Day 2866 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 14:18 NIV

Well, the woman you put with me here, she gave me the fruit and I ate it. Well, the serpent deceived me and I ate the fruit. Well, I’m not a smooth talker so I won’t be able to give your messages the panache and pizazz they deserve. Well, I have little experience as I am still young, so I doubt anyone will pay me much attention. Well, I’ve made too many mistakes and so surely I’m useless for anything good. Well, there’s a lion outside and I’ll die if I step out there.

Well, we made the golden calf because we didn’t know where Moses had gone. Well, at least in Egypt we had food to eat. Well, I didn’t know changing would take so long. Well, I thought being cleansed of my leprosy would be far easier and much quicker. Well, I can’t possibly remember all the rules. Well, I don’t have any nice clothes to wear. Well, I’m afraid I’ll mess up and look like an idiot. Well, I don’t want to go to Nineveh, so I’ll head the opposite direction. Well, I’ve spent my life persecuting your people, how can I now serve them? Well, Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners, so what does He know?

Well, I didn’t know it was wrong. Well, I didn’t realize that I could have picked another choice. Well, I forgot it was a sin. Well, I just wasn’t quite sure if it was bad. Well, it looked like fun. Well, it has a catchy beat. Well, everyone else is doing it. Well, if they show it on TV then it must be harmless. Well, it’s just a holiday for kids to dress up and get candy. Well, it’s just a word, and just because some say it’s a filthy word doesn’t mean that it really is. Well, surely God just wants us to be happy. Well, I don’t the harm in it. Well, well, well, well, ...

Well, we’re all absolutely full of excuses used to excuse our bad behavior, our complacency, our fear, our doubts, our trepidation, our weakness, our selfishness, our foolishness. We humans have truly perfected the art of shrinking away from any opportunity, any responsibility, any calling, anything that we simply don’t want to have to do. We are masters at weaseling out of everything we’re not interested in or willing to try or afraid we’ll mess up. We’re geniuses at passing the blame onto others for choices and decisions that we made all by ourselves. We are literally able to convince ourselves of just about anything that it takes to afford us the justification of trying things we shouldn’t and not doing things that we should.

Reading through a bit more of Luke last night, and this verse just came out of nowhere like 5:16 did a couple of nights ago. The Parable of the Great Banquet is about a man who decides to put on this lavish feast and sends out a bunch of invitations for the best of society to come and have a good time completely on his dime. Yet, one by one, the invitees all respond with excuses for their not showing up. Eventually the host grows so frustrated by the lack of respect and interest that he just sends his servants out into the streets to bring in whoever they can find just so that all his hard work and generosity won’t go to waste.

He ends up with the lowest of society filling his seats and enjoying his food. The rich and powerful all turned him down and refused to accept his invitation because they had all this other highly important stuff to do. What was so important you ask? Well, one guy just bought a field and had to go look it over. Another just purchased some new oxen and wanted to try them out. Still another just got married and so didn’t want to go to another celebration I guess.

They all had some reason to reject the kindness this man was trying to show them, but most of those excuses really just seem to say that they’re simply not interested in going. Are you really going to turn down some free food to go scope out a field? You walking away from a lavish party so you can harness up a couple new cattle? You really expect me to believe that some land and livestock are more important than all the work this guy went through to throw this grand banquet?

Sounds awfully silly doesn’t it? Well, it also sounds an awful lot like how humanity responds to God’s invitation to an eternal home filled with joy and peace and rest and every other good thing. We just don’t think of it that way.

For so long, literally since Genesis and the telling of the first people that God created, humanity has been finding excuses and rejecting invitations. We’ve rejected God’s invitation to enjoy every square inch of the Garden of Eden save for one single tree and made excuses to eat that off-limit fruit anyway. We’ve rejected God’s prophets who were just trying to help us see that we could do better and we made excuses to avoid the guilt earned in ignoring them. We reject God’s Word as it stands against the truths we’ve authored for ourselves and use our ‘intelligence’ as an excuse for authoring our own ‘truth’.

We reject His Son because we don’t need anybody threatening our power or authority. We reject God because we know what we’re doing and don't need anyone telling us what to do and we’ve got too much arrogance to ever admit otherwise. We reject the offer to follow Jesus because we’ve got dads to bury, things to sell, a flourishing business, an endless list of other things to do before we’re ready.

Yesterday we discussed the vital need for our complete focus along this narrow path following Christ. Our problem is that we still try to find any and every excuse possible to make it wider. We try to make this road a little easier. We try to make room to accommodate a personal preference or two. We do whatever it takes to make this journey into the unknown a little more comfortable because we fear doing what’s hard. We don’t want to learn His rules and expectations because then we’d have to accept responsibility for upholding them or punishment for failing to do so.

We don’t want to get rid of the wrath we’ve found as we love being able to rely on it, and we don’t mind showing it off to others either. We don’t want to look beyond our sins because doing so would first require us to admit that we’ve made them, and that would open the door to a sudden realization that we’re not perfect and actually do need someone to tell us what to do and how to live better as our sins testify that we’re clearly not good at living decent lives on our own.

