(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

You have to be able to endure hardness. The Bible says we're soldiers of Jesus Christ. What does it mean to endure hardness? Well, when times get tough, when things get hard, when you have to deal with hard situations, whether it's within the church or without the church, whether it's people attacking you, people who hate God, persecuting you, or having conflict. You need to be able to endure that hardness. You need to be tough. You need to be able to toughen up and be able to take it and stand and not just run away and not just not want to deal with it. Look, if that's the way that you're going to live your life, you're going to find yourself running away and not dealing with problems on a regular basis. You need to be able to face things in order to, you know, there's going to be no chance of making things better if you just always are shying away from problems, from conflict. And really what it boils down to, we just do two different types of attitudes that you can take, right? When you have problems, when things seem to go rough, you could moan and complain and allow yourself to be defeated and just say, oh, this, you know, and you can apply this to any aspect of your life. Doesn't matter what it is. It could be on the job. It could be at home. It could be in relationships. It could be in church. It could be, you know, doing something godly or not. Just, just there's, there's people that, that tend to have certain attitudes in life. And one is just to always be complaining, always be talking about all the stuff that's going wrong and just focusing on how hard and how tired and how I don't have enough time and I don't have the, like, you need to lose that attitude and get more of an attitude that's able to just say, hey, you know what, I'm just gonna make the best of my situation and see what I can do to make good things happen. And, you know, as we get into the passage, I know I'm kind of just ranting a little bit at the very beginning. I just want to give a little bit of direction to what I'm trying to get across here because I haven't used much Bible yet, but I mean, just enduring hardness is a big thing to be able to keep moving forward because we don't want to stop what we're doing here. And you don't want to let anything knock you out of the battle, of the fight, of your Christian walk, of doing what's right, whether it be because it's hard, because, you know, whatever. We started in Luke chapter 14. And the reason why I started in this passage is I want to point out how easy it is to make excuses, making excuses to not do stuff. Now in this particular parable, in this particular story, this has to do with salvation. And we're gonna start reading again in verse number 15, but this is a great supper that's prepared and people were bidden and they just made up every excuse not to show up. And again, in the context, this is referring to basically the house of Israel not accepting Jesus Christ, not accepting that salvation, and then God taking away, you know, you know, changing his people, no longer being his people, and then bringing in other people who were going to attend. But let's read the parable real quick because I want to focus just on the excuses. Look at verse number 15. The Bible says, and when one of them that sat at meat with him heard these things, he said unto him, blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. Then said he unto him, a certain man made a great supper and made many. So this is in response to the statement, blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. And that's a true statement. Blessed, you know, hey blessed is that man that's going to eat bread with the Son of God in the kingdom of God. Amen. And now he's going to explain though, and Jesus decides to further just expand on that statement because he's not rebuking him here, but he's explaining like, yeah blessed is that person, but there's a lot of people who think they're going to be sitting down to eat at that supper that aren't going to be sitting down eating at that supper. A lot of people who think they're going to be there that won't. And it's because of, you know, partially because of what he's saying right here. Verse number 16. Then said he unto him, a certain man made a great supper and made many and sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, come for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground and I must needs go and see it. I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I go to prove them. I pray they have me excused. Another said, I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come. So that servant came and showed his Lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in hither the poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou has commanded. And yet there is room. And the Lord said unto the servant, go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be filled. For I say unto you that none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper. So that's the bigger thing is he's referring to the kingdom of God and the supper that he's prepared and that all these people who were supposed to come, these chosen people that are supposed to be there aren't going to be there, right? Because they rejected him. When it was time to come, when he called, they refused, right? That's the primary purpose of this, but I'm going to be taking this one step further where I think it's still applicable and focus more on these excuses. And what is he trying to do? He said, he's trying to get his house filled. And one of the things that I think about when I read this passage too is, hey, God wants people in his house, in his local house, in his body, in this assembly and people coming to church. But what do you oftentimes see? You see people who come up with every excuse possible not to come to church, not to be here. And you know, today is a perfect result. And it's funny because I didn't even realize today was a Super Bowl until at lunchtime. I forgot. I mean, I forgot. I had looked it up once before earlier this year when it was going to be and try to see who was in it. Because sometimes who's playing will impact soul winning. If there's a local team that's playing, then people go real nuts about that. But if it's just other people, it's not as big of a deal. But anyhow, we have all these excuses and you just add in this list. Oh, you'll have to have an excuse. The Super Bowl's on, right? See, God wants people to come to his house. God wants his house to be filled. And he's saying, hey, come and look, he's prepared a great supper. He's prepared a great meal. And if you're going to come to our church, someone's been preparing some scripture for you. Someone's been preparing some manna, some of God's spiritual meat for you to have, for you to learn, for you to grow by, to help you out in your life. Hey, this has been prepared for you, but where are you? Right? What is it that's going to allow you to just skip out of church? Oh, it's too hard. Oh, there's, you know, there's always an excuse. There's always an excuse to not do what's right. There's always an excuse to not go to church. There's always an excuse to not go soul. And there's always an excuse to not read your Bible. There's always an excuse to not pray. There's always an excuse to not do what's right. How about this? There's always an excuse not to tithe. I don't have enough money. It's easy to find an excuse if you don't want to do something.