Day 60 | Give This Man Place
April 28, 2015 - WEEK NINE
Brunswick Monogrammist, The Great Banquet, Warsaw Museum, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
DAILY READING
CONSIDER AS YOU READ
- What is the practical application of Jesus’ admonition to not seek the “highest room”? What should we be more concerned with?
- Are we guilty of refusing the Lord’s supper for more trivial concerns?
- Do the parables in this chapter have any common messages or themes?
SUPPLEMENTAL READING
The story implies that invitations had been given sufficiently early to the chosen and prospective guests; then on the day of the feast a messenger was sent to notify them again, as was the custom of the time. Though called a supper, the meal was to be a sumptuous one; moreover, the principal meal of the day was commonly spoken of as supper…. The matters that engaged the time and attention of those who had been bidden, or as we would say, invited, to the feast, were not of themselves discreditable, far less sinful; but to arbitrarily allow personal affairs to annul an honorable engagement once accepted was to manifest discourtesy, disrespect and practical insult toward the provider of the feast…. Plainly none of these people wanted to be present. The master of the house was justly angry. His command to bring in the poor and the maimed, the halt and the blind from the city streets must have appealed to those who listened to our Lord’s recital as reminiscence of His counsel given a few minutes before, concerning the kind of guests a rich man could invite with profit to his soul….
Explication of the parable was left to the learned men to whom the story was addressed. Surely some of them would fathom its meaning, in part at least. The covenant people, Israel, were the specially invited guests. They had been bidden long enough aforetime, and by their own profession as the Lord’s own had agreed to be partakers of the feast. When all was ready, on the appointed day, they were severally summoned by the Messenger who had been sent by the Father; He was even then in their midst. But the cares of riches, the allurement of material things, and the pleasures of social and domestic life had engrossed them; and they prayed to be excused or irreverently declared they could not or would not come. Then the gladsome invitation was to be carried to the Gentiles, who were looked upon as spiritually poor, maimed, halt, and blind (James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1915, 420).
READ COMPLETE TALK
FOR YOUNGER DISCIPLES
QUESTIONS FOR YOUNGER DISCIPLES
- What can you tell a friend who is afraid of the dark?
- How does the light of Christ help you?