Wednesday Evening Prayer Meeting
November 11, 2009
The Reverend Mr. Nathan Shurden
If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to the gospel of Matthew, the
gospel of Matthew. It is indeed, as
Jeremy prayed a second ago, it is wholly appropriate that tonight, as we grieve
the loss of a passing sister in the Lord, that we consider in earnest the
urgency of the Gospel again. That’s
been where we have been for weeks this fall, studying our great salvation.
That’s how we have titled this series that Jeremy and I have been
teaching for some time now. We’re
concluding this series in a passage that indeed takes our thoughts into the
Gospel and upwards to the heavenly places today and it’s wholly appropriate that
it would be so. Tonight is a night
set apart for the purposes for giving glory and honor to God.
How do we do that? We do
that by listening to Him. So we
want to give our attention tonight to Matthew, chapter 22, and this parable,
this remarkable parable that the Lord Jesus Christ tells us.
These parables which we began two weeks ago are for the purpose of
clarifying the doctrine of salvation.
We’ve talked about all of the Biblical terms for salvation, like
regeneration, justification, sanctification and glorification – all the many
ways that the Bible talks about the Gospel and impresses upon us the need for
the Gospel, we’ve talked about them.
And now in these parables, the desire is to see the glory of those
wonderful terms enacted in glorious stories, these instructions from our own
Lord Jesus Christ. And tonight, as
we look at the wedding feast, and as we consider the symbol of the marriage
supper of the Lamb, which is the passion of the Christian, to one day be at
supper with his Lord once again, we want to be reminded of that, that that is a
picture of what it is, God’s intention and full plan, for all who have placed
their faith in Christ. So let’s
look together at Matthew 22, Matthew 22, verses 1 to 14.
Before we read God’s Word, let’s ask for His blessing.
Father in heaven, we do come tonight with our hearts laid open before You.
You know our every thought, you know our every feeling.
You know particularly Father the pains and the griefs that encompass us
even now. Lord, we know that the
death of our sister and the pain that is causes doesn’t surprise You.
It didn’t take You by surprise.
And Father we know tonight that the passage that You have given to us
doesn’t take You by surprise either.
This is for us. This is what
we need to hear tonight. So Lord,
we pray that You would lift from our hearts all the tyrannies of the urgent, all
the distractions, all the pressures from this day, all the things that would
cloud our thoughts, that would keep us from hearing You, that would You would
remove them and that You would make it clear, very clear to our hearts, what it
is that You want us to know from this passage.
So bless now Father as we look into it, as we read it as it is expounded,
and as Your Spirit takes it home into our hearts.
We pray it in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
“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 seized 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, ‘Bing him hand and foot and cast him into the
outer darkness. In that place there
will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
For many are called, but few are chosen.”
Amen, and thus far the reading of God’s holy Word.
As you look into this passage it is a passage that is well-known for most of us.
We’ve read these words many times before.
It’s a very familiar parable of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It’s a parable that’s actually a part of a series of parables. It’s the
climactic parable. It’s the third
in a series of three. To gain the
context for this passage you have to go back to chapter 21 and to realize that
the Lord Jesus Christ is actually confronting the Pharisees and the Sadducees as
He writes, as He speaks, this parable.
He’s confronting them because they’ve come to Him and they have
questioned His authority. They have
questioned by what authority He is able to do these things and to say these
things. They realize that they have
all of the credentials, they went to all the right schools, were taught under
all the right instructors and professors, they got their masters of divinity
degree, they passed their presbytery exams, they were ready to go into the
church. What about this Jesus?
What authority does He have?
As they question Jesus, they confront Jesus, and Jesus tells these three
parables. And He tells us this
third one in many ways to strike at the end that the Pharisees are headed
towards and to open up the avenue to those who are willing to head the
invitation to the wedding feast, those who can hear that message that Jesus has
for them, that they might receive the reward and the blessing that God has
determined for them from the beginning.
That’s the context of this passage.
As you look at this passage, you see several things.
We see two types of acceptances here – two types of acceptances in this
passage. We see two types of
rejections in this passage and we see one type of redemption.
We see two types of acceptances, two types of rejections, but we see one
type of redemption. Now in order to
see this from this passage we need to look at these two groups, this group that
the initial invitation went out to and the group that the servants wind up
taking to the highways and the byways after the judgment of God.
As the story opens here in Matthew chapter 22 we see that there is a king
who is giving a feast, a wedding feast, for his son.
Now this is a grand event as all of you well know.
