Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 578
Delivered on Sunday Morning, July 3, 1864, by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, at Bayswater
“And they all with one consent began to make excuses.” Luke 14:18.
THE provisions of the Gospel of Christ may well be compared to a supper, provided as they were, in the evening of the world—“in these last days.” The description, “a great supper,” is well borne out if we consider the greatness of the provision—how much love and mercy God has displayed towards the sons of men in the Person of Christ Jesus—how much power and gracious working He has shown by His Holy Spirit. A great supper it is if we think of the richness and sweetness of the provision—it is a feast worthy of the great King. The flesh of Jesus is our spiritual meat and His blood our choicest wine. Our souls are satisfied with Covenant mercies, most fitly set forth as “A feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.”
A great supper it is, moreover, when we consider the number of guests invited. “Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” The call of the Gospel comes to every man and woman within hearing of the ministers of God—
“None are excluded there, but those Who do themselves exclude! Welcome the learned and polite, The ignorant and rude.”
No other king ever sent out an invitation so broad as this! Wisdom “cries at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. Unto you, O men, I call. And my voice is to the sons of man.” Is it not strange that when the householder made so great a supper—when he offered it without money and without price—that all his neighbors should with one consent begin to make excuse?
He did not call them to prison or to misery! How, then, came they to be so unwilling to obey the summons? Why this unanimity in the rejection? We find good men differing as to how it is that evil men can hold together so well. What? Not one who has respect enough to his generous friend to sit at his table and receive his bounty? Not one. Truly, here, Brethren, we have a picture of the universal depravity of man! All men are thus vile and refuse the mercy of God. We never know how bad man is till the Gospel is preached to him. The Gospel acts as a white background to set forth the blackness of man’s heart.
Here human nature reaches to the greatest height of sin’s enormity! Spitting forth his venom against the Lord of Infinite Love, man proves himself truly to be of the serpent’s brood. The Gospel is preached to thousands and do all make excuse? So the parable has it and truly so the fact proves it. What? Is there not one whose free will is inclined towards Christ? Is there not one of so good a natural disposition that he will come to Jesus? No, the text says, not one—“They all with one consent began to make excuses.” How thoroughly has father Adam ruined our understandings! What fools, as well as rebels, we are to refuse to partake of the banquet of love! We are altogether become unprofitable. There is not one who seeks after God!
You will, perhaps, remind me that there were other men besides those who made excuses. Most true. But these were in the highways and hedges, or in the streets and lanes of the city. And so those who do not hear the Gospel and therefore are not guilty of rejecting it, yet nevertheless are far off from God by wicked works and strangers to the commonwealth of Israel. Thus, taking the two characters to represent all mankind, we find all to be enemies of God. Those in the highways need to be “compelled” to come in—they had a natural reluctance to feast at the good man’s table. And so all sorts of men are averse to the Gospel. They are perfectly willing to sin—content even to perish in sin! But to come to Christ, to accept the great Atonement, to put their trust in Jesus—this is a thing they care not for and with one consent, when they hear the Gospel—they begin to make excuses.
We fear that there are many in this meeting house this morning who have been blessed with hearing the Gospel for years but up to now the only treatment they have given to the gracious message is to make excuses about it. I hope to deal with such very simply and very affectionately—earnestly desiring that they make their last excuse this morning and that it may meet with its death blow. O that they may come to the feast which they have long rejected and rejoice in the mercy of God in Christ Jesus!
Why did they make excuses? Let us, first, try to account for their conduct. Secondly, what excuses did they make?— let us recount them. And thirdly, how foolish thus to make excuses!—here let us encounter them.
I. Let us try to ACCOUNT for the fact, the sad fact, that men are so ready to make excuses rather than to receive the Word of God. We account for it in the first place by the fact that they had no heart at all to accept the feast. Had they spoken the truth plainly, they would have said, “We do not wish to come, nor do we intend to do so.” If man’s heart were not so deceitful, it would not make excuses, but it would say outright, “‘We will not have this Man to reign over us. We do not feel our sinfulness. We will not, therefore, accept pardon. We believe that we can work out our own salvation with our own doings.