Word of Salvation – Vol. 26 No. 13 – January 1981

 

An Honour To Be Invited

 

Sermon by Rev. D. K. Baird on Matthew 22:1-14

Scripture Reading: Matthew 22:1-14

Psalter Hymnal: 58; 413; 230; 95

 

Let me ask you: did anyone receive an invitation to the royal wedding? No. Did you expect to get one? Did you look in the mailbox every day for that embossed envelope? No. None of us expected to be invited.

Of course, some people you did expect to be invited like the Prime Minister, the Premier perhaps and the Chief Justice. Certain people could be sure of it. Others would regard it as the social coup of the year. I believe Dame Edna had to concede that she had not received an invitation.

Now just imagine this. Imagine that the invitations were sent out and received, and the date for reply came, and passed… and it was discovered that everyone had declined! Imagine the consternation in Buckingham Palace! What an embarrassment: the media must not get to know.

The Palace is not, however, content to let the matter rest there. A new round of invitations must go out. This time it is by personal couriers, who go to the homes concerned, knock on the door, and convey the message: “Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, requests the pleasure of the company of so-and-so at the wedding of her son…….!” But the couriers find the door slammed in their faces. Of course some politely decline, saying they have pressing business commitments that week and couldn’t possibly get away. But others get quite nasty about it and some of the couriers even get beaten up.

Of course such a thing would never happen would it? Of course not. But it did happen. Not to Queen Elizabeth, but to a monarch much more important than her. We see it described in the parable. The parable is about the Lord God, the King, who has made a wedding feast for His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. All through the Old Testament the Lord sent out invitations to the people you would expect to be invited: the Jews. They had the closest connections with the King. The King had brought them into covenant with Himself; He had revealed Himself to them; He had told them very early that they would be the first to receive an invitation when the time came.

Time and time again the Lord sent His servants the prophets, saying, the time is getting closer, get ready for the feast. But in general there was a decided lack of interest: “Stop bothering us, we have more pressing things to think about.” Some even got nasty and some of the prophets were actually killed. They thought so little of the Lord God; they did not see it as an honour to be present at the wedding of His Son.

Even when the Christ appeared, and the Lord said, “This is my beloved Son, listen to Him”, they still snubbed the invitation and couldn’t be bothered with it. So in the end, “The King was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.” (verse 7). Thus it happened to the city of Jerusalem in A.D.70. Nevertheless the Lord continued to send out invitations. In Acts 13:46 we read of Paul saying, “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.”

So the invitation of the gospel has been sent to everyone and anyone, all over the world, whether they seemed worthy of it or not, whether they expected it or not. It has even been sent to people like us. The invitation says, Come and share with Christ in the wonderful free gift of salvation. Let’s celebrate and rejoice together.

So in terms of the parable:

“Then he said to his servants, ‘the wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests”. (verses 8-10).

What would the Lord say to us here today from this story? There are, no doubt, a number of things.

1. Probably most of us here are Gentiles; if not all of us. We are some of those whom the servants gathered in off the street. We are not the people who were at first invited. We are not among those whom one would expect to have been invited. It was the Jews first and then us. Gratitude is called for here ― we are to be doubly grateful that even we have been included. This is not an aspect that we are accustomed to think of over much, but it is a prominent theme in the New Testament, and whenever we read of it we should become humbly grateful.

2. In spite of what we have just seen, there may be some people here today who might have thought they were likely candidates for an invitation, and really deserved an invitation. You may have grown up in a Christian home. You were always surrounded with the Bible’s message of Jesus. Within the covenant community you became familiar with the privileges of the church. And you became too familiar with them ― a familiarity that breeds contempt ― and you started to think you somehow deserved it all. You may well take the invitation lightly, not as an honour, but as a right! You regard yourself as the one who is important. As for the invitation you will take it or leave it; the Lord can wait until its convenient for you. You have then become blind to the great honour it is to be invited to the banquet of salvation. No longer are you accepting that salvation as an undeserved gift. That is a perilous attitude to persist in. In the parable the Lord bypassed such people.

3. If we received an invitation to Prince Charles’ wedding, we would know it was a great honour (unless you were a dyed-in-the-wool republican). You would recognise it as an honour, because you would know who the Queen is, you would know who Prince Charles is. Why do the people in the parable (the Jews) have such a careless attitude to the invitation? Because they do not have much time for the King ― the Lord or for His Son the Christ. So we too have to ask ourselves the question: what is our attitude to Jesus of Nazareth? Do we grasp the point that he is no-one less than the royal Son, the Son of God? He is not a person we can treat with indifference.

4. Verse 9 reads, “Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.” No doubt they got quite a surprise that the King was interested in them. Just as we would if we received an invitation to Prince Charles’ wedding. Maybe you got a big surprise when the Lord invited you to share in his free salvation. You might have even said, “Who, me? You have to be joking!” Now it is good to be humbled and surprised that you have received an invitation. Because not one of us deserves it. We have all sinned ourselves out of the Lord’s considerations.

BUT should we keep harping on this “I’m not good enough to be a Christian” thing? And some of us do go on a bit with this, and so actually never come to see ourselves as accepted by the Lord. So what if you are not good enough? We all know that none of us is good enough, and no-one has ever been invited because they were so good they deserved it. The invitation has been sent out as an expression of the generosity of the Lord, who desires people to accept his free offer. We do not honour the Lord’s generosity by continually saying, “I’m not good enough”. We rather honour that generosity by freely and humbly accepting the offer.

5. On the other hand some one here may feel quite good enough to come into the presence of the Lord. That too is a big mistake. In the parable those brought in from off the street were given a wedding garment by the King. And they needed it! Some must have looked fairly disreputable from sleeping out on a park bench all night. We need such a wedding garment too. It is a grave mistake to think we can waltz into the presence of God as we are – with our own alleged merits and goodnesses. We must be wearing the robe of righteousness that the Lord supplies, i.e. we must be credited with the righteousness of Christ. The man in the parable who was thrown out for not having on a wedding garment represents a person who thinks he can enter God’s presence as he is – with his own “goodness”. He was self-righteous, and was cast out into hell.

From our comfortable position inside the banqueting hall, let us also look outside to the world at large. Let us today take a lesson from the way the King sends his servants out into the streets and lanes of the city to bring people in. The King wants all and sundry to be invited to share in his salvation. Such people are not going to wander in of their own accord; they wouldn’t dare! As the servants of the King we are to get out there and bring them in. We should not be content with just a cosy huddle of the privileged. Freely we have received, let us freely give.

What an honour it is to be invited to the banquet of salvation! The more we realise what a great King the Lord is, the more we realise what a great saviour the Lord Jesus is, and the more we realise what generosity is being extended here, the more we will realize what an honour it is.

Our focus of attention should be upon the King and the splendour of his whole person, and the magnificence of the salvation-event. As we focus on him we will respond with a grateful readiness to his very gracious invitation.

Amen.