#401 Fridays With Pastor Jim Bachmann: "Unbelievable Unbelief"

Let's turn in our Bibles this morning to the 22nd chapter of Matthew, verses 1-14. This is the parable of the wedding feast, yet another parable about the kingdom of God. Jesus told this parable during Passover week.

He saw the great multitudes of... the volume just dropped off for some reason. Let's turn in our Bibles this morning to the 22nd chapter of Matthew, verses 1-14. The parable of the wedding feast, yet another parable about the kingdom of God. It was Passover week as Jesus told this parable. The city of Jerusalem was crowded with thousands of visitors and as Jesus looked at the multitude, he saw them as a sheep without a shepherd, he saw far too many of them as unsaved and unaware of their danger. And therefore, in these last days of his ministry, his teaching became more and more solemn as we will see in the parable this morning. I'm reminded of the words of the famous 17th century Puritan, Richard Baxter, who once said of his own preaching, I preached as never sure to preach again, as a dying man to dying men. And even more so could this be said of our Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we thank you for the teaching of our Savior, we thank you for his atoning work in our behalf and pray that you would quicken us this morning, give us ears to hear and hearts that would respond eagerly and with delight to what your spirit would teach us.

Spare us from deceiving ourselves and being unsaved and unaware of our danger. And so to that end, we commit this time for our good and our growth, our salvation and for the glory of God through Christ our Lord, amen. And again Jesus spoke to them in parables saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. Again he sent other servants saying, tell those who are invited, see, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered and everything is ready, come to the wedding feast. But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm and the other to his business while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully and killed them. The king was angry and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, the wedding feast is ready but those invited were not worthy.

Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find. And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found both bad and good 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 and he said to him, friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?

And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth for many are called but few are chosen. All flesh is grass and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers and the flower fades but the word of our God stands forever. Let's start with a question. What do you believe is the biggest problem in the church today? Is it preaching? Is it theology?

Is it commitment or the lack thereof? I would suggest to you that if not the biggest problem, certainly one of the biggest problems, is the same problem Jesus was facing in the final days of his ministry as he looked over the multitudes and it is simply this, as we look over the multitudes of people who are in the church or members of the church around the world, far too many are unsaved and unaware of their danger. This is the third of three parables that Jesus told. It all started in the previous chapter with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. After that Jesus cleansed the temple, cast out the money changers and had a stern warning for them.

And after that he cursed the fig tree and after that those troublesome chief priests and elders showed up and said, Jesus, tell us by whose authority you do these things. They challenged him and Jesus answered, albeit indirectly, with these three consecutive parables beginning with the parable of two sons, one of whom refused to follow his father's instruction, followed by the parable of the wicked tenants who refused to pay the landowner what was due him, followed by this parable of the wedding feast where the invited guests refused to attend the party. And so we begin this morning, point number one, by noticing the inexplicable indifference of the religious leaders to whom this parable was primarily addressed, their inexplicable indifference to the Lord Jesus Christ and his great work, verses three through five, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast but they would not come. And he sent other servants saying, tell those who were invited, see, I've prepared my dinner. My ox and my fat calves have been slaughtered and everything is ready.

Come to the wedding feast. But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business. This was stubborn, willful indifference. They would not come, verse three. They paid no attention, verse five. Jesus was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Here we have a king who went to a lot of trouble. He slaughtered the fattened calves and he slaughtered the oxen and he prepared the dinner.

But the leadership was inexplicably indifferent and had no appreciation for the sacrifice, the effort, the cost, the honor, and the opportunity of attending this great feast. I performed a number of weddings in my ministry. They've all been interesting.

I could keep you well entertained by telling you some very exciting stories. We had a wedding at Cheekwood one summer that a big black snake interrupted and threw the place into utter confusion and bedlam of the worst sort before finally order was restored after some 10 or 15 minutes. One of the first weddings I ever did was atop Lookout Mountain. The groom was a soccer player at Covenant College whose team did far better than he thought and advanced to the playoffs and lo and behold the next playoff game was scheduled the same afternoon of his evening wedding which shouldn't have been a problem. But lo and behold the game went into overtime and he was the goalie and he couldn't very well leave and so he was late, quite late to his own wedding, so late in fact that many of his invited guests gave up and left and went home not knowing what had transpired. But here in Matthew 22 the situation was even worse because it wasn't as though these guests showed up and left early. They just never showed up in the first place. They would not come. They paid no attention.

