Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God

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I'd like to now welcome tonight's minister, the one who will be bringing the word to us.
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Jesse Pickett serves as church planter and pastor of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Hilliard.
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He is a graduate of Trinity Baptist College in Jacksonville and a fourth-year student at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Greenville, South Carolina.
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Jesse is the proud husband of Kristen.
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They have three precious children, Harrison, Ella, Catherine, and Emmalyn.
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And now we invite him to come and to open the word for us and to teach us God's truth.
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Let me say, as we're opening our Bibles tonight to Matthew chapter 22, let me say how much of a privilege it is to be preaching God's word and participating in this conference.
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Thank you, Pastor Keith and Sovereign Grace family for having me to come minister God's word.
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And the topic that I've been tasked with addressing tonight is evangelism and the sovereignty of God, as has already been stated.
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And I believe this is a very prominent, a very vital topic for we who confess to be Reformed Christians to have a good grasp of.
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And the reason is that if you do consider yourself to be Reformed tonight or if you're new to the Reformed faith, then you need to know that there's going to come a time that somebody is going to ask you, now, if you believe that God is sovereign in salvation and you believe that God has full ordained whatsoever comes to pass and that whoever comes to faith comes only because they have been chosen by God, doesn't that mean we shouldn't witness? Does it not mean we shouldn't share the gospel then? Doesn't the doctrine of election mean that ultimately we don't need to witness as Christians? And how do we answer that as Reformed Christians? What is the biblical answer? And I can't think of anywhere better in the scriptures than Matthew 22 to go and find the teaching of our Lord himself on this exact subject.
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Let me read the text tonight and I'll begin at verse number one of Matthew 22 and I'll read down to verse number 14.
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Let us stand.
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Pastor Keith, is that the way we do it around here? Stand for the reading of God's word.
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Matthew 22 1, here the reading of God's word.
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Jesus again 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.
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Again, he sent other servants saying, tell those who are invited, see or look, I've prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered and everything is ready.
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Come to the wedding feast.
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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.
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And the king was angry and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
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And then he said to his servants, the wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy.
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Go, therefore, to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.
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Those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good.
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So the wedding hall was filled with guests.
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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? He was speechless.
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Then the king said to the attendants, bind him hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness.
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In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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For many are called, but few are chosen.
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So far, the reading of God's word.
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Let us pray.
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Immortal, invisible, the only wise God to whom belongs glory and honor, majesty and dominion forever and ever.
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We pray now that you would come and Lord Jesus Christ, you as our mediator would exercise your threefold office.
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As prophet, would you come and would you declare the word of God to us? As our priest, would you intercede on our behalf before the father and bring us into his presence tonight? And as our king, would you come and would you rule over us? Would you subdue our rebellious hearts? Would you cause us to bow before your majesty? Say, what wilt thou have me do, Lord? Lord, you promised open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
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And we come with mouths wide open tonight, praying that you would fill them, fill us with the good nourishment that comes from your word.
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So now, Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts together here tonight.
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Be acceptable in thy sight.
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Oh, Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
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For Jesus sake and in his name, we pray.
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Amen.
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Please be seated.
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Well, I don't know about you, but I remember vividly my wedding reception.
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Uh, wedding receptions are some of the most special times.
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If you've ever had the privilege of getting married and then enjoying the reception afterward, they're some of the most memorable, wonderful times that you'll ever experience.
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I still remember the food prepared, the kind of food, the banquet.
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I don't think I've ever been to a wedding ceremony and a wedding feast afterward, a banquet that had as good a food as mine did.
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And that's largely because of my wife.
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She knew what kind of food to order for our wedding feast.
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But there's just great memories that one associates with their wedding ceremony and then their wedding reception that follows.
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You meet family and you greet friends and everybody is happy and you're hugging and you're being congratulated.
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And it's just something you never forget.
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And in the first century and in the New Testament culture, weddings were, to say the least, a big deal.
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In fact, most weddings lasted up to six or seven days.
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And in fact, some of them even lasted longer than that.
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And in the case of a king giving a wedding feast for his son, it would be the wedding feast, the wedding feast to end all the problems.
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Because in a lot of ways, the grandeur of the wedding feast had a lot to do with the means of the one providing it.
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So I'm telling a story here about such a wedding feast.
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And the higher the social status one enjoyed, the greater and the more extravagant the wedding feast.
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And we're introduced in this story to a prince given for a prince, the son of a king, we are told.
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Now, Jesus is, of course, being autobiographical.
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This is a story about himself.
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And this is a story about an invitation to come to a grand celebration in honor of the son of the king.
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And he's sending out, as Jesus tells us in the story, he's sending out servants and he's inviting the guests.
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Come, the feast is almost ready.
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Make preparations and come to this feast.
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The lamb is taking for himself a bride and there is going to be a celebration.
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That is what is being pictured in the story that Jesus is telling.
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Now, this parable is occurring, you might know, in the middle of what we call Passion Week.
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And that is to say, it's the week of Jesus's crucifixion.
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It's the last week of his public ministry on earth.
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And we can roughly sketch the life of our Lord.
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At age 30, he began his public ministry.
