namely to Matthew chapter 22 verses 1 to
14.
We are particularly concerned with one facet of
this manifold portrait, but we shall look at
it in its entirety first and then come
to see one rather tragic episode as we
conclude.
The first thing that is obvious as we
look at these words is this.
It is that the kingdom of heaven is
described in terms of a feast.
The man or woman who has responded to
the gospel call should be a person who
is recognizably feasting, feasting upon good things.
The call to the kingdom is neither a
call to a funeral nor to a fast,
but a feast.
And it is unfortunate that so many of
us convey the impression that it is anything
else.
When we say this, of course, we don't
mean to imply that the Christian man has
no burden to bear.
He has.
He has an intransigent enemy that encounters him
at every turn.
But in the deepest depths of his soul,
if he is a true Christian, there is
a feasting upon things divine.
There is a joy which is unspeakable and
full of glory.
And may I remind you, those words were
uttered to a persecuted community.
When the apostle Peter spoke to a community
of joy that is unspeakable and full of
glory, he was not writing to a community
that were materially well off.
He was writing to a people that were
robbed of everything, including their home.
But he had no hesitation in saying this,
that they were already receiving the end of
their faith.
And part of it was this, a deep,
deep, settled peace and joy in God.
In other words, to be a Christian is
to be a man or a woman who
is already feasting.
Now, that is the background that we have
in this passage.
It is a summons to a feast.
Our Lord has commissioned his servants to go
into the highways and the byways of life.
Indeed, he has commissioned his servants to go
to the uttermost parts of the earth, to
summon men into the kingdom and to be
partakers of the kingdom feast.
And as we therefore stand in his name
in this book that he knocks tonight, we
are not assuming something or presuming something that
doesn't belong to us.
This is his command.
Go ye into all the world and make
disciples of all nations, because the feast is
ready, and the provisions are vast enough to
meet the needs of all men everywhere.
Now, there are two main things here that
we shall look at tonight.
First of all, there is the emphasis that
our Lord places upon the unheeded invitation.
I suppose it is true to say that
is what preponderates in the passage.
Written across the whole passage there is this
notion of the multitudes rejecting the invitation to
the feast, treating it as if it were
an invitation to a funeral.
But there is something else here.
In the first leads on to the second.
There was one man who did accept the
invitation, but rather thoughtlessly.
In consequence, though he found himself apparently at
the festal table, waiting for the coming of
the king and the beginning of the moment
of banqueting, the king's eye fastened upon him.
Will you excuse me?
Strange what happens to a man from time
to time.
The king fastens his eye upon him and
sees that there is one thing which disqualifies
him from participating in the least in the
festal provisions.
And he is excommunicated and cast out from
the festal chamber.
Now, let's look briefly at these two pictures.
First of all, we're looking at the masses.
And the notion, the thought that pervades these
early verses in the passage is that of
the unheeded invitation.
If you have your New Testaments open before
you, you will notice that verse five summarizes
the attitude which is the subject of the
first ten verses.
But they made light of it, and they
went off, one to his farm and another
to his business.
They made light of it.
In the first place, we read that the
call was issued, inviting men to the feast,
and was rejected.
They would not come, says verse three.
They made light of it, says verse five.
Now, it would seem that here our Lord
has in mind what had already taken place
during his ministry.
He had sent out some of his disciples
to proclaim good news.
He had sent out his disciples into the
villages round about to proclaim that the kingdom
of God had come.
Which, in a nutshell, means this.
The king has come.
The king of the everlasting kingdom.
And with the coming of the king, he
has power to do everything that is necessary
to rectify wrong.
If he does not rectify every wrong immediately,
he will do so ultimately.
But some he does here and now.
He will heal the sick.
He will bring peace to the derailed mind.
He will bring sanity again to a man
or a woman that is almost taken over
by satan.
And he will pardon the sins of men.
You see, the king has come, and with
the king, the benefits of a kingdom that
is everlasting.
Every kingdom has its own benefits.
You live in the British Isles, there are
certain benefits.
If you live in this great land, there
are other benefits.
