The Wedding Banquet You Don’t Want To Miss

O Lord, we ask with the psalmist, teach us the way of your statues and we will keep them to the end. Give us understanding that we may keep your law and observe it with our whole heart. Lead us in the path of your commandments for we delight in them. Incline our hearts to your testimonies and not to selfish gain. Turn away the reproach that we dread for your rules are good. We long for your precepts in your righteousness give us life. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Our text this morning comes from Matthew 22. Please turn there in your Bibles, Matthew 22. Looking at five parables leading up to Easter, five parables during this Holy week. We’ve had three back-to-back to back in chapter 21 and now into chapter 22 and as we’ll see they have similar themes, but there are some unique nuances to each of them. We come to the third of these parables, one after another in chapter 21 and chapter 22, all of them directed, in particular at the religious leaders. Matthew 22 and 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 and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come.” Again, he sent other servants saying, “Tell those who are invited, see I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready, come to the wedding feast.” But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business while the rest ceased his servants, treated them shamefully and killed them. The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city, then he said to his servants, “The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.” And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found both bad and good, so the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?” And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness and that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth for many are called, but few are chosen.” That line right there in verse 14 is the summary statement for both halves of the parable.

Now we should not take this statement, many are called but few are chosen as a precise mathematical formula about the number of saved people in the world, it is not meant to be a math problem, this statement is a proverb, it’s a maxim, it’s an aphorism. It means, roughly, not everyone who hears the Gospel will believe the Gospel. Or if we put it in a church context, we might say, many who are connected to the external privileges of Christianity will not in the end prove to be Christians. Many who are connected to the external privileges of Christianity and that is likely almost every single one of you in this room because you are in church this Sunday. You probably have a Bible, some of you grew up in church, maybe you’re a member here, you are connected, praise God, to the external privileges of Christianity and Jesus tells this parable as a warning to say, “There are some who are in that big Sunday morning number who are not in the end some who have truly been chosen.” Now this is not meant to make you fear that you are not saved. It is, however, meant to lead to some self-examination. It is aimed squarely at presumption, because just to qualify what I previously said, you should not doubt that you are saved unless of course you are not saved and Jesus tells the third consecutive parable to this point which is uncomfortable, it ought to be a little uncomfortable for us, to say there’s a whole bunch of people in Charlotte, North Carolina who are called and they show up and not many of them, not all of them, are truly chosen. It is a proverb aimed at presumption, like a politician who assumes that his last name will get him elected and then he never bothers to run any ads or to state his beliefs or to do any campaigning and he is not elected. Or a basketball player who assumes he will make the team because he has practiced before, he has been on previous teams, and when it comes to this tryout he doesn’t need to show up, he will always be on the team. Or a girl who assumes that suitors will always be beckoning at her door because she has always been the pretty girl, and she need not care about her character and how she relates to others. You insert your own application. One could argue that this trio of parables in Matthew 21 and 22, each of them have been about this same thing, about presumption. One son promised that he would go into the field, but then he presumed, eh, my father, I said I’d go, if I don’t go it’s not a big deal. Turns out it was a big deal. The next parable, the tenants in the vineyard presume, well this master who left us in charge he’s gone a lone ways away and he probably won’t know what we do, he probably won’t even come back and so we can mistreat the servants he sends, we can even kill his son and we can scheme for his inheritance because they presumed that the owner of the vineyard wouldn’t care, wouldn’t know, wouldn’t return. And here in this parable, the wedding guests presume that it’s good enough to be invited, that they don’t have to actually attend or if they do attend that they don’t have to pay any attention to what they wear to the banquet. Now when you read these parables back to back to back, it can sound like three parables are saying the exact same thing and you may be buckling up and think, well this is going to be the third sermon in a row telling us the same message and there is an overlap, they’re all aimed at the religious leaders who think we are spiritually good to go when they are not. That’s the big overarching theme that binds all three of these parables together. It’s for people there or people here who are just moving and waltzing through life thinking, I am spiritually set, I am altogether, I don’t have to think too much about faith, repentance, obedience, because I am one of God’s favorite people. These three parables are to puncture that presumption, but they’re also nuances to each one and so this parable, The Wedding Feast, is something a little different than the other two.

