Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God

Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God

I'd like to now welcome tonight's minister, the one who will be bringing the word to us. Jesse Pickett serves as church planter and pastor of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Hilliard. He is a graduate of Trinity Baptist College in Jacksonville and a fourth-year student at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Greenville, South Carolina.

Jesse is the proud husband of Kristen. They have three precious children, Harrison, Ella, Catherine, and Emmalyn. And now we invite him to come and to open the word for us and to teach us God's truth.

Matthew 22 and the Free Offer of the Gospel

Let me say, as we open 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. Thank you, Pastor Keith and Sovereign Grace family for having me to come minister God's.

Word.

And the topic that I've been tasked with addressing tonight is evangelism and the sovereignty of God, as has already been stated. 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.

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. 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.

Let us stand. Pastor Keith, is that the way we do it around here? Stand for the reading of God's word. Matthew 22, 1, here the reading of God's word. And 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.

And 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. 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. And the king was angry and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city, 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. 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?

He was speechless.

Then the king said to the attendants, bind him hand and foot, cast him into outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen. So far, the reading of God's word, let us pray.

Immortal, invisible, the only wise God to whom belongs glory and honor, majesty and dominion forever and ever. We pray now that you would come and Lord Jesus Christ, you as our mediator, would exercise your threefold office 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. And we come with mouths wide open tonight, praying that you would fill up and fill us with a good nourishment that comes from your word.

So now, Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts together here tonight. Be acceptable in thy sight. Oh, Lord, our rock and our redeemer. For Jesus sake and in his name, we pray.

Amen. Please be seated. Well, I don't know about you, but I remember vividly my wedding reception. Wedding receptions are some of the most special times. 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.

I still remember the food prepared, the kind of food, the banquet. 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. And that's largely because of my wife.

She knew what kind of food to order for our wedding feast. But there's just great memories that one associates with their wedding ceremony and then their wedding reception that follows. You meet family and you greet friends and everybody is happy and you're hugging and you're being congratulated.

And it's just something you never forget. And in the first century and in the New Testament culture, weddings were, to say the least, a big deal. In fact, most weddings lasted up to six or seven days.

And in fact, some of them even lasted longer than that. And in the case of a king giving a wedding feast for his son, it would be the wedding feast to end all of that. 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.

So I'm telling a story here about the higher the social status one enjoyed, the greater and the more extravagant the wedding feast. And we're introduced in this story to a prince given for a prince, the son of a king,.

We are told.

Now, Jesus is, of course, being autobiographical. This is a story about himself and the story about an invitation to come to a grand celebration in honor of the son of the king. And he's sending out, as Jesus tells us in the story, he's sending out servants and he's inviting the guests.

Come, the feast is almost ready. Make preparations and come to this. He is taking for himself a bride and there is going to be a celebration. That is what is being pictured in the story that Jesus is telling.

Now, this parable is occurring, you might know, in the middle of what we call Passion Week, and that is to say it's the week of Jesus's crucifixion. It's the last week of his public ministry on earth.

And we can roughly sketch the life of our Lord. At age 30, he began his public ministry. 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.

And we find ourselves in this text where Jesus is at the third of those Passovers. And he's going to be crucified. And when he's telling this story, it's around Wednesday.

Now, we know what happened on Sunday.

It was what we call Palm Sunday. It was the day that Jesus rode into town on a donkey. And that was the parade posture of a king who was ascending and receiving, ascending to the throne and receiving his kingdom.

So Jesus came in fulfillment of Zechariah 9 .9, and he came riding on a donkey to receive his kingdom. He's getting ready to do the necessary work to lay the foundation of his kingdom, his.

Cross and his redemption.

So he came riding in on that Sunday. And then we know that he went directly to the temple and he cleansed it and he drove out the money changers. 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.

And when he drove in as the king, as the conqueror, as the Lord on Palm Sunday, he cleansed the temple. And then he retired to Bethany that night. And then Monday morning, you'll remember that he returned back to the temple.

And on his way, he saw a fig tree and he noticed that that fig tree didn't have any fruit on it. And so he cursed that fig tree and he went on to the temple and he began to teach. And then the next day he came by.