In the first century this is something that would have taken months to
prepare. It would have taken a
remarkable amount of money. This is
one of those grand social events that you do not want to go wrong.
It’s a little bit like southern culture, isn’t it?
I have couples that come to me and worry that their engagement is too
short because they won’t be able to plan the wedding – that’s the worry.
In the first century, a wedding was very important.
It had so many things to say about your social standings, so many things
to say about your friends and your family.
It was an event that a lot of pressure was placed on.
Here’s a king, a royal event, one of tremendous magnitude that would
affect an entire country – that’s the significance of this.
He’s invited many guests to come, many guests to come.
But we learn in here that as he has invited these guests and they put all
of the preparations into the feast and the feast is ready, it’s all being laid
out on the banquet tables and the celebration is just about to begin, the band
is about to strike up, but before that he has to send all of his servants out
into the city to begin to draw in all the people that have been invited.
That’s what we see in verse 3.
Notice how verse 3 is written – “And he sent his servants to call those
who had been invited.” So the
invitations had already gone out months ago.
People knew that this big event was happening.
Now the servants are going out to say, “The time has come.”
Now why is this so important?
What’s the big deal here?
Well, the big deal is, as these servants go out into this city to remind the
people of God that they are to come into this royal event, they decide that they
don’t want to come. They don’t want
to come. Now you can imagine, some
of you even know the experience of throwing a party, and inviting lots of people
and even having people say to you that they’re going to come and then they don’t
show up and they’re not there. What
happens when that happens? Well,
you feel about this small and you feel betrayed.
You feel as if, “Well, I must not be all that important to these people.”
You can imagine a king and a grand event such as this.
These are people who have already sent their RSVP letters in.
They’re coming. And the day
of the wedding feast, the servants go out, and they, well, they’ve just decided
not to come. Well the king was
remarkably, with longsuffering and patience, says, “Well, servants just go back
out and just urge them to come to this feast.
Remind them that these are not like the normal foods that you have at
night around a dinner table. This
is a fattened calf and this is an oxen.
I doubt none of you are going to have this tonight as you eat, so please
come and enjoy this celebration with us.”
The king has gone in a very real sense to cajoling these invited guests
to come.
But they respond again and they say they’re not coming, but this time the
response takes on some clarification.
It’s not just that they, “Oh, I don’t want to come,” it’s that they
actually show that they’re indifferent, they actually show that they’re
indifferent. Look at how the text
reads in verse 5. It says, “But
they paid no attention and they went off.”
They paid no attention and they went off.
The message of the servants went in one ear and it went out the other.
They actually said, “You know, I’m just going to go on back to my house,
to my farm, and I’m going to go on back to my business.
I’ve got so much to do. I
really don’t want to have anything to do with this grand event, with this
wedding feast that’s here.”
It’s often the case even in invitations such as this, a grand invitation, that
in our own mind’s eye that there are certain things in this life that are more
important than the invitation to come to the wedding feast.
It’s oftentimes as we share the Gospel with one another and as we hear it
for ourselves and as we understand that it is calling us and beckoning us on to
a life of obedience, to a life of sitting and supping together, even of the
delicacies of the faith and the glories of the faith that we often shirk them –
why? Because we’re really very
satisfied at home, because we really have so much to do in our businesses.
One of the ways in which the Gospel fails to penetrate the hearts of
unbelievers and then as the hearts of believers sometimes grow callous, is that
the urgency and the glory and the beauty of an invitation like a wedding feast,
which is the invitation of the Gospel, to come and enjoy the most delicacies of
life, the greatest of delicacies, that we actually say, “No, I think I’ll just
go and have my bread and water at home.
I think I’ll just go spend some more time working in the office.
That sounds more important to me.” Don’t you find that that’s often the
case? Sometimes when you talk to an
unbeliever where there’s just such blindness that the glories of the Gospel
message that are being displayed before him he cannot see them.
And don’t you find sometimes that the delicacies of the Gospel lay before
you as you read the Word and as you pray that your heart’s not alive to them?
It’s a wedding feast that’s being laid for you in the Word and being
prepared for you by Christ in the heavenly places, and yet sometimes it doesn’t
even look appealing, as if our hearts are dead.
The invited guests have given a kind of formal acceptance, “Oh yeah, I’m
coming. I’ve sent my RSVP card in,”
but when the time came they didn’t come.
