"The Great Invitation" | Matthew 22:1-14 | Sunday Morning Worship Service

At Didre and my wedding, we did not take RSVPs.

We were both school teachers.

We invited everybody in our school to our wedding, in both of our schools.

We were both in college ministry.

We invited everybody at our college to our school.

We invited every, I mean, to our wedding.

We invited everybody to our wedding.

And so we thought, you know, we don't even need to keep track of who says yes or who says no.

He or she who wills to come, let him come.

That was the motto at our wedding.

We had it at church and it was uh a big auditorium, a big worship center, so there's room for lots of people.

We had a instead of dinner, we had like a chocolate fondue fountain out there.

It was wonderful and it was amazing, and lots of the students came and it was really fun.

But there was a moment before the wedding where I was a little bit nervous.

Is anybody actually going to come?

Was kind of a thought that went through my mind.

I don't think I would have said that out loud, but I was just wondering.

And so as the hour approached and people started to show up, and then at the very beginning of the wedding, when I walked in from the side door and I saw the place was filled, I breathed a little bit of a sigh of relief.

Like, because that could have been awkward.

There would have been a lot of chocolate left over.

That's different than another wedding that Dieter and I were invited to once, where uh we were asked to RCP, and we did.

We RCP'd yes.

And then about a month or so before the wedding, we got contacted by uh one of the family members who said, you know, you were actually just invited out of politeness.

Um we weren't, you know, really expecting you to come.

I know this is awkward.

Uh-huh.

So we we didn't go.

Um yeah, yeah.

That's sort of the opposite problem of this wedding here that we're about to read about this morning.

In the passage we're reading about this morning, there's a wedding, and there are maybe even people that are RCP'd, but they decide not to come.

Let's look at this text this morning.

Again, Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.

Now, let me pause real quick and say there are three parables in a row here, four if you count the fig tree parable at the beginning, where Israel is compared to a fruitless fig tree.

But then there's a series of three after that that are all parables condemning Israel, and they're all about sons.

The first parable, you remember, is the son who says, Yes, dad, of course he'll empty the dishwasher, but has no intention of doing it at all.

The second parable is about the landowner who leases out his vineyard and goes to collect rent and sends his son to collect a rent, and the the tenants murder the son, if you can believe it.

And this third parable is about a king who is throwing a wedding feast for his son.

In that first parable, the son who says yes and does no stands in for Israel.

They're the disobedient son.

In the second and third parable, the son represents the Lord Jesus.

And in both parables, the Lord is attacked.

The son is attacked.

In the second one, he's murdered, and in this one, he is merely scorned and rejected, but certainly hated.

And so Jesus is telling his parables as a way of condemning the religious leaders of Israel.

That's evident.

You see that in verse uh 46 of chapter 21.

The religious leaders are seeking to arrest him because they understood in verse 45 that he was speaking these parables about them.

In verse 15 of chapter 22, they're going to plot how to entangle him in his words.

The religious leaders recognize these parables are designed to condemn them.

Now, with all the parables Jesus tells, they start with very natural, normal stories that then have a surprising twist in them that is shocking and unexpected.

All three of these parables are like that, and this parable is the same way.

The kingdom of heaven is compared to a king who gives a wedding feast for his son.

This is a normal part of their life.

Everybody would have a grid for a king giving a wedding feast for his son.

That would be a big deal.

It would be an over-the-top kind of feast.

It would be the most elaborate and ornate feast of anybody's lives that had been there.

It's more extreme than a coronation feast.

The word for the son here, there's the article before it.

The king is giving the feast for the son that he likes, his good son, his oldest son.

The king probably has more than one son, but this is the son who's the prince.

This is the son who is the heir.

It's the same phrase used in the earlier parable for his beloved son.

This is the son the king likes.

This will be the most fantastic and amazing and over-the-top wedding of these people's lives.

What a coveted invitation that would be.

And the invitation goes out in verse 3.

His servants were sent to call those who were invited to the wedding.

So, in this is a world where, by the way, there is no outlook calendars, there's no evite.

Can you imagine a world without evite?

How do you get anything done?

No Google calendars, no reminders.

When you send out a wedding invitation, it's not a save the date thing.

