Chapter 18—“Go into the Highways and Hedges”
This chapter is based on
Luke 14:1
;
Luke 14:12-24
.
The Saviour was a guest at the feast of a Pharisee. He accepted
invitations from the rich as well as the poor, and according to His
custom He linked the scene before Him with His lessons of truth.
Among the Jews the sacred feast was connected with all their seasons of
national and religious rejoicing. It was to them a type of the blessings
of eternal life. The great feast at which they were to sit down with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while the Gentiles stood without, and
looked on with longing eyes, was a theme on which they delighted to
dwell. The lesson of warning and instruction which Christ desired to
give, He now illustrated by the parable of a great supper. The blessings
of God, both for the present and for the future life, the Jews thought
to shut up to themselves. They denied God’s mercy to the Gentiles.
By the parable Christ showed that they were themselves at that very
time rejecting the invitation of mercy, the call to God’s kingdom. He
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showed that the invitation which they had slighted was to be sent to
those whom they despised, those from whom they had drawn away
their garments as if they were lepers to be shunned.
In choosing the guests for his feast, the Pharisee had consulted
his own selfish interest. Christ said to him, “When thou makest a
dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy
kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors, lest they also bid thee again, and
a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the
poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blessed; for
they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the
resurrection of the just.”
Christ was here repeating the instruction He had given to Israel
through Moses. At their sacred feasts the Lord had directed that “the
stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates,
shall come, and shall eat, and be satisfied.”
Deuteronomy 14:29
. These
gatherings were to be as object lessons to Israel. Being thus taught the
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