Now if you think about the context of this passage it’s very clear that the Lord
Jesus as He tells this parable, He has the Pharisees at the back of His mind,
doesn’t He? He has the religious
leaders – these are the ones that have already sent in their RSVP card, they’re
situated in the city, they’re a part of the invited guests, they’ve become under
the privilege of the king, and the king is preparing for them a tremendous
feast, but when it’s time to show up for the feast, they’ve been caught up in
the things of the world. They’ve
been caught up in the things of this life and no longer do they have a taste for
that which is heavenly. It’s one of
the frightening places we find ourselves spiritually, isn’t it, when we begin to
lose taste for the eternal and we begin to genuinely think that a little more
time at work, a little more neglectful of the Bible, a little more slumber at
home, a little more neglectful of the means of grace, a little more neglectful
of this spiritual reality and that, that we begin to lose the taste for the
eternal. In the case of the
Pharisees, many of the realities coming home is that they never had the taste
there in the first place. They
never had the motivations that are there.
The Gospel, as it is presented in this passage, tells us that there is an
appearance of godliness without the power of God, that there are those who will
say, “Lord, Lord, I prophesied in Your name.
Lord I cast out demons in Your name.
Lord, I preached sermons in Your name.
Lord, I attended faithfully Wednesday night prayer meeting in Your name.”
And He will say, “Depart from Me.
I never knew you. You looked
like a Christian, walked like a Christian, talked like a Christian, and didn’t
have the heart of a Christian.”
As this rejection takes place in Matthew chapter 22, the Lord Jesus says there’s
a feast still to be had, there’s a feast still to be had.
And he says, “Servants, I’m sending out the troops now to destroy those
who have murdered my son, those who have not cared about my invitation.
That judgment is deserving of them because of their rejection, but the
feast is still spread. I want you
to go to the highways and byways” – the English Standard Version actually says,
“I want you to go to the main road.”
“Now the sense for that is that I want you to go to the road that takes
you into the city. It’s the big
road. It’s in the major cross
section or intersection of the city.
I want you to go there and whoever you see I want you to begin to draw
them in. I want you to speak to
them. I want you to tell them that
there’s a feast prepared for them.
I want them to know that they are welcome to come to the wedding feast of my
son.” So the servants go out, they
gather them together, they come back, and we learn in verse 10 that the hall,
the wedding hall with all of the banquet delicacies that are there, is full of
people who have come in from the highways and byways.
Now part of what Jesus is doing in this parable is He’s saying, “Those who were
the privileged, those were the ones who had all of the promises given to them,
the ones who looked and acted like they were loyal followers of the king and
desired to do what pleased them, were actually the ones who didn’t show up to
the wedding feast. But I’m going
out to the strangers. I’m going out
actually to those who would be sitting around the intersections.”
Who would those be? Well, in
the ancient cities, if it was around the city gate, it would be the beggars.
It would be the strangers.
It would be those that didn’t really have citizenship in the particular city in
which he was overseeing. He’s
saying, “I want you to go out to those people and into the roads and bring them
in.” He brings them in and he makes
them his own.
Now here is where you think the parable should just end, right?
You know those rich, snooty religious people have been rejected and the
strangers, the poor, the despised have been rejected – end of story; rags to
riches; that’s exactly what we want to hear.
It’s not where Jesus ends the parable.
It actually goes on for several more verses and we find something quite
unique. This king, this king who
has invited all these strangers, who had invited all of these poor and dejected
people in to sup with the marriage feast, as he comes in, he sees one who
doesn’t have a wedding garment on, who’s not dressed for the occasion. Now you’d
think in a sense that we’ve already passed this point Jesus.
We thought the point was it doesn’t matter how you come or what you look
like, as long as you come. Isn’t
that kind of what you’ve been telling us Jesus?
I mean, isn’t that where it is?
Just come, that’s the reality. Many of us stop there when it comes to the
Gospel. We just think as long as
we’re here, as long as we’re present, it’s okay, everything’s going to be fine.
As the king calls this one over to himself, he says, “Friend, how is it
that you got in here without a wedding garment?
How did this happen?” And
the key comes to us in verse 12.
Notice with verse 12 says – “And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in
here without a wedding garment?’ and he was speechless.”
Now you would think that there would be some really good explanations for this.
“Actually when your servants came, into the main road and where they
found me where I was begging or where I was homeless or where I was a stranger
or where I was on my way, when they found me, I didn’t have time to go back home
and grab a wedding garment and get fit for the occasion.”
That would seem like a very logical explanation.
Or another one, if you’re poor and don’t have the means through which to
gain the clothes that would be fitting for a wedding garment say – “Well, if
you’ll remember king, you sent the servants out to come to those who didn’t have
the means. I don’t actually have a
wedding garment.” But he doesn’t
say any of those things. It says
he’s speechless. But why would he
be speechless? Well it seems very
clear from the passage that everyone else, all of those other strangers, all of
those other poor, all of those other despised, had wedding garments on, but just
this one didn’t have it. Why?