It mattered not how great the cost was or the sacrifice or the honor of going. They simply were inexplicably indifferent and the Lord Jesus Christ was here exposing the scandal, the great scandal of this inexplicable indifference. Jesus came to his own people and his own people received him not. His own people had been so long looking for the Messiah and praying for the Messiah and expecting and watching for the Messiah to come and at long last here he was. Every day living among them, breathing, walking, talking, preaching, teaching, performing signs and wonders and miracles that time and again attested to his person and work. Truly he was the Son of God as the Roman centurion said.

He was the Christ, the Son of the living God as Peter said. But they missed it. They paid no attention. They refused to buy in to him, to his person and his work. And I tell you it ought to send a shiver down our spines that these people who were so eager to see the Messiah nevertheless so easily and so confidently made such a ghastly mistake.

It was unbelievable unbelief on the part of people who should have known better. Now this inexplicable indifference was made inexplicable secondly by the fact that the invitation itself was an incredible invitation verses 9 and 10. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find and those servants went out in the roads and gathered all whom they found both bad and good so the wedding hall was filled with guests. What made this invitation so incredible? Number one it came from the king. Number two it was absolutely free, all expenses paid.

And number three it was indiscriminate. The doors were open to both good and bad. A marvelous, unbelievable invitation for anyone who wanted to partake. Weddings are important as you know. You have been in weddings, you have been married perhaps, you have had children get married. We've had three children, two daughters, one son get married. We found out as nearly everyone finds out that weddings take a lot of work and can cost a lot of money and particularly for the brides we had to take some deep breaths along the way. But they were happy occasions, they were large weddings, it was a joyful time. But we learned something that surprised us which was the number of people who failed to RSVP to our invitation. And we assumed it was just a careless mistake or oversight, perhaps the invitation was lost in the mail, who knows?

But one must come to grips with the fact that what may be of the utmost importance to you may not matter at all, may not be a blip on the radar to someone else. And by the way as you've noticed I'm not king. I'd like to be king, you'd like to be king but we're not king and we're never going to be king but this man was king. This wasn't just any wedding invitation and wedding invitations are all special but how much more so one that came from the king. As this one did, what an honor to be on the recipient list, to have an invitation to attend this tremendous celebration. People should have cleared their schedules and circled the date on the calendar and made this of the highest priority but instead they paid no attention. And they refused to come, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, an inexplicable indifference to an incredible invitation, I mean who in their right mind would ignore an invitation from the king himself.

Just two or three years ago Kristin and I received a very fancy ornate letter in the mail and it turned out to be an invitation to the presidential prayer breakfast, the national prayer breakfast that takes place every year in Washington D.C. And wow we were impressed, we wondered how in the world we got this sort of thing and we felt like King Trump himself had personally invited us. And so we made plans to go and we went and we settled into our hotel room and after we went downstairs and stood in a long line to get the packet of information for the conference and got to the front of the line and we were told we needed to go to another line. So we went to this other line and stood for a while and finally made it to the front and when we made it to the front we were given the bad news. And the bad news was that we owed X number of dollars and that X required another deep breath on our part. The invitation said nothing about the cost, we probably wouldn't have gone, even gone to the conference had we known of the cost but there we were.

And so deep breath and all we pulled out the checkbook and paid the bill. This was free and this came from the King and this was completely indiscriminate, both good and bad were invited to come and no one was disqualified. Just as no one is disqualified from the kingdom of God, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved, rich and poor and good and bad and black and white and male and female, Jew and Greek, whosoever, good and bad. Had the opportunity to enjoy the feast of a lifetime but those troublesome chief priests and elders paid no attention and refused to go because they cared more about their farms and more about their businesses than they did the kingdom of God if they cared about it at all. And so in their minds, the invitation was not incredible, the invitation was worthless but for others, as Jesus taught elsewhere, it was just the opposite. For others, the invitation was priceless, like the pearl of great price. And when that man found that pearl of great price, you remember what he did? He went to his farm, no.

He went to his business, no. He sold everything he had in order to purchase the pearl of great price, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. That's the kingdom of God, it's the treasure hidden in the field that man finds and he does whatever it takes to purchase that treasure, to obtain that treasure. And it was indeed a priceless invitation for those who were far away, for those who would fall into the bad category, the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame, the prostitutes, the outcasts, the tax collectors, the sinners, the far away, the strangers and aliens to the covenants of promise, the poor in spirit. They saw this and cherished it as an honor of all honors and a blessing above all others.

Philip Yancey has told a wonderful story and every time I read this parable I think of his story. I think I've shared it with you before but it bears repeating again about a young woman who was engaged to be married, so excited. But sadly her fiancé came down with a bad case of cold feet and canceled the engagement.

