The great feast stands for God's invitation to men and women. It is a picture used elsewhere by the Lord Jesus Christ. Imagine a nobleman in ancient times throws a great supper, a great dinner. What is the idea of it? First of all it’s for fellowship. You are invited. Yes, in this world, not all invitations are sincere and feuding families may still invite each other and therefore fellowship is not always the expected outcome, but it should be to bring people together. It is an extension of the hand. That is what the parable means. God has invited us into fellowship with himself, into union. God has found a way of throwing the barriers down between us and himself, and bringing us into the fold and blessing us, and surrounding us with warmth and gladness and riches and blessing.
There is this barrier between us and God. We are rebels, we are sinful, far away from him. Just how far we are away from him is indicated by the way in which we refuse him, just as these people refuse their invitation. But God has done something to dispense with that barrier, to get rid of it. God has done something whereby he can – like feeding a man at a banquet – give us mercy and forgiveness for all our sin. He has found a way whereby he can distribute to us light and understanding. Here are we all in darkness, muddled and confused about spiritual things, unable to understand who God is, what he is like, what he wants of us, what the purpose of life is. But he is willing to come to this rebel race and distribute life to us, who are dead, unable to feel God before we are converted. He is willing to give us complete reconciliation with himself and eternal life.
It is a feast which God has prepared at amazing cost. It may be that there were some very, very wealthy men in the East who could have thrown a feast for the whole town, and it would have cost them relatively nothing because they were so wealthy. But we must never forget that when God decided that he would prepare a feast of life and pardon and forgiveness, that great offer of blessing cost God so much the human mind cannot even take it in. The cost of all this was that the Son of God. He had to come into this world and suffer and die in agony to bear the punishment due to us for our sin. Christ came and he took the place of all those people, past, present and future, who will ever be converted or have been converted.