{"id":7154,"date":"2015-11-28T00:05:14","date_gmt":"2015-11-28T08:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7154"},"modified":"2015-11-27T23:48:01","modified_gmt":"2015-11-28T07:48:01","slug":"invitations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/11\/28\/invitations\/","title":{"rendered":"Invitations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, <\/p>\n

\t\u201cThe kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. Again he sent out other slaves saying, \u2018Tell those who have been invited, \u201cBehold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast.\u201d \u2019 <\/p>\n

\t\u201cBut they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them. But the king was enraged, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire. <\/p>\n

\t\u201cThen he said to his slaves, \u2018The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. <\/p>\n

\t\u201c\u2018Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.\u2019 Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests. <\/p>\n

\t\u201cBut when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, \u2018Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?\u2019 And the man was speechless. <\/p>\n

\t\u201cThen the king said to the servants, \u2018Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\t\u201cFor many are called, but few are chosen.\u201d (Matthew 22:1-14)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tWhat is the kingdom of heaven like? Jesus\u2019 parables never compared the kingdom of heaven to earthly kingdoms. Most didn\u2019t even have government officials in them. Though this parable has a king in it, the story has little to do with governing. Instead, it\u2019s all about a party. <\/p>\n

\tJesus\u2019 parables, just like Aesop\u2019s fables, all had morals. They were not allegories, where each character and event represented some person or thing. Instead, the story taken as a whole was the message. The moral was the reason for the parable. <\/p>\n

\tSo what was the moral\u2014the point\u2014of Jesus\u2019 parable about a king who threw a party? That although everyone gets an invitation and no one is excluded, not everyone wanted to come. And what of the one without wedding clothes who was speechless? The ill-dressed man, for whatever reason, had not really wanted to be there either, otherwise he\u2019d have worn the right clothes.<\/p>\n

\tGod has invited everyone into his kingdom. But not everyone will come because not everyone wants to. <\/p>\n

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Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, \u201cThe kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7154"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7154"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7156,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7154\/revisions\/7156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}