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And then we can roughly sketch the life of our Lord through three different and distinct annual visits he made to Jerusalem for the Passover.
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And we find ourselves in this text where Jesus is at the third of those Passovers.
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And he's going to be crucified.
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When he's telling this story, it's around Wednesday.
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Now, we know what happened on Sunday.
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It was what we call Palm Sunday.
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It was the day that Jesus rode into town on a donkey.
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And that was the parade posture of a king who was ascending to the throne and receiving his kingdom.
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So, Jesus came in fulfillment of Zechariah 9.9 and he came riding on a donkey to receive his kingdom.
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He's getting ready to do the necessary work to lay the foundation of his kingdom.
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His cross for redemption.
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So, he came riding in on that Sunday.
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And then we know that he went directly to the temple.
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And he cleansed it.
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And he drove out the money changers.
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And I would say just as an aside, one of the greatest things the church needs today is for Jesus Christ to take the whip of the Holy Spirit and drive out all the trash that is masquerading itself as worship.
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And when he drove in as the king, as the conqueror, as the Lord on Palm Sunday, he cleansed the temple.
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And then he retired to Bethany that night.
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And then Monday morning, you'll remember, that he returned back to the temple.
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And on his way, he saw a fig tree.
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And he noticed that that fig tree didn't have any fruit on it.
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And so, he cursed that fig tree.
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And he went on to the temple.
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And he began to teach.
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And then the next day, he came by.
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And you'll remember that the disciples saw the fig tree.
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And it had withered.
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And one of them said to Jesus, Lord, the tree you cursed yesterday, it's withered.
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And it's dried up.
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And that was really a symbolic invitation for a state Judaism that was rejecting Jesus and about to put him on the cross.
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It was like that fig tree.
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It should have been bearing fruit for the nations.
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Israel was, in the Old Testament, a blessed nation with spiritual blessings that no other people enjoyed.
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They were the repository for the scriptures.
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The prophets had been sent to give them the word of God.
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And now, their savior had come offering salvation.
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And they were in the process of putting him on a cross.
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And so, on Tuesday, he cursed the fig tree.
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And then he comes back on Wednesday.
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And he begins to teach again.
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And it's Wednesday that he begins to tell these parables.
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On Thursday, the next day, the day one day removed from our text tonight, you know that he's going to celebrate the Passover in the upper room.
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And he's going to institute the sacrament of the Lord's Supper as he is the fulfilled Paschal Lamb, Christ our Passover.
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Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, has been sacrificed for us.
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And then on Friday, you know the trial.
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He'll be arrested in Gethsemane on Thursday night.
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Be put on a mock trial late Thursday night into the wee hours of Friday morning.
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Peter will deny him.
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The disciples will flee.
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Only a faithful few women and John will go with him all the way to the cross.
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And by nine o'clock in the morning on Friday morning, he's hanging on a cross.
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And he dies around three o'clock.
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And it's right in the middle of all of that.
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That Jesus says to us what he says to us tonight in this passage.
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So it would be a monumental understatement then to say that we probably should listen to what Jesus has to say in this passage.
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Because it's right in the middle of the most important thing of the world.
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And I was going about accomplishing our redemption for us.
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And really, this is the third in a series of three parables that begin back in chapter number 21 and in verse number 23.
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The first parable that runs from 21 verse 23 down to 21-32 is a parable about repentance.
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And there's three parables about repentance.
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And it starts with a parable about baptism.
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And then it goes on to how John came and he was preaching the kingdom of God to you.
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And you would not listen.
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You would not change your mind about what he was saying to you.
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And in verse 32, John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him.
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But tax collectors and prostitutes believed him.
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See, you are a sinner because you did not repent.
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Tax collectors and prostitutes did.
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The second parable runs from 21 down to 45 and it's about retribution.
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That final and full rejection of the gospel offer merits only the wrath of God.
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That God rejects the offer of the gospel.
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And then our parable tonight is a parable about rejection.
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It's a parable about rejection.
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Rejecting the offer of the gospel and what happens to those who do so.
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And these 14 verses hold us in perfect tension, I believe.
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And as we unpack it, I think you're going to see this.
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These 14 verses hold us in perfect tension.
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The doctrine of the free offer of the gospel to whosoever rejects the gospel, but also the truth, that I am not who I am, it is due to the sheer, sovereign, electing mercy of God alone.
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That is what this parable teaches us and that is what our Lord is trying to explain to us in this parable.
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He's really giving us a theology of the rejection of the gospel.
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Why is it that some people reject the truth and others receive the truth? And so if I might tonight, in our short time together, I'd like to outline this text under two main points or two main headings.
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In verses 1-10, I want you to see freely offered salvation and then in verses 11-14, I want you to notice merely outward profession.
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Freely offered salvation and merely outward profession.
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What I'm trying to do in telling this story shows us what the path of the free offer of the gospel is.
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That's really the one phrase summary of the first 10 verses of this chapter.
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The free offer of the gospel, if you know anything about church history, comes from a huge debate that erupted several times in the Presbyterian Church in Scotland.
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And on one side you had the men who were called Neonomians, led by a man named Richard Baxter.
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And what the Neonomians thought, Neonomian is a fancy word that means new law.