I suppose if you go south of the
border, though you Canadians may be very suspicious
of this, but south of the border there
are some benefits too.
Every kingdom has its own benefits.
This kingdom has.
And all the benefits of the kingdom are
wrapped up in the person of the king.
The king has come, and he sent his
emissaries to tell men and women everywhere, the
king has come, and the powers of the
kingdom are unleashed among you.
Come.
But they wouldn't listen.
Or, rather, to be more precise, they listened
somewhat, but they would not come.
I think this is a very real touch,
is it not?
The farmer they invited listened for a while,
shrugged his shoulders, went back to his oxen,
and went on with his ploughing.
A businessman they invited had his ears open.
He thought there might be a bargain here.
He listened, he heard, shrugged his shoulders, back
to his job.
They would not come.
They treated the feast as if it were
a funeral.
They considered the divinely proffered joy as if
it were judgment, and the freely offered provisions
of God, the festal provisions of God, as
if they were all tinctured with poison.
They had no taste for the things of
the kingdom.
But the story doesn't end there.
Now, believing, and to those of you who
know what the Bible says about God, you
might, if you were simply thinking of the
sovereignty and the greatness of God, you might
conclude, well, all right, if they will not
have it, then surely the book ought to
close.
The offense to the deity is such.
You don't expect him to make a second
invitation.
But you know, such is the grace of
God.
He comes again, the sovereign Lord of the
universe.
He who holds the stars in their places,
and the constellations.
He who lit the sun.
The Lord God omnipotent comes again to a
sinner man that has defied his every word
and refused his pleading.
And that's what we have now.
Verse four, he sent other servants, saying, tell
those that are invited, behold, I've made ready
my dinner.
My oxen and my fat calves are already
killed, and everything is ready.
Come to the marriage feast.
Oh, how gracious a God in our hearts.
The reference here is to a different set
of servants.
Now, we mustn't read too much into this.
If we can read anything into it, I
suggest to you that the reference now is
to the apostles going out after the day
of Pentecost.
It is a prophetic message.
It is a seeing ahead of things that
were yet to take place.
Some of them would be the same people,
in fact, and yet different.
Now they have seen their Lord reigning on
the tree, for reigning he was, accomplishing our
redemption, declaring triumphantly, it is finished.
They would have seen him by this time
risen from the dead.
They would have known by this time that
he had ascended at the Father's right hand,
because he sent forth the Holy Spirit as
he said he would.
Now they go forth, declaring that everything is
ready.
You see, it was only after the resurrection
and the coming of the Spirit that, in
point of fact, everything was ready.
Now everything was seen to be prepared.
The table was spread.
Salvation is an accomplished thing.
A fountain has been opened for sin and
uncleanness.
It's there.
A righteousness has been wrought which is acceptable
by God.
It's proved by his session at the Father's
right hand.
God has received the atoning sacrifice.
Eternal life is the gift of the Christ.
All things are ready.
The table is spread.
The feast is waiting for those to come
who are invited.
But injury followed insult.
Not only did they make light of it
and treat it with the utmost scorn, but
we read they seized his servants and they
treated them shamefully and they killed them.
There wasn't an apostle that wasn't slain, according
to the testimony of history.
They treated the bearers of divine tidings as
if they were the servants of men.
They despised the sender and they despised the
sent ones.
And they would not heed the tidings though
they were invited to a kingly and a
royal feast.
That's the tragedy here.
But there is one other thing here before
we pass on.
The other fact we have in this first
part of the chapter is the Master's declaration
that the call repeatedly rejected incurred the divine
wrath.
The dishonor involved in the recurring rejection is
actually self-destructive.
You cannot reject God unduly without destroying yourself
in the act.
People speak about breaking the law of God
in a way one knows what is meant,
but you see it's not God's law that
you break, ultimately it's yourself.
You never break God's law.
It is eternal as God.
Defy it, reject it, refuse it, it's yourself
that you break.
And the same with the invitation.
Heed it, listen to it, weigh it up,
tear it down, it's yourself you break.
Here was sin against the Son whose festal
occasion it was.