And double sadly she was unable to obtain a refund for her reception. And as she thought about it she decided to go ahead with the party and invite not her wedding guests but send the invitations to homeless shelters and to rescue missions. In honor of her former fiancé she changed the menu to boneless chicken. And that summer night June 1990 in Boston the Hyatt Hotel hosted a party like no other party before Philip Yancey describes it by saying that warm summer night in downtown Boston people who were used to peeling scraps of pizza off cardboard boxes instead dined on chicken cordon bleu.

Waiters in tuxedos served hors d'oeuvres to senior citizens propped up by crutches and aluminum walkers. Bag ladies, vagrants and addicts took one night off from the hard life on the sidewalks and sipped champagne, ate chocolate wedding cake and danced a big band Melodies into the night. It's a wonderful picture of the kingdom of God with the exception that it only lasted one night. This was an everlasting feast. Jesus hears talking about the kingdom of God, good and bad, free, indiscriminate. Come enjoy fellowship with the king. Come you who are thirsty says the prophet, come to the waters and you who have no money and you who have no merit and you who have nothing.

Come and feast with the king, the spirit and the brad say come, leave the farms and leave the businesses and seize this golden opportunity to obtain the pearl of great price. An incredible invitation which made the indifference so unreasonable and inexplicable but then third and last on this most solemn note, we're introduced to one of the guests who did come to the feast but who turned out to be an independent idiot. Verse 11 and 12, but when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment and he said to him, friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?

And he was speechless. There's a man who had enough sense to come to the feast. He wasn't about to let a good meal pass him by but he didn't have enough sense to dress appropriately and people always want to know, well, what should he have worn?

What's this wedding garment? What's the symbolism? What's the meaning here?

And the fact is we don't know. There are a lot of wonderful theories as to what it may be but what we do know is this, that the king didn't like it and the king was offended. In some way the king was disrespected by this after all the king had done. Here's a man who insisted on coming in his own way and on his own terms, who refused to be a team player and do what everybody else did, what everybody else found easy to do and for one silly little foolish, as the hymn writer says, gilded toy of dust, one silly little idol he held onto and while it, I'm even using the words little and silly, while it seemed that way it had disastrous, damnable consequences because the king says in verse 13, bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth for many are called but few are chosen.

Such a tragedy. He was so close. He was in the banqueting hall. He could smell the food if not taste it but he insisted on doing it his way and close, you see close doesn't work. Close doesn't count.

King Agrippa was close to the kingdom. Most you persuade me to be a Christian, he said to Paul and Jesus said to the scrub, you're not far from the kingdom of God but close doesn't get us in. Close gets us into outer darkness. Close gets us to that place where there's eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth because he knew he was so close and for a silly idol, a silly issue, he forfeited his place in the everlasting kingdom and proved that he was not chosen, called, invited, yes, he heard that general invitation but he wasn't chosen after all and let me say I believe this man represents thousands of people in our churches today who care about their farms and care about their businesses but are false sons in her pail, false sons in the church as the hymn writer says. They hear the call of the gospel, that general call, not the effectual call but the general call. They hear it, they're close, they attend, maybe they join, maybe they contribute but at the end of the day they're not hungry and they're not hard after God, they're not hard after the kingdom of God. Other things are much more important, they care about their pleasure, they care about their hobbies, they care about their success, they care about their power, their farms or businesses and the kingdom of God is not on their radar and they hear that general call and they assume it's meant for someone else but not intended for them. How do we know we're chosen?

I tell people not to worry about that. That's the business of God, that's in the mind of God. If you want to make your calling and election sure as I believe as Peter said, repent of your sins, repent of nominalism, repent of that dreadful lukewarmness, repent of that unwillingness to engage with the body of Christ and seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness like the deer pants after the water brooks, like the man sells everything to obtain the pearl of great price.

Seek God with all your heart and you will know that you've made your calling and election sure because as C.S. Lewis once said, a lukewarm faith or I think he said it was a moderated religion is really no religion at all and much more amusing to the devil. Let's pray. Oh Father, we pray that you'd spare us from deceiving ourselves, spare us from lukewarmness and nominalism. We thank you for your wonderful invitation, awaken us if we're slumbering, quicken us if we are in danger, alert us Lord lest we settle for just getting close to your kingdom, make us hungry, make us fervent and passionate all for Jesus. Worldlings prize their gems of beauty and cling to gilded toys of dust. Father we would rest beneath your wings, we would be all for Jesus. So rid us of every idol and every hindrance that would impede our devotion to you and help us to love you with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and we ask this in the matchless name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.