The kingdom of heaven is like a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to summon those invited to the banquet, but they didn’t want to come. Again, he sent out other servants and said, “Tell those who are invited: See I’ve prepared my dinner; my oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.
But they paid no attention and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged, and he sent out his troops, killed those murderers, and burned down their city.   Matthew 22:1-7 HCSB

The word excuse is defined as an explanation offered in defiance of some fault or offensive behavior, or as a reason for not fulfilling an obligation.  There is a saying that says, “An excuse is a lie wrapped in the skin of reason.”  We all make excuses.  We start young in grade school with those like, “the dog ate my homework”.  As we grow older, our excuses sometimes become more elaborate.  Working in probation and parole, I got lots of excuses.  Now, I must admit, I appreciated a good, well thought out excuse.  I didn’t believe it, but I appreciated the effort it took to produce it.  When I found drugs on someone’s person, it was common to hear, “that’s not mine, I was holding it for somebody.”  Now possessing an illegal drug is a crime, who it actually belongs to is irrelevant, the one who is in possession is the one who has violated the law.  But once, I found marijuana in a jacket pocket and the young man insisted that it was not his jacket.  He claimed that while running from the police, he got cold and saw this jacket hanging out on a clothes line in someone’s back yard.  He said that he put the jacket on and never realized that there was drugs in the pocket.  So obviously these drugs must belong to the person who was the rightful owner of the jacket.  When someone would fail a drug screen, they would often look at me with this incredulous expression.  They just couldn’t believe that they had failed the drug screen because they had certainly not violated the conditions of their probation or parole by using drugs.  Many would pause and appear to be in great thought and then say, “oh yeah, I was around someone who was smoking marijuana”.  Now that didn’t really work for drugs that had to be injected or ingested.  It also didn’t work for marijuana as we learned that in order to test positive just by being around the second hand smoke that you would have to be in a small closet with that person for many hours with the other person smoking constantly.  But my favorite was when a young man offered up the excuse that he had gone to a party that had gotten kind of wild and he had “fallen asleep” on the sofa. He insisted that someone must have taken a big drag off a marijuana cigarette and opened his mouth and blew the smoke into it or “shotgunned” this illegal substance into his mouth while he was sleeping.  He got an A for effort.  He had clearly put some thought into this one, but as it was a violation of his conditions of parole for him to be in the presence of people who were drinking and using drugs, this excuse didn’t help. He still went to jail.

I’ve also gotten some pretty creative excuses when I invite people to church.  I’ve been told, “Sunday is my only day to sleep in”.  One of my personal favorites is, “I go grocery shopping on Sunday.”  Our church only lasts an hour.  If you come for Sunday school and the sermon, it’s two hours.  So, how long does it take someone to grocery shop.  Even when I am out of everything, I can usually get my groceries in an hour, just saying.   Then my personal favorite, “I don’t need to go to church, I can worship God anywhere.”

The sad thing is that even those of us who are in church every time the doors are open, still make excuses for our “not so Christian” behavior.

When we accept Christ as our savior, we can confess our sin and repent and God will remove our sins from us.  We won’t have to be judged on them.  But woe unto those who excuse their sin and fail to enter into a close relationship with Jesus Christ.  Woe unto those who fail to accept Christ as their savior.  Revelation chapter 20 tells us that they are going to be judged by their deeds.  Some of my deeds have not been acceptable and I certainly don’t want to be judged by them when that time comes.

God has extended to us an awesome invitation.  What’s your excuse?  I encourage you to stop making excuses and come to Him today, before it’s too late.

Have a great day!