And you'll remember that the disciples saw the fig tree and it had withered. And one of them said to Jesus, Lord, the tree you cursed yesterday, it's withered and it's dried up. And that was really a symbolic indication that Judaism, that was rejecting the word of Jesus and about to put him on the cross, it was like that fig tree.

It should have been bearing fruit for the nations. Israel was, in the Old Testament, a blessed nation with spiritual blessings that no other people enjoyed. They were the repository for the scriptures.

The prophets had been sent to give them the word of God.

And now the Messiah, the Savior had come offering salvation. And they were in the process of putting on a cross. So on Tuesday, he cursed the fig tree and then he comes back on Wednesday and he begins to teach again.

And it's Wednesday that he begins to tell these parables. 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 and he's going to institute the sacrament of the Lord's Supper as he is the fulfilled Paschal Lamb.

Christ, our Passover, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, has been sacrificed for us. And then on Friday, you know, the trial, he'll be arrested in Gethsemane on Thursday night, be put on a mock trial late Thursday night into the wee hours of Friday morning.

Peter will deny him.

The disciples will flee. Only a faithful few women and John will go with him all the way to the cross. And by nine o 'clock in the morning on Friday morning, he's hanging on a cross and he dies around three o 'clock.

And it is right in the middle of all of that, that Jesus says to us what he says to us tonight in this passage. So it would be a monumental understatement then to say that we probably should listen to what Jesus has to say in this passage, because it's the most important accomplishing our redemption for us.

And really, this is the third in a series of three parables that began back in chapter number 21 and in verse number 23. The first parable that runs from 21, verse 23 down to 21, 32 is a parable about repentance and there is such a thing as repentance and it starts with a parable about baptism and then it goes to a parable about how John came and he was preaching the kingdom of God to.

You and you would not listen.

You would not change your mind about what was coming to you. In verse 32, John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him,.

But the tax collectors and prostitutes believed him.

See, you are in a parable because you did not repent, the tax collectors and prostitutes.

Did.

When it comes down to 45, it's about retribution, that final and full rejection of the gospel offer merits only the wrath of God.

The gospel is a threat, we reject the offer of the gospel.

And then our parable tonight is a parable about rejection. It's a parable about rejection, rejecting the offer of the gospel and what happens to those who do so. And these 14 verses hold in perfect tension, I believe, and as we unpack it, I think you're going to see this.

These 14 verses hold in perfect tension the doctrine of the free offer of the gospel to whosoever, but also the truth that nobody does harm. It is due to the sheer, sovereign, electing mercy of God alone.

That is what this parable teaches us, and that is what our Lord is trying to explain to us in this parable. He's really giving us a theology of the rejection of the gospel. 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. In verses 1 to 10, I want you to see freely offered salvation, and then in verses 11 to 14, I want you to notice merely outward procession.

Freely offered salvation and merely outward procession, in telling this story, shows us.

What the path of the free offer of the gospel is.

That's really the one phrase summary of the first 10 verses of this chapter. The free offer, that phrase, free offer of the gospel, if you know anything about church history, comes from a huge debate that erupted in the Presbyterian church in Scotland.

And on one side, you had the men who were called neonomians, led by a man named Richard.

Baxter.

And what the neonomians, neonomian is a fancy word that means new law, and what they're essentially taught was, you should only give the gospel to those who ever be redeemed from their sin before they're converted and regenerated.

And so essentially, what Baxter and his followers, the neonomians, were teaching was that the free offer of the gospel was to earn salvation before regeneration. And what the apostles and the neonomians said was, that is law.

That is trying to merit salvation by law keeping. And so the actual free offer to neonomianism were the men who were called the merrow men. And the merrow men 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.

And what they were saying was, it is impossible, get this now, it is impossible to know who is.

Elect.

You can't know who's elect. God knows who he has chosen, we don't. And so the merrow men stood up and rightly exposed the error of neonomianism by postulating what they called the free offer of the gospel.

But the Bible doesn't tell us 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 start into those kinds of things.

God has taught us to preach. So there's a wonderful poem that actually sprung up around neonomianism that exposes the error of it, written by a man like this, hits neonomian spring, as Sundry called, the new lawmakers to redress our fault.