This parable can be divided into two parts. Notice the first part deals with the guests who do not come and in the second part deals with a guest who comes unprepared. So those are the two halves, the guests who were invited but did not come, and the guest who arrived but was unprepared. So, first, verses 1 through 8, let’s think about the guests, the invited guests who did not come. Look at verse 2. The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. That language for many of us, kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven is so familiar its spiritual language passes right by, and we can understand it intuitively enough, but we don’t live in a kingdom, we don’t have a king in America. If Jesus were giving a parable today he might say, here’s what it’s like to be a part of God’s team or to be in God’s corporation or to be a part of God’s school or to be a part of God’s country, those would be similar ways of speaking, but here he says, “Let me tell you what it’s like in the kingdom of heaven.” And notice he says, “It’s like a wedding feast.” Now stop right there, that should be good news to you. The kingdom of heaven can be compared to a wedding feast. Some of you have already been to weddings this summer, many of us at some point over the spring, sometime over the summer months will go to a wedding, many people go to a wedding at least once a year, some of you are planning weddings for kids, some of you are working three jobs because you have a wedding for a kid, and even though they are a lot of work it is something exciting, it’s something to anticipate, joyful, lavish, amazing even if you try to do it on a frugal budget which is a good idea, it’s still the kind of party that you don’t normally have, once in a lifetime event, especially here as Jesus tells us the story because it’s not any old wedding, it’s a king who gives a wedding feast for his son. This would have been amazing news. The prince is getting married.

Were any of you there on April 29, 2011, when William and Kate got married? I don’t think so. We’ve got a few Brits here, you can tell me later if you got an invitation. Mine was lost in the mail. It was quite a royal affair and even here in America people, we don’t have royals of our own, but people are obsessed with the royal family. One person estimated that 2 billion people watched the wedding. Somebody else said it was 150 million, well that’s a pretty big difference, so somewhere between 150 million and 2 billion, but even 150 million, that’s a lot of people to watch a wedding because it’s a royal wedding. You don’t wanna miss this. The prince is getting married. At that time the grandson was getting married. You see in verse 3, he sent his servants, the king, to call those who were invited. This was customary so you need to understand this about the custom of the time. In fact, there was a saying that you don’t show up at a wedding unless you get doubly invited. You had to essentially be invited twice. Why, because once you had to tell people that the wedding is taking place and then another time to gather them when everything has finally been prepared and is ready because this is a big deal, especially to get ready for a royal wedding. You don’t wanna show up early, you don’t wanna show up late, so one time everybody wants you to know you’re invited and then stay tuned, we’ll tell you when it’s time to saddle up or walk the path and get to the king’s wedding banquet. It is sort of like today, you first get that save the date postcard, just a teaser, you’re on the list, you’re very special and then later you get the super fancy wedding invitation lined with baby skin and all the rest in there and a precious invitation. Well here these guests had accepted the first invitation, the town cryer, the servants go throughout the kingdom and say, hear ye, hear ye the prince is getting married and you’re invited and of course they say yes, absolutely we want to come, but as often happens in life, it’s one thing when it’s far off in the distance, absolutely king can’t wait to make it and now when the servants come around a second time, you said you were coming, you accepted the invitation, now they don’t come. Do you see the connection with the parables Jesus has already told? This is just like that first parable, the son who said, yessir I will go into my father’s vineyard and then he never goes into the field to work. Well, these guests, yes, we have been invited to the royal banquet and now they don’t show up.

Verse 4, he sent other servants so I’m gonna try again. This is a very persistent gracious king. You think the king has every right. Why do you have to be invited to my banquet, I invited you once. You said yes, I invited you a second time and you didn’t come, but here he is graciously pursuing them, tell them. Notice verse 4, he gives three messages from the king. Number one, I have a dinner prepared. Number two, it is an exquisite meal. Just like the parable the prodigal son with the fat calf, this is something, you know in that culture you don’t get meat all the time, only rich people have access to meat, that’s why in the Levitical laws you can bring a bull or a goat or you can bring a sheep or you can bring birds if you’re the poorest and most people probably just brought that. Many people do not have access to beef let alone to the finest, the oxen, the fat calves so number one there is a dinner. Number two, this is a fancy pants dinner and number three, come, everything is ready. We’re having communion Lord willing next week but maybe you’ve heard when I give the communion invitation the last thing I say before the elders come and distribute the elements, come for all things are now ready and it’s taken from this language and there’s another parable like it, Luke, this language because it is the king inviting us to his wedding banquet, to his feast, telling us everything is ready. I mean imagine getting an invitation to the prince’s wedding. Maybe held in a cathedral somewhere, in a castle, catered by the king and queen with a guest list of all the who’s who in the realm. It’s like being invited to the presidential inauguration if that’s your thing, or the Oscars if that’s your thing, or the Super Bowl locker room. I got invited to R.C. Sproul’s funeral and that was like the thing, like wow, show up.