So, we end up turning down this gift of a chance to follow Jesus to Heaven because we have sins to enjoy, trophies to polish, friends to continue enjoying being around, TV shows to watch when we’re bored, music to listen to because all our friends love it. We refuse His offer of salvation because we can’t bring ourselves to admit our sins, and use the commonality of sin as a reason as to why it must not be so bad. We refuse forgiveness because we still think we’ve done nothing in need of forgiveness.

You see, when we look at our excuses from different angles, we see just how silly they sound. Surely people wouldn’t reject an invitation to Heaven, but we do that very thing every time that we choose to sin knowing the cost it carries. We choose that very thing every time we allow ourselves to become distracted by this wacky world we’re in. We reject His invitation every time that we set our hearts on something in and of this world. We turn Him down every time we refuse to change because it’s just too hard, and we’re still having too much fun to see a reason to change.

We don’t want to change. We don’t want to try. We don’t want to leave anything behind. We don’t want to let anyone down. We don’t want to lose any friends. We don’t want to have to be strict about what we allow into our lives. We don’t want to accept responsibility because we’re used to living in a world that pretends that responsibility doesn’t exist, and that consequences are therefore impossible.

And thus, the narrow path that leads to life loses in the battle for our adoration as our hearts just find the wide path so much easier and more accommodating, and it just doesn’t require as much from us as the narrow.

Is what we’ve found or hope to find in this world really so grand that we can’t let go of it in exchange for a promise of something eternally better, all because that promise of something eternally better requires us to surrender, to change, to humble ourselves?

What is it about this world and our lives in it that has us willing to refuse God’s offer of salvation through repentance? What is so amazing around us here that it’s worth taking our focus off of Jesus and His leading down the narrowest of path? What is so stinking incredible about our lives lived our way with all this junk that we’ve learned to desire that we’re willing to risk missing out on an eternity of peace?

What are we so afraid of that it has us unwilling to stand up and speak the truth of God’s Word? What are we worried will happen should we actually go all in on following Christ and living for His will? Why does the world around us, those around us, the things around us still have so much sway over us that we keep living like we can’t ever be happy anywhere else?

Friends, if we only knew what God had planned, what He has prepared, what joy and peace exist within His Heavenly abode, we’d stop making excuses to stay here. We would stop looking for reasons to keep doing the stupid things that just might keep us out of His presence. We just might finally realize that there’s nothing here, no worldly gain, no amount of social acceptance, no amount of selfish comfort that is worth risking the reward that awaits those who fully surrender all this world in exchange for their chance to experience what only a life of faith leads toward.

How long are we willing to avoid what’s hard just for the sake of living an easier life? How long are we going to keep doing things our way before we finally realize that our way has never led to anything? How long can we keep coming up with excuses to avoid God’s invitation before those gates close and we find ourselves stuck outside of Heaven hearing a bunch of people having the time of their eternal life enjoying all that He has prepared for them?

Don’t we realize that He prepared that place for us too? Don’t we realize that nothing we’ve got going on, nothing we’re trying to find, nothing we’re hoping to experience in this place, no selfish worldly trophy we’re trying to win can come close to competing with the eternal peace that Christ won on the cross. Don’t we realize that we can literally only serve ourselves and this world for so long before we find ourselves no longer here to enjoy these hollow little lives we’ve tried so long to carve in soil that’s passing away?

My point in all this is that God has offered to lead us to His grand banquet. He has offered us salvation from all the stupid things we’ve done and all the foolish excuses we’ve tried to hide them behind. He has invited us to join Him in Heaven. Is it worth missing that for a new field, a couple new oxen, a bigger TV, a faster car, a vacation to Bermuda, a 3 minute song filled with foul language and highly questionable meaning, a chance to repeat a bunch of lies to appease and befriend those around us, a bit of dark humor in a blockbuster, a fleeting moment of pleasure, a lasting period of doubt, a temporary hit of selfishness?

Friends, I really do think we’d be shocked if we could see just how narrow the road is that leads to Heaven and just how little room we have to take our faith as lightly as we tend to. This is our one chance at something better than what we deserve. If we reject the invitation of the cross, there will not be another. And there will be no excuse good enough to justify our choice to let His salvation slip through our fingers.

If we choose to take our eyes off the prize of Christ, that is our choice and we alone will bear the consequences. We have to stop looking for an excuse to stay the same, an excuse to avoid trying, a reason to remain unappreciative of all He’s done. We can only reject Him for so long before He rejects us forever.

Our faith deserves our utmost respect. Jesus deserves our utmost respect. And we do not respect Him by continuing to live our lives as we see fit and lean on every worthless excuse to do so. If we choose to withhold the respect He is due, then we must accept the cost associated. We just can’t continue living like ‘we didn’t know’ when He went through such great lengths to make sure we did. Christ came to bring us our invitation to Heaven. We should be incredibly careful as to how we respond.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold