Father in heaven, we thank You for a new day of life. Lord, not just another day of life to live and to breathe and to see Your goodness in all things, Lord, but this day as Your church on earth, we especially dwell on, Lord, just revel in the empty grave that Christ was nothing less than all You called Him to be and perfection and a perfect sacrifice and a resurrected life, Lord, to save us, God. So we just say thank You, and we bless Your name this morning, and we pray that Your Word, by the power of the Spirit, would all the more grow us in Christ, it would all the more turn our affections and our love for the things of God, Lord, and that You would just be made manifest in us and among us. In that we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, hey, good morning. Happy Easter to you. It’s so good to be with you. If you’re a guest with us this morning, my name’s Chad. I’m the pastor here, and we’re happy to have you celebrate Easter with us. We’re going to be in Matthew chapter 22. If you have a Bible with you and you want to turn there, Matthew chapter 22. We’ll be in verses 1-12. 1-14.

Matthew 22. 1-14.

And Matthew writes, 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, sent his servants to the kingdom of heaven, 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 another to His business, while the rest seized His servants and treated them shamefully and killed them. And 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 in 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.

My younger sister, Elena, she’s ten years younger than me. She’s getting married next month in May. And that’s weird to have a young… She’s ten years younger than me and she’s getting married. It makes me feel old. You can’t get married. You’re a baby, right? But we got the RSVP in the mail for her wedding this past week. And it was just weird to see, oh my goodness, my younger, my baby sister is getting… She’s getting married, right? Sometimes we get wedding invitations like that and we’re not very excited because we know we have to go. And it’s like, I wonder, can I get out of this one? Do I have to go to this one? Or, oh no, this is a close friend and I look forward to going to this one. You know? Easter is by and large an RSVP. It is an announcement to the world. It is a call. Jesus is called. It is a calling all into His kingdom. That’s what Easter is. That’s what the church is all about. It’s calling people into this new kingdom through this resurrected Christ. The question, I think, for us on Easter is how will you respond to the invitation? How will you respond to the call of the kingdom?

Jesus says the kingdom of heaven may be compared to, or He says elsewhere, the kingdom of heaven is like. And we’ve said multiple times, in Matthew’s Gospel, the kingdom of heaven, it’s a spiritual kingdom in us. And as much as that’s true, that the kingdom of heaven, it’s a spiritual kingdom right now inside of us as God dwells in us, there is a reminder at the very end of Jesus’ ministry, there is a reminder here that this spiritual kingdom will become a kingdom that overwhelms the earth someday. It’s a kingdom that you can’t escape. It’s a kingdom that will rule, rule all people. And Jesus is reminding them in this parable of that very thing. So it’s a present kingdom in me, but if it’s a present kingdom in me, that means I’m living for and I’m looking for that kingdom that will come. He says that kingdom is like a wedding feast.

It’s like a wedding feast. If you’ve ever been to a fancy wedding, wedding i’ve been to fancy weddings and they’re very uncomfortable aren’t they because the food’s really nice and people are dressed really good it’s a fancy place you’re like oh this isn’t me i didn’t grow up this way this is too fancy and the food i’m sure it was expensive but it doesn’t even taste good just weird you know you’ve been to like a wedding like that before i just want something simple like ham sandwiches with cheese on them or something but you go to a wedding like that and it’s illustrious and it’s amazing but the the finest wedding that you could think of um not only the best wedding you could think of beyond that more magnificent that’s what jesus is describing and that’s what the people are hearing jesus say because for a king in this time to throw a wedding feast for his own son that would have summoned the king’s greatest luxuries that would have been the king’s best expenses everything he had at his disposal to make this feast great and a feast like this would not have lasted like like I’m losing my Saturday night going to a wedding. It’s not a Saturday night thing. I mean, it’s an all week long thing, sometimes a couple week long thing. And it’s the best food and it’s the best drink and it’s the best entertainment and it’s enjoying the king and enjoying his son. And best of all, it was all free. Nothing you could bring could match anything this king has already provided. It was free.