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And what they're essentially taught was you should only give the gospel to those who ever need it.
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And the ever-needing will be filled with love and affection and unbrokenness over their sins before they're converted and regenerated.
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And so essentially, what Baxter and his followers, the Neonomians, were teaching was that the free offer of the gospel is the free way to earn salvation before regeneration.
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And what the opposing Germanist said was, that is law.
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That is trying to merit salvation by law-keeping.
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And so the opposition to Neonomianism was the men who were called the Merrowmen.
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And the Merrowmen were led by the Erskines, if you've ever heard of the Erskines in Scotland, and by a man also by the name of Thomas Boston.
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And what they were saying was, it is impossible, get this now, it is impossible to know who is elect.
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You can't know who is elect.
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God knows who He has chosen, we don't.
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And so the Merrowmen stood up and rightly exposed the error of Neonomianism by postulating what they called the free offer of the gospel.
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But the Bible doesn't tell us that we should be so worried about if this or that lost person is elect or not, and trying to decide, I don't know if I should give the gospel to this person, how do I know if they're elect or not? Listen, God doesn't ask us to search into those kinds of things.
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God has taught us to preach.
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I always tell my people, you officially start...
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So there's a wonderful poem that actually sprung up around Neonomianism that exposes the error of it.
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Written by a man like this.
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It's Neonomian spring, as sundry call, the new lawmakers to redress our fault.
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The law of Christ and the covenant's faith is changed as their Bacterian Bible saith.
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Shaping the gospel to an easy law, the...
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with hay and straw.
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Yet...
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idols and the stuff, their legalist hands in a gospel glove.
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That's what Neonomianism was.
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They were trying to determine if somebody was elect or not, to try to figure out if they should give them the gospel or not.
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Thomas Boston and the mayor of men said, no, the scripture tells us to preach the gospel and command repentance and faith toward Christ to every creature.
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Duty is ours, consequences are God's.
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Or to put it another way, the gospel does not demand that we get better in order to come to Christ.
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The gospel says, come to Christ because you can't make yourself better.
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And the hymn writer said, if you tarry till you're better, you'll never come at all.
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You'll never come at all.
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So the first ten verses of this chapter speak to the very thing that the mayor of men sought to speak to in the 18th century.
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And it is the free offer of the gospel.
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Freely offered salvation to whosoever will.
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Now there are two eras in biblical history, two time frames in biblical history, covered in these ten verses.
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The first eight verses tell us that the gospel was freely offered to those living during the Old Covenant age.
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The gospel freely offered to those living during the Old Covenant age.
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In verse one, the text says, Jesus again spoke to the disciples and said, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.
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Now, the kingdom of heaven here refers to the center of God's rule.
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It is the realm in which men and women, boys and girls, shall call themselves the realm of the praise of King Jesus.
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And the term is used interchangeably in the New Testament with the kingdom of God.
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Kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God is referring, I believe, to the same thing.
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Let me give you an example of the terms being used interchangeably.
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Turn back to Matthew 19 for just a second.
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Matthew 19.
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And look at verse 19.
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Jesus said to his disciples, truly I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person master the kingdom of heaven.
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And so it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich person to master the kingdom of God.
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You see how those terms are used interchangeably? It is the sphere of God's rule, the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God.
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You can compare Matthew 13.24 with Mark 4.26.
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Matthew 13.31 with Mark 4.30.
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Matthew 11.11, Jesus says the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John the Baptist.
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Luke 7.28, the least in the kingdom of God.
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Same parallel account, the least in the kingdom of death.
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You can go on, but I think you get the point.
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What Jesus is saying here is the intercession, the entry into the kingdom and have your sins forgiven and know God in a saving relationship.
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It is like a feast in honor of the Son of the King.
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And it is going to be extended to all who will hear.
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And in verses 1-8 he is showing us how that worked itself out in the Old Testament.
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Historically, Reformed theologians following in the train of a Dutch theologian by the name of Gerhardus Vos have said that the kingdom of God comes in two stages.
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Now track with me here because this is very important.
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The kingdom of God comes in two stages.
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And Vos said that the kingdom of God first comes in grace and then it later comes in glory.
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The kingdom of God comes in grace first and in glory later.
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Now what does that really mean? Let's talk about that.
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What that means is that the time when the kingdom of God comes in grace is the time between the two advents.
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Between Jesus' first and second comings.
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So that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven is brought to man through the preaching of the gospel.
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Through people going out and witnessing.
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Through the ministry of the Lord.
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Through preaching and inviting people to come.
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That's the kingdom of grace.
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And thank God that is the era in which we live right now and will be until Jesus comes again.
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That you enter the kingdom now by Christ.
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The invitation is the will.
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But beloved, there's coming a time when the kingdom of God is going to come in glory.
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And the kingdom era of grace and the kingdom offered in grace is going to be over.
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Then God will bring the kingdom in glory.
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Then Christ will return and usher in his kingdom.
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And he will crush his enemies.
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He will rule the nations with a rod of iron.
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And he will, the Psalms tell us, break the teeth of the wicked.
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And he will be the one Isaiah describes as coming up from Eden with the blood of his enemies spattered up on his coat.
