The parable of the wedding banquet, sermon by Jeremiah shipley

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This morning, I do not come with any grand words, reason, logic.
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I come with one simple message, Christ crucified is a stumbling block to the religious and it's foolishness to those who don't believe.
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It makes no sense. It makes no reason. Why would
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I give up what I have? For something less than. We preach the gospel of old, the gospel of 2000 years.
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The same message, the same sermons. Well, I've heard that a thousand times.
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Well, perhaps the thousand and one, the Holy Spirit might grant you the grace to allow you to hear
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His word, to allow you to understand your status before Him.
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Perhaps it is the thousand and once time that He may touch your heart and bring you back into a right stead with Him.
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You grew up in church. You know the words. You know the message.
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Perhaps you could come up here and preach it yourself, but you've never experienced it.
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You have not tasted and seen that the Lord is good. It is solely an intellectual thing.
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It is solely something of the mind. Or perhaps something of single nights of tears and remorse and guilt, but never of repentance.
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We read Matthew 22, verses 1 through 14.
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Please hear the word of God. And again, Jesus spoke to them in parables saying,
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The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.
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And he 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, Those who are invited, see I have prepared my dinner.
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My ox, my fat calves have been slaughtered and everything is ready.
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Come to the wedding feast. But they paid no attention and went off. One to his farm, another to his business.
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While the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully and killed them. The king was angry and he sent his troops, his armies.
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Excuse me. He sent his troops and his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned their cities.
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Then he said to his servants, The wedding feast is ready, but those who were invited are 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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And 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. 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?
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And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness.
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And that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.
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Let us pray. Father, give us ears to hear and eyes to see.
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Break down the walls of anger, of bitterness.
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Those who wronged us did not do so by your hand or your name. Let us be forgiving and gentle and lowly.
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In your name I pray, Amen. The context of this parable is one of rebuke to the
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Pharisees. It is a condemnation to those of Israel.
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The parable is before, the parable is after. The understanding of all the prophets of old that Israel slaughtered and killed.
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And he comes to this one. He compares the kingdom of God to a wedding, not a funeral.
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The kingdom of God is not a place of mourning and sadness. But a wedding is a place of joy and laughter and fulfillment.
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I don't know about you, but at my wedding, I had a great time. My wedding was the pinnacle wedding.
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There will never be one greater than it. It was awesome. Every person
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I loved dearly was there. And we were all of one heart and one mind. Of laughter and love and fellowship, dancing and joy and singing.
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This is what the kingdom of heaven is like. This is what God's family is like.
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Of rejoicing. The wedding here is the ceremony of the gospel.
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This whole parable is a parable of the gospel. And by the way, friends, this is not a sermon to the lost.
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For the church of God needs to be reminded again and again of the gospel. We have to be reminded of where we came from and how far the
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Lord has taken us. To bring us where we are. For if we forget such a thing, then it will be absolute necessity that we'll become arrogant in our religion.
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Our righteousness, we will start thinking is of ourselves rather than the righteousness of Christ.
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This is a grand wedding. This is the king's son. You have to understand this imagery here of the time.
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So this was one of the negatives of being an American. We don't have kings. We don't honor kings.
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We kicked the king out of our country. We said, you're going to tax RT? Absolutely not.
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You can take that right back over the ocean. This is America. We have no king.
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But in that mindset, we do miss some things. This is the king's son.
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This is grand honor. This is the event of the millennia.
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If you were invited to such a wedding, you would be a fool to deny it. I mean, to deny the wedding, the invitation of the king's son, the prince to the throne, the heir, to deny that, how foolish we would be.
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And at such a grand wedding, there's no budget. Every young couple that we were there about a year and a half ago, having to make sure it all fits in the budget.
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There is no budget for this wedding. There's nothing too expensive. There's no venue.
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There's no clothing. There's no cake. There is no nothing. For he's either his guest or his son.
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Also keep in mind of who the bride is. The bride is the church. It is us together.
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We are both the church, the bride, and the servants in this parable. We are both.
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And he sent his servants, verse 3, to call those to the wedding feast. But they would not come.
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How often have you presented the gospel, shared the gospel with someone, and they were so uninterested?
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They just didn't care about what you had to say. It didn't matter how gracious you said it, how amazing.
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It doesn't matter. They did not care. And so were these people. They were invited to the grandest event of their life, a once -in -a -lifetime thing.
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And they flippantly ignored it. Threw it to the side as something irrelevant, uninterested.
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It didn't tickle my fancy. It didn't scratch my curiosity enough.
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And so they threw it to the side. But keep in mind when the king sends an invitation, it is not invitation with an
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RSVP that you can either accept or deny. That is not the invitation we see here.
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When the king, again, we don't have kings, so you struggle to understand this. I struggle.
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We don't have presidents here. This is the king. When the king sends an invitation, you answer. You say, yes, sir, salute, right now
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I'm going. You don't say, oh, well, let me go do this first, or I'm busy. You don't tell the king
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I'm busy. What you have going on is not more important than what the king has to do.
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No, when the king invites you, you say, yes, sir, and you go, moving.
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This is not an open invitation. This is not that. When Christ came and said, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.
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When he said, if you do not repent, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. It wasn't a suggestion of, well, you can repent if you want.
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No, there's a command here. There's a demand. This is a royal summons, a royal summons to the wedding.
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But again, they were utterly disinterested. How many of us, if we had a gash in our arm, actually had a conversation with a young person
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Wednesday. They said, I know I'm not a Christian. I said, okay, well, are you ready to change that?
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And this person said, no. I said, okay, why? A shrug of the shoulders.
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I said, if you had a gash in your arm, like, so you were bleeding out.
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And I said, we got to get you to the hospital. And you said, who in here would not look at this person as having a death wish, as being suicidal, as being mentally unstable?
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So how much more, how much more do we look at people and say, do you not understand that you are going to hell?
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Do you not understand that this is a reality? This is not a fable.
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This is not a story. This is your life more real than where you are at now.
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Well, and look at what they say. This is the second invitation.
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And he sent other servants saying, tell those who are invited, verse 4, see, I have prepared my dinner.
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My oxen and my calves have been slaughtered and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast. That's the finished work of Christ, by the way.
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That is the work of Christ. When Christ said, it is finished, the calf was slaughtered, the dinner table prepared.
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There is nothing more to be done. What work could you bring to the finished work of Christ?
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What good word, what finances, what attitude, what singing voice, what could you bring that he needs or wants?
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It is finished. It is done. It is complete. The oxen is killed, the calf is ready, the dinner table is set.
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All you have to do is come sit. That's it. Come sit at the table of Christ and you will be his child.
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Verse 5, but they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business.
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While the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. They deemed their crop and their customer more valuable than the
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Christ. They deemed their crop and their customer more valuable than the
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Christ. How shamefully do we get too busy for Christ?
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This week, when it says, when you fast, not if you fast.
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When it says, go into your inner closet, close the door and pray to your Father in secret. Doesn't say in the car with the radio going.
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There needs to be a dark intimacy there of secrecy, but we're too busy.
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We're too busy. I've got to, you know, I've got this thing, I can't,
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I'm working 80 hours. Okay, cool, understood, understood, understood.
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There's not a person in here who hadn't worked 80 hours before. What, you think you're something special or different?
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You think that your busyness deems more worth to ignore Christ than someone else's?
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You will procrastinate your way into hell. You procrastinate your repentance, you procrastinate your humility.
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Let me remind y 'all of something. It is impossible to be too humble. You can't be too passive.
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You can be too passive for sure, but you cannot be too humble. Christ humbled himself to the point of death.
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Where are you at in your humility scale? Where am I at in my humility scale?
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Nowhere close to that, not in the same universe.
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We will procrastinate our way right through the gates of hell. To disrespect me is one thing.
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To disrespect my daughter is a whole nother. Can I get an amen?
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Amen. You say a cross word against, someone says a cross word against you, that's one thing.
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When they attack your child, that's another. They did not deny the king here.
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They denied the king's son, his child. They dishonored, disrespected, and showed disgrace for the son of the king.
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And so how does the father respond to that? Well, let us read verse seven. The king was angry and he sent his armies out and destroyed the murderers and burned their cities.
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You want to know why you don't appreciate the grace and mercy of God? Because we have no understanding of the wrath of God.
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Absolutely no understanding of the holiness of God, of his hatred for sin.
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One sin qualifies an eternal fire.
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What does your heaping mound demand then? If one disgrace of the son, one denial of the invitation, demands a burning of a city.
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What does your heaping mound and years of disgrace and dishonor to the son demand?
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What does that call for then? As scripture says, you are heaping up, piling up wrath for the day of judgment.
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And then we flippantly ignore the conviction of the spirit. He calls on us and we say, no, you know,
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I don't, you can tell. When you're not repentful, your prayer life plummets.
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You want to know why? Because I can't stand to face him. It's like when you run to your room to not have to talk to your parents, right?
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You don't want to speak to them. Because if you speak to them, then you have to talk about the elephant in the room.
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And so you just don't. We just won't. We will ignore our prayer life.
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Ignore the Father. Push it back, push it away. Hopefully we can forget about it.
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Just bury it deeper and deeper. Because to speak to God would mean to speak of my sin.
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And I don't want to do that. So we ignore it. Push it away, push it back.
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He was angry. And let me shift gears here for a second.
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We are the servants of God, right? And at times, if we are obedient and doing what we're supposed to, we are the ones going and sending the invitation out.
