Podcasts about matthew 22:1-14

This episode of the podcast is sponsored by the Eastern Mission of the ALC. Find out what they are all about here: http://alcem.org You can find out more about the Apostolic Lutheran Church of America here: http://apostoliclutheran.org/Dennis is the pastor of the Spruce Grove Apostolic Lutheran Church. Visit their website here:http://www.sprucegrovealc.org/Nicholas is the pastor of the New York Mills Apostolic Lutheran Church. Their service is live streamed every morning at 10:30 AM CST.Our goal is for this podcast to eventually be listener supported. You can support us here. https://www.patreon.com/Godspeace?fan_landing=true

The parable about the wedding feast highlights the actions of the father and the wedding guests, who need to put on the garments of faith.

This episode of the podcast is sponsored by the Eastern Mission of the ALC. Find out what they are all about here: http://alcem.org You can find out more about the Apostolic Lutheran Church of America here: http://apostoliclutheran.org/Dennis is the pastor of the Spruce Grove Apostolic Lutheran Church. Visit their website here:http://www.sprucegrovealc.org/Nicholas is the pastor of the New York Mills Apostolic Lutheran Church. Their service is live streamed every morning at 10:30 AM CST. They also have an extensive sermon archive. http://www.nymalc.org/Our goal is for this podcast to eventually be listener supported. You can support us here. https://www.patreon.com/Godspeace?fan_landing=true

Proper 23 (28) Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A, 2022-2023)Scripture Readings: Exodus 32:1-14, Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23, Philippians 4:1-9, Matthew 22:1-14

Week 8 of In the What's Next: Understanding Heaven's Timeline. A sermon series featuring Travis Eades.

Week 8 of In the What's Next: Understanding Heaven's Timeline. A sermon series featuring Travis Eades.

Morning worship – 11am Parables of Jesus Christ (30) Called to the Royal Wedding Scripture Reading: Matthew 21:28—22:14 Text: ...

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John explores how Matthew 22:1-14, the story of the King and the wedding feast, is NOT a story about the nature of God and kingdom of Heaven. He suggests it is instead a critique of how Chief Priests and Jerusalem elite view the reign of God and their place in itJohn invites people to:reflect on the ways are we like the ungrateful one who did not wear the wedding robeIn what ways are we like chief priests and Jerusalem eliteAnd what might we need to let go of to really join the partyYou can read the notes for this sermon here

Given at St. Anselm's Abbey by Fr. Michael Hall on October 11, 2020.

Eastern Hills Baptist Church

Malcolm Skelton- The Marriage Feast, Matthew 22:1-14

Malcolm Skelton- The Marriage Feast, Matthew 22:1-14

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Only by embracing the righteousness of Christ do we succeed in truly experiencing kingdom living

Jeff McLain looks at Matthew 22:1-14 as he continues our series, Illustrate. Illustrate is our 13-week, Sunday morning series, exploring the parables Jesus used to illustrate for us the realities and inbreaking of the Kingdom of God; and so we can embody what life in the Kingdom looks like.Support the show (https://tithe.ly/give?c=397080)

Proper 23 - Sunday after Pentecost (Year A) Exodus 32:1-14, Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23, Philippians 4:1-9, Matthew 22:1-14

