What is important to you? The question is not, "What do you think is important to you?" Nor is it, "What do other people to think is important to you." What is important to you? Here is the answer to that question. Look at your life: where you spend your time; where you spend your money; what you think about. That will disclose your center. Do you like what you find? Does it need to change?

Often we slide along in life, not realizing that our life is not centered on what we think ought to be important to us. We need a reality check to see things as they are and a challenge to change things to where they should be. Jesus told this parable at a banquet in order to give a reality check to those around him. It still does the same for us.

At the banquet, the people were concerned about their self-importance. Jesus heals a crippled man they wanted to ignore. They even want to ignore the fact that Jesus healed him on the Sabbath. Jesus pointed all this out to them and they became uncomfortable. Then one man blissfully said, "Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God." This sounds pious, but he was really trying to focus conversation on something in the future in order to change the subject. Jesus’ parable was a reality check.

In the parable, a man fixes a dinner, but those invited do not come. Their lame excuses all boil down to the same attitude: they all have other priorities. They thought the banquet was OK; they just had other things to do. Jesus had been inviting the people around him to follow him. He was offering new life—a banquet of fellowship with God. But the people who should have accepted his invitation gave lame excuses. How ironic that a man wistfully spoke of eating with the Messiah in the Kingdom of God while physically eating with the Messiah whom he refused to follow into the Kingdom!

The eternal life that Jesus offers does not start in the future. It starts right now. Those who were at the table with Jesus did not receive and eat the banquet that he was offering them. Does that describe you? Jesus is calling you to follow him. You are already invited. Will you trust in him? Will you follow him?

We live in the Bible belt. Many people have positive things to say about Jesus and the Bible. They may even go to church occasionally, but they have not received Christ as their Savior and Lord. Jesus said that those who will not come will not eat the banquet. Is that you?

This parable challenges believers as well. We need a reality check. We say we love Jesus, but are we really following him? Or do we follow him only when Jesus’ way agrees with what we desire.

One specific area where we are invited to feast with Jesus is in corporate worship every week. We are to have time set aside to commune with Jesus every day, but on the Lord’s Day, Jesus himself invites us into his presence with the saints for worship. When we neglect corporate worship we are turning down Jesus’ invitation. Sometimes our absence from worship is unavoidable or necessary. How often is our excuse for not joining with the Body of Christ just lame?

Our service begins with God’s greeting and ends with his blessing. It is God’s Word that is read and preached. Our prayers, praises and offerings are given to God. So often the excuses I hear for those not coming regularly to worship sound just like the men in Jesus’ parable: "worship is OK, but we just have other priorities." I am just like the servant in the parable. It is not my invitation they turn down. It is the Lord’s.

Many believers are too individualistic. They are concerned only for their personal relationship with Jesus. The body they neglect when they fail to gather for corporate worship is the Body of Christ. The invitation they decline is Jesus’ invitation.

I know many people feel close to God while on the lake or the golf course. I urge them to get to the lake or golf course as often as they can. But not on Sunday morning! They have a prior invitation from Jesus.

Church attendance is not about obligation or earning a special pin or award. It is about responding to the invitation of Christ to gather with him as part of his family. We think, won’t it be great to eat at the feast in the Kingdom of God? Won’t it be great to gather with the saints and the Lord Jesus? That is what we do here. The saints are here. Jesus is here and he has invited us here and now. This is a reality check. If you are not keen on meeting with the Lord and his people now, what makes you think you will think it important later?