The left's faith is changed, as their Bacterian Bible say it, shaping the gospel to an easy.

Law, with hay and straw.

Yet, idols and the stuff, their legalist hands in a gospel glove. That's what neonomianism was. They were trying to determine if somebody was elect or not, to try to figure out if they could give them the gospel or not.

Thomas Boston and the merrow men said, no, the scripture tells us to preach the gospel and command repentance and faith toward Christ to every creature.

Duty is ours.

Consequences are God's. Or to put it another way, the gospel does not demand that we get better in order to come to Christ. The gospel says, come to Christ because you can't make yourself better. And the hymn writer said, if you tarry till you're better, you'll never come at all.

So the first 10 verses of this chapter speak to the very thing that the merrow men sought to speak to in the 18th century. And it is the free offer of the gospel. Freely offered salvation to whosoever will.

Now, there are two eras in biblical history, two time frames in biblical history covered in these 10 verses. The first eight verses tell us that the gospel was freely offered to those living during the old covenant age.

The gospel freely offered to them. In verse one, Jesus said, the text says, Jesus against the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. Now, the kingdom of heaven here is the center of God's rule.

It is the realm in which men and women, boys and girls, call themselves the kingdom of.

King Jesus.

And the term is used interchangeably in the New Testament with the kingdom of God. Kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God is referring, I believe, to the same thing. Let me give you an example of the terms being used interchangeably.

Turn back to Matthew 19 for just a second. Matthew 19, and look at what Jesus said to his disciples. Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person have heaven. And also, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich person to encounter the kingdom of God.

You see how those terms are used interchangeably?

It's the sphere of God's rule, the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God. You can compare Matthew 13, 24 with Mark 4, 26. Matthew 13, 31 with Mark 4, 30.

Matthew 11, 11.

Jesus says the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John the Baptist. Luke 7, 28, the least in the kingdom of God. Same parallel account, the least in the kingdom of death. Go on, but I think you get the point.

What Jesus is saying here is the intercession, the intercession into the kingdom and have your sins forgiven and know God in a saving relationship. It's like a feast, son of the king, extended. And in verses 1 to 8, he is showing us how that worked itself out in the Old Testament.

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. Now, track with me here because this is very important.

The kingdom of God comes in two stages. And Vos said that the kingdom of God first comes in grace and then it later comes in glory. The kingdom of God comes in grace first, in glory later. Now, what does that mean when we talk about that?

What it means is that the time when the kingdom of God comes in grace is the time between the two advents, between Jesus' first and second comings. So that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven is brought to man through the preaching of the gospel, through people going out and witnessing, through the ministry of the Lord, through preaching and inviting people to come.

That's the kingdom of grace.

Thank God, that is the era in which we live right now and will be until Jesus comes again. That you enter the kingdom now by the power of Christ, by His invitation, by the power of His will. But beloved, there's coming a time when the kingdom of God is going to come in glory.

And the kingdom era of grace and the kingdom offered in grace is going to be over. Then God will bring the kingdom in glory. Then Christ will return and usher in His kingdom and He will crush His enemies.

He will rule the nations with a rod of iron and He will, the Psalms tell us, break the teeth of the wicked. He will be the one Isaiah describes as coming up from Eden with the blood of His enemies spattered up on His coat, on His cloak and on His robe.

He will tread out the winepress and the fierceness and then the wrath of the kingdoms of this world will have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ and He will reign forevermore.

Hallelujah.

But until then, until He brings His kingdom in glory, thank God He's bringing His kingdom in grace. And He's bringing it not with sword and spear, not with horse and chariot. He's bringing it to come freely, offered gospel, pictured here as a celebration in honor of the Son of the King.

And so Jesus goes on to say to these Old Testament hearers that this King sent His servants.

Now, these would be the prophets.

He sent His servants to call those who were invited. Do you see the tense of that verb there? That's the idea of being the first invited, the pre-registered guests, if you will. 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.

The gospel is, Romans tells us, to the Jew first and then also to the Greek. So He sends His servants, the prophets in the Old Testament, to call those who were invited to the wedding feast. And it's astounding statement that they would come, but they would not come.