But notice what they don’t do, verse 5. They paid no attention, no attention. Like mom calling for family dinner. It doesn’t happen in our household, maybe some of yours this happens, everything has been prepared lovingly, prepared lavish feast. Is it too much to ask that when the food is ready could you please come and eat it while it’s still hot? It takes many, many loving yells to get the children to come, come! And many times, it’s paying no attention. One’s outside playing basketball, one’s upstairs on the TV, one’s doing something else, reading a book, they’re doing something else, paying no attention. Well, you should listen to your mom when she calls you to the dinner table and you should listen to the king and his servant when he calls you to come to the feast that you’ve already agreed to attend. Verse 5, they pay no attention went off, one to his farm, another to his business. Do you see what Jesus is doing, he’s a master storyteller, he does a little jab at the rural folks and a little jab at the city folks, least either one think that they were exempt from this story. Some people said that they had to go off to the farm and you could think maybe some of the city people go, that’s what those hicks out there, you can’t get them to do anything and they’re so far away and they can’t be bothered, and they like to stay to themselves. But then he sends in others to their business, and it may be the people out in the country say, well that’s what city folks are like, they never have time, they’re too busy for anything, they don’t know what’s important in life. Jesus says in both directions some people said, I gotta go and I gotta tinker around with the animals in my barn, and somebody else said, well I’ve gotta go, I’ve got a business to attend to, I have to make some money. Isn’t this a lot like the parable of the sewer where the seed of the word is chocked out, Jesus says, by the worries of the life and the deceitfulness of wealth. This is exactly what Jesus is illustrating. You have an opportunity, a once in a lifetime opportunity to come to the king’s palace for the royal wedding of the royal son and you say, ho hum, business as usual. I’ve gotta make a buck today, I’ve got some stuff to do in the field and so the word is choked out by the worries of life and the deceitfulness of wealth. Jesus wants them to see how short sighted they are. Here they have at their opportunity a lavish feast with the best bull, the royal cattle, the swankiest guest list and they say, too busy, I’ve gotta tinker around at the barn, got insurance to sell, I’ve gotta binge watch something on Netflix, I can’t be bothered.

And then it gets worse. And the next verse says, 6, the rest of them seize his servants, treated them shamefully and killed them. Now that’s what happens in verse 6, but here in verse 5 the first response with these they just don’t pay attention. I want you to notice that because it’s easy to say well I’m not in verse 6, I wasn’t gonna try to kill somebody, but if you’re not in verse 6, many people are in verse 5, they just don’t pay attention. Here’s the mistake that all sorts of people make and often people in the church. Well, you think, well I don’t hate God, I’m not against Jesus, I’ve got nothing against the church or the Bible or Christianity and in fact, if that’s what you’re into that’s fine. If you’re a churchy person, you’re a Jesus person, you’re a Bible person I don’t have anything against it, it’s a free country, go live your life and here’s the problem. We think our indifference is a light and meaningless offense. It’s not really killing anyone, I’m just indifferent, I just don’t want to be bothered enough to show up. Now I know college campuses are all different and some of the students may have very heady objections to the Gospel, but in my experience being around campus ministry or talking to people who are in campus ministry, you can go to the campuses and you’re armed with all of your good apologetic reasons and maybe you wanna talk about the reality miracles or the resurrection or you’re ready to defend a biblical view of marriage or talk about all of how, you know, how the cannon was formed and all of these things, but really students, those of you ministering to students, most of all usually you simply don’t want to be bothered to live your life a different way. You know the intellectual objections often are just the window dressing to say, I wanna party, I wanna drink, I wanna have fun, fun here in my college life, I don’t really wanna be bothered with having to do this Christianity thing. That’s fine, maybe I’ll do it later, maybe when I get another time, you know my grandma used to go to church and I think that’s fine that you wanna be religious, it’s just not for me right now. Exactly like these invited guests, indifferent, I’ve got things to do. Jesus does not look lightly upon indifference. Here’s why, rejecting the Gospel, even if it’s just out of sheer indifference is always the result of unbelief. You’re not just indifferent, you disbelieve. You do not believe in the feast or in God or that God can make good on his promise. That’s why these guests, they can say, well I’m just busy, no it is unbelief. If you really believe that there was a feast waiting for you, if you really believe this about the king you would not turn your back. You may think it is mere indifference, but it is actually the sin of unbelief and then the rest, verse 6, go out and shamefully treat the servants, isn’t this how it often goes with the ungodly, maybe even with some of you. Our anger against God is often in proportion to the earnestness with which he pursues us. The more He is after us, the angrier we get because you want Him to leave you alone and the more He is after you, and you just find why do people keep inviting me to church, why do they keep giving me Bible studies, why do they keep wanting to share their faith? God pursuing you and the closer He gets the harder you push Him away, the more frequently He calls, the more violently you curse His name, that’s what happens here. Enough already they say, I’m tired of these servants who were not going to your feast. First one’s too busy, off to the farm, off to business, now the rest of them say I would kill you, I don’t wanna hear about the prince and his stupid wedding.