An engagement announcement does not have a save the date, March 31st, you know, whatever, at such and such time.

That's not what it is.

It's an announcement of the engagement with an invitation to the wedding at a time to be named later.

There's a certain amount of preparation that will go in.

So as soon as the engagement happens, the announcement goes out, but then weeks or maybe a month or two might go by before the actual wedding.

And that's because people are preparing the house for the couple to live in.

In some cases, that won't be the situation with the king, with the king, you're preparing the feast.

Weddings in this world would normally take place on a Wednesday.

They didn't have a, you know, our version of a weekend.

The weddings would take place on a Wednesday, and the idea would be the feast would last all the way even into Thursday.

Friday, people are traveling back to their home for the Sabbath.

The couple would have the wedding party Wednesday and Thursday and then be alone for Friday and Saturday, kind of their honeymoon, so to speak, and then return to life on Monday.

That's the idea.

And so you know the king is announcing a wedding for his son.

It's going to be an outlandish and over-the-top event at some Wednesday, probably in the future.

And then the preparations are made.

People would know the preparations are being made, the animals are being slaughtered, the palace is being transformed, dignified guests are arriving from afar.

I mean, it's a big deal.

And so you would perceive the day is approaching, and then on that Wednesday, the servants and the word is slaves, do los, the slaves would go out into the community and find the people that were invited and say, today's the day.

Let's go.

Today's the day.

Come to the king's house.

You would be expected to stop what you're doing.

If you had work that day, you would skip it.

If you were supposed to be in the field that day, you would stop and get changed and go to the wedding.

That's the idea.

Everybody would act that way.

But in verse 3 it says the servants go out and tell the people who are invited, but they would not come.

That phrase at the end of verse 3, they wouldn't come.

That's what's unbelievable about this.

They wouldn't come.

In fact, the the Greek is even more harsh than that.

The Greek is the word for will, Themea.

It's their will, and then it's the word for against.

Their will was against the invitation.

We might say they had hardened their hearts.

They had determined in their hearts they would not go to this wedding.

What in the world is that about?

We can make this an American analogy very easily.

You could imagine a president one day having a wedding at the White House for his son or daughter, or more likely grandson or granddaughter.

And that would be the most hot-ticket wedding you've ever heard of.

A wedding in the maybe the South Lawn of the White House or something for somebody in the president's own family.

You would go, if you were invited, you would go.

It doesn't matter the party of the president.

You would be stoked.

The president has invited you to this formal wedding at the White House.

That's a big deal.

And you wouldn't say, oh yeah, but I have, you know, receipts I have to turn in at work.

You know, I actually had planned to go to soccer practice that day.

You would go to the wedding.

But these people in verse 3 are set against it.

And so the king says, other servants out.

And this is because the king is positive there has to be an ex there has to be a mistake.

Why?

He's looking out at the empty worship center.

Where is everybody?

The slaves are coming back, and the slaves just shrug their shoulders.

So the king has got to be thinking, maybe the invitation wasn't clear.

Go back and tell them the fattened calves have been killed.

The oxen are slaughtered in verse 4.

All the work has been done.

There's a lot of food here.

This is, like I said, an elegant feast.

Lots of oxen slaughtered.

Not some like Fondue Fountain, like some weddings I've heard of might have.

This is over, this is Ritz Carlton.

This is over the top.

Go let him know.

The food's hot.

Let's get going.

Well, his story gets even worse.

Verse 5.

The people, the second time, this is the third time they've had the invitation, the second time that day the slaves are showing up at their house, they paid them no attention.

This is the word for the word for mellow.

It's an odd way to render it here.

They paid no attention to the Spanish word tranquilo here.

They're mellow, they're from the same root here.

They're just they don't care.

They have the servant in their foyer saying the king's dinner is hot, the wedding is getting ready to happen right now.

The one that you're invited to at the palace, let's go.

And they are just chill.

Whatever.

And they go back to their work.

That's the crazy part of the story.

They go back to doing what they were planning on doing anyway.

They don't even make an excuse like, oh, I would love to go, but I have a funeral.

My dad died this week.

I'd love to go, but but I had friends from out of town show up unexpectedly.

That would at least be an excuse.

They don't even pretend to have excuses.

Look at what it says in verse 5.

