Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

A Sermon preached on February 15, 2009, by the Rev. Dr. S. Randall Toms
At St. Paul’s Reformed Episcopal Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

                And when one of them that sat at meat with him heard these things, he said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.   Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many:   And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.   And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused.  And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused.   And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.   So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.   And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.   And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.   For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.   And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them,   If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.     (Luke 14:15-27)

Anytime we do something wrong, we always invent some kind of excuse to try to justify our behavior.   We are excuse-making beings.  Ever since Adam fell, we have been offering excuses.  Adam had an excuse:  Eve.  Eve had an excuse:  the serpent.  Since that time, mankind has been involved in the constant pursuit of elaborate excuses.  There have been so many notable personalities in the news for the last few years who have been caught in some kind of wrongdoing, and we see how the excuse-making machine goes into operation.  When certain political leaders are caught violating the law in some way, they invent excuses for themselves, such as they didn’t really know what they were doing was wrong, or they simply forgot.  When religious leaders are caught in immoral activity, they begin to blame their childhoods, or the pressures of the job, or the force of the temptation that they encountered.  When athletes are caught using illegal substances to enhance their skills, they say they were under too much pressure to perform, or conform, or any of a thousand excuses they offer for cheating.  Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear someone say, “I have no excuse.   I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but I wanted the fame and the money.  That was more important to me than my reputation and my family.  I am a sinful human being who loves his sin, and I was willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of the enjoyment of my sin.”

Our whole society is in the business of excusing sinful behavior.  When someone goes on a killing rampage, we want to go back into his history and find an explanation, which is another way to say, to find an excuse.  “Well, he was bullied when he was a child, so he took it out on other people and shot all his classmates.”    “He was abused as a child, and  now he abuses children.”   “He lost his job, and he was in such a depressed state of mind that he killed his wife and family.”    I remember back during  the Rodney King riots, how people started attacking other people, using that verdict as an excuse.  President Clinton said that this behavior was inexcusable, but understandable.  No!  It is not understandable!    If you say it is understandable, that is the next step to patting them on the back and saying, “What you did was wrong, but we understand.”   The person usually interprets that statement as meaning, “I had a good excuse for what I did.”   

There are no good excuses.  No one is pointing a good at these people, forcing them to engage in this kind of behavior.   Many children have been bullied and never picked up a gun and took revenge.  Many people have lived in abject poverty, but never killed a wife and family.  Many people have been guilty of injustice, including our Lord Jesus Christ, but did not seek to retaliate.  We do these things because deep down inside we want to do them, because we are evil at the core.  People want to be vicious and cruel, and they just wait for the opportunity to be so.  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people, especially when they lose their tempers and say things they shouldn’t, say, “I’ve been waiting for many years to tell you  just what I think of you.”  You see, that desire has been there for a long time.  All they lacked was the excuse, and they have been eagerly awaiting for that other person to do something so that they could finally pounce.   Whenever someone insults another person and the offended party strikes back, you can bank on it—that person has been waiting for that opportunity for a long time, and deep down inside he is so happy he finally got the chance to let loose.  Then, we can say to ourselves, “ I’m really a good person deep down inside, but he just pushed me over the brink.”  Liar!  You did it because you wanted to do it. 

Nowadays, with our advanced scientific knowledge, we are excusing all kinds of sinful behavior with the justification that we are just born this way.   We are born, biologically, with the tendency to engage in such behaviors, so we shouldn’t say that these behaviors are sinful, because they are just natural.    And you know what?  I don’t have any argument with them.  I think they are right.  I think we are all born twisted and perverted.  Everybody since Adam, with the exception of our Lord Jesus Christ, was born that way.  This is our doctrine of original sin.    We are all born with sinful tendencies.   Article 9 of our Thirty-nine Articles reads: 

Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated….”  