And as would have been customary, the king sends out his servants to collect those who have already been invited. They knew a second invitation was coming and the servants are there now. And the servants say, hey, it’s time. The king summons you to come. Yet, and this would have shocked Jesus’ hearers, they would not come. This wasn’t a common folk wedding. This was a king’s invitation. And to reject the king’s invitation, the invitation was to insult the king. When the king gives an invitation, it’s a command. Come.

With an uncommon patience, this king sends more servants. And strange for a king, he pleads with these people to come. He says, don’t you know, I’ve put out my fattened calf and I’ve put out my ox and there’s a dinner and everything’s ready. Won’t you come? He pleads.

But it says that they paid no attention to him. Or the KGV renders that they considered it a light thing. A light thing that the king had invited them. They were uninterested. They were unconcerned. There was a certain weightlessness to what the king had said to them. It says one went off to his farm. Another went off to his business. In the Luke account of a similar story, one guy says, you know, I just got married and so I’ve got to take care of my wife. And another guy says, I actually just bought some land and I have to go and look at my new land. And some were so put off at the idea that this king would interrupt their little lives that they mistreat and kill the king’s servants. Which to mistreat and kill the king’s servants would have been if they had mistreated and killed the king himself.

This was treason. This was revolution, one commentator reminds us. The king, he got in the way of their good things. They had their good little life. They had their good little kingdom. And they’re apathetic and hostile towards him.

So, what does that mean? Here’s what it means. It means for centuries, even all the way back to the garden and the fall of man, God had been saying to his people, hey, you broke stuff. You ruined yourself. You ruined the world with sin. But I’m going to send my Messiah and he’s going to restore. All your laboring and your toiling in a sin-stricken world, I’m going to come and save you from it. And the meaninglessness of living life apart from knowing God, God says, I’m going to send Christ and he’s going to save you from that. Your brittle bodies, the brittle, failing nature of the world, I’m come, he’ll come and he’ll redeem all of it. How good and how faithful was God so often throughout the centuries to say to his own people, Israel, hey, I love you and I’m going to save you. And they would say time and time again, no thanks. We have our good things. We have our good things.

Jeremiah chapter 6 verse 16, the prophet says, Thus says the Lord, Stand by the roads and look and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is and walk in it and find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk in it.

Jesus will say in the next chapter in Matthew 23, 37, O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it, how often would I have, gathered your children together as him gathers her brood under her wings? And you were not willing. You were not willing.

God said, I would save you. I would save you. And they say, no, we don’t want you to save us. And he said, I would save you. I would save you. And you read all the prophets. You read all the prophets, all the prophets. And it’s God saying, but I love you and I love you and I’ll save you and I’ll save you. And God’s people saying, no, no, no. We have our good things. We have our good things. All the way up through the ministry of John the Baptist, all the way throughout even the ministry of Jesus Christ Himself. They said, no, we have our good things. Let’s kill Jesus. He threatens our good things.

And you know what’s really easy to do 2,000 years later is to open our Bibles and see all that and say, those Jews, who are they thinking? But you know what we ought to do rather is look at our own hearts. And see how we in our own hearts are just as guilty.

Friend, if you and I would on this Easter morning rightly respond to the kingdom invitation, we must come to God empty-handed. We must come empty-handed. Isaiah says in Isaiah 55, Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money, without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and you labor?