Here was sin against the Father, the King,
who had arranged the feast.
Here was sin against the servants of the
Father and of the Son that brought glad
tidings to such wicked men.
The Father, the King was angry.
Now this is a note that is not
much loved these days, I don't suppose it
ever was, but note the Bible is unequivocal
about it.
The God who arranged the feast is a
God who is angry.
When those for whom it was purposed and
prepared despise the things divinely prepared.
There is a phrase in the book of
the Revelation which is surely one of the
most graphic and descriptive and eloquent phrases in
any literature when it speaks of the wrath
of the Lamb.
The Lamb.
Nothing is more peaceable, amicable, meek than a
Lamb.
But the culminating point in history will see
the wrath of the Lamb.
Love despised becomes wrath kindled.
And the greater the love despised, the more
terrifying the kindling of consequent wrath.
The King was wroth.
In fact there is a statement here which
again is prophetic.
You see our Lord does this kind of
thing, so do the prophets in the Old
Testament for that matter.
They speak as if things had already happened.
They have not actually happened, but they're so
certain of happening that they speak of them
as already done.
And our Lord puts it like this.
He speaks in verse 7 of the King.
He sent his troops and destroyed those murderers
and burned their city.
Now that was as yet future.
Our Lord is describing what happened in the
year 70 A.D. when the Romans under
Titus waded knee-deep in the blood of
the victims in the streets of Jerusalem.
And at last the city and the people
that had rejected the Christ of God, who
offered the festal things of heaven to a
sin-bound community, are now rejected.
And if this were only a scene that
is depicted in history it would be tragic.
If we were only reading about history here,
things that happened thousands of years ago or
hundreds of years ago, it would be tragic.
But my friend there is something that makes
it more tragic.
It is this.
That though we have this episode before us
and though we know that the judgment of
God was meted out upon the rejecters of
his Son, men still do the same thing.
And we cannot even feebly learn from the
lessons of the past the unheeded invitation.
But now come, come to the second.
I find this even more challenging than the
first.
The unacceptable guest.
Now this man came all right.
I can't tell you why he came, I
can't tell you what his motives were, the
Bible doesn't tell us and so I can't
say, but come he did.
And our Lord depicts him as having come
into the very place, the very, the very
festal room, the dining room in the palace
where the guests were gathered for the festal
occasion.
And there he is.
He's come.
He's there.
But the fact and the tragedy that comes
out here is this, that he was unacceptable.
Though the terms of the calling were such
that those who went out were to gather
in all they could find in the very
highways of life, right out on the main
streets, on the main thoroughfares.
This man came and though he came he
was unacceptable.
Why?
Well now look at the picture.
The man heard the royal invitation and he
accepted it.
We start there.
Unquestionably he realized the honor that was involved.
I suppose he might have thought rightly that
it was an honor at any rate to
visit the presence of the royal household, of
the royal palace.
I don't know what other thoughts may have
lingered in his mind, but he was deeply
conscious of the high privilege which was coming
his way, that of sitting at the palace
table on a royal occasion.
And he accepted.
Perhaps he questioned at first whether it was
really meant for him.
But you see the terms of the invitation
were so wide that they obviously included him.
Look again at verse nine.
As many as the servants should find.
Now you can't be wider than that.
The servants were told to go out and
to gather into the feast as many as
they should find.
You see no one is excluded.
They weren't told as they went out, now
don't you go after such and such a
type of person.
If you see a man dressed like this,
well keep away from him.
If you see a man from such and
such a sector of society, avoid him.
No, no.
It was as wide as this.
As many as you find.
So thought this man.
It applies to me.
It was in that faith that he set
out.
Now I'm using my imagination now.
This isn't said in scripture, but I imagine
he must have been a fairly decent sort
of a fellow.
And there is nothing here to indicate that
he was at last cast out because he
came in rags or he hadn't washed his
face or washed his hands or he wasn't
hygienically acceptable or anything of that kind.
My impression is, for right or wrong, that
he really set up for this occasion.
He must have had a fairly decent wardrobe,
this man, and he put on his best
attire.