When you say, “I want to engage in this sinful behavior because it is only natural,” you are right.  It is only natural.  Ever since the fall of Adam, it has been natural.  But the whole point of the gospel is to deliver you from what is “natural,” to give you a new nature that can fight against what you find so natural to do.  This is why Christ came into the world.  Notice that our Article states that this infection of nature remains even in the regenerate.  These tendencies that you find in yourself to do what God’s word forbids  continue even in the Christian, and he must fight and struggle against them all the days of his life. 

We think that if we find an impulse in ourselves that is natural, that means that it is automatically good, and therefore, excusable.  For example, I often hear it said that men are not naturally monogamous.  Nature designed us to impregnate as many women as possible, so we shouldn’t blame men if they sleep with every woman in town.  It’s only natural.    Well, it may be very natural, but it is also very sinful, very irresponsible, and very selfish and hurtful.  If a man finds that “natural” tendency in himself, he must fight against it with all his heart and soul, and in many men, it will be an agonizing battle that may drive some to the breaking point; but the point of discipleship is that we deny ourselves.  Ever since the popularity of Freudian psychology took possession of our minds, we have been taught that if we repress our desires, we will have serious psychological damage.  Jesus taught us that the whole point of following him is not only to deny our sinful desires, but to deny our very selves.  This excuse of “we are only doing what is natural” is just a way to justify what we really want to do deep down inside.  Jesus teaches us that those very powerful desires must be crucified.

We are also quite adept at making excuses when it comes to refusing to do what we know we should do.   During my many years in the ministry, I have heard, I guess, almost every excuse that people have for not serving the Lord, for not being dedicated to his church.  I have counseled many people over the years, and I have discovered the main reason people come to the pastor for counseling is they want the pastor to excuse their sinful behavior.  People often come to me saying that they need my advice because they don’t know what to do.   That’s not the case.  They do know what to do.  Already, deep down inside, they know what to do.  They just don’t want to do it, and they hope that they can get me to agree with them, so that they can then say, “The pastor said I didn’t have to do that.”  I was telling my wife the other day that I was going to write a book entitled, “You Already Know What to Do,” but I checked on Amazon, and someone already beat me to that title.  Someone has written a book by that title on how to rely on the inner wisdom or intuition you have within yourself.  I wouldn’t put it in those terms, but I do think, based on Romans 2:14-15, that the law of God is written in hearts of all people, so that deep down inside we know what we should and shouldn’t do:  “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:   Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.”   God has written his moral law in our hearts.  He has put a conscience within us, and that conscience does excuse, or refuses to excuse us.  The believer in Jesus Christ is even more without excuse, for he has the Holy Spirit and the knowledge of God’s word.  We already know what to do.  We’re just looking for a way to get out of it.

 I’ve told young pastors not to make the mistake of taking people’s excuses too seriously.  The excuses will usually have nothing to do with the real reason for doing what they did.    Let me give one example, since it is the one that pastors hear so often:  “I didn’t come to church, because….”  I’ll talk about church attendance, since the excuses for not attending church are the silliest of all.  You may not realize this, and it was shocking when I realized it, but there are people who call themselves Christians who decide each Sunday whether or not they are going to church.  I am so glad that I grew up in a family that never had to make that decision, or at least, it had been made years before, once and for all.  My parents didn’t wake up on Sunday and decide whether they were going to church.  It was Sunday.  Of course, we were going to church, and no excuses were offered or accepted.  From the time I was 12 until I was 15, I never missed Sunday School for three solid years.  We gave badges at our church for erfect Sunday School attendance.  You say, “Weren’t you ever out of town on Sunday.”  Yes, but we went to Sunday school at some church, and had to bring back a bulletin from the church we attended to prove we had been there.  My first cousin, from the time he was 7 to the time he was 14, never missed Sunday School.  Seven years of perfect attendance!  His badge had little attachments that hooked on to one another each time you completed another year.  He had such a ladder of perfect attendance badges he jingled when he walked into Sunday School.  Weren’t you ever sick?  Yes, and we came and infected the whole Sunday School class, I guess.  My three years of perfect attendance were broken because I was vomiting and just couldn’t get out the door.  But that discipline taught us that if you really want to get to church, you can.  That kind of commitment is sadly missing in our day, and we offer the most ridiculous excuses for not attending church.