One of them goes off to his farm.

He just goes back to pulling weeds.

Back to harvesting fruit.

The fruit will be there tomorrow.

He goes back to his daily life.

It's not even, if we're being honest here, it's not even that special of a life.

He's a farmer.

The next guy is a business owner.

A retail worker, however you want to say it.

He just goes back and recycled off to his business.

He goes back to his normal, everyday life.

I'm going to call it a mediocre life.

It's certainly mediocre.

I don't mean that condescending.

It's noble work for his family, but it's work like everybody else.

It's certainly mediocre compared to the king.

He can't be bothered to go to the king's temple because he has his normal mediocre job to attend to.

He doesn't even open his mouth.

He just goes to work.

Well, that's better than verse six.

Other people who are invited seized the servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them.

Hello?

That took a turn for the worse.

You don't murder someone for inviting you to their wedding.

That is what we call an overreaction.

I have to read you, I normally don't do this, but I have to read you a sentence from a commentary I read this week.

Quote, in no society is it considered good manners to murder someone bringing you a wedding invitation.

I paid$75 for that commentary.

I mean, at this junction, the story is absurd.

It's jumped the shark.

You don't want to go to the wedding, fine.

Say no, thank you.

You don't murder the mailman.

But that's what they do.

It seems like such an outrageous overreaction.

The only thing that could explain it is their hearts are hardened against the king.

They don't like the king and they don't like his son.

They're not doing it.

But even that, you don't like the guy who invites you to your wedding.

You might say no.

You might feign an illness.

You might send them an annoying wedding gift.

You don't kill them for inviting you.

The king would be aghast, it says in verse 7.

The king was angry.

Now, this is very similar to what happened in the parable we looked at last week, right before this.

And you remember in that parable, when they murdered the landowner's son, Jesus asks the crowd at this point, he says, What do you think should happen to those murderers?

What should the landowner do?

And remember, the crowd says the landowner should bring those miserable wretches to a miserable death.

That's the idea.

The crowd had already announced the verdict and a similar trial a few minutes earlier.

So now this is easy.

Jesus doesn't even ask the crowd for their verdict on this.

He just tells them what the king's going to do.

The king sends his troops and destroys those murderers and burns their city, which is his city too.

He burns it all down.

You're going to murder my slave for inviting you to my son's wedding.

I'm going to burn you and your family to the ground, the king says.

And he sends his army to do it.

He doesn't send out more slaves, he activates the National Guard to arms.

As if they're being invaded, only their command is to burn your own village down.

That's what happens to them.

And at this point, it's not even an overreaction.

They have it coming.

Well, the food is getting cold.

The bride and groom are awkwardly standing on the stage.

Be right back.

You're going to go do some pillaging.

Burns the villages down, comes back.

The food's still there.

The wedding is still set up.

Now what?

So he says to his servants in verse 8, the feast is ready.

Those who are invited are not worthy.

And by not worthy, he just means they didn't come.

They've shown their lack of worth by not attending.

There was the potential of them being worthy by virtue of them being invited.

It was the who's who of town for sure, the business owners and the shop owners and the wealthy people are obviously the ones that would be invited to the king's feast for his son's wedding.

But now he's going to broaden his opportunity window a little bit.

He's going to say, now go out in verse 9 and invite as many people as you can find.

I don't care if they can walk.

If they can't walk, carry them.

Verse 10, his servants went out to the roads and they gathered all whom they found.

Luke's version of the parable says, they went out and they compelled them to come in.

What a cool phrase.

They found in verse 10 both bad and good people.

They found everybody.

At the highways and the byways.

These villages would have a city center, a village center, and a spoke system where different roads meander through the fields and the vineyards, and they all descend upon the center of the city.

And so it's a spider web kind of going out.

And so the servants go to the center of the city and they start inviting everybody who's passing by.

People are probably coming because of the fires and the other houses that were burned down.

People are descending on the city, and the slaves are now inviting everybody they see to go to the wedding.

The good and the bad, meaning the people that are doing virtuous things and the people that are doing illegitimate or unvirtuous things.

So, for example, here, they're inviting people that are going into town to buy groceries for their family dinner that night.

They get intercepted and so come to the wedding.

