Gospel of Matthew in chapter 22. Chapter 22. As we continue our march through Matthew. It's football season, so I'm going to indulge myself just a moment here by using football illustrations. So forgive me, I don't do it often, but I'm gonna begin that way this morning. It was cool enough this morning and yesterday to play in football. We can use it as an illustration, maybe, it's football weather. But I, to my eternal shame, grew up a Cowboys fan. And sadly, I still remain one to this day. It's a curse my father laid on me and my father's father before him. And so I noticed something as football season cranked up this year. Actually, this popped into my head as I was thinking about this message today. But when I was really young, everybody in Arkansas just about were Cowboys fans, everybody. Now, there were some exceptions that maybe they moved in from somewhere or whatever, but that was almost universally true. But because back then, in the early 90s, when I was, you know, seven, eight, nine, 10 years old, they were good. And everybody was a Cowboys fan. Everybody had hats, they had t-shirts, they had jackets. Yet as the years went on, they hadn't been so good. Matter of fact, it's been, More years than I care to remember since they've won a playoff game, right? So it's strange to notice, though, that as the years went on and they weren't so good, the Cowboys fans disappeared in Arkansas. They were here in droves, and then suddenly, somehow, someway, a bunch of people turned up as Patriots fans and Rams fans, depending on who was good. And somehow, those same people have been Chiefs fans all their life since about three years ago. Y'all ever notice that? The people, they moved with the times. They were not true believers. Some people hated the Cowboys from the beginning. Some have just grown into it. But today, that's a silly way to introduce a very serious subject. In a really startling way, we're going to see somewhat of a similar dynamic, again, much, much more serious, be illustrated by Jesus in this parable. Within this text of Scripture, what we're going to see is we're going to see three types of people identified. Four, maybe if you want to count the servants, but three that I want to focus in on today. We're going to see Guests, rebels, and pretenders in this parable that Jesus is going to share with us in this text. I want you to look with me here in chapter 22 of the Gospel of Matthew, beginning in verse 1. There the Bible says this, And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said, The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding. and they were not willing to come. Again, he sent out other servants saying, tell those who are invited, see, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and fatted calf are killed, and all things are ready, come to the wedding. But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business. And the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully and killed them. But when the king heard about it, he was furious and sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Then he said to his servants, the wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore, go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding. So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, bind him hand and foot, take him away and cast him into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth for many are called, but few are chosen. Let's pray. Lord, help us this morning as we look at your word, Help it to bear fruit in each of our lives. God, we just ask that you'd glorify yourself in our midst in these moments in Christ's name. Amen and amen. Jesus introduces this parable and much like the last couple of parables that he shared, there's a king or there's a master that's there that is representative of God. And he has arranged in this parable a marriage supper, there's going to be a wedding. Marriage is repeatedly used in the Bible to illustrate God's relationship with his people, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. We often think about the idea of the church being the bride of Christ, and that's something that's used repeatedly in the New Testament. Here in this parable, the bride is not discussed. But in other places, we hear of what's called often the marriage supper of the Lamb. That's over in Revelation 19, verse 6 through 9. The Bible says, Therein I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters, as the sound of mighty thundering, saying, Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reigns. Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come. and his wife has made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, Write, Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, These are the true sayings of God." So this imagery of marriage is used all over the Bible. wedding feasts, the relationship between husband and wife, it all is used in different places to picture for us relationship with God, being a part of the kingdom of God. And so in this parable, the Bible begins by telling us, Jesus begins by telling us that this king arranged this marriage and he sends out his servants. He sends out his servants to go and invite those to the wedding. The ones that he has said that need to be invited, they go out and they share the invitation. And the Bible tells us there in verse three that they were not willing to come. They were not going to come. Now, this looks like probably we might best put it as something like a save the date, right? That this wasn't going out and saying, hey, it's time to come right now. They were going out and telling them, hey, this is coming up. All right? You need to be prepared to come. This is going to happen." And they refused right then. They said, no, we're not coming to something like that. I don't want any part of it. These servants go out and find these unwilling invitees, and they reject their initial call. Here, the servants are likely picturing for us the prophets of the Old Testament. I think we can rightly take it and apply it to the disciples, the apostles in the New Testament. We can rightly apply it to all those who would proclaim the gospel, servants