Let me give an illustration close to home here.  Almost all of you here remember when we were meeting  at 8:30 A. M.  Some people said that they couldn’t come to our church because that was too early, and they couldn’t get their kids ready and get them to church.    I always wanted to say, “Wait a minute.    You can get them up much earlier than that every morning to get them ready for school.   I drive through our neighborhood at 6:00 in the morning and those kids are out there on cold mornings waiting for the bus, but you can’t get your kids to church at 8:30.”  (By the way, where are all those people who said they would come if we had a later service?)  Some people say, “I couldn’t come to church because I was too tired.”   Now,  you wake will up on Monday morning, far earlier than you have to wake up  to get to church by the way, and you are just worn out, half asleep, not even in your right mind, but you will stumble to the shower, somehow grab a cup of coffee, and you will be at work.  Being too tired is no excuse, because that money is terribly important to us, far more so than our spiritual health and well-being.  Let me get this straight.  You can get up at 3:00 in the morning to get in the truck to drive however far you have to drive, so that you can be in that duck blind, and shiver for an hour or so in the cold rain, waiting for sunrise, but you can’t get up for church.  You can make that 7:30 tee time.   You can be on the lake by 6:00 waiting for that big bass to rise, but making that kind of effort and sacrifice for church is just asking too much.  What’s the real reason you didn’t come to church?  Say it:  “I just didn’t want to come.”

The people that Jesus described in our text for today had their excuses as well.  But, as is the case with all excuses, they were very flimsy, and they merely hid the real reason.  Jesus tells the story of a man who made a great feast, and when the time came for the people to come to the feast, he sent out his servants to tell the people, “Come, for all things are now ready,”  but those who were invited refused to come.   You need to understand something here about the basic laws of hospitality in the East to understand what an insult this was to the man who prepared this banquet.  According to the custom of those days, the people had already been invited to come to the feast.  You have to remember that in these days when there were no watches, clocks, and telephones,  it would have been  necessary to invite people twice to a feast.  You would invite people to a feast ahead of time and announce the day, but no one would know the hour the banquet would begin.   When you finally had everything ready, you would send out someone to let the people know that it was time for the banquet.  In this parable, the man had prepared a feast for the people that he had already invited, and the had said that they would come. Then the servants went out and said, “All right.  It’s time.  Come to the feast”  But then,  they all began to make excuses why they couldn’t come.  This was a great insult to the man.  How would you feel if you had invited people to your house for a big dinner, you had gone through all the work of preparing for them, and then, at the last minute, after everything was ready, they said, “Well, I can’t come because…”  In these Biblical days, accepting an invitation, and then refusing to come when the hour actually arrived would have been considered a serious insult.  But to top off the insult with such flimsy excuses as these people offered would have been an additional slap in the face.

Look at these excuses:

The first one says, “I have bought a piece of ground, and I have to go see it.”  That seems a little odd.  Didn’t he take a look at it before he bought it?   Surely he did.  And if he had already bought it, wouldn’t it wait until tomorrow or next week for him to inspect it.  The land wasn’t going anywhere, but the feast has to be attended at this one time.    This was an excuse, but what was the real reason?   He didn’t want to come.

The other one said, “I have bought five oxen,  and I need to  go try them out.”  Didn’t  he know they were good oxen before he bought them.  And again, couldn’t he have tried them out the next day?   What was the real reason he declined?  He didn’t want to come.

Then the third one says, “I’ve just gotten married, and I can’t come.”  This man could have appealed to Scripture for his excuse.  Deut. 24:5 says, “When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken.”  This man could have said, “The Law itself says that I’m supposed to stay home with my wife for a year.”  But as you can see from the text, this would have been a clever subterfuge, since this requirement of the law didn’t prohibit social engagements.   Furthermore, it certainly wouldn’t have excused his behavior of having already accepted the invitation, but now refusing to come.  I heard a preacher years ago say that this man’s response didn’t describe many brides he knew.  She would have probably jumped at the chance to go to a lavish feast such as this.    On the other hand, I can understand a newly married man wanting to stay home with his wife.  A wife is a good thing, but even something as good and legitimate as a lovely bride must not come before this gracious invitation.  Again, what was the real reason he declined this invitation?  He didn’t want to come.