He's going, he's going to the palace.
This is a vile occasion.
He's well groomed.
He's well dressed.
He knows what he's about.
He appreciates what is of value and significance
and of honor for him.
And if you were to see his gait
as he led for the palace entrance, I
believe you would have seen a good example
of a man well groomed and well dressed,
ready and acceptable as men might judge for
the palace affair of the day.
He heard the king's invitation and he accepted
it, but he was subjected to the king's
inspection and he was discovered as unworthy and
unacceptable.
The gaze of the king focused upon him.
Look at verse 11.
And when the king came in to see
the guests, he saw there a man which
had not on a wedding garment.
Now let's use our imagination just a little.
There's call for it here.
The king came in.
All are waiting.
The table is spread.
Everything is ready.
All the guests have seen what is on
the table thus far, and they're waiting for
the one moment when the king comes in.
And when the king comes in, soon the
feast will start.
They hear the fanfares and the sound of
the trumpets and thus last he appears.
And from the elevated position and the high
table in the oriental court, you can imagine
the king looking down over the gathered throng
and he sees them all.
But at last he notices one man, so
out of place, so different.
He's the only one there clothed as he
is clothed.
There may be variations and differences between all
the other people, but this man stands out.
And the thing that makes it absolutely unique
is this.
He hasn't on a wedding dress.
Now notice, it doesn't say he had on
a very bad shabby dress, but he didn't
have a wedding dress.
The eye of the king saw him.
The glory and the majesty of the king
had been belittled by him.
And so the king asks the question, how
is it that this man arrived in heel?
Whence came this man?
Now, a word of explanation.
It was an eastern custom that whenever their
kings invited guests to the royal palace and
to the royal table, not only did the
king provide food on the table, but he
provided a garb, a dress for his guests.
Now, if we don't realize this, then it's
very difficult to understand what our lord is
getting at.
As a matter of fact, the way to
the dining room always led via the roving
room, so that every guest that came into
the dining room, as a king's guest on
any such festive occasion as this, was clad
in the robe that was given him by
the royal servant in the roving room.
Now, when you come to think of it,
this was the most sensible arrangement.
For example, you might have somebody that was
invited to a royal occasion who was very
poor, who couldn't afford to buy a new
garb for the occasion.
He can't go to the bank and draw
a check and have a new ring out.
He has to go very much as he
is.
He only has the poor paltry clothes in
which he stands.
But you see, it would make no difference
for him.
Because when he came to the king's palace
and came to the gates and was taken
in, he would be taken immediately to the
worn robes of the king.
And there would be attendants waiting for him
to measure him and to give him a
kind of apparel that fitted him a wedding
garment, so that he did not feel overawed
in the presence of others.
Again, I suggest to you it was the
most sensible arrangement for this reason.
Someone exceedingly rich might have been invited, whose
wardrobe would be very full and very flowery
and very attractive.
And in oriental countries they can be very
elaborate and very colourful.
And I, for my part, like to see
them.
But you can imagine somebody dressed in such
gorgeous apparel that he would be the centre
of attraction on an occasion like this.
There's no possibility of it.
Whatever kind of apparel may be yours, you
have to leave it in the robing room.
It's taken off.
And instead of that, you have the apparel
that the king himself has provided for you.
You are dressed in the robe provided for
the wedding, so that every man is equal
before the king.
They're all dressed, if they are to dine
at his table, they are all dressed in
the garment provided for the occasion.
But this man, somehow or other, I can't
tell you how, probably it's a hypothetical case,
and our Lord is just describing a hypothetical
issue.
We won't argue about that, but he describes
it somehow or other as if the man
has got right in there, and the king's
eye meets him and inspects him.
And the question is asked, how did he
get in here?
Do you remember what they told?
We have in verse 12 the unanswerable question.
Friend, how cameest thou in hither without the
wedding garment?
And he was speechless.
I don't know whether he bullied the attendants
or whether he knew some secret passage to
come into the dining hall or not, I'm
not going into the details of that, I
can't tell you.
But one thing I know is this, the
king found him out.