Introduction Well, it's not every day that a story from current events just hands you a tailor-made sermon illustration. But that's what happened on Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, November 24th, when a couple sought to crash a state party at the White House. Perhaps you've heard that story. I find it remarkable, the moxie of that couple. You know the story, I think, or some details of it. President Obama was hosting his first state dinner at the White House for the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh and his wife. Three hundred high-ranking state officials and dignitaries were invited to that event, but this one couple was not invited. But yet they came anyway. A strikingly attired couple. She was wearing a red and gold sari, appropriate attire for the occasion. And he was wearing a black tux. And they just swept confidently past the photographers and other people that were there at the red carpet watching the dignitaries who were coming in. They just walked right by, by the Secret Service. We'll get to that in a moment, but right on by everybody and into the event. And I think, undoubtedly, it was the clothing that they wore, and the confidence that they had, that enabled them to get through. If they'd been dressed like tourists, saying, “Is this where we should…” You know. They would have been dealt with very, very quickly. “No, time for tours is over. Tomorrow resume.” But they went right in with the proper clothing, and with that confidence. And they had the, just, the gall to stand and get their photos taken with various folks and then post them later on the web. And so I think there's going to be some trouble for them. I haven't followed the story recently, but I heard that perhaps there were gonna be some charges pressed against them. I don't know what it would be, but I'm sure there's something. And the Secret Service is asking a simple question, “How in the world did it happen?” And I don't relish those who, probably heads are gonna roll or maybe already have, for something like that. They said procedures weren't followed. They were not invited, but they were still attending. Now, there are a lot of similarities to the message that I'm gonna preach in the parable, but there's some significant differences too. In the parable of the wedding banquet, the one there was invited, but he wasn't chosen. And he didn't have the proper attire, he didn't have the proper clothing. And he wasn't just facing criminal charges, he was sent to hell. And so, as we come to, for the second week, the parable of the wedding banquet. Last week we looked at some details and just the big picture of the parable. We looked at what it taught us about God and man and various things, but there were some weighty doctrinal issues that come from this parable that we reserved for this week and I wanna look at them with you, together. I wanna talk about the imputation or the crediting or the giving of Christ's righteousness, I believe, represented by the wedding clothes. I wanna talk about the joys of heaven, the horrors of hell, and the sovereignty of God and salvation. These are the weighty doctrines that await us this morning. Review of the Parable The Parable Recounted and Described Let's just go over the parable again. You already heard it read this morning, but just look at it again. Christ spoke to them again in parables. He was teaching them in parables. “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. And he sent some servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ But they paid no attention and went off - one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. ‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot and throw him outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are invited, but few are chosen.” Lesson #1: The Gift of Christ’s Righteousness is Essential to Heaven That's the parable. Let's look at the first lesson, and that is the gift of Christ's righteousness is essential to heaven. We must receive the gift of Christ's righteousness or we will not be permitted to enter Heaven. Look again at verses 11 through 13. The king comes in, he sees the guests, he noticed a man there who's not wearing the wedding clothes. “How did you get in here without wedding clothes?” The man's speechless, there's nothing he can say. And then the king throws him outside. What Are the “Wedding Clothes”? Why Such a Harsh Response? Now, what are these wedding clothes? And why such a shocking, really, a harsh response? Well, William Hendriksen, commenting on this passage, said this, “There can be only one explanation. It is by the command of the king and from his bountiful supplies, at the very entrance of the wedding hall a wedding robe had been offered to each guest. All except this person had accepted that free robe. This one man however, had looked at his own robe, perhaps slightly brushed it off with his hand, and then had told the attendants, ‘My own robe is good enough. I don't need the one you're offering me.’ Then, in an attitude of self-satisfaction and defiance, he had marched on into the wedding hall.” Well, I think obviously that goes beyond, I think it uses some imagination, but I think it's probably true within the context of the parable. Seems like everybody else was properly attired, but this man was not. John McArthur said this, “The proper wedding garment of a true believer is God imputed righteousness, without which no one can enter or live in that kingdom.” Now we're going to talk about that word, imputed. It wouldn't surprise me if many of you don't know what it means. I hope that by the time we get done, you do know what it means. Even if you don't know the word, you need to know the concept. The imputed righteousness of Christ is essential to heaven. Positive Righteousness Required for Heaven Now, the foundation of this whole point is that a positive righteousness is required for heaven. You must be righteous in order to go to heaven. And so it says in Matthew 5:20. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, said this, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” So there is a level of righteousness you must have to go to heaven, to enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus actually intensifies it later in that same chapter, at the end of the very same chapter. Matthew 5:48, he says, “You must be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” You must have a perfect righteousness, like unto that of God himself, to go to heaven. So to whom, then, will God open the gates of the New Jerusalem? What nation will enter in and stream into those gates? Isaiah 26:2 says, “Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, The nation that keeps faith.” It has to be a righteous nation that enters the gates of the New Jerusalem. In 2 Peter 3:13, the Apostle Peter calls the new heaven and the new earth “the home of righteousness.” You must be righteous to live there. There is no unrighteousness in that place. Problem: No One is Righteous Well, of course, we all have a problem, don't we? Significant problem. No one of us is righteous. Romans 3:10 teaches that very plainly. “There is no one righteous, not even one.” Note that in the parable the man is speechless. There is nothing he can say. And so it will be, dear friends, on Judgment Day, when the unrighteous are confronted with the perfect righteousness necessary for Heaven. There will be nothing they can say. There will not be one answer possible in a thousand accusations, not one. We will be speechless. If we don't have a gift of righteousness we will be lost. The Answer of the Gospel: Imputed Righteousness But praise be to God. Praise be to God. We celebrate this time of year, and every time of year, a gospel that solves our problem. Isn't that marvelous? Oh, how sweet is the gospel of the gift of righteousness that comes in Jesus Christ. And the glowing center of that, declared very plainly in Romans 3:21-24, “But now, a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known, to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” That is talking of the gift of a righteousness from God, simply by faith. Not by works, of the law, not by our good works, but just simply as a gift, a gift of Christ's righteousness. The Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness This is where we get to this doctrine of the imputation or the crediting or the reckoning of Christ's righteousness to our account. Now, what do we mean by imputation? What are we talking about there? I guess the image I always get is of a numbered Swiss bank account. Like you have in those spy movies, you know. And there's this numbered account, and it's your account and suddenly there's a billion dollars in your account. Where did it come from? You probably wouldn't care, just as long as it's there, right? But there it is, suddenly a billion dollars credited to your account. And so it is with the righteousness of Christ, it's just credited to you as though it's yours. The imputation or the thinking or the reckoning. God thinks of you as righteous in Jesus. That's how it works, a reckoning. There are actually two aspects of this imputation. Positively, Christ's righteousness is credited to us as though it were our own. God just sees us as righteous as Jesus. I mean, it's incredible when you think about it, he sees us as obedient as Jesus. He sees us as having kept just as many of the laws of Moses as Jesus did, as having spoken nothing but perfect words, as Jesus did. Incredible. I mean, you just keep unfolding and it's just, it boggles the mind, but God just credits Jesus's obedience, his righteousness, to you as though it was yours. And negatively, our sins are credited to Jesus and not to us. So God does not reckon or consider our sins ours anymore. He considers them as having transferred over to Jesus. Whereupon he struck Jesus with the wrath of God in our place. Jesus drank hell for us on the cross, because he was bearing our sins. So, there's a double imputation or crediting. Christ's righteousness to us and our sins to Jesus. Now, let's talk about this positive imputation or crediting of Christ's righteousness. Christ lived a perfect life, a sinless life. You could have thought, “Why didn't Jesus just be born or just made a man 33 years