Most people aren’t the worst version of themselves, are they? Most people don’t live to murder. That’s why it’s shocking when you hear of a, what do you call that? You call that a serial killer, right? Most people don’t live to adulterate. We call them womanizers, right? Most people are not the worst versions of themselves all the time. Most people are just like the majority of the people in Jesus’ parable. They just live for their good things. Most people think, I got my cattle, I got my crops I’m fooling with, and I got this business deal going down I got to worry about. Man, I got this land I acquired, and I got a wife, and I got all this good stuff I’ve got to take care of. These are my good things, and I’m tied up with them. And you say, well, what’s so wrong with all that? I mean, couldn’t we even make the argument that God Himself created all those good things? Well, yes, He did. The problem doesn’t lie in the good thing itself. The problem lies in this. Your heart, propensity, and mind to enthrone the good thing as if it was the greatest and only things. That thing getting our greatest affection, even giving our good things more space than they deserve in our hearts. Friends, in a very real and wonderful sense, God should be seen in the, all that you could taste and touch and smell and see. There’s a lot of good food to try. There are beautiful places to see. There are things to do, and in them see the beauty, see the creativity of God. Power, authority, aren’t bad things in and of themselves, right? Think about the shepherd boy David who became king, or Daniel the slave who became powerful in Babylon. They’re not bad things. Because each good thing in its place, should cause you now to say, okay, Lord, I see this good thing, and I see you in it. I see your goodness in giving it to me, and I’m constantly asking the question, how do I leverage all my good things to bring you glory and live for you? And if it so happens to be, Lord, there are good things in my hands, there are good things in my life, and they detract from you being the greatest thing in my heart. Lord, let me happily part with that thing. That’s not how you and I live. Your sin ruined heart just like mine, has this devilish tendency to conceive of a world without God. God, away, you and I consider our good things to be our best things.

But the Father is saying to you on Easter morning, the same thing He’s been saying to His people for centuries, for millennia, what I have in my heavenly abode, all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places, a new heaven and a new earth that will commence when Christ returns, it’s so much better than any trinket, any lifestyle, anything you could want, anything you could be right now. Nothing will satisfy you like my son Jesus. And you know what it makes us think of? It makes us think of Lazarus and the rich man. Remember that story? Luke 16, he’s in hell and he calls out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue from an anguish. But Abraham said, Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things and Lazarus and like man are bad things. But now he is comforted here and you are in anguish. And besides all this between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed. So are we talking about materialism? Yes. Yes. Are we talking about comfort and security? Yes. Are we talking about power and position and desiring praise for men? Yes. We’re talking about all of your good things that are going to keep you in the outer darkness away from Christ and His kingdom because you love them more than Christ Himself. And let me tell you what I don’t want you to do this morning. I don’t want you to console yourself and say, yes, I may have been as one who has loved a thing more than Christ, but I’m not one of those aggressive and hostile people who are against Christ. That’s not me. You might as well be. To not come is to not come regardless of the reason. Do you understand the king ended up burning the whole city? The farmer lost his farm as much as the aggressive hostile man lost his life. Everything was lost. The gospel yells to you this morning, flee that city that will be destroyed with fire and run. With haste into His kingdom. Straddling the line between the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God will win you no favors. And God Himself says in Revelation, if you are lukewarm and you try to have both, I will spit you out of my mouth.

You know, and I cannot as much as I want to do it. I can’t in one sermon. I can’t in 10,000 sermons help you tease out all those little idols in your heart. Time would fail me to do it. I can’t do it for myself.

And secondly, you know, the only person that can really do that is the spirit of God wielding the sword of God. So here’s what you and I must do. We must fly to Christ daily and say, Lord, here I am with open hands. Lord, take my good things and the good things I don’t need. Take them from me. Lord, here I am. And I lay my heart on the table again. God exposed to me my sin, exposed to me how small and how silly my desires for you. Well, I love the things of the world so much. More, friend, are you willing to forsake your good things as bad things if you must so that you don’t lose Christ?

C.S. Lewis has famously said, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. You know, when you have toddlers, like, you know, one, two years old, you put so much time and energy into thinking up the best present for them. I mean, you really do. And they open it and they want to play with the box. But you’re like, but there’s the shiny red scooter thing. Like, what are you doing? And they don’t care and they don’t know. They just like the box.

Friends, you and I are just like, we like that, aren’t we? And if we would say, well, in the 21st century, I mean, we’re just bombarded with stuff and the opportunity for luxury and comfort and security. Then I say back to you, all the more reason to be in prayer all the more. All the more reason to allow the Lord to tease your heart out on a daily basis so you don’t sell your soul. And thinking about it from an evangelistic standpoint, what’s so good about the church if the world only sees the church chasing after stuff and chasing after power and chasing after security and getting in the same silly political squabbles like everybody else as if life depends on man politics, man-sized politics, right? We don’t preach a different supernatural gospel when we look and act just like the world. I want you to never use the word ownership.