And they don’t miss verse 7, the king was angry. Well of course he should be angry. When God calls sinners to repentance and faith and offers them abundant life in Christ and they shrug their shoulders and walk away, it is an act of treason and idolatry. Treason that they would not heed the king’s summon. This was meant to be a scandalous story. You’re talking about the king, whether you vote for whatever the president is at the time or not, just for the sake of the office, if president personally sends a messenger to you to tell you something, you listen, try to respond for the sake of the office that he holds, but here they pay no attention to this king, they do not consider a feast in the presence of the son to be a thing worth even the slightest inconvenience. Do you see how this parable now is also extrapolating the second parable where the stone that the builders rejected has become the corner stone, where they don’t want anything to do with the son. That’s what Jesus is saying, you cannot be bothered to even come and attend to the royal son’s wedding and we read the king will send troops, destroy those murderers, burn the city and surely after the fact years later the church looked back on this statement and saw it’s fulfillment in 70 AD when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, the temple was put to ruin, that it was the judgement of the Lord upon Jerusalem for rejecting the royal messiah and then verse 8 gives this stinging rebuke. He said to His servants, the wedding feast is ready, we’re going ahead with the wedding, don’t think because you don’t show up that suddenly the king doesn’t have a wedding anymore, it’s ready, but those invited guests were not worthy. They were called, but they showed themselves not to have been chosen. Don’t get up on worthy like they needed to be obedient for a year, no they were already invited guests. What Jesus means is the fact that they didn’t bother to show up, to follow-up on their Word shows that though they were invited, though they were called, they did not really prove to be chosen and there is a simple word to describe these invited guests, they are fools, they’re fools. They did not believe that this was a real feast or a feast worth the slightest inconvenience. You ever get those phone calls and you can tell when you say hello and nobody speaks right away, you’ve gotta wait for a click that that’s probably not ya know, mom calling, and they, “Hello, you have won an all expenses paid cruise to”, you know if you get that sort of message just out of the blue and your phone says probably spam and you’ve won a cruise somewhere if you would just give them your social security number it will be all set, they just need a slight, just a credit card, they just need like five dollars down from your credit card and the cruise will pull up, it will go right down the street in Mint Hill and pick you up and just send you off. Now you get that and you know this is not, something feels off here, this is not legitimate and so you don’t think twice about, you don’t answer that phone, you hang up that phone because you do not believe that’s a real offer, you do not believe there is real good news in that, you think this is a scam, this is worth ignoring, get on with the rest of my life. That’s what these guests, that’s how they’re treating a message from the official envoy of the king. Eh, I don’t think so, this is not as good as you say, this is not something that I need to deviate one second from the rest of my life to go and attend and because they missed out on a real wedding, if that was a real all expenses paid trip to Mars for you, take your dream trip to Europe wherever you go, you didn’t do it, you say, well wow that was silly, that was foolish, you had all of that right at your fingertips, nothing to do except to accept it and show up and you couldn’t even be bothered to do that. That’s what these guests are like with the invitation of so gracious a king. These are the guests who didn’t come.

The second half of the story is about the guest who came unprepared. So, verse 8 he said to his servants, the wedding feast is ready, those who were invited were not worthy, so then in verse 9, go there for, here’s a new message for the servants, I want you to go to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you can find. So the initial guest list refused the invitation and the king says, well we’ve still gotta party, I’ve got all this food, I’ve got a dinner, go out and get whoever you can, go do the highways and the hedges, the riff raff and the ragamuffin, go to every street corner whoever you can find this is talking about, I want you to go to the busy places, to the intersection and I want you to invite whoever is there. All of us have had the experience driving around town. You stop at one of the intersections and someone is there with a cardboard sign asking for money, can you spare some change, or you’ve been through a city and someone is curled up in the winter months on top of a heating grate or you run on a greenway somewhere and you go under an overpass and somebody up in the very tippy top has a sleeping bag and is sleeping there. This is Jesus saying to the servants, I want you to go out, I want you to find those people, I want you to find them wherever they are, they’re just standing around on the street corner, they’re sleeping somewhere where they ought not to be sleeping. I want you to go tell them and I want you to invite them, I want you to tell them that they can come to the king’s royal feast.