who are going out. Most closely here probably again associated with the prophets of the Old Testament. They're going out and they're proclaiming to those who are invited to the wedding. Almost certainly a representation of the Jews. He goes and they tell him to come and they're rejected. Jesus is illustrating for us the thing that we talked about a lot last week, which is the fact that the prophets of God, the servants of God, all throughout the Old Testament would go to the people of God proclaiming His truth. And time and time and time again, they were rejected. But I ask you here to notice the patience of the king in verse 4. Again, he sent out other servants saying, tell those who are invited, see I've prepared my dinner, my oxen and fatted calf are killed, and all things are ready, come to the wedding. Some of them are going to be distracted by the things of daily life, some of them are going to turn and abuse the servants of God. But the king shows patience with those he's inviting here. He sends more servants to proclaim the feast is ready. You see, friends, in the Old Testament, the sum total of the proclamation of the prophets ultimately points to this. There is a Messiah coming. There's a whole lot of other things we could talk about in the Old Testament prophets and all that they said. But if you had to sum it up in one sentence, the summation of the entire law and prophets is this, that the Messiah is coming. Here he comes. And they were being rejected, they were being abused, the prophets of God, they were being treated terribly. And now, In this time, in Jesus' time, the proclamation is continuing to go out. Even when Jesus comes, even when the apostles are on the scene in the book of Acts, they are still taking the gospel message, the message of the kingdom of God, first to the Jews. To the Jew and also to the Greek, right? Jesus said that this, I have come for the household of Israel. The king has shown great patience with those who have been invited to the feast. He persists with them. He has care towards them. Again, the imagery of the parable is that some drift away after the cares of this world. They're distracted by that. And others, they are adamant in rebellion. They take these servants. They kill them. And finally, the king's patience wears thin. He's invited them. He's gone again and told them the feast is ready, right? Jesus comes proclaiming everything that you're looking for, right? You got to save the date or at least know that the Messiah is coming. Here it is. The feast is ready. Come to the table. And they say no. And worse than that, they beat Him, kill Him, crucify Him. And so the king's response is strong. It says, when the king heard about it, he was furious. And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Those who were invited, those who rebelled, these are the rebels, right? These are the ones who are rebels. These are the ones who just outright reject the truth. And we can, I think, rightly picture that as the Jews of Jesus' time and even the Jews of the Old Testament, but we can picture that in our context of anyone who hears the truth of the gospel message, of the life and the death and the resurrection of Christ, and just vehemently says, no, I want no part of that. The picture here for that kind of person, the hard-hearted person, the vehement rebel, is destruction. Now I believe it's likely here when Jesus speaks of the destruction of those who rejected this initial invitation, rejected a secondary invitation. I think this destruction is probably very emblematic of what happens in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. when the Romans decimate Jerusalem, scatter the Jewish people abroad. And the historians say that when Jerusalem is conquered, that the bloodshed was so awful that there were places in the city where blood ran ankle-deep. It was absolute destruction that took place. I think that that's probably a part of what Jesus is talking to, but ultimately, it points to the greater destruction and judgment that comes to all of those who would reject the invitation of God. The king's response to the rejection of His invitation to the wedding of His Son is destruction and judgment. All those who would reject the message of the wedding of the Son of God, the coming together of the Bride of Christ that is the church, and the Son of God who is the Lord Jesus Christ, that invitation, that is the gospel message. That is the truth that there is a Savior who has come, who has lived perfectly, who's died on a cross for sin, who's been laid in the tomb, who's risen from the grave and proven to all of us that He is God in the flesh, that He is a worthy Savior, that He can forgive our sins. That message is the invitation. More than that, it's the command. The command of God is repent. All ye lands, repent and believe in the gospel. There's destruction that comes for the rebel. And most of us say, well, okay, praise God. A rebel ought to be dealt with. We can get behind that. Hold on to that thought for a moment. Notice what happens next. If we do picture really the initial focus of the parable as being the Jews who reject the message of God in the Old Testament and in the coming of Christ, then what we see here in verse 8 through 10 is a wider call. Then he said to his servants, the wedding is ready. But those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore, go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding. So the servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. The king tells his servants, those who I invited, they were not worthy. They're not worthy. Their actions showed their unworthiness. Any who would reject the invitation of a king, a good and benevolent king, obviously, in this example, to the wedding of his son, they have shown themselves unworthy. Anyone who would reject the wonderful, beautiful message, the offer that is placed on the table in the work and the person of Jesus Christ, have shown themselves not worthy of the kingdom of God. He tells them, go to the highways and the hedges, go find everyone, go broadcast this invitation widely. You see, friends, I think for us, as I say often when we approach