Matthew 22:10

A king throws a wedding banquet for his son. He sends out the wedding invitations, probably to the best and brightest. When he sends his servants out to pick up the people he's invited, they say they don't want to come! He tells the invited guests how great the party is going to be, but they make fun of it. Some of the guests even mistreat and kill the messengers! Talk about not wanting to go to a party! The king decided that he wants a full house at the wedding party, so he sends his servants into the streets to bring in whoever they can find.

This is a great story for us. More than just being about a people who had the opportunity to accept the message of Jesus and didn't, it's about the next group of people...the ones who get the next opportunity. The original wedding guests were the sort of people who get to go to the real Hollywood power weddings. It's as if when Brad Pitt and angeline Jolie got married, no one on their guest list had accepted their invitation. Imagine if Brangelina announced their wedding, and then ended up inviting hundreds of people just off the street. I don't know what street it would have been, maybe in California or in France or in Rwanda. Anyway, that would be quite the situation, wouldn't it? Hundreds of Joe Schmoes going to the wedding of celebrities?

And we like stories like this, right? This is good news for you and me. If the A-listers don't get to go, maybe our name will eventually come up. This is the gospel: Jesus didn't come for the good, fancy people who are self-sufficient, successful, and glamorous in their own eyes. He came for the needy, the weak, the unpolished. The gospel, in other words, is for the rest of us - the street people who live our lives in perpetual fear that we'll never make it, that we'll never be invited. The gospel is for us, and Jesus is saying that we're the ones who end up inside the wedding feast.

-- 

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,