old, and just die that day. Blood shed on the cross, done, right? Why not? Could God do that?” Of course he could do it. Would it be Christ's blood shed on the cross? Yes. Could it have saved us? Debatable. I don't know if I wanna get into that. I just, God chose not to do that. Instead, what God wanted was a life lived. In many respects a normal life lived, a human life lived. Walking on the dusty roads, eating food, drinking liquids, resting, getting fatigued, all of that stuff, a normal physical life, yet without sin. And so Jesus lived his whole life under the law of Moses. He was obedient to his parents at age 12. He was born under the law, he lived under the law. Obeyed the law, fulfilled it perfectly. Active righteousness of Jesus just obeying everything God commanded Him to do. Perfect righteousness of Jesus. And that active righteousness has been credited to you by faith if you're a Christian today. Isn't that incredible? God just sees you as though you are as obedient as Jesus. Because of your union with Jesus through faith, that's how He sees you. How remarkable is that? How much should you praise God for that? Gresham Machen who was a Presbyterian hero of the faith. In the early 20th century he fought the battle with liberalism in his denomination. And just as he was dying, just before he died, he sent a message to his friend and his theological co-worker, John Murray, and he said this, “I am thankful for the active obedience of Christ; no hope without it.” So Machen believed that Christ's obedience to the law is essential to our salvation. And I think it is. Christ's active obedience is essential to my salvation because that's the robe that Christ won for me and you. That's the act of righteousness. That's the wedding robe we have to wear on that Judgment Day. Imputation Essential to Our Acceptance on Judgment Day And that imputation of Christ's righteousness to us is essential to our acceptance on Judgment Day. Remember in the parable the man's thrown out, he's evicted because he doesn't have those wedding clothes. He's speechless, there's nothing he can say. And this is the reception that anyone will get who gets to Judgment Day trusting in their own righteousness. I stand here today as a messenger from God to tell you, you will go to hell if you do that. You will be cast out eternally if you stand and trust in your own righteousness and do not receive the gift of Christ's righteousness by faith. You are not good enough. Your righteousness isn't sufficient. I am not singling you out, I'm not either. There's no one righteous enough. How to be as Righteous as Jesus So how can we be as righteous as Jesus? Well, I've already told you, but I'll say it again: Simply by faith. By trusting in Christ. By simple faith. Not by any movement of the muscles, not by any deeds or actions or activities. You can do it while sitting and listening, just as you sit and listen you can just hear and believe. It says in Romans 4:3, “What does the scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.’” That's it, just credited to him. Perfect righteousness credited to Abraham's account simply by faith. I Corinthians 1:30, “It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God - that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.” And again, Philippians 3:8-9, Paul says, “that I may gain Christ,” that's what he's yearning for, “that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” And again, probably most famously, especially on the double imputation I was mentioning, 2 Corinthians 5:21, “God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” There's your double imputation. Now, John Bunyan who wrote the classic Pilgrim's Progress in the late 17th century. He was converted remarkably and told his conversion story in his testimonial book, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. And as he was struggling with the gospel and with his own wickedness and his own efforts at saving himself and all that, wrestling with it, trying to come to some kind of assurance that he would, when he died, that he would go to heaven and not hell. Very concerned about his soul. This is what he wrote: “One day as I was passing into the field and that too, with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right with my soul, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, ‘Thy righteousness is in heaven.’ And I thought I saw with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness;” right there, “so that wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, ‘He lacks my righteousness’, for that was just before him. I saw moreover that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor was it my bad frame of heart that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ, himself, the same yesterday, and today and forever. Thy righteousness is in heaven.” Now, later it troubled Bunyan as he searched in the Bible, that he couldn't find the phrase anywhere, “Thy righteousness is in heaven.” It bothered him. And it actually isn't found anywhere. But, the doctrine certainly is, and he lighted on the passage I just read to you, 1 Corinthians 1:30. “It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us righteousness.” It's the same thing. Christ is in fact our righteousness. And so he wrote about this in Pilgrim's Progress and as Christian, the pilgrim who's leaving the City of Destruction and going to heaven, the Celestial City, trying to find some way to get out from under his guilt, he's got this heavy burden on his back. He comes at last to the cross, and when he looks at the cross, his burden is loosed from his back, and rolls down into the empty tomb, and there he saw it no more. And then he is given some gifts and one of the gifts that's given is this robe, this new set of clothing that covers him. Just a short time later in the story, as he's traveling along, the journey isn't done yet, at that point. We have a long way to go in our pilgrimage to heaven. And so, he's traveling along, but he's in this beautiful robe. He notices two men tumbling in over the wall to get into the way to the Celestial City, Formalist and Hypocrisy are their names. And they're coming in and they notice, and they start to have a discussion. He's like, “The thief comes in this way. You ought to come in by the narrow gate, like I did.” And they're saying, “Well I don't see any difference between... We don't see any difference between us and you except that clothing you're wearing, which some friend probably gave you to cover your nakedness.” And this is what Christian says, “As for the coat that's on my back, it was in fact given me by the Lord of the place whither I go, and as you say, it is to cover my nakedness with. And I take it as a token of his kindness to me for I had nothing but rags before. And besides this, I comfort myself as I go: surely, I think, when I come to the gate of the city, the Lord thereof, will know me for good since I have his coat on my back. A coat he gave me freely in the day that he stripped me of my rags.” Friends, go that way for Judgment Day. Clothed in the righteousness of Jesus. Charles Wesley put it this way in the hymn, “And Can It Be”: “No condemnation now I dread. Jesus and all in him is mine. Alive in him, my living head and clothed in righteousness divine. Bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown through Christ my own.” So lesson number one, the gift or the imputation of Christ's righteousness is essential to your going to heaven. Lesson #2: Heaven is a Joyful Place Lesson number two: Heaven is a joyful place. I don't need to say much about this because I covered it a lot last week. But I don't think you'll mind if I talk more about the joys of heaven. Would you? Spend another week? Have you been constantly basking in heavenly joy, this week? Has it been a heavenly joy week for you? Well, it hasn't been for me, I mean it's been a week. It's been a busy week, some moments in and out, but I need a strong hope. I need to renew my faith today. And so I want a sense of just what it's gonna be like to sit at table at the wedding banquet with God and enjoy that. The Joys of Heaven are Hinted at Here And so, “the Kingdom of Heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his Son”. That's what it's gonna be like, a wedding banquet. We're gonna sit at table with God, and we're gonna drink from the fountain of joy and we're gonna be happy forever. Forever and ever, and there'll be nothing in that place to take away our joy. The thief that came to steal and kill and destroy, he'll be screaming in agony in hell, he'll be away from us forever. Nothing will steal that joy from us, it'll be ours, forever and ever. And foundational to that joy of heaven, as I mentioned last week, is relationship. It's all about love. That's what's gonna be the foundation of our joy. God loves me. But before we even get there, you have to start foundationally. God loves his Son, he loves Jesus. “This is my Son, my only Son, whom I love.” And we are seen to be in him so he loves us like he loves Jesus. And how sweet is that relationship? And so it's all about love. As I mentioned last week, the love of the Father for the Son, he wants to put on this wedding banquet for his Son. Sparing no expense, what would God the Father spare in expense for his Son? Nothing. But so also secondarily a story of a love relationship between God the Son, and his bride, the church. We are his bride. We are part of that bride of Christ that's gonna be coming down from heaven, the New Jerusalem prepared for the husband. And we are going to be in some mysterious way, married to Christ. Every earthly marriage is a picture of this. You've been to lots of weddings. They're happy times, at least they should be. I've been to some interesting weddings, ask me about those, some other time. You've probably seen some on YouTube that didn't end so happily, alright, those things happen. But this one is gonna be happy, it's gonna be perfectly happy, it's gonna be joyful, a celebration. And every earthly marriage, it just pictures in some mysterious way. Ephesians 5-31-32, the union of Christ and the church, that will be consummated, mysteriously consummated, there at the wedding banquet. And so it's all about love, it's all about joy. We're gonna be sitting at table