“Many Called; Few Chosen” – FBC Morning Light (11/7/2024)

The Wedding Feast and the Rejected Invitation

Well, good Thursday morning to you. Today we're reading again in the Gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I want to focus on this parable that Jesus tells in Matthew 22, called the parable of the wedding feast.

The story is that the kingdom of heaven is like a king who arranged a marriage for his son. Of course, this is a picture of God the Father, God the Son, the wedding feast for the Son, for Jesus, and so forth, and it says he sent out his servants to call all who were invited to the wedding.

So you have this wide, broad offer of coming to the wedding feast. So all who were invited to the wedding, and yet they were not willing to come. This is an interesting response to the offer of the Gospel, especially the offer of the Gospel to the Jewish people in the time of Jesus.

Particularly, Jesus is focusing on the attitudes of the religious elite and the religious leaders of his day. They should have been the first to welcome the Messiah and to embrace him and to follow him, but instead, they're like these who were invited to the wedding feast.

They were not willing to come. So the story goes on, the king sent out other servants saying, tell those who are invited, see, I've prepared my dinner, my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready.

Come to the wedding. Again, there is another opportunity to come, come, come to the wedding. But how did they respond? They made light of it and went their ways. They sloughed it off. They thought it was a joke, this Gospel, this come to the kingdom, come follow Jesus.

This is a joke. They made light of it, and they went on their own merry way, doing what they wanted to do. One went to his farm, another to his business. They just went on with life as usual. Some of them, we read in verse 6, seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them.

That's exactly the way many responded to the early believers, the early apostles. Every one of them practically martyred, and this same response to the offer of the Gospel has been repeated many, many times throughout church history.

When you proclaim the Gospel, even in our day, there are some who just completely dismiss it. They laugh it off. They just go about their business, pay no attention whatsoever to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But some respond to it with hostility. They would love it if every true preacher of the Gospel were locked up and sent away to a prison camp in Siberia or something. That would just delight them. Well, the story continues.

The king says, well, the wedding is ready, and those who are invited, they're not willing to come, so go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in. And he says, invite these people to the wedding.

So that's exactly what they did. Verse 10, the servants went out into the highways, gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. And the wedding hall will be filled with guests.

All those who follow Christ, call to Him as a Savior, they will fill that wedding hall. But when you get right down to it, at the end of the parable in verse 14, it says, many are called, but few are chosen.

So here's the thing. The call of the kingdom is offered widely and freely, but most are going to either ignore it, flatly reject it, or even respond with hostility to it. Some will be so hostile that they'll want to kill the messenger, if you will.

But there are those who will hear, and will respond, and will fill the wedding hall. Who are they? Well, they're the ones who are not only called, but were chosen. So many are called, few are chosen. Have you responded to that wedding call, that invitation to the wedding of the King's Son, Jesus?

Have you trusted Him? Are you following Him as your Savior? I trust you are. I trust you will be, along with me, filling up that wedding hall on that great day. Our Father and our God, we thank you for this glorious invitation, and the grace of our God, who would call sinners such as we are, good and bad, in the world's eyes, irrelevant.

You've called us, and you've chosen those to fill the wedding hall. We look forward to that day. Bless these thoughts to our hearts, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, listen, have a great Thursday.

May the Lord bless you in it.