Luke 14:24

“ ‘For I say to you, that none of those men who were invited shall taste of my supper.' ”

And His parable ends on the sombre note that none of those first invited will taste of his supper. These words are addressed by Jesus to His hearers, as the plural ‘you' makes clear. He is enforcing the application of the parable so that they will not overlook it, and letting them know that it is His Supper that is in mind, that is, the Kingly Rule of God, where they may feast with Him. The finality in mind here parallels Luke 13:24. The parable was spoken in the first place to the Scribes and Pharisees. It was a warning to them that if they refused His invitation to enter under the Kingly Rule of God present in Him, they would find that rather than being blessed in the Kingly Rule of God (Luke 14:15), they would be rejected from it once and for all.

There may be in mind here the custom of sending food from banquets to guests who had been unable to attend (compare Nehemiah 8:10), so that Jesus is stressing that this does not apply here because their reasons for not attending were invalid. Let them take note. Once the door is closed. There will no longer be hope.

But it also contained a wider message for a wider audience, a message for some of His disciples who were probably with Him, and for those who would hear it from their lips. For Jesus was a master strategist. (And He may well have told the parable a number of times in different ways in different contexts. A good story is always worth repeating). It informed them that while the Scribes and Pharisees would on the whole not enter under the Kingly Rule of God, many ordinary people, and even outcasts, would be delighted to do so. They would come in their lameness and their blindness and their relative poverty, humbly and gratefully, to receive His salvation and His blessing. Blessed are the poor who seek Him, for the Kingly Rule of God is theirs (Luke 6:20). Like the crooked woman they would come to be made straight.

But the distinction between those in the city (Jerusalem) and those outside would certainly suggest to Luke and his readers that the invitation was also intended to go out to the Gentiles. For Jerusalem symbolised the Jews in Gentile eyes, and outside it would indicate the Gentiles. It is quite probable also that Jesus had this in mind, for He had a number of times made clear His interest in the Gentiles (Luke 4:25; Luke 7:9; Luke 11:31), and He knew that the Servant was to be a light to the Gentiles (Isaiah 42:6; Isaiah 49:6). But as always it was open to His hearers to apply it for themselves in their own thinking.