You own nothing. You steward everything. You own nothing. From your talents to your money to your house to your job, your relationships, everything God has given you to make Him great, to make His kingdom known. Is that the thing for which you exist? Will you come to Christ empty-handed and say, Lord, I have no good thing unless You put it there in my hands? Amen.

Look back in verse 8. Matthew 22.

It says, Then the king 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. 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, 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. So the servants did what they were told to do. The king said, Just go out there, wherever people are, and just invite people. So they do it. It says they bring in the good and the bad. You know, that means that they brought in the morally upright, and they brought in the town drunk.

They brought in the squeaky clean Sunday school boy, and the tax collector and prostitute and thief. That means they brought in the upstanding citizen, and they brought in the illegal alien. They brought in the honest, hardworking man who provides for his people, for his family and the low life. They brought in good neighbors and they brought in bad neighbors. They brought in honest businessmen and crooked men who are cheats. It’s quite scandalous, isn’t it, Grace?

You know the commonality among all these people? The one thread running throughout all of them? They’re unworthy. The only reason that they could come was that the king had invited them to come and they took the king on his arm. They didn’t offer a merit of his invitation. That’s why they’re there. That alone.

And it says the king came in, and the king wasn’t disgusted. He wanted these people there. He invited them. He was delighted to see them. He desired them to be there. And he comes in to look at all these people filling his banquet halls, and his eye catches one man who doesn’t have on the wedding garment. Now remember, the servants rounded up these folks in a fury, quickly. Come now, come now. A lot of them poor, didn’t have the means to provide a wedding garment for themselves financially, much less have the time to have one made. This is a garment the king would have provided to everyone coming. You see what the man’s done. The man has dared come into the king’s presence, come into the king’s court on his own terms. He dared be himself and himself alone before the king. And the king says, why would you do this thing? And the man has no good answer. The Greek word actually is the man was muzzled. He couldn’t say anything, and he couldn’t say anything because he was willfully defiant. And he was really more defiant than the ones who killed his servants because at least they had, you know, the common sense to stay away. This man comes right up in the king’s face and says, I am who I am.

Had not the king been kind to call the unworthy man? Had not the king been unimaginably kind to outfit the man so that he would fit into his royal halls? What is the king to do with someone who is so openly defiant but give him what he wants? Throw him out. If he doesn’t want the unmerited blessings, then he does not have to have them. If he will not rejoice and celebrate the king’s way, let him be out there apart from the celebration.

It’s Easter Sunday. And as we’ve been singing and as we’ve been saying and praying and reading the Scriptures, Easter is nothing but a time to rejoice because the Father has said to the whole world, hey, come on, and rejoice and celebrate my son Jesus. Rejoice. Rejoice and come and know that Christ Himself has become the living way through which you can come into my eternal kingdom. Christ broke His body. Christ poured out His blood. And Christ was resurrected so that you and I could have new and eternal life. He says to everyone, won’t you come?

So I say to you this morning, won’t you celebrate Jesus? He left His heavenly abode where all things and all creatures worshipped Him. And He came to our fallen doctor. He came to our dark world. I say to you, come and celebrate Jesus. He not once succumbed to Satan or to sin. He was perfect as no one ever had been or ever will be again. I say to you, come and celebrate Jesus in humility. He loved the sinner and the outcast. He loved you. Come and celebrate Jesus. He gave us a taste of what heaven will be like in His kindness and gentleness. Come, celebrate Jesus. He bore a cross on His back in humiliation before the world. Come, celebrate Jesus. He carried that cross for the very people who strapped it to Him. Come, celebrate Jesus. He hung there for all your sin and shame. Come and celebrate Jesus. He says it is finished. Come and celebrate Jesus. He was laid in a tomb having died to sin. Come, celebrate Jesus. Three days later, He rose up out of that grave victorious over sin and death and Satan. Waiting for evermore, He crushed the head of the serpent. Come, celebrate Jesus. He offers you a share and a portion in His resurrected life. Come to Jesus and live.

