Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Jeff Parrott.

Many of us have been in that strange yet kind of hilarious situation where we receive an invitation,

yet we don't know how to respond to it. Of course, some

invitations are an easy yes, like the invite to not only attend but be in the wedding of a best

friend, and some are an easy no thank you, like the invite to your barista's ex-roommates'

cousin's retirement party. But other invitations are much more

complicated. You know the kind I'm talking about, where there's no easy yes or no easy no to offer.

So you end up responding to the RSVP really late in the game or just not at all. The invite just

wasn't urgent or important enough to elicit a clear response.

And so you're left with that awkward, funny feeling of not knowing what to do with that invitation.

Of course, our sense of urgency and commitment to an invitation is clarified by relational connection.

How you handle that invitation is rooted in the

relationship you have with the one who's inviting you. The more serious and intimate the relationship is,

the greater the resolution and commitment is in responding and attending. Now, if that's true in the

horizontal dimension of human relationships, how much truer's true in the horizontal dimension of human relationships,

how much truer is it in the vertical dimension of our relationship with God? If the Creator

King of the universe is sending out an invitation to his banquet, what should our urgency,

an obligation be, to respond, to attend? In our passage today, Jesus teaches about the nature of the

invitation to his feast, and along the way, he humbles us and empowers us with a surprise about the

kind of people who end up feasting at the banquet of his kingdom. As we get ready to approach God's word together,

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