 It is obvious that none of these excuses hold up under close examination.  When you compare the excuses with what would have been enjoyed at the feast, it seems silly, and just plain rude, that these people would use such flimsy excuses not to attend this feast.  Jesus is showing us that the pathetic excuses for not attending a feast is no different than refusing to attend the feast that he has prepared for us.  He invites us all to his feast; that is, he invites us to come and enjoy fellowship with him.  In the Bible, fellowship with God, fellowship with Jesus, is often described as a feast, many times a wedding feast.  Isaiah 25:6 reads, “And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.”  You see, teetotalers and people on fat free diets aren’t going to enjoy the kingdom of God!  The kingdom of God is a feast of wine and fat things. 

In Matthew 8:11-12, we read, “And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.   But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  Heaven is sitting down at a feast with all the great patriarchs and saints of the past, while Hell is being shut out from this blessing.  Jesus said in Rev. 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”  Again, our fellowship, our relationship with Jesus is described in terms of the intimacy of fellowship around a meal.  Biblical days were  much like ours in South Louisiana.  When we want to have fellowship with other people, we say, “Come to our house for dinner,” or, “Let’s go out and eat together.”  The other night when we met for our Super Bowl party, wasn’t that fun?  Last Sunday when we had the baptismal celebration, wasn’t that a joyful time?  While we have so much fun at banqueting and parties, those wonderful celebrations are not to be compared with the banquet that Christ has prepared for us.  One day, we are going to sit down with Jesus at his table and enjoy a most wonderful feast throughout all eternity.

But you don’t have to wait until you die to begin to enjoy that feast, the blessings of salvation.  Those blessings of the gospel feast are to be enjoyed by us now.  When we become Christians, our fellowship with Christ at his feast begins.  In our daily walk with Christ, we are having fellowship with him.   When we pray, we are enjoying his presence.   When we read God’s holy word, we are having communion with him.  But the greatest moment of fellowship that we have with our Lord Jesus Christ this side of heaven is the service of Holy Communion.  Before our Lord went to the cross, he commanded us to observe a meal, a feast.  Isn’t it wonderful that worship is centered around a meal?  The service of Holy Communion is nothing other than the gospel banquet.  Our fellowship with Jesus is never richer than when we come here to partake of Holy Communion.  St. Paul’s Reformed Episcopal Church was founded for one reason—the service of Holy Communion as it is observed in our Prayer Book.  Those of us who weren’t Episcopalians, became Episcopalians for this one reason—fellowship with Christ in the service of Holy Communion.  This is why we have weekly communion.  The greatest experience of life, fellowship with Christ, is attained in the service of Holy Communion.  The greatest joy that you can have in this life this side of heaven is feasting with Christ at his table each and every Lord’s Day. 

Actually, my silly little illustrations about church attendance weren’t that far off, were they?  How people respond to the invitation to come to worship is the same as the response  to have fellowship with Jesus, for the richest fellowship we have with Jesus is at this table.   The invitation to worship in our church, is the invitation to receive the body and blood of Christ for the salvation of our sins, to rely only upon his sacrifice for forgiveness, and to receive all our spiritual blessings from him alone.  If people invent excuses to refuse to worship, they are refusing to respond to the invitation of Jesus to his banquet.  When we invite people to church, we aren’t merely inviting them to sing some songs or hear a sermon.  We are inviting them to the gospel banquet.  If people have no heart for worship in God’s house, they have no heart for God at all, for this is the place on this side of eternity where God reveals his glory the brightest and where our fellowship with him reaches it zenith.  When we invite people to church, they often think of thousands of excuses, but what is the real reason.  They do not want to come.  Alexander MacLaren put it like this: 

When a man pleads a previous engagement as a reason for not accepting an invitation, nine times out of ten it is a polite way of saying, “I do not want to go.”  It was so in this case.  How all these absolute impossibilities, which made it perfectly out of the question that the three recreants should sit down at the table, would have melted into thin air if, by any chance, there had come into their minds a wish to be there!  They would have found means to look after the field and the cattle and the home, and to be in their places notwithstanding, if they had wanted.  The real reason that underlies men’s turning away from Christ’s offer is, as I said in the beginning of my remarks,  that they do not care to have it.  They have no inclinations and no tastes for the higher and purer blessings.