eating, drinking, feasting in some mysterious way. I keep using that word mysterious. I don't know what eating is like in heaven in the resurrection body. I know that Jesus ate broiled fish in a resurrection body. So, I'm hoping for better, hoping for something else, but who knows, maybe I'll be healed from my dislike of fish of any sort at that point. But the Lord knows what to do and it's going to be a happy, joyful, celebration time. And you'll have people at your right and at your left and you're gonna talk to them and you're gonna be totally satisfied with your position there at the table. And you're going to enjoy yourself, forever. Yearn for this Joy And there is no joy on earth that compares with it. The only thing that comes close is the deposit given us by the Holy Spirit, those little foretastes that we get. Like maybe you're having one right now like I am, and you're just yearning for it and longing for it. That's the closest it comes. No earthly gift can ever come close. So, I would urge that you actually stoke up the fires of that desire in your heart. Make yourself yearn for it more than you ever did before. Feed your heart with things above and things to come, and what it's gonna be like, Feed your heart and your mind so that you can yearn for it more than ever before. And oh, how I wish I didn't have to turn from such a delightful and happy topic to one, so dreadful and horrible as this. Lesson #3: Hell is a Terrifying Place Hell Described Briefly Here The horrors of hell, depicted very plainly in Verse 13. And Jesus warned us, more in detail and more specifically about hell than any other biblical figure. And you know I wonder sometimes about that. Not just that we needed the warning, but because he was going to experience hell himself on the cross, and he was gonna drink that cup from his Father and so hell was very personal for him and that he would absorb it in our place. But look at it. Look at Verse 13, “Then the king told the attendants, tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Further Descriptions of Hell Elsewhere There are many descriptions of hell in other places. Revelation 14 speaks of those who receive the mark of the beast and “if anyone receives the mark of the beast, he too,” it says, “will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. And He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest day or night.” It says. And the sheep and the goats, the story of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:41, “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” Five verses later in verse 46, it says, “Then they will go away into eternal punishment.” Mark 9:48 says, “Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” Revelation 20:14-15, it says, “The lake of fire is the second death, and if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” Tie Hand and Foot, and Throw Him So those are just different verses. But I want to zero in just on verse 13, and pick it apart a bit. First, it says “Tie him hand and foot.” The king commands the man who's not wearing wedding clothes to be tied up, hand and foot. The image is one of forceful restriction, the man cannot get away. Hell is the place of ultimate restriction. From hell there can be no escape. Now, every prison on earth harbors within it some prisoners who harbor hope of escape. Even Alcatraz, that rock in the middle of the San Francisco Bay that was thought to be escape proof. There is a story in June of 1962, of three men that escaped. Now the FBI tells us they didn't make it. They may not have. No bodies were ever found, but they were able to get out and they made a rudimentary raft, and they got away. But Dante, in writing Inferno, there was a sign over the gate, entering into the infernal region. It said, “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.” There's no escape. And why no escape, because God knows how to keep his prisoners. You have the omnipotence and the omniscience and the omnipresence of God working together to be certain you don't escape from hell. Omniscience, speaking of earthly judgments, in Jeremiah 23:24, “‘Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord.” And then omnipresence, “‘Do I not fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.” Amos 9:1-3, “Not one will get away, none will escape. Though they dig down to the depths of the grave, from there my hand will take them. Though they climb up to the heavens, from there I will bring them down. Though they hide themselves on the top of Mount Carmel, there I will hunt them down and seize them. Though they hide from me at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the sea serpent to bite them.” Now that's just earthly. How much more impossible is it to escape from hell? The prisoners escaping from Alcatraz were hidden from the guards. They made dummies with real human hair, so that as the guards walked by the guards were fooled, thinking that the prisoners were still in their beds during the bed checks, during the night. Can't do that to God. God's omniscience, God's omnipotence, God's omnipresence ensures that no one will ever escape from hell. There's no getting out. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus, father Abraham says to the rich man, “Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can any one cross over from there to us.” Jude 6 says that God held mighty angels in the pit before Judgment Day. It says, “The angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home - these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great day.” There can be no escape. And notice also that they are thrown outside. “Tie him hand and foot and throw him outside.” It says. Some make foolish statements and it's just amazing the things you hear as people are trying, foolishly, to protect God's reputation as though hell is the dirty little secret of the future life. No, no, no, hell is God's righteous punishment on sin. God knows all about hell, and we don't need to protect God's reputation. But they seek to do this and you know what they say? They say, “God doesn't send anyone to hell. People send themselves there by their choices.” Can I say to you quite plainly on Judgment Day, no one will choose to send themselves to hell. No one will say, “You know, I really don't wanna be with you, I don't wanna be with God. I'm going to walk and jump into the lake of fire over there.” No one will wanna go there. You won't need any faith to see it like you need faith now, to believe what I'm saying is true, it will be right there. And maybe some others have already been cast in there by the angels. They will have to be thrown outside. Thrown there. Against their will. Outside And note the word outside. What does the word outside mean? Well, outside of that wonderful place I just was talking about. The New Jerusalem, the place of feasting, the place of happiness, the place of bounty and celebration and joy. I said before, even if there were no hell, it would be hell to not be in heaven. But these folks are gonna be outside. Thrown outside. It says in the book of Revelation, “outside are the sinners,” there's this sense of outside and we're in here. Excluded, cast out, rejected, not permitted to enter and enjoy the presence of God. Darkness It says, “Throw them outside into the darkness.” What is darkness? Well darkness is a place where there is nothing good. 1 John 1:5, it says, “This is the message we have heard from the beginning and declare to you: God is light; and in Him there is no darkness at all.” Well, hell is a place of perfect and complete darkness, it implies that there is no blessing from God there. God and his ability to bless is completely removed from hell. It's a place of darkness. And don't let anyone tell you, “I wanna go to hell because all my friends will be there.” Sadly, it may be true. That all their friends will be there, but they will have no fellowship. Because it's a place of darkness, complete darkness, you'll see nothing, there'll be no light. The New Jerusalem, the New Heaven and the New Earth will be illuminated with the glory of God and Christ will be the lamp and the righteous will shine with that light, the glory of God will radiate through that beautiful place. But it will not be there in hell because it's a darkness, a place of utter darkness. Weeping It says, “Throw them outside in the darkness where there will be weeping.” Do you know what weeping signifies? It signifies psychological, mental, emotional trauma and pain. It's a place of regret, a place of sadness, a place where you wish you had another chance, one more chance. A place where you remember the good things you had while you were alive and also that you never gave God thanks for them. And probably most acutely of all is there are some sighs and groans going up from hell. People will remember the chances that they had to hear the gospel which is the only power which would have gotten them out of there. And they will regret what they did at that time. I actually prayed this morning that there would be some lost people here today. That you will fear regretting not having acted properly with this sermon. That you heard everything you needed. You've heard, you've heard the gospel this morning, you've heard the gospel of the gift of Christ's righteousness, of the shed blood of Jesus, of Christ drinking hell. You have all the ingredients, the power of God is here for you, you don't need to go to hell. Jesus drank hell for all that will repent and believe. So repent and believe. You don't need to go there, Christ has already stood in your place to take it from you, he's here to warn you of it. But if you choose not to heed that warning you will regret this day, you'll look back on this day and you'll regret it, and say, “You know, you told me the truth, that day, and I didn't listen.” A place of psychological misery, of weeping and weeping and weeping, for eternity because you're not in heaven and you are in this dreadful place. Gnashing of Teeth Weeping and gnashing of teeth. I don't know what that is, other than I think of physical torment there. It's not just mental, emotional, psychological. I believe in the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. And I believe that the worm will not die and the fire will not be quenched. It's gonna be a place of active torment, under the wrath of God. People will gnaw their tongues in agony. Summary: Please Flee the Wrath to Come And so I beg you as though God himself were making his appeal I plead with you, flee the wrath to come. Because it's coming and just accept the gift of Christ's righteousness. Accept a place at the wedding banquet free of charge. Here's your place, sit down and eat forever, and enjoy forever, just accept it, receive it. There is no earthly situation, as horrible as hell. I don't use the word hell unless I'm speaking of it doctrinally, never. I don't say, “I felt like hell.” Or, “You look like hell.” I don't use the word because there's just nothing on earth that directly compares with it. Can you imagine giving someone in hell a chance to be out of hell and in an AIDS clinic in Uganda, suffering from pneumonia, the final throes of AIDS, would they take it? I tell you, they would take it if only for 24 hours to get out of hell. They would go out of there and go to Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen or any one of a number of horrible places on earth rather than be in hell. So, flee the wrath to come. It says in 2 Corinthian 6:2 “‘In the time of my favor, I heard you, and in the day of salvation, I helped you.’ I tell you now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation.” Flee to Christ now. You don't need to go anywhere. You don't need to get up and come forward. You probably ought not to. You probably ought to just sit and believe and trust. And then after that, if it's a genuine faith, a whole lifetime of good works will come. Just believe and receive. Lesson #4: God is Sovereign in Salvation Lesson number four. God is sovereign in salvation. Now, there are two really shocking aspects of this parable. One is what happened to the man who wasn't wearing wedding clothes. Throw him outside in the darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth. Just went through that carefully. But verse 14 is pretty shocking too. It's like, “Where did that come from?” It's kind of like out of left field it seems. Well, nothing's out of left field from the mind of Christ. If it seems out of left field to you, you just don't understand the mind of Christ at that point, that's all. Called by God And so what does he mean when he says, “Many are invited, but few are chosen”? Most translations actually give us this, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” Where did the issue of choosing even come in? Well, remember Jesus is telling this parable to the Jews who are rejecting it. And in effect, like Paul in Romans 9-11, is answering the question of, “Why are the Jews rejecting?” It's so unbelievable that you would actually reject an invitation to a banquet with the king. Why are you doing it? And Jesus's answer is, there are lots of people invited, but only some, few, are chosen and the chosen ones will stay at the wedding banquet and if you're not chosen, you won't say at the wedding banquet. That's what Jesus is saying. It's the doctrine of election of choosing by God. So we have to deal first with “many are called.” What do we mean by called or invited? Well, the invitation, the call comes from God. First of all, you can't go to the wedding banquet in and of yourself just like any more than we could have gone to that state dinner that that couple from Virginia, they tried, and I think it will probably never happen again, I'm thinking. Alright, you can't just up and say, “I'm going to that state dinner.” You have to be invited. And if you're not invited, you can't go. And how much more then, heaven. But here's the beauty of it. God is inviting you. He's inviting you, it's an incredible thing. The initiative was on God's part, and he is opening it up. He's sending out messengers and the messengers are going, saying, “Come on everybody, come. Whosoever wills let him come.” That's what it's saying, God must call us. Two Different Callings: General and Effectual Now, I believe there are two different kinds of calling and they're related. There is an external call that you hear with your ears, you're hearing it right now. Causes your eardrums to vibrate. It may not cause your heart to move, but it does cause the eardrums to vibrate, causes the mind to think some certain thoughts. The General Call of the Gospel: Evangelism It's an external call. It's the words of the gospel which Paul says, “Is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes,” it's the gospel of Jesus Christ. The general call goes out, the external call you just hear it, you could read it, you could hear it on Trans World Radio, you could hear it on a DVD, you could see it on YouTube. There's lots of different ways to get that call, but it's external, and it's just an invitation from God to believe in Jesus. Messengers are sent out. It's Lottie Moon time and so we say, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how then can they call on the one they've not believed? And how can they believe in the one of whom they've not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’” So that's the external call. It's the call of the evangelist, of the missionary. So you go and visit a new neighbor. And you bring them one of those little white bags with the little gifts in there. Invite them to our concert. Alright. Bring a freshly baked little loaf of bread or something. It's Christmas time, it's time to be neighborly. You go out there and you invite them to church, that's not the call. But then you get in the conversation and as you go in, you start talking about Christ and him crucified, Jesus shed his blood if you repent and believe. Now that's the call. You're starting to get into gear explaining the gospel and they listen, you are giving the external call. Or an urban evangelist sets up a tent. For seven straight days he's in some tough area of some city in the U.S., and they have a crusade, and they preach the gospel. They preach Christ and him crucified. Every day and every night. That's the call, the external call, the invitation. A missionary in China conducts an English language class. And uses the Bible as a text. And there's a specific student who wants to know more, comes privately after hours. They have a conversation. The missionary shares the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. That is the external call. It's the message of the gospel. A physician witnesses to a patient who has just received a diagnosis of terminal cancer, sitting there in the room, they're witnessing very plainly of repentance and faith in Christ. Dear friends, that's the external call. Now as Christians, it is our job to do that. We are called on to spread that as widely as we can. We are called out to go into the hedge rows, and the street corners and place of employment and your neighbor and everywhere to the ends of the earth, missionaries like the Gillams and others going out to the ends of the earth with the external call, spreading the gospel. So verse 10, “The servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.” Jesus himself did this, “On the last and greatest day of the feast he stood and called out in a loud voice. ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.’” There's your external call. The Effectual Call of the Gospel: Regeneration But there is another call. And it works together with the external call and at the same time as the external call, there's the internal call of God. The internal call of Almighty God. It's an effective call, an effectual call. It creates what it calls. God says, “Let there be light,” and there's light. God creates and there is. It says, in Romans 4:17, speaks of “the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” So God calls to the heart, to the unregenerate heart, and the unregenerate heart, hearing the words, the external call of the Gospel, repents and believes. Why? Because God has worked it sovereignly in their heart. So it says in 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” So you've got that external general call and you've got the sovereign call of God in regeneration. Not Everyone Gets Called by God Now, not everyone gets these calls. First of all, it's “Many are called,” not “everyone is called.” So there are some people that live their whole lives and never hear about Jesus, they never get the invitation that way. If you asked me about that and the justice of it and all that, that's another sermon, already preached it, probably several times. Come and ask me, and we'll talk about it. But it does say, “Many are called.” So many many many people hear the external call of the gospel, many. But only few are chosen to sit at the banquet with God, chosen by God for that purpose, this is God's sovereignty in salvation. Ephesians 1 says, “He chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” God’s Sovereignty in Salvation According to Jesus, then, God sovereignly chooses whom he will call with that internal call, who he will clothe with the righteousness of Christ, and whom he will seat at the banquet table with him. I don't know what other interpretation, you could give to Jesus' summation of this parable. “Many are called but few are chosen.” It's the chosen ones that get to sit at the table and aren't cast outside into the darkness. Applications Well, what application can we take from this? Well, I've already given you one, repent and come to Christ. Secondly, be involved in the external call, be involved in the call of the mission. You have the chance to do that financially. Next week you're gonna hear a Lottie Moon speaker. Listen to that message, see how God may be calling you to be involved in missions. I believe that people like the Gillams and others, missionaries that are in our church, they are a stewardship from God to this local church. Let's cherish their call and let's do what we can to feed that call and encourage them. And as you spend more time, you may actually hear a call from God, to go on mission work yourself. And then finally, if I could just urge you, feed your hearts with the joys of heaven and study the terrors of hell. I really believe that an hour in each place would do us good whether we were Christians or non-Christians. But you can get it through the Word of God. Feed on it. Close with me now if you would in prayer.