And they're inviting the homeless beggars outside the grocery store.

They're invited to the wedding.

They're inviting the people in the left turn lane on Braddock that are backed up there.

And they're inviting the homeless guy walking the median on Braddock.

They're inviting the guys that are passed out, drunk, and asleep in the bus stop right there.

And they're inviting the bus driver and all the people going to work at the Pentagon on the bus.

Everybody's invited.

Both good and bad.

Good meaning people that are just doing their normal life things.

And bad meaning the drunkards and the homeless, the Luke's version is the lepers and the lame, those that are asleep and passed out in the bushes.

All of them are invited.

Everybody.

This is amazing.

These people are not expecting to go to a wedding that day.

They got up, they were just going to the store to get eggs.

Instead, they get ambushed with an invitation to the King's Palace for the best wedding of their life.

This is far-fetched, but you could imagine a scenario in Washington, D.C.

where you're walking outside Old Ebbett's or some restaurant down in D.C.

and some White House staffer comes running across the street sweating.

There's a state dinner tonight, and we messed up, we forgot about it.

We need 50 people to fill the back of the room, so it's not rude to our guests, kind of thing.

Maybe not that far-fetched.

You would say, Yes, I can't believe I'm invited.

Yay! Or LA, where I used to live.

This is a more realistic scenario in LA.

You're just going to the store or you're going for a walk, and somebody says, We're shooting a movie in this park right here.

We need 50 extras.

And you're like, Of course I'll do that.

That's so cool.

I've always wanted to be in a movie, and you see the yellow sign, Jurassic Park, and you're like, I hope I'm not the one getting eaten.

You would cancel what you're doing next.

You'd text your wife and be like, I'll be an hour late.

I'm at a picnic in a movie.

Like it's a fun thing to do.

This is even better than that.

Everybody is stoked.

They're not an extra in the movie.

They're not in the background of the state dinner.

They're getting to participate in the king's son's wedding.

Amazing.

This would be a wonderful place to end the parable, wouldn't it?

What a happy ending.

What a happy ending.

When the king came in verse 11 to look at the guests, he saw there was a man who had no wedding garment.

Now, this is the this is true at our American weddings too.

You're sitting down, and likely the bride's parents, the groom's parents, are working their way table to table around the room.

They're greeting everybody who's there.

They invited him, they're paying for it, they're greeting everybody who's there.

And so it is with this king.

And you picture the wedding starting, by the way, and the groom looking out at the audience, wondering, Dad, I don't recognize most of these people.

And don't worry about it.

But now the king is making his rounds and he comes across the table, and there's one guy who's not wearing the right clothes.

Commentaries here are divided on this.

Some point out that there is a Jewish custom, this attestitude in the Old Testament, of when you show up for a wedding at a king's palace, you are provided your wedding garments there.

You're provided what you're supposed to wear there.

It's a gift.

In our world, the groomsmen are supposed to buy their own suits.

In this world, the groomsmen are given their suits by the groom.

Not just the groomsmen, but every all the men at the wedding have their suits for them.

You see this in Genesis with Joseph when his brothers show up unexpectedly at the king's palace.

Joseph provides them with clothes to wear as they go in.

Or Samson.

Remember Samson's wedding?

There were 70 guests, 70 suits of clothes for that, and Samson bet on the clothes.

He was gonna have to pay for them for all the guests at the wedding.

That was the whole lion thing with Samson.

There's something like it in Esther as well.

There's these clues, like maybe this is that kind of situation where they were provided clothes and this guy didn't put them on.

Or maybe it was a situation where the wedding's getting started and people ran home and got dressed and came to the wedding.

We don't know.

It's a made-up story anyway, it kind of doesn't really matter.

But the point is that every single person at the wedding figured out what they had to do, except this one clown.

Everybody else sorted it out, but not this guy.

He's there and he's not wearing the right clothes.

The king says to him, Friend?

How'd you get in here without a wedding garment?

The word friend is sounds better.

In English than it does in Greek.

This is a word that is used a few other places in Matthew's gospel, and it's usually used correctively, like before Jesus is betrayed.

He says, friend, what you're gonna do, do quickly.

The English equivalent, a better English equivalent, it might be buddy.

You know, buddy literally means your friend, but when you say it, you don't mean it that way.