This is the Old Testament story.

The message of the Old Testament was, get ready. My Son is coming and with Him is coming His kingdom. And it's going to be a grand kingdom. And it's going to be a celebration in His honor. And He's going to be the name.

His name will be the name above every name and all the ends of the earth will give glory to Him. And His name will last as long as the sun. And it will be from sea to sea, Psalm 72 told them. And come to this feast and get ready because He is the Son of the King and His wedding feast and His bride being prepared.

That day is going to come. That's what we see in verses 5 and 6, had no time for such business. And astoundingly, some of them even killed the servants who came to invite them to the feast. Look at verses 5 and 6, they paid no attention.

They went off, one to his farm and another to his business. Now, this is apathy. And this is how some people hear the gospel today. Couldn't care less about that, have no desire to hear that. That has no relevance to me whatsoever.

I couldn't care less about that and what a Jewish caravan of Christ's a thousand years ago has nothing to do with me and won't let me live my life. That's not a new phenomenon.

That's how it was in the Old Testament.

The only thing to do is to come to the feast in honor of the Son. Apathy, but not just apathy. Sometimes the wedding feast was met with sheer animosity. Look at verse 6, while the rest, the rest who were invited to the feast, seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them.

We know that Jeremiah was censured on numerous times and told, hush and be quiet. Some scholars believe that Isaiah was the one Hebrews 11 refers to as being put in a hollowed out log and sawed in half.

I mean, this is animosity against the gospel. This is sheer hatred of the message and the messenger. And some responded with an I don't care attitude and some responded with the I hate you attitude. And the same thing we should expect to be true of us living in the new covenant.

Sometimes when we witness, people won't want to hear what we have to say. Sometimes when we witness, we will incur the wrath and the vitriol and the hatred of some.

Nothing new.

This has been the experience of God's servants from the beginning of time. In fact, the very first gospel martyr was Abel because Cain rose up and slew him out of jealousy because he hated the gospel pictured in the sacrifice that he brought.

And that's the way it is all across the board with the free offer of the gospel to some that they are apathetic or that they respond in animus. This is what many of the Jews did in the Old Testament when they ignored, mocked, silenced, persecuted and killed the prophets.

The king had gone out of his way to make preparations so that all of those invited to come. That's what's so astounding. When you look at verse four, he tells those who are invited, he sends them another invitation.

See, I've prepared my dinner.

I mean, notice the patience, the long suffering of God here. I've got the same story that there is to be done so that you can know. And if you can look at these, I've swept up a bit of the cross, but the Lamb of God was going to be slain so that they could come and enjoy the sacrifice of the Son.

They wanted nothing to do with it and it reached its apex. Well, it reached its apex with Jesus, but it also reached a boiling point with their treatment of John the Baptist. And we know ultimately that he was beheaded because he preached on the sin of the king.

Be that as it may, it was met with stopped up ears and hardened hearts and eyes closed to the truth that did not want to come to the feast. He had prepared everything. Can you imagine rejecting such an invitation, such mercy, such grace?

This would be the wedding feast to end all weddings. It would be like something you've never experienced before. It would be a grand ball. It would be like a presidential inauguration dinner that you've been invited to.

And you said, no, thank you. I got a dentist appointment. No, thank you. In the face of the king who had done everything necessary for them to be welcomed into the eternal banquet hall of heaven.

No, thank you.

Got business to take care of. Got more important things to do. So you see, then no wonder the king reacts the way he does in verse seven, right? So the king was angry. Classic biblical understatement.

Yeah, I would be too. You would be too. The king was angry. So what did he do? He sent his troops and he destroyed those murderers and he burned their cities. And in about 35 years from when Jesus told this, that's exactly what happened.

When Emperor Nero mustered the Roman troops and sent them to besiege Jerusalem under the leadership of Titus. And they burned the city to the ground. And that old rejecting apostate religion was forever done away with because they rejected and they persisted in their rebellion and they persisted in their rejection.

And Jesus said, therefore, your house is left to you. That's what happens when you persist in your rebellion. That's what happens when you hear invitation after invitation after invitation to come to the feast of salvation to have your sins forgiven.