You see verse 10, they went out and they gathered all whom they found both bad and good. Now this is not a recipe, this is not how you do church membership and just let’s get bad people and good people, no this is talking about the general call of the Gospel. One time someone said, Spurgeon, you’re a Calvinist, you believe in election, how come you preach the Gospel to everyone when only the elect can be believed, and Spurgeon said, “Because the elect don’t have yellow strips down their back, in other words I can’t see who they are.” So we absolutely believe in the free offer of the Gospel, that’s what we see here, I want you to go out to the street corners, to the highways, and the hedges and anybody you see I want you to tell them the good news that you have an opportunity to feast with the king, and so they come, and whether the people were surprised or not some turned out to be good, some turned out to be bad, the wedding hall was filled.

Now verse 11. It makes sense the king is going to come into look because he sent his servants out to give this good invitation and now his servants probably knock on the door, king we did what you said and you’re not going to believe it, you’ve gotta come in here. The wedding hall, the feast, everything’s ready and the place is absolutely packed out, there’s not a seat left, come on in here. And so, the king comes, and he wants to look at the guests and he opens the door and something’s not quite right. Verse 11 he saw there a man who had no wedding garment, and he said otherwise him, friend, that’s interesting you may think that’s a really nice address, but every time in one of Jesus’ stories where it has friend, it is sort of an ironic buddy. It’s a little bit like, hey friend, let me ask you something. So, friend sets you up, “Excuse me sir, where’s you wedding garment?” And the man was dumbstruck, he was speechless. He too presumed, first group presumed, “We’re the king’s loyal subjects, I’ve got a lot of stuff going on, it’ll be fine if I don’t show up. I don’t need to go to the banquet.” And what happens when they don’t show up, the king is enraged and he sends his army later and he destroys that city, they presume, “I don’t really have to do anything.” Now this man also presumed, “I was invited, it doesn’t matter what I do once I show up.” And the king again is enraged, tells his attendants, verses 13, “Bind them up hand and foot, cast them to the outer darkness. I want you to get rid of this man, I want you to put him in the farthest reaches, banish him from my sight.”

It seems to us at first like this is a bit harsh. I mean come on king, you just asked him, he was out in the highways and the hedges and maybe he was a beggar, maybe he was a street person and now you’re expecting him to have the nicest, cleanest clothes? One possible explanation is that the king himself would provide the wedding garments for his guests and that is an attractive option theologically and at least since Augustine many have speculated that the king himself provided the garments for guests and that may be the case though there isn’t real strong evidence that this happened, but that’s possible. But even if that’s not the case, theologically it’s still the similar idea. The point is this, you cannot come in your own grubby clothes because it would be an insult to the king. And before we feel sorry for the servant, oh poor guy, he would just come in off the streets, he just didn’t have a change of clothes. Do you notice he’s only speaking to one man? Apparently, everybody else had a change of clothes. In any culture you come to a wedding, even in our day when everything was so informal and casual, you’ve got to dress up just a little bit. When we would have people sometimes move from the south up to Michigan they said, you people, you don’t know how to dress up for anything. They would sort of lope off the top end of your wardrobe, what you people wear for weddings we wear for church and what you wear for church we wear, ya know, mowing the lawn and just down, down, down the list. You people don’t know, I do appreciate that down here, you know how to get dressed up because not every occasion is the same occasion, and some things are casual and some things are formal and some things are special and this was as special as it comes. Now whether the man was expected that everyone, even the poorest among them had a change of clean white linen garments or if the king himself was to provide the garments, it’s the same thing and we can say from the rest of the teaching of scripture that Jesus is not saying you need to go and clean yourself up, but rather, you must attend to how you present yourself in front of the king. Here’s the point, for this man, here’s why it was such an offense, for to just come on in there with his grubby clothes was to think, one, I’m not in the presence of greatness and two, what I have on my own is good enough. That’s what Jesus is teaching. Again, it’s about presumption. To think that you can come to the royal wedding and the king is just happy that you’re there and you don’t have to think about whether you have any righteousness to be there. Put together two halves of these parables because it’s an absolutely genius parable that Jesus has a way to just hit everyone right between the eyes. The first half of the parable is a warning to insiders, spiritual insiders less they think, I am in the kingdom by virtue of my heritage or because, get this, I made a commitment years ago. I made a commitment years ago; I threw my pinecone in at the fire and I joined the church and I became a Christian. It doesn’t matter; I don’t have to do a single thing with my life after that. The first half of the parable says, “Careful, what are you doing now? It’s against insiders.”