Like buddy or bro, it might be the more modern version of it.

Like, bro, what are you doing?

That kind of that's this word.

Bro?

What are you doing here without the right clothes?

This past summer I was invited to an outdoor wedding in California, and the invitation said black tie required.

And I didn't know with that.

I Googled it, and it's apparently you're supposed to wear a tux for that with shiny shoes.

And I was thinking, outdoor wedding in LA.

I don't want to want to wear a tux.

And so I texted some friends that were going, none of them were wearing tuxes.

But I brought a black tie just in case.

I want you to know, and I left it in the car and went there and I look in, and sure enough, I was dressed like everybody else.

Nobody else was wearing a tux.

That would be close.

But what if I was not dressed appropriately?

What if it was black tie required and I was there with, you know, my window pane sport jacket on?

Is the bride's dad gonna come grab me by the ear and throw me out?

Maybe.

I would deserve it.

Is he gonna have me arrested?

Well, that's overkill.

You don't arrest somebody for not following the dress code at a wedding.

You might kick them out, you might offer them to borrow a jacket, but you don't arrest them.

Look at what the king does in verse 13.

The king says to attendants, bind him hand in foot, cast him into outer darkness in that place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Which is, we're leaving the analogy of the wedding behind.

The king is throwing this dude into hell, is what's happening.

This is the language from the end of the book of Isaiah to describe hell.

He's not wearing the right tie at the wedding, and he gets thrown into hell.

That's where the parable ends.

So I should let you know there's more going on in Jesus' parable than a wedding story.

Let's go back to the beginning of the parable and work our way through it again, this time with an outline, three kinds of wedding guests.

Perhaps you invited all three of these kinds of people to your own wedding.

Three kinds of wedding guests.

The first is the refusers.

These are those that wouldn't go.

They had set their will against it, they had settled in their heart, they're not coming.

If it's their last day on earth, they're not going to that wedding.

And by the way, this in the parable clearly represents the Jews.

You know this because of the earlier parable.

They had killed the prophets, they had killed the messengers, that was the prophets.

The Jews had turned their heart against God.

And in the Old Testament, the Jews were absolutely invited to the wedding.

The Savior in the Old Testament is promised back in Genesis chapter 3, through Adam he will be the savior of the whole world.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

All of mankind, all of humanity can look to Jesus as the savior.

But the savior is not provided through all of mankind.

In Genesis 12, God calls Abram to leave his nation and start a new nation, and through Abram's seed, his offspring, will the nations be blessed.

So the savior is for the world, but provided through Israel.

It is through Abraham's seed that the promise is reckoned.

It is through Abraham's seed the nations are blessed.

In fact, the very first scripture given in the whole history of the world is the Torah given on Mount Sinai to Moses, who brings it down to Israel, and it is designed to set Israel apart from the nations.

Israel in Deuteronomy 4 is not supposed to look like the nations, dress like the nations, act like the nations, talk like the nations, eat like the nations, smell like the nations.

They are supposed to be totally different than the world, so that the Savior can come to them and go to the world.

That's the idea.

That's the plan of redemption.

The law was supposed to be a schoolmaster over Israel to keep them in custody like a tutor until their graduation day came.

Graduation day is when the Savior arrives through them.

Israel's held under the law until the Savior is there.

And so everything in the law is looking forward to the sun coming.

They celebrate the Passover feast every single year, looking for the Passover lamb, the true lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

They celebrate the feast of light every single year, waiting for the light of the world to come and shine on them.

Feast after feast, sacrifice after sacrifice, year after year, law after law, the whole Israeli identity was separate from the world so that they would produce and then recognize and receive the Savior when he came.

But they did not do that.

For centuries, they had built up their own system since Ezra rebuilt the temple.

400 years have gone by.

They've developed their own temple now, their own system, their own rabbinical system, rabbinical hierarchy, legal structure.

They had a system that the leaders loved and they wanted to keep it, and they wanted to keep doing what they have always been doing.

They were happy with life just the way it is.

The only thing that could mess it up is if the sun actually shows up.

That would mess up their plans.

And their lives were very ordinary.

These priests thought so highly of themselves, but they're just doing ordinary people doing ordinary things.

