the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
John Gossner's Treasury
We have both straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in. Genesis 24:25. Come; for all things are now ready. Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. Luke 14:17-23.
As Rebekah and Laban so hospitably invited, received and lodged the servant of Abraham, there being enough room in their father’s house, so hospitable and infinitely more hospitable is the Son of the eternal Father, in whose house there are as many mansions as there are men who desire to be saved. Should it ever be said of the vast habitation of God, when a poor, sinful, repentant child of man, longing for grace, knocks to be admitted and received: The house is full; there is no more room? The Savior teaches us something different. Not alone for those who voluntarily announce themselves at the first invitation, is there room; but if all come who have been called and invited, yet there is room for those also who are compelled and constrained by the power of love. Though all respectable people are at the table, there is yet room for the maimed, the halt, and the blind, and those whom nobody else desires to have in the house. Even when all these are brought in, there is still room for those wretches who lie along the highways, the sight of whose misery pains the passersby; there is still room for those who lie behind the bushes and the hedges, who, as a rule, are not very fine and cultured people; yea, even for them there is room. The Lord desires by force and violence to have them at His table. He becomes angry if they do not come. He will consume them with fire if they do not accept His house and His table, as He destroyed those who allowed themselves to be kept from coming to His supper by their oxen and fields and wives. So earnestly does the Lord desire that all men should be saved. So many places are prepared in His house; there is so much room that none will be turned away: all are received. Therefore, do not fear that you will not be received; fear rather that you will not come; that you remain away through your own neglect, to the sorrow of Him who has called you.
God calling yet! and shall He knock
And I my heart the closer lock?
He still is waiting to receive.
And shall I dare His Spirit grieve?