The second half of the story is a warning to outsiders. See, it’s easy to just think, oh yeah, tsk, tsk, tsk, it’s always the religious people. But here is a warning to outsiders, least we falsely reassure people that if you are on the margins of society then God is indiscriminately pleased with you as if Jesus called sinners, but did not call every sinner to repentance. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, black or white, whatever nationality, whatever language, Jesus calls all of us to faith and repentance, and once we exercise that faith and repentance, He calls us to obedience. We must not presume on the free offer of the Gospel as if there is nothing on the other side of faith, as if there are no obligations, if good works were not part of the Christian life, as if we could sin that grace may abound. So, the first half of the parable are to those insiders who say, well I’ve been at church my whole life, I’m fine. And in the second half it’s to anyone who says, well God loves outsiders, and I guess I’m an outsider so I must be good to go, and this man came in and he thought his own righteousness was sufficient. We will not take our place at the wedding feast of the son unless we are clothed with a special garment, unless we are given a robe of righteousness. Here’s how we have to get this and it’s very careful in how we think about the gospel. Yes, the gospel is always, come as you are, but then also come and be changed. Come as you are. It doesn’t say you’ve gotta prove yourself for a year and then come, no come, come as you are, come now, come, there’s a guest list and you’re on it, but be changed and don’t think you can come into God’s presence with your own dirty clothes, you need as we read from Zachariah, you need the robes of righteousness of another. The proper response to God’s gracious welcome is to, on one level despair, not despair of the invitation, not despair that God will welcome you, but despair of yourself. Some of us do not truly know grace and because of that we do not truly worship, because we have never really despaired. See, the riff raffs who got pulled in at the last minute should have come thinking, I do not deserve to be here. I mean where, where can somebody give me a change of clothes because I’m going to meet with the king. I can’t believe I got invited to the prince’s wedding, to the royal feast, and I need a change of clothes. We’re all invited to the wedding banquet, every last one of you in this room. The king calls you and if you come, Jesus says he will in no way cast you out when you come with faith and repentance. If you come up to the king and you say, here I am, I’ve got my garments, I’m ready, VIP coming through. If you say, why was I made a guest? I hope there’s not a mistake because I, I got an invitation to your son’s feast and I’m here and the king says there’s no mistake, a son, daughter let me help you, I want you to get out of those dirty clothes and let me give to you something clean and bright and fresh and come on in. This kingdom notice, it is not a funeral that God invites you to, but a feast. He will not withhold one good thing from his beloved.

Do you believe that God can spread a table rich enough to satisfy the hungriest soul. This is the word from Isaiah 55, “Come all you who are thirsty, come to the waters and you who have no money come buy any, come buy wine and milk without money, without cost, listen eat what is good, your soul will delight in the richest of fare.” See Isaiah 55 is the first half of the parable, “You’re hungry, would you come, just show up, come.” And then Revelation 19 is the second half of the parable, “Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and peals of thunder shouting hallelujah for our Lord God almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory for the wedding of the lamb has come and the bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean was given her to wear.” Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints and the angel sits and he writes, “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the lamb.” Every one of you are living a blessed life. You’ve got pain, you have trials, you have difficulties I know, but you have a blessed life for this reason, that you are privileged, more privileged than billions of people on the planet this morning because you are within hearing distance, shouting distance of the invitation from the king. There are billions who have not heard, let us give of ourselves, of our children, of our wealth that they might too hear this message which all of you have the privilege of hearing this morning, the wedding supper of the lamb is ready, you would but come, partake of the feast and even better than partaking of the feast the king himself will provide you with the garment and even better than that, not only are you welcome to come to this feast, but he promises to give you a crown. What a gracious, persistent, kind, merciful, undeserving king we have. Do not be left out. Let’s pray.

Our Father in heaven, we thank you for this Word and we pray that you might send the invitation again, sorry, all we can say is we are sorry that we are so hard of hearing, so easily distracted, so prone to wander, so call us and compel us and bring us in and clothe us and crown us we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.