Andy Davis preaches another verse by verse expository sermon on Matthew 22:1-14. The main subject of the sermon is the parable of the wedding feast.

Introduction So, we resume our series in Matthew. Going back to Matthew now and resuming our look at the life of Christ from that marvelous gospel. And we come to the parable of the wedding feast. We're gonna deal with it in two weeks. This morning we're gonna just look at the general overview and details of this parable and next week we're gonna draw out three of the weighty doctrinal issues that come from this. Just too much to cover in one week and so we can look forward to that next week. But I will never forget as long as I live, the morning of July, 29th 1981. I was a non-Christian. I was driving to work at a job I hated. And I was listening to the radio, reports describing the most lavish wedding of our time, the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer at Saint Paul's Cathedral. And I was green with envy. I will never forget that. Lady Diana's wedding train was 25 feet long, we were told. She arrived in a glass coach. Took 3.5 minutes for her to walk the red velvet aisle up to the altar. 750 million people watched that wedding from 58 countries by TV and a privileged 3,500 viewed it in person. I remember feeling incredibly jealous and not that I cared that much about the royal couple, but I didn't like my life at that point and thought, “Boy, wouldn't it be great? Wouldn't it be great to have the life of luxury and ease they were gonna have?” They were going on a Mediterranean cruise for their honeymoon. Eleven day cruise. A gift of the Queen of England. And I was pulling into the parking lot right at that moment as that all was being described, toiling my way through a life that seemed far less appealing. I remember wishing that I could at least have been one of the privileged few that could have attended that wedding. Little did I know what the future held for that couple or, for that matter, what the future held for me. That couple, as you know, had a tragic future in-store. A life of conflict and hostility, of adultery, broken relationships, of misery and, of course, the untimely death of Diana pursued by the paparazzi in Paris, bizarre car chase. You know the story. Whereas I, for my part, would be invited and chosen for a far more lavish wedding banquet 15 months later when I became a Christian. And now I look on my own attitude at the time as foolishness, worldly foolishness. I can't wait to sit at the wedding banquet with Jesus. Amen? I can't wait to go to that wedding and sit at table with Jesus and partake in a mystical sort of way, a way I cannot understand, but as part of the bride of Christ, as we just sang, how beautiful is the bride of Christ. To be part of that and to enjoy just being in the presence of God. And part of the anticipation and the joy I have looking forward to Heaven comes from this parable and from the image, the picture of God that it gives us as the ultimate generous joy giver. That God is himself a happy being and he delights to make others happy out of his bounty and his lavishness. I'm just looking forward to being in the presence of such a being. Looking forward to being in the presence of God. There are so many faulty views of God out there, aren't there? The “cosmic killjoy.” The one leaning over the ramparts of heaven to see if any of you are having a good time. And telling you to cut it out, squelching any joy you might have. I believe these images are clearly a Satanic lie. Clearly a satanic lie. From the Garden of Eden Satan has been lying to us, telling us that God is holding out on us, holding out joy and happiness. If we could just follow him, we would be really happy. The truth of the matter is quite different. The book of Revelation says of Satan that he is filled with rage, because he knows his time is short. How can a being like that give anybody happiness? Jesus spoke of him saying he's a murderer from the beginning, the thief who comes to steal and kill and destroy. Jesus is the one who has come to give us life, and give it abundantly. Paul puts it this way, speaking of God, in 1 Timothy 1:11 speaks of “the glorious gospel of the blessed God.” And like many of you, perhaps, you just read over those words and it's like those religious words: Glorious, gospel, blessed, God, those kind of things. It wasn't until John Piper kind of re-translated or actually got a little more careful in the translation than we're used to. “The glorious good news of the happy God.” It is glorious good news that God is happy and that he invites you into his happiness with him, that he wants you to be as happy as he is. That is a biblical picture of God and that's a picture we get of God in this parable today. In the parable, Jesus portrays God the Father as a joy-filled host of a wedding banquet. He portrays heaven as a lavish, joy-filled feast in which the fattened oxen and the cattle have been butchered and everything's made ready, and we're invited to sit at table and enjoy. And amazingly in this parable, this invitation is rejected. Rejected and rejected and rejected, again and again. So, my earnest desire today is to explain the joy of God in this parable in such an appealing way that you'll sit at table with Christ even now, by the power of the Holy Spirit. And I do mean at the Lord's Supper, later on, but I also just mean day-to-day that you would just sit at table with Jesus, through that deposit, that guarantee of the Holy Spirit, and have foretaste of that heavenly banquet, knowing that it's not the full consummation, but just sit at table with Jesus. And even more, mindful of the fact that there are almost certainly people here today who are in an unregenerate state. And you are lost. The Bible says you're under the wrath of God. If you were to die today, you would go to hell, you would spend eternity away from God. You can be freed from that today, just by hearing the gospel, which is the power of God for salvation. Just by hearing words of Christ crucified, his blood shed for sinners, of his bodily resurrection from the dead. And that hearing that, that faith will spring up in your heart and you'll be justified, forgiven of all your sins, and you will someday sit at table with God. That's my hope today. Can all of that happen? Yes, it can. That's the power of the Word of God. And so, that's what I'm praying for today. A Happy King Throws A Party Context But let's begin by just setting this parable in its context. A happy king throws a party, that's what it's about. And so Jesus is there in the last week of his life, we've already traced that out. He has made his triumphal entry to “hosannas” from the little children. “Hallelujahs.” “Blessed is the one who comes in the Name of the Lord,” and they're just chanting and celebrating. But it wasn't long after that joyful entry that Jesus began to cross swords with his enemies, the Jewish leaders who wanted to kill him, who were conspiring to put him to death. They are the ones that rebuked the children for praising Jesus. They're the ones that were there when Jesus cleansed the temple, and they asked him, “By what power or authority do you do this?” They were there when Jesus was teaching in the temple area. They questioned him about that. They confronted him on his authority to do any of the things he was doing. He told them parables to try to explain their situation before God, Jewish history, and who he was. Parable of the two sons. The first son, the father says, “Go and work in the vineyard,” and the first son says he won't go, but he changes his mind and goes. And the other son, he says he'll go, but he doesn't go. And which of the two did the will of his father? And Jesus applies that parable, talking about the ministry of John the Baptist, he said, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw that, you didn't repent and believe.” And then he told them the parable of the wicked tenants in the vineyard, picking up on that theme of God as the owner of a vineyard. An absentee owner. And how a vineyard was planted and rented to some tenant farmers, and when he sent servants to collect the fruit, they just beat them up and killed them, and then finally he sends his son and they kill him too. And then Jesus applies the parable this way, “I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but the one on whom it falls will be crushed.” Well, the Jewish leaders definitely got the message at the end of Matthew 21. It says, “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus' parables, they knew he was talking about them, they looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because all the people held that he was a prophet.” That's how it ends, chapter 21. And we go right from that into this parable. Jesus answers them again and tells them another parable, the parable of the wedding banquet. Now, why did Jesus use parables? This was something that Jesus chose to do. A parable is a story with elements taken from everyday life, something we understand, something that's familiar, but it teaches a spiritual principle. And if you get the key, if you understand it, then it's a marvelous teaching tool. Very memorable and teaches elements of truth that really just can't be gotten across so powerfully any other way. But if you don't have that key, it's gibberish and it makes the one who speaks them look like he's insane. They actually thought he was demon-possessed after telling parables. So it's a very wise thing. Jesus actually divides people by the parables that he tells. But in this way, I think he's explaining something about the rejection of the Messiah by the Jewish nation. The Parable Recounted So what's in this parable? You heard Bert read it. I'll just go over it briefly, just for details. “The kingdom of Heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.” So God is portrayed as a king and preparing a wedding banquet for the Son. “And he sent servants,” verse 3, “to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come.” So there's some group of people that had already known that this banquet was coming, and he's basically saying the time has come. It's time for the wedding banquet. However, verse 3, “they refused to come.” It's rather shocking, if you think about it, but they refused to come to the wedding banquet that's been prepared. Well, the king tries again. He sends more messengers. Verse 4, “He sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited, that I prepared my dinner.’” Maybe you didn't understand the earlier message, maybe you didn't know. Well, I'm trying to make it clear. Dinner is ready. Dinner is served. In my family, you don't have to ask twice. They know. Thursday, you know when it was ready, it was long sought after. I'm gonna get into trouble. It was wonderfully made and the ladies worked hard and it was marvelous. But I'm just telling you, when the time came, we were there. We were eager. But the king sends more messengers, “Tell them the banquet is ready. The time has come. My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.” But those invited actually attack the messengers at this point. Verse 5 and 6, “They paid no attention and went off, one to his field, another to his business.” Verse 6, “The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them.” But now we have the rage of the king. The king's