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On his cloak and on his robe.
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And he will tread out the winepress and the fierceness and the wrath of God.
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And the kingdoms of this world will have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.
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And he will reign forevermore.
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Hallelujah.
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But until then.
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Until he brings his kingdom in glory.
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Thank God he's bringing his kingdom in grace.
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And he's bringing it not with sword and spear.
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Not with horse and chariot.
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But he's bringing it with an invitation to come to the feast before it's too late.
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It's a freely offered gospel picture here as a celebration in honor of the son of the king.
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And so Jesus goes on to say to these Old Testament hearers.
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That this king sent his servants.
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Now these would be the prophets.
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He sent his servants to call those who were invited.
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Do you see the tense of that verb there? And that's the idea of being the first invited.
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The pre-registered guests if you will.
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That there were those, the covenant people of God in the Old Testament were the first ones to hear the good news of God's invitation to salvation.
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The gospel is, Romans tells us, to the Jew first and then also to the Greek.
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So he sends his servants, the prophets in the Old Testament, to call those who were invited to the wedding feast.
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And this astounding statement.
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But they would not come.
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But they would not come.
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This is the Old Testament story.
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The message of the Old Testament was get ready.
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My Son is coming.
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And with Him is coming His kingdom.
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And it's going to be a grand kingdom.
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And it's going to be a celebration in His honor.
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And His name will be the name above every name.
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And all the ends of the earth will give glory to Him.
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And His name will last as long as the sun.
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And it will be from sea to sea, Psalm 72 told them.
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And come to this feast and get ready.
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Because He is the God of the king and His wedding feast and His bride being prepared.
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That day is going to come.
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That's the attitude we see in verses 5 and 6.
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Had no time for such business.
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And astoundingly, some of them even killed the servants who came to invite them to the feast.
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Look at verses 5 and 6.
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They paid no attention.
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They went off, one to his farm and another to his business.
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Now, this is apathy.
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And this is how some people hear the gospel today.
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Couldn't care less about that.
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Have no desire to hear that.
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That has no relevance to me whatsoever.
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I couldn't care less about it.
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And what a Jewish caravan of Christ a thousand years ago has nothing to do with it.
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And let me live my life.
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That's not a new phenomenon.
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That's how it was in the Old Testament.
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Nothing to do with the day when the church comes to the feast in honor of the Son.
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Apathy.
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But not just apathy.
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Sometimes the wedding feast was met with sheer animosity.
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Look at verse 6.
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While the rest, the rest who were invited to the feast, seized His servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them.
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We know that Jeremiah was censured on numerous times and told, hush and be quiet.
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Some scholars believe that Isaiah was the one Hebrews 11 refers to as being put in a hollowed out log and sawed in half.
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I mean, this is animosity against the gospel.
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This is sheer hatred of the message and the messenger.
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And some responded with an I don't care attitude and some responded with an I hate you attitude.
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And the same thing we should expect to be true of us living in the New Covenant.
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Sometimes when we witness, people won't want to hear what we have to say.
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Sometimes when we witness, we will incur the wrath and the vitriol and the hatred of some.
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Nothing new.
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This has been the experience of God's servants from the beginning of time.
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In fact, the very first gospel martyr was Abel.
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Because Cain rose up and slew him out of jealousy because he hated the gospel pictured in the sacrifice that he brought.
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And that's the way it is all across the board with the free offer of the gospel to some.
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That they are apathetic or that they respond inanimous.
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This is what many of the Jews did in the Old Testament.
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When they ignored, mocked, silenced, persecuted and killed the prophets.
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The king had gone out of his way to make preparations so that all of those invited could come.
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That's what's so astounding.
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When you look at verse 4, he tells those who are invited, he sends them another invitation.
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See I have prepared my dinner.
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I mean notice the patience, the long suffering of God here.
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I've got the same glory that there is to be done so that you can know.
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And if you can look at these.
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I've swept them up.
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I've been able to avenge them.
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But the Lamb of God was going to be slain so that they could come and enjoy the sacrifice of his son.
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And they wanted nothing to do with it.
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And it reached its apex.
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Well it reached its apex with Jesus.
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But it also reached a boiling point with their treatment of John the Baptist.
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And we know ultimately that he was beheaded because he preached on the sin of the king.
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But be that as it may, it was met with stopped up ears and hardened hearts.
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And eyes closed to the truth that did not want to come to the feast.
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And he had prepared everything.
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Can you imagine rejecting such an invitation? Such mercy.
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Such grace.
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This would be the wedding feast to end all weddings.
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It would be like something you've never experienced before.
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It would be a grand ball.
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It would be like a presidential inauguration dinner that you've been invited to.
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And you say, no thank you, I've got a dentist appointment.
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No thank you.
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Death in the face of the king.
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Who had done everything necessary for them to be welcomed into the eternal banquet hall of heaven.
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No thank you.
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Got business to take care of.
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Got more important things to do.
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So you see then no wonder the king reacts the way he does.
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In verse 7, right? So the king was angry.
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Classic biblical understatement.
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Yeah, I would be too.
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You would be too.
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The king was angry.