this type of statement, that this is really, really good news for the vast majority of us who have no ethnically Jewish heritage. The rejection of Christ by Israel allows the gospel, God says, we will go wider. Obviously, it was in this plan the whole time. We can see that throughout the Old Testament, but it comes first to the Jew, and they reject. And the Bible says that the gospel will go out, that the kingdom of God will grow until the fullness of the Gentiles come in. Why? Because so that the Jews might be provoked. to envy, to jealousy, that they might see all that God has done for the Gentile peoples and they will look upon it and they will be moved by the power of the Spirit of God to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ. This wider call goes out because if you don't have ethnically Jewish heritage, this is good news. The gospel comes to all. Indiscriminately, no matter what, Nation, creed, or color, the gospel goes out. That's what the King says. Take it everywhere. Take it to the highways and the byways. Do you notice that it says that the good and the bad? Broadcast the invitation. Friends, I'm here to tell you this morning that I think salvation is a work all of God. I think God is in control of everything that has to do with salvation, don't get me wrong, but anybody that would say that we should not broadcast the invitation of the gospel far and wide is somebody that's not reading the same Bible that I am. We proclaim the gospel to everyone, the drawing, the saving, that's up to God, but we are commanded to carry the gospel to the neighborhood and to the nations. The gospel's not just a message for a small group. It's to be broadcast everywhere. Mark 16, 15 says this. Jesus speaking here says, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Do you notice that they came? They go to the highways and the byways. They go amongst the rich and the poor. They go wherever. And they carry the message. They carry the invitation of the king. And the hall was filled with guests. Praise God. As the gospel goes out in our time, in our age, as it goes out and as we await the return of Christ, that there are people coming in from everywhere. They're coming in poor and rich. They're coming in from the east and the west and the north and the south, every tribe, every nation, every tongue. The gospel goes out far and wide. So we see that there's those who have come in. They're guests now, right? The hall was filled. But something happens here. The king comes to see all these guests. The king comes to see who's sitting at his table. The king comes to see who's there among his people, who his servants have brought in. And in verse 11, it says he comes to see the guests and he sees a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. Now, we would say, well, what does that matter? But the imagery here is powerful. What's being shown to us here is powerful. Now, there's a couple of things to consider when we start talking about this wedding garment historically and practically according to the parable. Practically speaking, they went and gathered these people up in a hurry, right? They went out and said, hey, the king's having a feast for the wedding of his son. You need to come. And they went. Well, nobody would expect, you know, if you were walking down the street and somebody came and said something like that to you, you'd say, well, I'll come, but, you know, I got a little dirt on my jeans. I got—just come. Right? Practically speaking, if we want to take the parable directly here, we would say, well, it makes sense that they wouldn't have the clothing they would need. But also, historically speaking, there was a known practice, particularly amongst the wealthy, that when a wedding like this happened, that the guests were, in fact, issued wedding garments. that they wanted certain things to be certain ways, and they handed out wedding garments. Now, some will say, well, that wasn't in this region, that wasn't in that region, but it was something that was practiced in what's called the Ancient Near East, in that region, over a course of period of time by some people. And so, the giving of a wedding garment wouldn't have been unheard of, but Naturally here, the king would have given, had to have given wedding garments, right? Because he's pulled these people in from everywhere. If he wanted them to be dressed to some standard. He comes, he sees this man, he doesn't have on the wedding garment. He asked him a question, friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment? The Bible says he was speechless. See, everyone else was properly clothed. Everyone else had on what they were supposed to have on. This reality, the truth that the wedding garments had been provided for the guests, this adds another layer of self-righteousness to this. Because this man thought his garments were good enough or better than what was offered by the king. the garments were being offered, that they were being handed out, and he refused them. I believe this is the picture of the self-righteous pretender, or what we might call the false convert. This is someone who sits among the guests, sits among God's people, God's people who are all robed in the righteousness of Christ. And they are there as a pretender trying to soak up what they think are their rightful benefits. And yet spiritually speaking, they stick out like a sore thumb because they are robed only in their own righteousness and not that of Christ. They're not what they claim to be. See, the Bible has something to say about our righteousness and what kind of garment our righteousness is. Isaiah says it in Isaiah 64 6, but we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. We fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. Our righteousness is filthy rags. And hear me when I say this this morning, that a filthy rag is no garment for the king's table. A filthy rag is not what we wear when we sit at the king's table, and this has nothing to do with the clothes you got on your back this morning. This has everything to do with recognizing whether or not we wear the robes of the righteousness of Christ that he has given to us by faith in the