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We are the ones at times being treated shamefully. And for many of our brothers and sisters, and probably one day here soon in our country, we will be killed for the gospel.
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Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. Do not repay evil for evil.
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If they treat you shamefully, count it worthy to be in the same category as our
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Christ. Count it worthy to be in the same category of the great cloud of witnesses that we have before us.
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All those who have been martyred and slaughtered for the gospel, most of them we don't even know their names.
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To be counted in such a group is a great honor. It's a great honor and privilege. Do not wish the day, but do not fear the day.
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Amen? The Lord will repay.
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He sees your pain. He sees your suffering. He does not delay as some think delay.
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The Lord understands. What pain, what suffering do you have that He had not dealt with first?
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Sickness, the loss of a loved one. How about God losing His Son?
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What pain can He not understand? Our King has great armies.
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We forget that sometimes. Do you know in Scripture when it says the Lord of hosts, do you know what a host is?
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It ain't of a dinner party. The Lord of hosts means the Lord, the commander of God's armies, plural.
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Our God is a powerful God. He is a mighty God. He is a God whose quivers are full of lightning, whose silos are full of hail.
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Do you remember the hail that fell on Egypt? We're not talking about that.
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We're talking about hail, silos full of it, barns full of it. And they're still ready because if you've ever read
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Revelation, the hail will fall again. 2 ,000 pound heavy hail will fall again on this earth.
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We have a mighty God who sees your pain. Fear not what man will do. Fear those who can destroy both body and soul.
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You can't touch my spirit. You can hurt my body, but you can't touch my soul. Fear the one who can touch both body and soul.
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Not only did He do that, but also this is a prophecy of the
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Romans coming and destroying Jerusalem. They denied the son. They killed the servants.
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He went and burned their cities. Not but 30 years after this, Rome came in and completely obliterated
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Jerusalem, burned the city down, destroyed the temple.
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Verse 10, And 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. There's no prejudice in the kingdom of God. There's no prejudice.
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He does not care whether you are rich or poor. He does not care how many sins you have committed.
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He does not care if you are in Lamar or Collierville. And let me be honest, church.
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Sometimes I'd rather go talk to people in Lamar than Collierville. And how dare I? For real now, how dare
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I? We presume that because people have money, they now are pharisaical.
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How dare we? We show more grace to the drunk than we do the rich.
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How dare we? Who are we to judge? Just because someone has money, they can't honor
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God with it? Must watch ourselves not to swing the scales too much on one side.
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There is no prejudice in the kingdom. There's a parallel passage of this in Luke 14. I want to read one verse from there.
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He tells his servants to go and get all the lame and blind from the streets.
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His servants say, well, we've already done that. He said, then get anybody you can in here. And he says this, the master said to his servant, then go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be full.
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Two things on that. One, the Lord desires his house to be full.
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He wants all of you to come to repentance. He wants the banquet hall to be filled with singing and dancing, the palace for the wedding, for feet to be running through it, for every wall to be bouncing with singing, enjoying, and laughter.
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He wants the wedding full. The second thing is Christian. We are to compel people.
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We don't just invite them to church. This is, in our society, this has become so bad.
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Well, I invited them to church. No, you compel them to come to the wedding.
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In 2 Corinthians 5 .11, it says, knowing the terror of the
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Lord, we persuade men. Can I read that again? Knowing the terror.
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Remember how I said we don't understand the wrath of God? Knowing the terror of the
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Lord, we persuade men. There has to be a persuading, a compelling, a calling to those around us, to our co -workers.
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Lord, forgive us how we have worked with people for so long and have not compelled them.
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We have not persuaded them. We think in some horrible way that an invitation to church is the same as a compelling to the kingdom.
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It is not. We do not do our job. We fail at this miserably.
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We have no urgency for the kingdom. How dare we?
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How dare we not compel and persuade men? Because we understand the terror.
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We understand the wrath. And these poor ignorant souls do not.
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And we simply, knowing their ignorance, well, you can come to church if you'd like. But when the king came in, this is where the story takes a shift.
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Verse 11, but when the king came in to look at the guest, to see who his servants had brought in, he told them to go bring in anybody, anybody they could find, bring them in.
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Let's see who they brought. When the king came in to look at the guest, he saw there a man who had no wedding garments.
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And I'm going to go ahead and read verse 12. And he said to him, friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?
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And he was speechless. Do we know what the wedding garment represents? It represents the righteousness of Christ.
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It represents the righteousness of Christ. This is a requirement to come into the wedding.
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At this time period, it was a customary, if you did not have proper wedding garments, then they would give you one when you got there.
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That would... The king gave him an invitation. Let's give him good garments.
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So the invitation, if you know, it had no qualification. The only qualification was for you to come.
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He didn't say you had to look a certain way, do a certain thing, be a certain way. Just come.
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We'll provide the garments. And somehow this person got in. Somehow this person got in.