He was different.
This man had either browbeaten the king's servants
or somehow bypassed them, and here he is,
but he does not bypass the scrutiny of
the sovereign on the high table.
And then comes the uncompromising command, verse 13.
Then said the king to his servants, bind
him, bind him hand and foot, and take
him away, and cast him into outer darkness.
He had received the command and obeyed it.
The invitation had come to his own ears,
he'd accepted it.
He recognized the privilege of it.
But alas, alas, he did not see the
need to comply to the regulations of the
palace.
Look at the unparalleled disaster with which it
all ends up.
There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Instead of light, he finds himself in darkness.
Instead of joy, he finds himself weeping.
Instead of being in a feast, there is
gnashing of teeth with pain.
Here is a man who is trying to
treat the almighty God as if God were
but a man.
That's the long and short of it.
Here is a man who is dictating terms
to the king of the palace.
Yes, I'm coming, but I'm coming as I
please.
You see, God won't have it.
He won't have it.
And it matters not what your status may
be in society, how learned, how cultured, how
rich, how wise.
He will not.
And though you see the table spread, your
condemnation will be the greater.
For all the years of your eternal misery,
you will have the memory of the bliss
of the banqueting hall that you missed, the
things you saw but could not partake of,
and the king's face that might have smiled
in grace upon you had you accepted his
terms as well as his invitation, but which
is now a face of anger.
These were two dangers, our Lord, so existing
among the ancient hearers of the message proclaimed
by his disciples and apostles and by himself.
Has time changed?
Are there those who still disregard the royal
invitation to a royal feast?
Are there those among us tonight who have
been invited not once nor twice?
God in his infinite compassion has told you
of the festal, festal provisions of grace that
bring the very bread of pardon and the
wine of peace into the experience of a
man and a woman here upon earth.
And you've turned it down.
And he's come again.
Now this is the wonder of grace.
He's come again.
And in the infinity of his mercy and
compassion, he strikes the same chord in you
years again tonight in this church here in
Mars.
And he says the feast is ready.
There's yet room to spare.
At last, not a seat will be vacant,
but will you be there?
Clothed not in your own righteousness, not coming
as you please, but as he pleases.
Coming to the one who disrobes you of
your sin, and there is only one.
Coming to him who takes away the filthy
garments of our own unrighteousness and self-righteousness,
and who clothes with his own, counsels and
doth touch the heart of it.
When in that lovely hymn that we shall
sing just now he said this, Jesus, thy
blood and righteousness, my beauty is, my glorious
breath.
Midst flaming worlds, he's thinking of the angels
and the archangels, midst flaming worlds in these
arrayed, with joy shall I lift up my
head.
There is not a man, there is not
an angel, nor an archangel that can point
a finger, find a fault, see a flaw.
May I say so reverently, not even the
almighty God himself.
Now this takes your breath away.
You're aware of your evil and your sin
and the pollution of your heart as I
am of mine.
This takes a man's breath away.
But listen, a man who appears before God
in Christ, he appears in such impeccable righteousness
that even God himself finds no fault in
him.
He is of God made unto us wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, and we are complete
in him.
Oh, come to the feet.
And in order to enjoy the paradise of
God, come to the roving room tonight.
Let him disrobe you, let him take your
rags away, let him take your sins away,
let him clothe you with his righteousness.
This is the gospel, and it is for
you, the invitation of God tonight.
Let us pray.
Now, heavenly Father, we are humbled when we
think of this kind of picture given by
our Lord of the hearts of men and
of the perversity of men made of the
same natural stuff as we are.
We see ourselves reflected in so much of
this, and so we acknowledge our sins as
we think of the sins of others.
But our Lord, we thank thee that once
again this is a day, this is a
night of grace.
There's a star in the sky, and it
shines right down to where we are.
And it tells us of the roving room,
where men who come in their own garments
that are sin-spoilt are robed for thy
presence.
Bring us all there that we may see
thy face, and enjoy thy peace, and thy
presence at thy table now, and at last
in thy glory.
For Jesus Christ's sake.
Amen.