Because as one by one they came to the banquet hall and they entered into
the palace, the king not only had invited them into the wedding, but he fit them
for the wedding as well. He gave
them the garments that they needed to be appropriately clad for the occasion
that they were going to experience this celebration of the wedding feast.
But this one, this one decides he doesn’t need it.
He doesn’t need to be clad.
Now one of the fascinating things about Matthew 22 is that it hems in the
beauties of the Gospel by showing us two mistakes that we regularly make.
The first mistake we see early in Matthew 22.
It’s those who are invited who don’t come.
We see this regularly, don’t we?
I don’t know the spiritual state of everybody’s soul in here tonight.
The Lord knows that. But as
the Gospel is preached and as sinners are called to repentance into faith in
Christ, there are some who will be completely unmoved by that – the invited
guests that do not come. But there
are some that seek to come to the feast but do not believe that there is a need
for a new garment in order for them to have fellowship with the King.
Do you know one of the most richest metaphors that the Scripture gives to
us to describe salvation is a metaphor of clothing.
Paul goes on and on, doesn’t he, through his epistles, that we’ve taken
off the old man and we’ve put on the new man, that we’ve taken off the old
clothes and we’ve put on the new clothes.
Doesn’t he do that constantly, reminding us that not only does He invite
us to come as we are, but that when we come He will make us who we are to be?
He’ll say, “I welcome you into My wedding feast.
Let me clothe you in the beauties of the righteousness of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Come as you are and I’ll
clothe you and then accept you because I’ve been you in the righteousness of My
beloved Son.” Some of us think we
don’t need to come because we’re good enough – “I’ve been faithful.
I don’t really see my sin.
As I compare myself to others, it’s pretty apparent to me that God’s pretty
lucky to have me on His side.” And
then others of us think, “Sure, why not?
This King ought to accept me.
Sure, I’ll come in and crash the wedding party.”
And the King in both instances said, “You’re welcome to come to the
feast, but in order for the fellowship that I’m welcoming you into and the
eternity that we will enjoy around the supper table with the Lamb, you’re going
to need to come in the righteousness of My Son.”
Friend if you’re here tonight and you’re resistant to the coming of Christ and
you’re saying, “My heart – I just don’t feel in my heart my need for Christ,”
you’re like the Pharisee in this passage who’s unwilling to come at the point at
which they need it the greatest.
Some of us may think tonight that, “Sure, I’ll partake of the delicacies, but
I’m not too sure about having to change into the righteousness of Christ.
I just still want to be who I want to be.
I’ll take the blessings, but I don’t want to take the sanctification.
I’ll take the gifts but I don’t want to have to deal with the holiness
and the obedience.” In Matthew
chapter 22 as the Lord Jesus is speaking, He wants us to not fall off one side
of the ditch or the other, He wants us to see crystal clear – “Come as you are
and I’ll make you who you are to be.”
So whether laden with guilt tonight or whether just numb to spiritual
realities, each place the Lord Jesus says, “Here, here is a place to come, all
who are weary and heavy laden. I’ll
take from you that burden and that yolk and I will give to you all that you need
to have fellowship with Me.”
You know that each time we take the Lord’s Supper we, in a sense, reenact this
parable. He’s invited us to this,
this table at which He shed His blood and broken His body and displayed His
perfection, His atonement, and as we partake in it, there’s a shadow of the
beautiful feast that one day as Jesus says, He will “take new with us in the
heavenly places.” Friends it is
God’s desire for us to hear this truth afresh tonight and begin to make movement
by the Spirit to seize upon this Gospel afresh that we might know something of
the foretaste of the glory of that garment that we’re already wrapped in, right
now as the Lord looks upon us. This
is why we would title a series like this,
A Great Salvation. How great it
is. How great it is, and it
deserves all of our hearts.
Father, as we consider these deep and abiding truths tonight, we pray O God,
that You would remind us that wherever we are spiritually, we are never without
the need for Your grace. So Father
tonight we pray, would You clothe us, would You make these realities knew, would
You keep us from the resistance that we’re so tempted towards, and would You
soften us and break us and make Christ overwhelmingly attractive to us that we
would do whatever it takes to pursue it.
Father, by Your Spirit, do this work in our hearts.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Please stand for the Lord’s blessing.
May the grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, be with your spirit.
Amen.
© First Presbyterian Church,
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