It'd be so demeaning to tell them that, but that's the point of this parable here.

They're just doing normal people stuff.

Nothing cool, nothing unusual, nothing of eternal value at all.

It's just smoke in mirrors, trying to get significance to their life.

And then the king shows up and invites them to a wedding that will change their lives.

They're not having it because they like their lives like it is very much.

I mean, this is John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

Jesus came to his own, his own did not receive him.

This is how Matthew starts his gospel back in Matthew 2.

Do you remember when the Savior was born?

Magi from Persia put together the calendar in Deuteronomy.

They come to the Savior's birth, intercepted by the king of so-called Herod, the so-called king of Israel, who asks them what they're doing there.

They say they're looking for the one born king of the Jews.

And do you remember?

Herod asks, where is the king of the Jews born?

And the Jewish leaders, the crazy thing is that the Jewish leaders don't say, we don't know what you're talking about.

No, they say he's born in Bethlehem, three houses down, second door on the left.

And they go back to their normal life ignoring Jesus.

That's this first group.

They are angry at the king.

They are bitter and hard-hearted and angry.

They reject the king and his son.

They're hostile.

Now, this group is still around today, and it's not confined simply to ethnic and religious Israel.

This group is around today in the form of people who are leading ordinary lives that they like very much, thank you very much, and want nothing to do with God.

It's not simply that they reject the gospel, it's that they reject the gospel with a hatred towards God.

They're irrationally angry towards Christians, they have an irrational hatred towards God.

They hate everything about Christianity and they blame Christians for everything wrong in the world.

They blame God for everything wrong in the world.

Global warming, Christians' fault.

Inflation, Christians' fault.

Cancer, Christians' fault.

Everything is the fault of Christians and their God.

And they hate the God of Jesus Christ.

They hate him and they hate his gospel.

They hate everything about him because it's in opposition to their lives.

And it might strike you as irrational.

Like you come to somebody who's just leading a normal life.

It has no eternal significance.

They're just going through the emotions.

They're not even morally bankrupt.

They're just providing for their family and working a middle-class, normal job leading a normal life.

Okay?

That kind of person.

And you tell them the God of the universe invites you to come worship him.

He made you to worship him.

He made you for so much more than what you're living for right now.

Your conscience is convicting you of sin.

You feel guilty before God.

You feel insignificant in life.

You know you're gonna stand before God for judgment.

You'll be judged because of your sin.

He offers you a way to be forgiven.

He offers you a way to a better life than what you have now.

More eternal value, more glory, a clean conscience filled with worship, leading a life that matters as you worship the king.

And they they don't just say no, thanks.

They say, I hate you, I don't believe in your God, and I hate him.

That's this first group of people.

And again, it seems irrational to us, but you have to understand, they take the invitation to the wedding as condemnation on their own life and they're not having it.

They don't like God, and they don't want to be at the wedding if those other people they don't like are also there.

Second.

The receivers.

These are the people that receive the invitation and are stoked.

They can't believe it.

They too are just going about their normal everyday lives to the farm and to the work and to the market and all that stuff.

The invitation comes to them and they are shocked.

Wait, you mean I'm invited to the king's palace?

You gotta be kidding me.

Now, in the text here, this is the Gentiles, but it's more than Gentiles, it's the church.

The Jews reject Christ, end up murdering him in a few chapters, and the gospel goes from there to the nations, to the world.

This is the Great Commission.

Go into all the world preaching the gospel, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, going global with the message in the ministry.

And so the gospel is going to reach people that were not on the original wedding list, right?

They're not the Jews.

Jesus himself said that he came for the Jews, not the Gentiles.

And you remember when the Syrian woman was at his feet begging for a miracle?

And Jesus said, I didn't come for Syrians, I came for the Jews.

And she says, Yeah, but even dogs can eat crumbs off of the floor, right?

If the kids reject the food, at least the dog can look it up.

And Jesus says, I'm giving you your request here, and I haven't seen this faith like anyone in Israel.

Look at her humility.

She's on the floor begging for scraps from God, and she's blown out of her mind that God would hear her prayer request and answer it.

That's the second group.