People do not want Christ, and the fact that they do not want Christ is revealed by their refusal to come to his house and have fellowship with him at his table.  They have no love for these things. 

The truth that they do not want to come is revealed by the absurdity of the excuses when compared to the richness of the blessings offered here each Lord’s Day.  What is presented here each Sunday, but a feast?  Everything in our worship service is geared to get you ready for this feast at the Lord’s table.  By coming here, we are saying that we accept the invitation to come to this banquet, so we begin our services with praise and thanksgiving that God has been so gracious to invite us to this feast.  When you attend a great banquet, you prepare yourself by being clean and presentable, so in our service here, we have confession of sin before we approach the Lord’s Table.  Here we have the milk of the word, and the meat of the word of God.   I give my time to preparing these sermons for you, because they are part of the feast.  People who love Christ also love preaching, because in preaching the glory and beauty of Christ, the blessings of the gospel are described and explained for us.  My sermons are like the appetizers, if you will, to whet your appetite for the main course, which is the sacrament of Holy Communion.   I don’t spend my time preparing sermons just so that you will think they are good sermons.  I preach to draw people into fellowship with Christ, and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to make your fellowship with Christ deeper and more meaningful.  Then it all culminates with the glorious experience of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, where we are made one body with him, where we dwell in him and he is us.  There can be no greater experience in life than that.  Therefore, an excuse for not coming to worship  is not only a supreme insult to Christ, but it is also supremely stupid, because you are denying yourself the greatest moments that this life afford.  Nothing shows our lack of interest in spiritual things and our lack of love to Christ as much as our indifference to the blessings that he offers us in this holy sacrament.  

In this parable, the seriousness of this insult is reflected when  the master of the house says that none of those men who were invited and made excuses would taste of his supper.  The primary application of this passage would have been to the Jews.  This parable had been prompted by this man who had said, “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.”  This man, no doubt, thought that he would be one of those who would sit down with the Messiah and enjoy that feast when his kingdom was established.  Jesus tells them this parable to show that they were being invited to that feast now, and they were refusing to come.  They had been invited by Christ, but they had rejected him. All through their history, they had been invited to the banquet, and they had all said that when the Messiah came they would be so anxious to accept and sit down at the Messianic banquet.  But when the Messiah actually came, they spurned his gracious invitation and crucified him. 

The same thing is true now when we invite people to eternal life.  They all say that they want to go to heaven.  They all say that they want to have fellowship with God throughout all eternity.  Well, that fellowship is offered here and now.  Here and now you can begin having that fellowship with God through Jesus Christ.  When people are invited to church, we are saying, “All things are now ready.  Come to the feast.”  When you walk through that door on Sunday morning and see this communion table, you should be thinking, “The feast has been prepared.  I am about to enjoy fellowship with Christ in the deepest way possible in this life.”  What will God say to those on the last day who said, “We want to sit down at your table and feast with you,” when they refused the invitation to do so throughout their lives.  I will tell you what he will say:  “Not one on of you will taste of my feast.”   If you put other things ahead of Christ, and consider other things more important, you are going to be excluded from having fellowship with him.  The feast is reserved only for those who consider fellowship with him to be more important than anything else in the world. 

One day, there is a going to be a great marriage feast, the marriage feast of the lamb.  The bride, the Church, is going to be there.  But that bride will be composed of those who heard the invitation to the feast, and put everything else aside in order to attend.  Have you done so?  Have you seen the richness of this feast with Jesus, and have you seen that there is nothing in the world to compare with it? 

