HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS

PARABLES 17 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 
Today I’m sharing the parable of the king who invites many privileged guests to his son’s wedding feast, but they are all too busy attend. This is one of many end times parables that Jesus taught, after finishing two years and some months ministry in Galilee and then heading towards Jerusalem to begin the second part of his ministry. In Jerusalem he would begin to teach about his death and resurrection and ascension into heaven and his return to earth in the last days.  

This parable is prophetic of the wedding feast of Jesus and his bride the Church in the last days. It tells the story of a King who was arranging a wedding feast for his son and had invited certain privileged guests, and many of those guests did not honour the king with their acceptances but made excuses for why they could not come. Both Matthew (Ch.22) and Luke (Ch.14) tell the story and the stories each complement one another emphasising certain attitudes and values in one story, and not in the other, and giving detail in one story to supplement the other.
Matthew defines the man who was inviting the guests as a king, which makes the refusal to attend, a grave insult or rebuff. Luke makes the emphasis that the dinner tables were already set and just waiting to be occupied by the guests, which means that there was little or no notice for the guests to plan the event in their calendar, because the date of a wedding was never announced a long time beforehand as they are today. In those times the bridegroom would have to prepare a home for he and his bride to live in, and only then would he let people know when he was ready. And this all had to meet with the parents’ approval and when it was determined that the home was ready, the groom would gather his friends and go to retrieve his bride—often at night, with lamps and great celebration.
The bride and her companions had to be constantly prepared (as seen in the Parable of the Ten Virgins), and did not know the exact day or hour of his arrival. Once the groom arrived, the wedding celebration began and could last for seven days or more and unprepared, or unresponsive guests who were not ready for the announcement missed out on the feast.
When the king heard of the rebuffs to his invitation, he was furious, and he punished those privileged people firmly. Matthew writes. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore, go into the highways (Luke adds the byways – (or hedges), and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’ So those servants went out into the highways and byways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests. 
In the Gospel of Luke, the servants are to firstly go to the streets and lanes to the poor and disabled and the blind and the crippled. And when these had come in the servant said to the master that there was still lots of room left still n as room.’ Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. And those people came in, and they would have brought their friends with them. Compel may seem to be a forceful word, but the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5 that the love of God ‘compelled’ him to reach out to bring others into the Kingdom of God.
God the Father wants a full house for the marriage feast of his Son Jesus to his Bride which is the Church, and this will occur at God’s appointed time, but if those in the Church are not prepared and ready, God will still get himself a full house. He will be sending the Holy Spirit (his servants in the parable) into the world to open peoples’ hearts to receive his invitation. There will be highways and byways people out there and streets and lanes people out there, that may be at different stages of spiritual growth or have some weird and wonderful ideas about God, but if they have hearts to know God they will be taught of the Lord and hear and receive the full message of Jesus, and their souls will be saved. And they will also bring their friends with them. 
The following words about God that we are about to hear are from two people who in recent times have become listened to by millions of people around the world day after day, and they influence people in the political culture or the philosophical or even alternate cultures. They are sincerely grappling to understand the mystery of faith, and I believe God has given them a voice as a trumpet sound to awaken unbelieving hearts to the goodness of God. And these people already proclaim Jesus as God and as our resurrected Lord and Saviour.
These two people are Jordan Peterson and Russel Brand who preach Jesus, and the transforming work of God in their lives. You will hear these if you listen to the podcast and in the PDF file of the notes you can click on the links to the video clips that we saw in church. 
Jordan Peterson – video clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PbKxMnoCao&list=PLKki_g3WkrNeYJr2mUzjFh4B1lOzRp8bH&index=1
Russel Brand – video clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQhznYoCeOc&list=PLKki_g3WkrNeYJr2mUzjFh4B1lOzRp8bH&index=2

God is speaking to us from Heaven in these days more than ever before in history. The Bible says in Acts Ch 2 that on the Day of Pentecost ‘Each one heard God speak in their own language’. 
This is not merely a spoken national language or dialect but it is the uniquely personal way that God has created the individual human spirit of every person on the planet to hear the Holy Spirit speak to them in a deeply personal way, using all kinds of communicational frameworks.  Many hear The Holy Spirit by reading in the Word of God, and some by hearing the heart of God through a song, whether spiritual or secular, and others see God in the awesomeness and beauty of his creation or even in a dream or a vision. For others it may be the prompting of God through a meaningful phrase that comes into our mind and that only we could personally interpret. When we have faith in the work of the Kingdom of God in Heaven, we begin to understand the spiritual reality that God’s will in Heaven is always waiting to happen on earth in our lives. That spiritual reality becomes our new reality for our hearts and minds – what we think and what we believe. And if we ask for the Holy Spirit to become active in our lives, we will be guided by the Holy Spirit to hear what God is saying to us though Jesus and see with eyes of faith what he showing us to do. We will pray prayers of surrender to receive God’s answers and get his results rather than our demands for our own wishes. 
In the days of Jesus, a wedding was not planned with a calendar. And a wedding feast will be prepared for God’s people before Jesus returns, and we don’t have a calendar for that either, but the same principle applies about being prepared and ready for the anticipated event – Jesus said that only the Father knows the day and the hour. This parable emphasizes faithfulness, and the expectancy of the joy of final oneness together, making marriage a powerful metaphor for God’s covenant love. God is stirring this love response in peoples’ hearts through familiar and unfamiliar ways and voices in these days. The Holy Spirit can use all of us as doorkeepers that can open the doors of peoples’ hearts to hear the voice of Jesus personally and offer their lives to him as he has done for us. Be open to engaging with the highways and byways people in your world - so that you can help them understand the hope that lives in your life concerning the reality of Jesus.