ate (?) as to receive an
invitation in return, but also the poor, who could not return the favor.
Here again, Jesus was not giving merely rules of social hospitality; he
was illustrating the great spiritual principle of unselfish motives in all
deeds of kindness. We are not to confer benefits with a view to receiving
benefits in return.

However, Jesus did not mean literally to forbid inviting rich guests to
our homes or to insist that all feasts must be confined to paupers, but to
teach that no service is to be rendered with the mere hope of personal
gain. It is proper and pleasant, it may be even profitable, to entertain
"friends" or "brethren" or "kinsmen" or "rich neighbors;" but in none of
these cases is such entertainment a ground of merit for they may "bid thee
again;" but if kindness is shown to the poor or rich simply for their good
and with no thought of personal gain either present or future, the deed
will not be without its reward: "for thou shalt be recompensed in the
resurrection of the just."

Possibly this reference or some similar reference called forth from one of
the guests the exclamation, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the
kingdom of God." Jesus took the occasion to give the parable of the Great
Supper, by which he illustrated the sinful folly of refusing to accept his
offer of salvation. In this story those who were bidden to the feast at
first feigned a willingness to come, but subsequently, by their refusal
and their flimsy excuses, they showed their complete absorption in selfish
interests and their utter disregard for their host. However, their places
were filled with other guests, some of them poor and helpless, from their
own city; others were vagrants from the highways and hedges beyond. Thus
Jesus plainly pictured the refusal by the rulers and Pharisees of his
offered salvation and its acceptance, first by publicans and sinners, and
then by despised Gentiles.

There was, however, a message for each one who heard the story, and there
is a message to-day for anyone who is rejecting Christ. The Pharisees, by
inviting Jesus to dine, pretended to feel some sympathy for him as a
prophet, while in their hearts they hated him; and the very man whose
pious and sentimental remark about "the kingdom of God" occasioned the
parable, was unwilling to accept the invitation to "eat bread in the
kingdom of God" which Jesus was presenting.

So there are those to-day who show an outward respect for