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So what did he do? He sent his troops and he destroyed those murderers.
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And he burned their cities.
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And in about 35 years from when Jesus told this, that's exactly what happened.
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When Emperor Nero mustered the Roman troops and sent them to besiege Jerusalem under the leadership of Titus.
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And they burned the city to the ground.
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And that old rejecting apostate religion was forever done away with.
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Because they rejected and they persisted in their rebellion and they persisted in their rejection.
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And Jesus said, therefore your house is left to you.
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That's what happens when you persist in your rebellion.
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That's what happens when you hear invitation after invitation after invitation to come to the feast of salvation to have your sins forgiven.
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And you want nothing to do with it.
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So the king was angry and he sent his troops and he burned their city.
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And that happened in AD 70.
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When the Romans burned Jerusalem and its temple to the ground.
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And that sacrificial system has ever since then ceased.
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There's since then not been a single sacrifice in a lamb offered.
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And that is the providence of God.
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For those who reject the free offer of the gospel.
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But also verses 9 and 10 show us that this was freely offered also to those of us living in the New Covenant age.
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There's a transition, if you notice in verse 9, to the New Era, if you will.
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The age of the New Covenant, the time in which we live now.
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And the offer goes out to as many as we are to find.
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Today, just as it was for those under the Old Covenant.
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As many as would hear the prophet and as many as will hear us today.
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So verse 9, the king gives a commandment, you know, they're not going to burn the city.
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And here's what I want you to do now.
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Since they didn't want to come to the feast, get them back to the mountain right away.
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Does that phrase, go therefore, ring a bell to anybody? Because Jesus, Matthew is going to end his gospel this way.
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Jesus came to them and he said to them, the 11.
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All authority has been given to me in heaven and upon the earth.
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Go, disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the triune name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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And teaching them to observe every commandment.
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Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of this age.
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This is the anticipation of the going of the Great Commission.
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He sends new servants to go.
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And this time they are to go everywhere.
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And as many as you find.
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He says, go to the mountains and invite to the wedding feast.
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So many.
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As many as you find.
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This should give us great freedom in witnessing to people.
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Sometimes, I've been asked this question.
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Pastor, what if somebody's not elect in my family? I mean, they've never repented, they've never turned to Christ.
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Do I need to come to grips with the fact that they just might not be elect? And I always tell them, never.
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You never presume anybody is not elect.
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That is not your prerogative to do.
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It is your prerogative to keep inviting them to the feast until the day they draw their last breath.
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It says, go, therefore, to the main roads.
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Invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.
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And notice how indiscriminatory this invitation is to be.
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Notice the scope of it.
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Those servants went out into the road.
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If you want to come to the feast, it's ready and it's prepared, and you can come and you can eat.
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You can get your sins forgiven, and you can get baptized, and you can be saved if you will come.
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The scope is universal.
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It's to whoever will listen.
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Notice also that it's unconditional.
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It's unconditional.
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There's no assumptions attached to this.
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He goes on to say that they gathered all whom they found, both bad and good.
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Both bad and good.
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Now, we know that Jesus is speaking in terms of human relativity here.
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We know from the Scripture there's no such thing in the sight of God as a good person.
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We are all born depraved.
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We are all born rebels against God.
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Romans 3, Psalm 14, Psalm 53, other passages, numerous other passages.
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But we understand that among unbelievers, some people are better than others, right? Some people are more ethical and moral than others are.
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You don't have to look far to find an unregenerated man who works hard, who's faithful, who provides, who's just in general a good guy.
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But they need the Gospel as much as Adolf Hitler needed the Gospel.
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Good and the bad.
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Whoever you find.
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It's astounding to me.
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What this tells us is that there is nobody bad enough who can escape, that they can escape the mercy and grace of God.
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There's nobody too bad to be saved.
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We'll never look at somebody and say, they are so awful, they're beyond the scope of God's reach.
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No, we invite the good and the bad.
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If you read 1 Corinthians 6, it's a case study in sovereign mercy.
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Fornicators, adulterers, swindlers, homosexuals.
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And Paul said, and such were some of you.
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But you are washed.
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You are justified.
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You are sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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The blood of Christ can cleanse any sin and every sin.
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The good and the bad.
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The offer is to everybody we find, both good and bad.
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When I read this passage, I think about the man who is the local groundskeeper slash repairman slash plumber slash anything else our seminary needs.
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Up in South Carolina.
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His name is John Jolly.
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And everybody calls him Jolly John.
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Because he's the most jolly man you've ever met.
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But if you didn't know John's testimony, you would never know the sordid history he has.
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He was the town drunk.
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He was the drunk of Greer, South Carolina.
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He has alienated himself.
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He has barely any family.
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He's wasted all of his living away on gambling in a former life.
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Horrible, horrible history.
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And now he walks around the seminary singing the songs of Zion.
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Do you want to know why that is? Because two reformed, staunchly Calvinistic seminary students would go to him day after day after day and invite John Jolly to come to the feast.
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And in God's time, the Lord gave John Jolly a new heart and converted John Jolly into Jolly John who loves to serve the Lord by serving a seminary that's training men to preach the gospel that he loves so much.