enraged. “He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.” And then he sends out a general invitation to everyone. “He said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.” So here you've got this grand wedding hall and it's filled with good and bad people. But then the king comes in and as he comes in, he looks at the wedding guests and he notices there a man who's not wearing wedding clothes. And he approaches him, he initiates with him. He said, “Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes?” And the man is speechless, it says. He doesn't have an answer. And then, perhaps some people think maybe the, most shocking part of the whole parable, then the king told the attendants, “Tie him hand and foot and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The Parable Applied And then Jesus gives this, almost as shocking or maybe even more, in some cases, application or summation of this parable, “For many are called but few are chosen.” That's it. That's the parable. Those are the 14 verses we're gonna look at over these two weeks. Alright? These striking words at the end, “Many are called but few are chosen,” are striking because it seems that choosing isn't even in view. What choosing or what election or what kind of choice is involved here? He's contrasting the invitation to the wedding banquet and the actual attendance of those that end up being there. And not everyone who gets invited actually ends up sitting at table. And this fits the context, actually, because he's addressing the fact, I believe, that Israel, that the Jews, are rejecting their Messiah and not everyone who gets invited actually sits at table. “Many are called but few are chosen.” It brings it squarely in view of the sovereignty of God in human salvation. General Lessons from the Parable The Lavish Character of the King Alright, well, let's look at some general lessons from this parable. Some general lessons. First of all, I always ask when I come to a text, two questions: What does it teach me about God and what does it teach me about man? And I would recommend that to you as a general principle of Bible study. Whenever you read a passage just say, “What do I learn about God here and what can I learn about man?” And so, let's start with the first and most important question. What does this parable teach us about God? And we see first and foremost, the lavish character of the king. This parable teaches us about God. God is a king. Clearly, I think, the king in the parable is God the Father, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he's presented as a king, a sovereign, a ruler. And we see also this wedding analogy. I'll talk more about that in a moment, but it pictures a relationship between the Son of God and the church. A relationship between the Son of God and his people. Well, what are the attributes of the king? What does the parable teach us about the attributes of God? Well, we see first and clearly, the love of God here. The love of God. The whole wedding banquet language is about love. It's a love relationship between the Father and the Son. The Father loves the Son and wants to put on the banquet. And just because it's a wedding banquet, not just a celebratory feast or a harvest feast or something like that, there's a love relationship between the Son and his bride. The marriage between Christ and the church. So we see love. John the Baptist calls Jesus the bridegroom. You know, when his disciples come and they're jealous, because Jesus is doing better. Jesus' church is growing faster. And John understands exactly what's happening. It's exactly like it needs to be. And he says in John 3:29, “The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice.” So he uses bridegroom language to speak of Jesus. Jesus uses that language to speak of himself when questioned about fasting, He said, “How can the friends of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken away. At that point they will fast.” So, that's Matthew 9:15. The apostle Paul likened marital relations between a husband and wife, in a mysterious way, to the relationship between Christ and the church. And so there is this idea of a wedding between Christ and the church. The final consummation of this is depicted in the book of Revelation. As the new Jerusalem comes down like a bride, beautifully dressed, prepared for her husband, ready for her wedding day. And so the whole context of this parable is the love of the Father for the Son and of the Son for His bride. We see also, as I've already mentioned, the happiness of God. The happiness of God. A wedding is a happy time, it's a celebration. All over the world, A time of happiness. It's a time of eating and drinking and being happy, of laughter and music. And our God is a God of overwhelming joy. He is a happy God. You know, it just takes a while to wrap your mind around that. All of the misery in your life and mine has come from departing from this happy God. And all of the happiness and joy we'll experience comes from returning to him, reconciliation with him, right relationship with him. He's a happy God. How ridiculous is it then that some people portray him as a miserable being? I'm about to teach a class this upcoming semester on the Puritans at Southeastern. And H.L. Mencken said that Puritanism is “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Well, listen, that's really very clever and very bitter and all that, but the real issue isn't so much what does Mencken think of the Puritans, it's what does an unbeliever think about God? Same kind of thing, the haunting fear God has that someone, somewhere, is happy and they need to cut it out. But you know, the Scripture says, I think it's Psalm 115, “Our God is in heaven, he does whatever pleases him.” How foolish to be omnipotent and omniscient and be unhappy. [chuckle] I mean, if you're gonna be omnipotent, be happy, because everything's the way you want. And he is. He does whatever pleases him. In heaven, earth and under the earth, he's sovereign, he rules, and he is happy. He's a happy being. Our God is a God of infinite happiness and pleasure. Psalms 16:11, this is your future if you're a Christian, it says: “You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” Eternal pleasures at the right hand of God. And so the wedding banquet of Jesus Christ is ample evidence that our God is a happy God and He wants you to be happy too. He wants you to experience pleasure and joy. Thirdly, we see the generosity of the king. He is a generous being in this. He spares nothing for this lavish banquet. He wants to share his generosity with as many people as possible. Psalm 50, he says that, “Our God owns the cattle on a thousand hills.” Well, here he wants to share that bounty lavishly with the guests. So he is lavish and generous. “Tell those I've invited that I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered and everything is ready. Come to the feast.” He's generous. Now, some people are stingy. Proverbs 23:6-8 says, “Do not eat the food of a stingy man, do not crave his delicacies; for he's the kind of man who's always thinking about the cost. ‘Eat and drink,’ he says to you, but his heart is not with you. You will vomit up the little you have eaten and you will have wasted your compliments.” Well God isn't stingy and he's not thinking about the cost. He is putting on this wedding banquet and he is being generous, lavishly generous. How generous? Well, in order to get you there, he didn't spare his own Son, but gave him up for you. How generous then, is God? How generous? What would you spare? What's precious to you? He didn't spare anything. The most precious to him, he gave. Poured him out at the cross. See then the lavish generosity of God and see also the patience of God. Oh, he doesn't just try once, He tries multiple times to get these people to come to the wedding banquet. It says in Romans 9, concerning the reprobates, concerning the wicked, that “God bears with great patience the objects of wrath.” Oh, He puts up with an awful lot. And here, he just sends messenger after messenger. “Tell them to come. Tell them to come.” He's very patient. We see also the wrath of God here in this parable. You might think, how does that fit with the earlier picture of the happy God? But it does. And we see the wrath of God. Once the people become violent and abusive to his messengers, the king shows his wrath, his righteously passionate emotional anger to what they have done to his messengers. How else could a loving King, a just king, respond? His servants have gone in his name to invite people to a long-prepared wedding banquet and they are refusing to come and actually murdering the messengers. So I crafted an illustration to try to give you a sense of this. And it was so powerful as I went over it, it brought tears to my eyes because I have children. But imagine, just bear with this illustration. Imagine in one community, there's a group of parents that wants to put on a party for the village. And they get everything ready for the party and they send out their children. And the children are dressed, the boys are dressed up in these little white suits, girls are dressed up in party dresses with flowers in their hair, and they go skipping and dancing and singing into the village. And the villagers murder them. Now, what would you feel as a father of those children? What I feel right now. Only make it perfect, make it holy, make it just. So it is with God and the messengers of his gospel who have been beaten and killed, persecuted in every generation of church history. They have traveled over land and sea, they've gone over mountains, they have suffered privations, they've left the comforts of their home and they've gone over there and they have been persecuted and in some cases, martyred. And God loves those messengers, His children, more than any of you parents love your children. And the connection between Christ and his messengers is intense and powerful, so much so that he confronts Saul of Tarsus, breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples, confronts him saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting,” he says. So this is how God treats the persecutors of his messengers if he doesn't convert them. Praise God for the grace of God, He converted Saul of Tarsus. “You deserve to die, but I'm gonna actually convert you instead. I'm gonna transform you and you'd be one of my children too. And you'll be one of my messengers and guess what's gonna happen to you? Everywhere you go you're gonna get beat up.” “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name,” but in the midst of it all, there'll be the joy of a reconciled relationship. How do you see wrath in this parable? Well, it's right there in two ways. Two, actually, stunning ways. First, the burning of the town. Verse 7, “The King was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.” In redemptive history, this undoubtedly refers to the destruction of Jerusalem. They rejected Christ, 70 A.D. the Romans came and destroyed that city and burned it to the ground. But it's just a foretaste of the final judgment of God. It says in the book of Revelation that he sends out angels with bowls. And the angels pour out bowls on the earth. And the third angel pours out his bowl and the fresh water, the rivers and springs and streams are all turned to blood. And