Yes, the gospel came to the Jews, but just anything extra we're so excited for that we're minding our own business, doing our own jobs and our own work and our own mediocre life, and somebody knocks on our door one day and says, The king who made it the universe who made the universe is summoning you to come worship him.

And you think, me?

My name is Jesse, J-E-S-S E, not J-E-S-S-I-E.

Can you double check the invitation?

Because you can't mean it for me.

And then my man says, No, it is you.

Come to the king's place.

Come and worship.

Come and worship.

I mean, these people come and they come humble and they come converted.

They can't believe that they got called by God.

This is my story.

I didn't grow up in the church.

I didn't grow up reading the Bible, ever going to church.

I didn't know much about Jesus.

I mean, I bet I could have put the pieces together that Jesus is somebody who died on the cross.

Maybe I could have had that.

I definitely did not have the resurrection.

I was living my life for myself.

I was living my life for soccer.

I worshipped the god of Baal, but I pronounced it Ball.

I was just living for myself.

I didn't have hope for anything beyond me in life or ever.

And a friend of mine, in human means, it was a friend of mine, comes and invites me to church and shares the gospel with me.

And I go to church and I hear about the resurrection.

And I hear that Jesus died on the cross to bear the penalty for my sin.

And I hear those who place their faith in him can have new life.

And I heard that because Jesus rose from the grave, that your life also won't end in death, that you will your life can have eternal value.

And you think, what is man that God would be mindful of us?

We're so low, we're like sand on the earth, we're lower than the angels, and yet God sets his mind and his affection on us.

And I was sitting there in church that first time, and I just had my my mind blown.

Like it didn't even occur to me that I knew Christians believed in God, but that a God who could be at work in the world was just absurd to me.

And then to hear that that God is not only at work in the world, but inviting me to have a relationship with him through Christ.

How can it be?

I hope you never, never grow cold to that reality.

God set his affection on you of all people.

That's incredible.

And some good, some bad.

I mean, that's the point, that's the phrase from the story, right?

Some of them good, some of them bad.

You weren't called because you were good.

Don't think that.

Of course not.

When the text here says some good, some bad, it just means some people doing normal life things.

And other people doing wicked things.

To use the language of Paul uses with the Corinthians, the kingdom of heaven does not belong to the homosexuals, the sexually immoral, the idolaters, the fornicators, the covetousness, the greedy, the murderers.

But such were some of you, such were some of you.

So the gospel goes to people who are morally just fine, I guess, in some regard, living by their own self-righteousness.

And the gospel also goes to people who are sexually immoral and greedy and love money and just wicked people.

It goes to both kinds of people, and both kinds of people get saved.

Neither kind of person is adequately dressed for the wedding, though.

The person who's leading their good life, their moral life, there and their filthy rags of self-righteousness, they would, they would not fit into the king's house with their self-righteous rags on.

Gross.

And the rest of us, the sexually immoral and the homosexuals and the idolaters and the murderers and the fornicators, we're the homeless people asleep in the bushes.

We have to get woken up and water splashed in our face and carried us there.

But once there, both the good and the bad, put on the same dress.

Both of us are clothed in the righteous works of Christ.

This is the language of Zechariah, that you're invited to the king's house, your filthy garments are stripped off of you, and you're robed in white robes of righteousness dyed red by the blood of the Lamb.

And you think, how is it white if it's dyed red?

My friend, there's no other way for it to be made pure.

It's the blood of the cross that changes you when you give your life to Christ.

That's everyone who's come to faith in Christ.

Well, there's a third group.

The presumers.

The astonishing grace of the gospels has gone out to the world.

But because the invitation has gone out to the world, there are people who respond to the invitation, but not in the way that it was given.

They respond on their own terms.

Yeah, they're invited to church and they go.

Maybe their parents make them go.

Maybe their coworker invited them.

Who knows?

They were invited at some point and they're here.

And they attend church.

But they don't love the son.

They don't love the church.

That's the bride in the analogy.

They're here, but they've never repented from their sins.

One commentator says it this way: these are the baptized but not repentant.

They've responded to the invitation.

Yes, they joined the church.

But they've never given their lives to Christ.

They can attend church, they can be baptized, they can know the songs, they can know when to stand and when to sit.

They can have Christian parents and a Christian vocabulary.

They can have all the right answers in the whole world.

