Luke 14:23 Commentary and Bible Study

The parable ends with this final instruction to the servant: to do all that he can to make sure the master’s house is filled with guests. The servant represents all who belong to the true church, and who during this gospel age make it their business to gather as many as they can into the kingdom of heaven by communicating the gospel. That work will continue until the Lord Jesus Christ returns. Having sent out his servant to gather guests from the streets and lanes of the city, and still having more places to fill at the table, the master now goes a step further. The servant is sent to even more backwaters of the region, to bring in even more seemingly unqualified people to be guests. This is a wonderful picture of the grace of God in calling ‘not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble’, but, ‘the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; ²⁸ And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: ²⁹ That no flesh should glory in his presence’ (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). Those who are called and successfully brought in are in deliberate contrast to the original quests who will hear about in a moment, and among who is the man who had called out in verse 15. The parable is given by the Lord as an answer to him. This is why his remark was so presumptuous. He falsely assumed that he would sit at the great feast in the kingdom of God. He was ready to accept the Lord’s correction in The Parable of the Wedding Feast, and even to admire the picture of tranquillity and mutual submission that the Lord painted, but he presumed wrongly that he qualified to be there. He thought he wanted to be there, but we see in the parable, that it was the men who were bidden who refused to go to the feast, not the master who changed his mind. The invitation was at that stage still in effect, and was even pressed upon those who were invited. This man does not know himself, and this further Parable of the Great Feast is designed to show him the truth about himself. Who is verse 24 spoken to, and who speaks these words? If we are still inside the parable, then the words belong to the ‘certain man’ who has laid on the feast – ‘none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.’ That seems plausible, except for the words ‘For I say unto you’, and the ‘you’ is plural. Up till now the master has been addressing the one servant he was dealing with; he must therefore be speaking to additional servants. Some therefore think that the parable ends with verse 23. If so, then verse 24 is Christ speaking, and now emphasising the lesson which he wants the assembled hearers to learn. In that case, he is switching focus to the future feast in the kingdom of God, and calling that ‘my supper’. Either way, the lessons are clear. The man who called out did not properly understand what he was saying. He assumed that, as God’s chosen people, all Jews had a place at the table in the kingdom of God, and indeed wanted to be there. The truth was that Israel was not qualified to be there. Because they were ‘going about to establish their own righteousness, [and had] not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God’ (Romans 10:3). They lacked the true relationship with God that they needed in order to be there. Furthermore, it was they who would draw back and refuse the invitation. They would do this because, whether they realised it or not, their tastes were aligned to this world, not to the kingdom of heaven. They may have nominally been God’s people, but once they saw the true nature of the kingdom of heaven, they were sure they preferred this world and what it had to give.