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Because it's the gospel that rescued a man so depraved.
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And it is the gospel that can rescue anybody who will come.
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The free offer of the gospel to those living in the Old Covenant age and in the New Covenant age.
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To as many as we find, we are to go.
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And we are to invite.
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Now you'll notice that in verse 10, after a while the wedding hall becomes full of guests.
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Notice verse 10.
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So those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good.
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So the wedding hall was filled with guests.
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For 2,000 years, this wedding hall, the church, the visible expression of the body of Christ, has been being filled.
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And people are coming into the church.
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People are joining the church.
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People are making professions of faith.
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And the wedding hall, for 2,000 years, has been filling up.
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But one day, it's going to be full.
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And one day, the king is going to come and that king, when he comes back to his wedding hall, when the final banquet feast is about to happen and take place, the king is going to come and he's going to make special close inspection of everybody in that hall.
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He's going to take an account of everybody who is there.
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And that brings me to my second point.
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Having seen the freely offered gospel, we now see merely outward profession.
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Freely offered salvation, verses 11 to 14, strike us with the truth of a merely outward profession.
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While we understand that, there are also people who hear the invitation and outwardly respond with the outward motion.
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Church leaders and bishops lead from outward motion to the final feast.
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And so, the first thing I want you to notice is examination is made in verses 11 and 12.
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Examination is made.
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But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment.
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And he said to him, Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment? Now this refers to a common practice that when someone would come to a grand wedding banquet, the one who invited would provide the attire necessary to get into the banquet and remain there and celebrate the feast.
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And so, for us, we have about three men to the wedding hall, and as they're coming in, there's probably an attendant, and he's passing out these different wedding garments, and he's saying, put this on, honor the king, this will show you a guest.
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He's providing everything necessary for the guests to remain in the wedding hall.
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But apparently, in this story, there's somebody here who thinks, you know what? I don't care what the king has provided.
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I think I'm fine, thank you very much.
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Now we need to be careful about the misfits.
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He comes into the banquet hall, but he doesn't come on the king's terms.
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And he doesn't take a wedding garment.
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And he doesn't put on that wedding garment.
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That's been provided.
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You see, my friends, there's going to come a day when the king examines the wedding guests.
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Do you understand that? The king is going to examine the wedding guests on the day of judgment.
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There will be a time soon to come when everyone, through a well-made, straight-forward response, like this, ends at the hand of God.
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When everyone, and everyone who's made a firm, outward response to the gospel is examined before the trust of God.
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And then there's going to be people found who have not really put on a wedding garment.
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They might have come to the wedding hall, but they've not put on the wedding garment.
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And this is a type of insult to the king, because he's given it to them.
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He's provided it.
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It's like saying, I'll come to the celebration, but I'm going to come on my terms and not yours.
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And the question is, wait a minute, who is this celebration about in the first place? Let me give you the answer.
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It ain't about you and me.
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It is about the son of the king.
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He is the honored guest.
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He's the one the banquet is honoring.
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And if you're going to come to that feast, you've got to come on his terms, the way he has so ordained you to come.
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Now the question is, what does the symbolism of the wedding garment represent? The prophet Isaiah shed some, I think, very helpful light on this.
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Isaiah pictured salvation as a garment.
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Here's what he said, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, and cried, just as Jesus wept, and they took Him into His arms, and He died for them.
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They come dressed in the filthy rags of their own sin.
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And the Lord came, walking in the cool of the day, to Adam and Eve.
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They had hid themselves, and they had wrapped fig leaves around them.
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And God looked at them and He said, why did you hide? Why were you embarrassed? Why were you ashamed because you were naked? Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree? And do you remember what the Lord did? He said, these fig leaves will never work.
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And He took an animal, and He sacrificed it, and He clothed them with that sacrifice.
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And that is exactly what Jesus Christ does in salvation.
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That anyone who comes to Him by faith, in true repentance, calling on Him and taking hold of Christ, He gives to them as a free gift, the wedding garment of His righteousness.
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And without that wedding garment, you will not remain in the wedding hall when the King comes to make examination of your soul on the judgment day.
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There's nothing you need more than that wedding garment that has been provided.
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But I've got to warn you, that if you've not taken that wedding garment on the day of judgment, you will have no excuse.
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Notice what is said in verse 12 when the King asked Him, and I love this, you see something of the tenderness here.
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Friend? Friend? What is your excuse? Why are you in this banquet hall, but you have not come the way I told you to come? And the text tells us He was speechless.
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He had no response.
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And the scriptures tell us on the day of judgment, when God renders judgment on all mankind, every mouth will be stopped.
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And there will be no excuse for standing in front of Him without the wedding garment.
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So the examination is made.
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How is it that one procures this wedding garment? 2 Corinthians 5.21, one of my favorite verses.
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He, the Father, has made Him, the Son, sin for us, the one who knew no sin, so that we could be made the righteousness of God.
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God made His Son sin.
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And if you were one of His, He laid your sin on the Son.
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And He took the righteousness the Son earned, and He credited it to your account.
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That is what theologians have called through history, the grand transaction.
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Jesus gets my sin.
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I get His righteousness.
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The Father treated Jesus as if I were the one on the cross.