the angel celebrates the justice of God. “You are righteous, oh God, holy and true for doing this, for this is what you have judged. For they shed the blood of your saints and your prophets and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.” The final fulfillment of this will be the second coming of Christ when Jesus comes on that horse in front of the armies of heaven. Read about it in Revelation 19:7-11. He's riding a horse and the sword of God is coming out of his mouth, two-edged sword. Fire in his eyes. Faithful and true written on his thigh. Brings wrath, brings punishment for all those who have persecuted his people. So we see then, the judgment of God and the wrath of God. We see it also in the banishment of the man from the hall, who is cast outside into darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, because he's not wearing the right clothes. We'll get to that next week. I told you there wasn't enough time in one time to deal with this parable. But there's a reason for it, and we'll talk about it next week, but we see, I think, a picture of hell there. And therefore we see the judgment of God, the keen assessment of the wedding hall and its guests, the perfect judgment of God. Nothing escapes his notice. He comes in there to see the guests. He looks at them, He notices a man there who's not wearing wedding clothes. He's just dealing with his eyes. He sees and knows. And so it says in Proverbs 20:8, “When a king sits on his throne to judge, he winnows out all evil with his eyes.” Well, I don't know if Solomon could do that, but I know God can do that. And he winnows out all evil, separating the wheat from the chaff, separating the good fish from the bad fish, separating the sheep from the goats with his eyes. So that's what, some of what, I think the parable teaches about God. The Stubborn Sinfulness of Man What does it teach us about man? Well, how about let's start with the stubborn sinfulness of man. How stubborn are we in our sin, how much we resist the gospel message. The Jewish rejection of the Messiah, that's the context here. Through the prophets the Lord had been spreading a banquet feast and inviting them to come, getting ready for the Messiah. And they were the ones who had already been invited, but they're just being told now the banquets here. These are the Jews. And through the prophets they've been prepared for this. Isaiah 55:1-2, “Come, all you are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.” Well, that's the invitation. They've been told that the banquet's coming. And now Jesus is coming saying, “The banquet's here.” Verse 3, “He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.” Jesus said it, he is very plain. John 7, “On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and called out in a loud voice. ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within you.’” Did they come? No, they did not, they rejected him. And in the future they would reject the messengers of the Messiah and of the gospel. Matthew 23:34, “I'm sending you prophets and wise men and teachers, and some of them you will kill and crucify and others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town.” Now, note the reasons for this stubborn, sinful refusal. First, it's just a flat, “No.” They just refused to come. Just said no. Can you imagine a friend receiving an invitation to the inaugural ball in Washington, D.C., for the President, President of the United States? Just set the politics aside or whatever you think about presidents. But just think about the magnitude of the occasion. And you say to your friend, “When are you leaving?” He said, “I don't know. I don't think I'm gonna go.” “Why not? Are you not well?” “No, I'm fine. I decided the work's been piling up in the office. I think I'm probably just gonna work late that night.” “What are you, nuts? Are you crazy? This is an invitation to come, this is a once-in-a-lifetime invitation. How can you reject it to get a little extra work done at the office?” But that's about what they say. “They paid no attention and went off,” Verse 5, “one to his field, another to his business.” So the craving for money, for material possessions, for power, for the stuff of this world, drives out any allure that the invitation has. They don't wanna come, they're too busy. Even the possessions. Luke's version of this, Luke 14:18-20, it says, “They all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I've just bought a field and I want to go look at it. Please excuse me.’ Another said, ‘I just bought five yoke of oxen and I wanna try them.’” So like, “I just bought a new SUV, I just don't have time for the Lord, I wanna try it out.” Bought a new boat, something. Something exciting, something interesting, something worldly. And the allure of the invitation starts to fade. Just not that appealing. So they refused to come. Another said, “I just got married. I can't come.” Just making excuses. And note the escalating wickedness. It starts with simple refusal, then they start to make excuses, and then they get violent and start to abuse them, as we've already talked about. This parable then, gives us a remarkable tour of the human heart, of human wickedness in rejecting the gospel. The Free Offer of the Gospel Worldwide Notice also, if you would, the free offer of the gospel worldwide. Just tell everyone to come. The invitation, worldwide. I believe in the free offer of the gospel. I believe in telling anyone and everyone to come. It says in Luke 14, “The master told the servant, ‘Go out into the roads and the country lanes, and make them come in so my house will be full.’” Paul and Barnabas in Pisidian Antioch, after being rejected by the Jews, they said, “We are now turning to the Gentiles and they will listen.” So just go out, free, offer to everyone, any nation, tribe and people and language all over the world, “Come to the wedding banquet. The Mixed Nature of the Church Notice also the mixed nature of the church. Verse 10, “The servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests, good and bad.” So, also, around the world, the church is filled with good and bad. The church is filled with what the Puritans called gospel hypocrites. People who look good on the outside, but inside their hearts are far from Christ. How dangerous a state. I believe the hardest category of people to reach with the gospel, they're not Muslims, not communists, not atheists, they are gospel hypocrites. Hardest category of people to reach. What can you tell them? Mixed nature. The Mixed Nature of Judgment Day And only on judgment day will they be winnowed out. As I already said, the sheep separated from the goats. The good fish separated from the bad. The wheat separated from the tares. And so it will be. Thus also, I think, the mixed nature of judgment day when Jesus comes and separates all of that out. And so it will be. Three Major Doctrines Illuminated The Sovereignty of God in Salvation Now, next week, we're gonna talk about three significant doctrines that this parable discusses that I didn't discuss today. One of them is the sovereignty of God in salvation. That final statement, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” What did Jesus mean? We'll talk about that, God willing, next time. The Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness And I think we should talk about the imputation of Christ's righteousness. What were the wedding clothes that that man lacked? What are we supposed to be wearing on Judgment Day? Because apparently, if you're not wearing it you get thrown outside into the darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. So it would behoove us to know what kind of attire God expects on Judgment Day. I say it's the imputed righteousness of Christ. We're gonna talk about that next week. The Joys of Heaven and the Terrors of Hell And I wanna talk about the joys of Heaven and the terrors of hell. The kingdom of Heaven is like a wedding banquet. “Throw that man outside into the darkness, tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside in the darkness where there'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” There's so many things in each phrase. Tie him hand and foot. Throw him. Outside. Darkness. Weeping. Gnashing of teeth. Each one of those teaches us something about hell. The Parable Applied And so we're gonna look at it next week, God willing. Now, what application can we take for this parable today? Well, first of all come to Christ. I am one of the messengers that the king has sent out. I'm not speaking highly of myself. “We are all ambassadors of Christ,” it says, “as though God himself were making his appeal through us. … Be reconciled to God.” In the language of the parable, God himself is making his appeal through me: “Come to the wedding banquet.” I know exactly when it is. This is the Sunday after Thanksgiving. There are probably relatives here listening to me today. You were invited to come to church, maybe you don't usually go to church, I don't know. Maybe you go to a church in another place. That's really not so important right now. The question is, “Are you clothed in the righteousness of Christ? Have you trusted in Jesus?” Earlier, I gave you everything you needed to know. Jesus, the Son of God, shed his blood on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sins. If you trust in him, all of your sins will be forgiven, past, present, and future. Trust in Jesus. Come to the banquet. And if I can speak now to Christians, can I say, come to the banquet? He is a happy God. How are you? Are you happy? Are you joyful? Are you, through that indwelling Spirit, having foretaste of the future heavenly banquet? Or is the master coming out and saying, “I didn't say you could get up from the table, sit down and eat some more. Be joyful in me.” Didn't Paul say it this way, “Rejoice in the Lord always”? We wander from the banqueting table through sin. Jesus is inviting you right now to come back and sit down and feast some more in Christ. Don't wander after worldly things. Don't wander after sin. Understand the greatness of the joy waiting for you in Heaven. Now, we're gonna unfold some of those weighty doctrines next time and talk some more about applications at this point. The final application for me right now is, I just want you to prepare your hearts for the Lord's Supper. We're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper. And how beautiful and how synergistic and providential that we're having the Lord's Supper today because I believe that this Lord's Supper pre-figures the wedding banquet of the Lamb. Don't you? Sitting at table. God and man at table are sat down. I love that song. And just think about what it's gonna be like to feast with Jesus. And again, if you're not a Christian, please don't come. Don't partake. Instead spend your time repenting of sin and trusting in Jesus. But if you have trusted in Christ and have testified to that publicly, through baptism, water baptism, I'd like to ask you to partake. You may feel sinful. During the time, as we're getting our hearts ready, confess that sin. Resolve to make it right. It's for sinners. It's not for perfect people, it's for sinners. So, come and partake.

Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on Matthew 22:1-14. The main subject of the sermon is the parable of the wedding feast that Christ shared.