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And the great powerful king came to him. And this part trips me out. He calls him friend.
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He calls him friend. And the man did not make any grand apology.
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He said, oh, king, I'm sorry. I was working. And when I got the invitation,
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I was trying to go home and change real quick, but I didn't have time. Could you please forgive me? He didn't say that.
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On the other hand, he also did not say, how stupid to require me to wear some fancy clothing for a wedding.
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Can I not just wear what I have on? Is that not allowed? You are so stuck up, king.
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He did not say that either. It says he was speechless. Because when you stand before God, you will understand your sin.
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There will be no apology. There will be no excuse. There will be no reasoning that you can give for your sin.
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When we stand before the king, we are nothing but speechless beggars.
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That is it. Speechless beggars. But the king must uphold justice.
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And this is where we forget his holiness. The king must uphold justice.
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For Isaiah says, our righteous deeds are but filthy rags.
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And so this man came into the wedding dressed in his own goodness, in his own wisdom, in his own good works.
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And they were filthy rags before the king. And so he said to him, bind him hand and foot.
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Cast him into the outer darkness. And that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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The king must uphold justice. We disgraced the son.
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We disgraced the king. And we just say, ah, he'll let it slide.
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That is what I speak of when I say we take for granted the grace of God. He shows us his mercy so much that when he finally does show us his justice, we get angry.
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When he finally shows his justice, don't we pray for justice sometimes? We have people on our streets getting murdered.
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Do we pray for justice? But when he finally shows it, we get angry.
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From the book of Zechariah chapter 3, then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the
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Lord and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the
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Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, O Satan. The Lord has chosen
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Jerusalem, rebuke you. Is not this man he's talking about, this brand plucked from the fire.
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Now Joshua was standing before the angel clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said before standing him, remove the filthy garments and put clean ones on him.
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Is this not a picture of our salvation when you're around the campfire? If you didn't understand the imagery, when you're around the campfire and on the very edge of the fire, you just see that little piece of wood that's burning at the end and you pick it up.
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He says, is this man not but a brand just plucked from the fire? He's already burning, smoldering.
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And he's just plucked from the fire. So are we. So is this great salvation.
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And how may we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? We are caught from the fire, put out, but we're still black and sooty.
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And so the black soot that is covering us is then cleaned by the robes of Christ.
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And he gives us new ones so that we can come to the wedding.
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So we'll be fit to stand before the king. Though he called the man friend, he called him friend, he still had to uphold justice.
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So he sent the man he called friend into the eternal fire. Well, there'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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I am closing now, Mr. Hunter. I want to remind us of this church, beloved.
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Salvation is for today. It is never for tomorrow. You will never see in the
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Scriptures that speak of salvation being for tomorrow. It is always for today. We compel men today.
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Persuade them today. Repent today. It is never a thing of tomorrow.
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The verse that brother Christian read, Isaiah 55, 5, Seek the Lord while he may be found.
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Call on him while he is near. That means there's a time when the Lord won't be near. There'll be a time coming when he won't be found.
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Seek him now. Call on him now so that he may be found. So that he may come to you.
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Because his mercy does have an end for the unrepentant. It's called death.
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His grace does have a limit for those who are not with him.
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There is a judgment. You can't get before the throne of judgment. You can't walk into the court and the judge is sitting there ready to give his sentence.
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You say, oh, well now I want to apologize and make it right. It's too late. It's over at that point.
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And you will cry and be so guilty.
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But friends, guilt is not repentance. Tears are not repentance.
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You can cry all you want. The drug addicts. The drunks.
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Those addicted to pornography. Those addicted to their sins. How many times have you cried in your tears at night?
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And yet we're still here. What changed? Because you woke up the next morning.
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The sun set. The sun still rose. You must change.
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There has to be a repentance. Not just the tears of guilt. Behold, now is the favorable time.
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Now is the day of salvation. 2 Corinthians 6 .2
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Now, a moment in time is the day of salvation. Never tomorrow.
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Now is the time for our invitation. The time of invitation.
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But understand, just like this wedding feast, when we have a time of invitation, it is not open for a,
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I may or may not join in. I do not speak under my own authority, but that of my king.
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Now is the time of invitation. And it is a royal summons. The altar is open.
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Come repent. Come to the gospel. Wedding feast. Come to the king, to the son.
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Kiss the son, as Psalms 2 says, lest he be angry. He is the prince.
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Kiss his feet. Come now. If you have no business here, then
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I urge you, find someone next to you and compel them, persuade them to come to the gospel.
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That is your job. If you don't have business up here repenting, then you have business with the one next to you to compel and persuade to come to the wedding feast.
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Lord, may you give us the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
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May we hear your spirit today and serve you and praise you with a sense of urgency today,
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God. Let the urgency never fade. And when it does, let us rekindle the spirit in us.