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And the Father treats me as if I had earned all the merit that the Son deserves.
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That is a sweet gospel, my friends.
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And it's one I hope you know and believe tonight.
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Because the examination is going to be made.
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And I hope you have the wedding garment.
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Secondly, I want you to see execution commanded in verse 13.
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Then the king answered, or the king said to the attendants, bind him hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness.
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In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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When you try to come to God on your own terms, the only response of a holy God who has provided everything necessary for our acceptance with Him, the only way He can respond is with wrath.
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And with anger.
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And with rejection of us who have rejected Him.
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And so he looks at this man who has no regard for the free gift, who has not taken the beautiful garment of Christ's righteousness, and he says to the attendants, presumably I believe the angels, on the day of judgment, bind this one hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness where there is eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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Either you come into the feast, listen now, with the wedding garment provided as a free gift, or you attempt to come on your own righteousness and you find yourself eternally shrouded.
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The king commands execution on the day of judgment.
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When God asks you, why should I let you into heaven? If your response is anything like, I've been a pretty good person, I've never cheated on my wife or husband, I've always paid my taxes, I've worked hard all of my life, I've never really killed anyone, I've never stolen anything that big, I'm really not that bad, and I think my good probably outweighs my bad.
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Do you know what you're doing? You're sowing a fig leaf around you.
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And it will never keep you in the wedding hall on the day of judgment.
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And this is the message we preach to the lost.
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That their good works are not good enough.
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I don't care how good they are.
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They need the wedding garment because if not, there is execution to be commanded.
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And we must never, in our witnessing, never shy away from the doctrine of eternal punishment.
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Because if we deny substitutionary atonement, we've denied the gospel itself.
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And what is substitutionary atonement other than Jesus receiving the punishment that the sinner deserves? This is critical to evangelism.
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To faithful evangelism.
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Now I'm not saying, go stand on the street corner and say God hates fags.
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I'm not saying that at all.
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That is very unwise.
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I'm not saying to look at everybody you see who's lost and say, you're going to burn in hell, reprobate.
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But I am saying this.
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We need not step back and shy away from the truth of a holy God.
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Because a God who does not hate sin enough to punishment is no God at all.
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It's an idol of man's imagination.
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He is holy.
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And he must punish sin.
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And that's why Jesus says what he does here.
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In verse 13, execution commanded.
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The opposite of being in the wedding hall is being thrown into outer darkness.
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It's one or the other.
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There's no purgatory.
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There's no in-between.
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You're either in the wedding hall or you're thrown into outer darkness forever.
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One of the two.
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Let me put it in Old Testament terms.
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You're either on the ark or you're drowning underwater.
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There's no in-between.
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So I hope you're ready to come into the wedding hall.
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And I hope we're inviting everybody we find to come to the wedding hall.
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But come putting on the garment provided by the king.
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Examination is made.
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Execution is commanded.
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And I hope by the end of verse 13, I mean in some ways you get to the end of verse 13.
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And you think, you know, Jesus could have ended the parable right here, couldn't he have? I mean it seems like a natural ending point.
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Okay.
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Someone who ultimately rejects the free gift offered in Christ is cast out into outer darkness forever.
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Where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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End of story.
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Okay.
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So let's go invite those to come to the wedding feast.
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But it does raise a question, doesn't it? And it's this question.
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If the wedding feast is so grand and marvelous.
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And the penalty for rejecting the invitation of the king is so harsh and severe.
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Why in the world would anybody reject that offer? Why? Why won't they hear when we offer the gospel to them, some of them? Why can't they answer the question? Why are we so cravingly to the gospel? What is wrong with it? What is wrong about me? What is wrong about the world where everybody else is not quite smart enough? Am I just a better decision maker than the rest of the world? And I'm saying this because Jesus gives us the theology of rejection.
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And primarily, the question is, does anybody respond to the gospel savingly or not at all? If they respond to the pure, free, sacred, merciful gospel of the Lord, let me explain.
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This is the explanation given.
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For many are called, but few are chosen.
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Many are called, but few are chosen.
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The many here refers to what we call the outward and universal call.
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The many is the free offer of the gospel.
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The many is going into the roads and finding the good and the bad, the best and the worst, and everybody we find and say, come to the wedding feast.
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That is the linear call.
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The few are chosen refers to what we call the inward call.
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We are the ones who issue the outward call.
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But my friends, it is the Holy Spirit of God alone who issues the inward call.
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And we call this the precious doctrine of irresistible grace.
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Or effectual calling, if you prefer that term.
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And it is God coming to a dead sinner and giving that dead sinner a new heart, taking away the heart of stone, giving to him a heart of flesh, and causing them, the catechism says, persuading and enabling them to embrace Jesus Christ as a free, You know Jesus Christ is free? Because He went after you.
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You know why He went after you? Because He can.
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If you read in John 6, no man can come to me.
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Don't confuse can and may.
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May is permission, can is ability.
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Jesus said can.
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The root there is dunamis.
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Nobody has the power.
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Nobody has the ability to come to me.
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Unless the Father who sent me draws him.