gospel, or if we're pretending and wearing only our own filthy rag's righteousness. A filthy rag is no garment for the king's table. My concern, which I think has been a concern of pastors, preachers, evangelists in the modern age, Billy Graham even said one time he believed that 70%, 80%, 90%, depending on where you read the quote, of the people that came forward in his crusades, that they weren't doing business with God. They were just kind of following the crowd. I'm concerned that we have many a person out there that calls themselves by the name of Christ, and yet they are gathered together with the people of God, wearing not the righteous robe of Christ's righteousness, but instead wearing the filthy rags of their own righteousness, self-righteousness. Friends, this man was punished. Just like the rebels, the rebels were punished, they were destroyed, their city was burned. This man is carried away, bound hand and foot, cast into the outer darkness. That's language Jesus uses many times to describe hell. He's cast into judgment where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. The rebels are dealt with. judge destroyed. The pretender is dealt with, judged, and destroyed. It is only the guest that remains at the table. I think verse 14 for us underlines not just the last part of the parable. I think we make a mistake. Sometimes we only wanna kinda attach it to the last part of the parable, but it covers for us the whole parable. It's the summary statement for the whole thing. And it says, for many are called, but few are chosen. The many and the few. You see, there are many who've heard the call. The proclamation of God's truth goes out today like it's never gone out before. I know we stand and we lament and we say Christianity's on the decline and this and that and the other, but I can tell you through the miracle of modern technology that the gospel is being proclaimed in more places right now than any other time. Our church folks will tell you every once in a while, we print out a report from our sermon audio, and somehow, someway, the sermons that we post on sermon audio are regularly listened to in 14 to 17 different countries every month. Now, how that's possible, I have no idea. I know it's on the internet, but I don't understand how they're finding it. There's thousands upon thousands upon thousands of churches represented on that. I'm here to tell you this morning that the gospel is going out in a way now that it's never gone out before. More people are hearing the truth today than have ever heard the truth before. And many are responding. But friends, we have to understand the call goes out. Many are called. Some respond as the rebel and say, I don't want to hear that nonsense. I don't care nothing about that Jesus business. Get that out of my face. They will have their reward if they remain that way. Destruction. But the pretender is the one that somehow concerns me more. because they claim to be what they are not and perhaps have even deceived themselves after some time. And so I look and I see that the gospel goes out, the call goes wide. Some rebel, some pretend, and some respond in faith. By their actions, they show that they are among the chosen of God, How many people have heard the truth of the gospel? I can't even imagine. But again, some are open rebels who outright reject, some are pretenders who claim to be what they're not, but some by the righteous response show that they are this chosen of God mentioned here, true guests and sincere believers. Friends, my question for you, for me, for all of us this morning is to ask the question rightly, who are you? to be willing to ask that question to other people around us. Who are you? Are you a rebel in open rejection of God's truth? Are you a pretender who has only your own goodness to fall back on, claiming to be something you're not? Or are you one of the true family of God who has repented of your sins and placed your faith in the life and the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ? Many are called, few are chosen. You may have heard it all your life, but if you've not responded in repentance and faith, it matters not. Doesn't matter what your grandma, mama did, doesn't matter what your mama did, doesn't matter what your daddy did, doesn't matter. No grandchildren in the kingdom of God, only children that respond to the gospel message and become the children of our Father in heaven. So maybe you're comfortable and confident where you are. I praise God for that. Maybe you're questioning. I would encourage you to dive deep into the Word of God in prayer and make sure you've got your feet on solid ground, the rock of Christ. And if you're here and you're a rebel or here for whatever reason, you're here and you don't want anything to do with God, you don't want anything to do with Jesus, I'm glad you're here. But hear me when I say, whether you're a pretender who's put on all the niceties of Christianity but not submitted to it, or you're a rebel who stands up and says, get out of my face with that Jesus stuff. Whatever the case may be, the end is the same. It's judgment. So I beg of you to look to Jesus this morning. Christian, if you're here and you're comfortable and you're confident, this is the message we take. Repent and believe in the gospel. Don't be a pretender, be a repenter. repent, and believe the gospel. We carry this message as the servants of God, far and wide, proclaiming to all, come to Jesus, trust in him, repent, and believe in his message. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. I ask that you'd use it this morning. I ask that you would move upon the hearts of all of us here. Whether we're sincere believers, pretenders, or rebels, God, I pray your word would do work among us. Whether it's to encourage us to be as the servants in the parable and go out to the highways and byways sharing your truth, inviting folks to come in, or whether we need a hard heart softened by the power of your spirit. Whatever the case may be, God, I pray you'd move, you'd work, you'd do the things only you can do. In our midst this morning, we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen and amen.