What makes this rejection of the invitation so appalling is that it is a gracious invitation.  These people didn’t have to put out one bit of effort to prepare the feast.  It was all done for them.  All they had to do was respond to the invitation and enjoy the feast.  The same thing is true of eternal life, eternal fellowship with Jesus.  He has prepared all things.  He has lived the perfect life.  He has shed his blood for your sins.  All that he asks is that you set aside everything else and come to the feast. 

I ask you to look closely at this table of Holy Communion.  Do you really believe that by receiving this sacrament you become a partaker of his most blessed body and blood?  Do you really believe that by partaking you are filled with his grace and heavenly benediction?  Do you really believe that by coming to this table, your sinful body is made clean by his body, and your soul is washed through his most precious blood?  Do you really believe that through the grace of this sacrament, you dwell in him, and he in you?  As I have studied the past few weeks with our candidates for confirmation, we have looked at the question in the Offices of Instruction, “What are the benefits whereof we are partakers in the Lord’s Supper.  Answer:  the benefits whereof we are partakers in the Lord’s Supper are the strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of Christ, as our bodies are strengthened and refreshed by the Bread and Wine.”  Do you really believe these blessings are available to you in this sacrament?  Then think back to Garden of Gethsemane where his sweat was as great drops of blood.  Think of  the soldiers beating him, and placing a crown of thorns on his head. 

Think of the scourging, the nails through his hands and feet, and the hours of pain and agony on the cross as he took the penalty of our sin upon himself.    That is what it took to prepare this feast that is offered to you.  Because he suffered and died in that manner, he can look at you and say, “Come, for all things are ready.” What our excuses now  but the height of absurdity, and more than that, the callous response of  those who do not care about the price that was paid to make these blessings available.  What could be more gracious and loving than such an invitation?  No wonder then that the just desert of the rejection of that invitation is not partaking.  Those who do not come to the feast, get what they wanted:  no feast, no eternal fellowship with Jesus Christ.  Our Lord is gracious, but he will not be gracious to those who have refused his gracious invitation to come to this heavenly banquet.

The three men in this parable thought that they had something better to do than attend this gracious feast, so the master of the house told his servant, “Then go bring the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind,” and they accepted this gracious invitation.   You see, the blind couldn’t go to a field to see it.  The poor didn’t have the money to buy a field or oxen.  The crippled didn’t have the legs to try out some new oxen.  And perhaps, the maimed didn’t have a pretty new bride to keep them from the feast.   For them, this invitation was an unexpected gift, and they were more than happy to respond.  

This is why we make up excuses rather than attend the feast.  We have so much more that is far more beautiful than this bread and wine.  We have our riches, our pleasures, and our games.  What is bread and wine in comparison to these?   They are nothing, nothing at all, until you see yourself as one of the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind.  In other words, these spiritual things, more valuable than the world and all besides, will mean nothing until you see yourself as a sinner, a starving sinner, a beggar, who needs forgiveness of sins, who needs the life that only Christ can give, who needs the strength that only he can provide.  Until that time, we will remain indifferent to these blessings, and actually despise them by offering absurd excuses.  But the moment we see ourselves as the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind, nothing will be more important to us than this gracious feast. 

Once again, we come back to the point I made with the first sermon of this New Year.  As a church, we must pray diligently, constantly, because people are never going to see themselves as the poor, the halt, the maimed, and the blind, unless God reveals to them their true condition.  Until that time, all of the glorious blessings that we offer here will be ignored, and people will make up thousands of these absurd and flimsy excuses.  Let us pray that God will have mercy upon the people of this generation, who are distracted and under the spell of the allurements of the world,  that he will reveal to them their true spiritual condition, and the glories of the feast that we have to offer.  Only the Holy Spirit can do this work in the hearts of men and women.  Let us go into the world with the gracious invitation, “Come, for all things are ready,” and may God give people such a sight of the feast, that no excuse for refusing would ever come to mind

Amen.