You could ask them to explain the gospel three times and they would do it.

I mean, imagine this guy.

You could ask this guy, do you believe the sun exists?

Do you believe that the church exists?

This king's son is getting married and all that?

He would say, of course he believes in the sun.

He's at the wedding.

He's got a mouthful of the wedding food.

He doesn't love the sun.

I mean, how do you diagnose this third person?

I think most of the wedding guests would be a little, it would be confusing to them.

Hey, he doesn't look quite right, but we don't know for sure, kind of thing.

It takes the glare of the king to peel his self-righteousness back, right?

Once the king shows up and looks at him, now all the pretenses are gone.

The king sets his eyes on him, and it's obvious this dude does not belong.

He's a pretender.

To use the language of Hebrews 6, you can get wet from the fountain without swimming in it.

You can taste the heavenly food without eating it.

You can be at church without a love for Christ?

Of course you can.

How do you diagnose this in some way?

This is the kind of person who says, I believe in Jesus.

And you ask some follow-up questions.

Do you like church?

No, I don't like the church.

Church bugs.

Do you like reading the Bible?

Nope.

Don't like, I don't understand it.

Don't like reading the Bible.

Do you pray?

No, not really.

Find it boring.

Like short prayers here and there.

Kind of thing.

Well, my friend, what are you doing at the what are you doing at the wedding?

Who'd invited you?

Well, everybody invited me.

But you're not dressed in the right clothes.

You don't have love for the bride.

You don't have love for the son.

The crazy thing with this parable, it ends with this dude being cast into hell.

And you think, he's so different than the first group, right?

If you look at the screen, the refusers and the presumers, they are so different from each other.

One guy is like fighting the messengers, and the other guy says, Yes, I'm going to the wedding.

But they both end up in hell.

They both end up in hell with fire, too, by the way.

With Old Testament references, Isaiah 5, the vineyard analogy, goes on to talk about how God's going to burn the whole vineyard down.

That's the language it's used for the kings, wrath.

And then Isaiah 66 uses the language of hell.

That's the language it's used in verse 13.

Both the first and third groups end up in hell.

The third group is sadder, though.

Wet from the waters of baptism, communion crumbs on their chest, and no love for Christ in their hearts.

You don't enter the feast because you're good enough.

You enter the feast because you're invited.

But then responding in faith changes your clothes.

This is summed up in verse 14.

Many are called, but few are chosen.

Many are called, but few are chosen.

This is the doctrine of election.

The gospel call goes into the world.

The nations hear the gospel call.

Anybody with ears whose neighbors with a Christian or whose kid plays on a sports team with a Christian or works next to a Christian has probably heard the gospel call.

The heavens declare the glory of God.

Anybody with ears and eyes and a conscience can be exposed to the gospel, and yet only those who are drawn by the working of the Holy Spirit can have their hearts changed.

Many are called, but few are chosen.

The word translated chosen here, it's the word for election, it's the passive form of election.

Many are called, but few have been elected.

Chosen is a fine way of translating it.

Don't read this and think, well, that means somebody can want to be saved and not be elected and not be saved.

That's not what this is talking about.

It's a simple statement of the reality that God calls the universe, he calls the world, he calls all of humanity to repent.

But only some are chosen.

Lots of people hear the call, some fight the messengers.

Some respond to the invitation, but don't love the one who sent it.

They're just there, why would that person be at church anyway?

Maybe their friends are there, they like the people, they are bored on Sundays, people are nice there, they've always been there.

Whatever.

But they don't love Jesus.

The doctrine of election wraps up this parable because beneath their responses is the gracious electing work of God.

That second group is not there because they were good enough.

They weren't chosen because they were good enough, they were not good enough to be there.

The opposite is true.

But God robes them in the righteousness of Christ.

Lord, we're grateful for the wonderful promise of the gospel that we too can be clothed in the righteousness of Christ through faith.

We stand amazed in the presence of Jesus.

And we wonder how he could love a sinner such as us.

We're so thankful for Jesus Christ.

We give you thanks in his name.

Amen.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or you want more information about what it means to follow Christ, please go to our church website, ibc.church.

If you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to see you at one of our own worship services at Emmanuel Bible.

Now may the Lord bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.