And you cannot say, ah, but I’m too bad. Don’t patronize God with that stuff. Let me tell you something. You are far more dirty and nasty in your heart than you are in your heart. You would ever even realize only God sees how dirty and nasty your heart is. And He says, just come.

And don’t you dare say, I’m too good. Of course I got an invitation. Uh-oh.

There’s none who are righteous, the Scriptures say. No, not one. Our best righteousness is as filthy rags before His sight. Friend, if you come, it’s not because you’re too good. It’s because the grace of God has sent you an invitation. That’s your own right. That’s your only merit.

Come as you are, but friends, you can’t stay as you are. In Revelation chapter 3 to the erring Laodicean church, Jesus says, I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Jesus says, come to My kingdom. And leave at the door all your bad. Come to My kingdom. And at the gate, even leave all your good. Come to My gate and I will clothe you and I will dress you in My robes of righteousness. Christ will be the very clothed on our backs. Clothing that’s been dipped in crimson blood, but on us makes us white as snow. Jesus says, come and dress yourself in Me and I will fit you. I will outfit you for eternal life. Come. Come as you are. But then let Christ dress you. Let Him wash you. Let Him change you. Let Him make you brand new in how He desires to do it.

What are we supposed to do with our man here though? Because he was cast out of darkness and Jesus ends this parable what seems to be on a very scary note. He says, for many are called, but few are chosen. So there’s this great call going out and a lot of people are going to say, we’re going to hear it, but Jesus says, not everyone’s chosen. And I think we kind of shake and go, well, gosh, I hope that’s Me. I wonder if that’s Me. You don’t have to do that. Jesus just gave you the answer and the key. How can I know if I’m chosen by God?

Would you come to Him empty-handed and say, Lord, I have no good thing? Would you come to Him as dirty and naked and filthy as you are in your sin and say, Lord, I am no good thing? Lord, I need Your presence. We’re good things in My hands and I need You to dress me in the righteous robes of Christ. Friends, if you would say that to God, if you would speak that from your heart to His, believe you Me, you are chosen and you are His. You can get up out of your chair and do backflips all the way home because God has willed it from eternity past that He deeply loves you and He means for you to be in His heavenly courts forevermore.

All that God demands of you, His grace provides.

Jesus is our good thing, friend.

So what’s your RSVP going to say?

Are you going to come the King’s way? Are you going to respond rightly? Yeah, I’m coming. I’m coming because you called me. And I’m coming to find my good things, Lord, in your Son. And I’m coming to be a new thing in your Son. And it’s all free. It’s all free.

You know, God’s patient, but He’s not pushover. You know, and I don’t know where you’re at this morning. You know, you may have been in church your whole life like me. Or maybe you’ve kind of been in church or maybe you’ve not been in church at all and you’re just here. Wherever you are, Paul says today is the day of salvation. You will not always have this moment, friend. In this moment, respond favorably and say, say, yes, Lord, I submit to You. You be my God. You be my King. I, Your happy friend and servant forevermore. Would you say that from your heart this morning? Would you respond rightly to God’s gracious invitation this Easter? Would you pray with me? God of grace and mercy and love, whose mercy is new every morning and who takes our sins away as far as the East is from the West.

Lord, we thank You for this blessed Word

that You call us to share in Your good thing. Father, You call us to have a share in Your Son,

to know Him and to find true and real joy in Christ. Lord, that for Your glory, we wouldn’t be satisfied with the lesser things of life, of just having some stuff, having a good time, just living another day. But Lord, Lord, we have our eyes fixed on the thing You created us for. It’s eternity with You. So Lord, I just pray for every heart and every mind this morning that we would just be arrested by the goodness of Your grace and by the power of Your cross. Or that we wouldn’t wonder. Oh, but that we would know that we have surrendered and in our surrender, You will make good on Your promise and You will keep us eternally.

So Lord, stir up faith in us. Stir up obedience. Stir up glory. Stir up praise. Pray.