And you want nothing to do with it. So the king was angry and he sent his troops and he burned their city. And that happened in AD 70 when the Romans burned Jerusalem and its temple to the ground. And that sacrificial system has ever since then ceased.

There's since then not been a single sacrifice in a lamb offered. And that is the providence of God for those who reject the free offer of the gospel. But also verses 9 and 10 show us that this was freely offered also to those of us living in the New Covenant age.

There's a transition, if you notice in verse 9, to the new era, if you will. The age of the New Covenant, the time in which we live now. And the offer goes out to as many as we are to find today, just as it was for those under the Old Covenant.

As many as would hear the prophet and as many as will hear us today. So verse 9, the king gives a commandment, you know, they're going to burn the city. And here's what I want you to do now. Since they didn't want to come to the feast, get them back to the mountain right away.

Does that phrase go there for a ring of bell to anybody? Because Jesus, Matthew is going to end his gospel this way. Jesus came to them and he said to them, the 11, 11 to me in heaven and upon the earth.

Don't disciples of all nations baptizing them in the triune name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of this age. This is the anticipation of the going of the Great Commission.

He sends new servants to go. And this time they are to go every day and invite to the wedding feast, so many as you find. This should give us great freedom in witnessing to people. Sometimes I've been asked this question.

Pastor, what if somebody is not elect in my family? I mean, they've never repented. They've never turned to Christ. Do I need to come to grips with the fact that they just might be might not be elect?

And I always tell them, never. You never presume anybody is not elect. That's not your prerogative to do. It is your prerogative to keep inviting them to the feast until the day they draw their last breath.

It says, go, therefore, to the main roads, invite to the wedding feast as many as you find. And notice how indiscriminatory this invitation is to be. Notice the scope of it. Those servants went out into the road.

They went out of home.

If you want to go to the feast, it's ready and it's prepared and you can come and you can eat. You can get your sins forgiven and you can go and you can be saved if you will come. The scope is universal.

It's to whoever will listen. Notice also that it's unconditional.

It's unconditional.

There are proscriptions attached to this. He goes on to say that they gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. Both bad and good. Now, we know that Jesus is speaking in terms of human relativity here.

We know from the scriptures, there's no such thing in the sight of God as a good person. We are all born depraved. We are all born rebels against God. Romans 3, Psalm 14, Psalm 53, other passages, numerous other passages.

But we understand that among unbelievers, some people are better than others, right? Some people are more ethical and moral than others are. 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.

But they need the gospel as much as Adolf Hitler needed the good and the bad. Whoever you find.

That's astounding to me.

What this tells us is that there is nobody bad enough who can escape that they can escape the mercy and grace of God. There's nobody too bad to be saved. We'll never look at somebody and say, they are so awful, they're beyond the scope of God's reach.

No, we invite the good and the bad. If you read 1 Corinthians 6, it's a case study in sovereign mercy. Fornicators, adulterers, homosexuals, and Paul said, were some, but you are washed. You are justified.

You are sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The blood of Christ can cleanse any sin, the good and the bad. The offer is to everybody we find both good and bad. When I read this passage, I think about the man who is the local groundskeeper, repairman, plumber, anything else our seminary needs.

Up in South Carolina, his name is John Jolly and everybody calls him Jolly John because he's the most jolly man you've ever met. But if you didn't know John's testimony, you would never know the sordid history he has.

He was the town drunk. He was the drunk of Greer, South Carolina. He has alienated himself. He has barely any family. He's wasted all of his living away on gambling in a former life. Horrible history.

Now he walks around the seminary singing the songs of Zion. 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.

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, who's training men to preach the gospel that he loves so much because it's the gospel that rescued a man so depraved.

And it is the gospel that can rescue anybody. Free offer of the gospel to those living in the Old Covenant age and in the New Covenant age. To as many as we find, we are to go and we are to invite. Now, you'll notice that in verse 10, after a while, the wedding hall becomes full of guests.

Notice verse 10. So 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. For 2000 years, this wedding hall, the church, the visible expression of the body of Christ has been being filled.

And people are coming into the church. People are joining the church. People are making professions of faith. And the wedding hall for 2000 years has been filling up. But one day, it's going to be full.