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And if you have responded to the invitation to the feast, if you have come to the banquet hall, and if you put on the mask of Christ's holiness, you need to know that it is due to the kindness and mercy of God.
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Will you not worship a God who has done for you what you could never do for yourself? Christ lets us come for one second.
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This is why Jesus says what He does in verse 14.
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He interprets the parable for us.
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Because He never wants us to presume for one second that our response to the gospel of salvation is due to our skill, to our talent, to our ability, to our faculties, but it is due to sheer sovereign grace and mercy alone.
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So as we evangelize the nations, we say to the lost, without equivocation, whosoever will may come.
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And whoever wants to come, come and drink and take of the water of life freely.
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But we also go in the confidence that our evangelistic efforts, this is such good news, such good news, that our evangelistic efforts are not in vain, because it is not up to our skill, and it is not up to our creativity, and it is not up to our ideas, and any such thing that we can teach man-made to produce false conversions.
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It is not incumbent upon us to say the right words in the exact way, or imagine the right way to get the person to respond.
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But we can witness in the fullness that we see God through His mighty to save.
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And He can and He will convert through our stammering, stuttering, fallen efforts, imperfect as they are.
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The gospel that we preach is about a perfect God.
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And that is good news.
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And far from Calvinism being a hurdle in the way of evangelism, it is a hurdle in the way of evangelism, my friends, because we are the ones who understand that God is able to save no matter how poorly of a job we do in presenting it.
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That is an encouragement for me on a Sunday morning.
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When I walk out of the pulpit feeling like an absolute failure, that I remember that it is in the power of God, not in my eloquent words of human wisdom.
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That is where the power is.
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God is mighty to save.
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The doctrine of election is good news.
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We know that witnessing today is not an easy thing.
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But let me ask you a question.
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Do you think it was any easier in the first century when Paul was doing it? In fact, I defy one of you, including myself, to even try to convince ourselves that we have come close to suffering what Paul did for preaching the gospel.
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He was persecuted.
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He was stoned.
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He was rejected.
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He was laughed.
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He was scoffed.
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He was made fun of.
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He was brought before kings and governors on trial.
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He was shipwrecked.
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And he received lashes, 39 of them, multiple times.
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But why could Paul keep going, and keep preaching, and keep witnessing? Because at the end of his life, he could say, I endure for the sake of the elect, that they may obtain the salvation in Christ Jesus.
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You keep going, and you keep witnessing, because you know that it is through those secondary means of witnessing that God is going to accomplish his redemption.
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He is not going to let his son die in vain.
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And every soul for whom Christ died will be saved through the preaching of the gospel.
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So, Jesus gives the explanation.
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Many are called, but few are chosen.
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Let me close tonight with the words of one of my favorite hymns in all of the world.
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A hymn written by Isaac Watts.
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It's a hymn about the church.
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It's a hymn about the beauty and the wonder of worship on the Lord's Day, as the church gathers to celebrate at a banquet feast in honor of the Son.
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And it's a song full of doctrine, both of election and the free offer of the gospel, written by a staunch Calvinist.
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And the title of it is, How Sweet and Awesome is the Place? Listen to these words.
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How sweet and awesome is the place with Christ within the doors, while everlasting love displays the choices of its stores.
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Here every bowel of our God with soft compassion rolls.
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Here, where's here? Here is the gathered worship service.
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Here peace and pardon bought with blood is food for dying souls.
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While all our hearts and all our songs join to admire this feast, each of us cries with thankful tongues, Lord, why was I guessed? Have you ever just asked yourself that question, guessed here? Why have I been welcomed to the feast? Watts goes on to write, Why was I made to hear thy voice and enter while there's room, when thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come? Why was I brought in? Why was I given a hunger, when there are so many countless millions of others out there, throwing the junk and the garbage of their sin, rather than partake of this feast called salvation? Why? And he answers this question in the fifth stanza.
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Towards the same love that spread the feast, that sweetly drew us in, else we had still refused the taste, and perished in our sins.
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The same love that spread the feast, the same love that sent His Son to die on the cross, is the same love that drew us savingly to that cross.
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That's what Watts is getting at.
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And then in verse 6 he transitions from the doctrine of election and effectual calling to the doctrine of evangelism.
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He says, Pity the nations, O our God.
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What a prayer.
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Constrain the earth to come.
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Send Thy victorious word abroad, and bring the strangers home.
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We long to see Your churches full, that all the chosen race, may with one voice, one heart, one soul, sing Thy redeeming grace.
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Our Father, how thankful we are for Your sovereign mercy, and how comforted and how empowered we are, we who are Christians tonight, who really do have a burden for the lost, how comforted we are to know, that as we go, and as we give, and as we invite, we spread the Gospel, that those You have chosen will come.
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So help us to endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus.
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We pray that we would go and find the good and the bad, and compel them to come.
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Lord, we long to see Your churches full, that all of Your chosen race, from every kindred, nation, and tongue, may together with one voice, and heart, and soul, sing Your redeeming grace.
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We thank You that You are mighty to save, and we thank You that in mercy, You have prepared a feast in celebration of Your dear Son, and it's Him we wish to honor tonight.
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So be magnified among us, we pray, for Christ's sake and in His name.