A Sermon by R M M’Cheyne
Matthew 22:1-14. And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said, The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. . . .
This parable describes to us, briefly and vividly, God sending the gospel first of all to the Jews and then to the Gentiles, and the different receptions which it received from each of them. Let us go over the different parts of the parable.
The first lesson which this parable teaches us is: God has all along been inviting men to a marriage and a marriage feast. “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage” (vv 2-4). This was the very message which all the prophets and apostles of old were commissioned to carry to God’s chosen people of the Jewish nation. This was the very message which Christ Himself brought with Him, for He did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. It is He who spoke this parable and this is the very message which we now bring to you.
(1) It is a marriage that you are invited to. Men in all ages have been naked and poor and penniless – not only without any righteousness, but lying under the curse of God’s wrath, infinitely sinful and abominable in His sight. Yet the delights of the Lord Jesus, the King’s son, have been ever with the children of men and He condescends to choose out of them those whom He will take as His bride, that they may be with Him eternally, to behold and share His glory. Just as the husband becomes liable for all the debts of his wife,2 He agreed to bear all the iniquities of His bride in His own body on the tree. And just as all the honour and merit of the husband is given to the wife, so Christ’s own merit and loveliness shall be a garment to clothe His bride. He has accordingly sent forth His messengers to invite all sinners to become one with Him, and His message is, “Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people and thy father’s house”. And the clothing He offers in which to bring them in is of “wrought gold”.
1The final sermon from the book, Revival Truth; it has been edited.
2This was Scottish law in M’Cheyne’s time.
To this day, my friends, my anxious desire is to espouse you to that one Husband, that you may be “members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones”. What infinite honour that the Son of God should come from the bosom of the Father and propose so close, so mysterious, so blessed a union with base and sinful worms, whose bodies are of clay and who “are crushed before the moth”. If there is one thing more wonderful than this in the whole world, it is that any one of us, base-born worms of a day, should refuse a union of such unspeakable grace!
(2) It is a feast that all are invited unto. “Behold, I have prepared my dinner . . . ” (v 4). At every wedding there is a feast, and so it is here. The blessings of the gospel have all along been set forth to men as a feast. Did not Solomon set them forth as a feast? (Prov 9). There he speaks of Wisdom having “builded her house” and “hewn out her seven pillars: she hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table. . . . Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled.”
Did not Isaiah set them forth as a feast (Is 25), when he says, “In this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined”? And again, in chapter 55, He invites all, saying, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk [the richest parts of every feast] without money, and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto Me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.”
Did not Christ set the gospel blessings forth as a feast, when He said, “He that cometh unto Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst. For My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed”? Again, does He not set them forth as a feast in the holy ordinance of the Supper, where bread and wine are offered to you, to picture the blessings of redemption? Yes, we have utterly failed in our preaching of Jesus, if we have not set Him forth to you as “a feast of fat things, of wines on the lees well refined”. And you have utterly misunderstood every sermon that you ever heard, if you think that we have been inviting you to anything but a feast of peace and love, of joy and eternal life.
Yes, the message we are commissioned to bring is not one of wrath, but of love and joy. “Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage” (v 4). I beseech you to note that we do not invite you to come and make a feast for yourselves – to bring your own provisions with
you. No, we invite you to a feast that is already prepared. “All things are ready.” The oxen and the fatlings are killed; the wine is poured out; the garments are waiting for you to accept them; all things are ready; not one thing is unprovided.
Pardon of all your sins is ready. God has provided the ram for the burnt offering. You do not have to bring anything to blot out your sins before you come. No, pardon of sin is one of the dishes of the feast. An old writer says, “A good conscience is a continual feast”. And so it is, but who has a good conscience? He only who has partaken of the Lamb of God, that “taketh away the sin of the world”. He has a conscience void of offence, not because he never sinned, but because his sin is all taken away.
A garment of righteousness is ready. Christ has provided wedding garments for all the guests, as was customary in the East. You cannot say, Wait till I have made myself worthy to come, for this garment is part of the feast. “All things are ready: come unto the marriage.”
The oil of the Holy Spirit is ready. At all feasts, the guests were anointed with the most precious ointments; and now in the East, a rose oil is sprinkled on every guest.3 So Jesus has provided this promise of the Father. You cannot say, Stop till I have changed my heart; for that is one of the good things of the feast. “All things are ready: come unto the marriage.”
If you keep away from the feast after such an invitation as this, the only reason is that you are too proud to come to a feast where you provide nothing. Be sure then that if you do not come to the real feast in the gospel, you do not come to the image of it in the Lord’s Supper, lest you eat and drink judgement! Will you perform such a mockery on your own soul – such a mockery on God – as to refuse to partake of the true feast this day, and yet sit down at that which is an image of it another day? First take, as we freely offer you, the true feast, and then what is any man that he should forbid you the bread and wine at the table of the Lord?
The second lesson which we learn from this parable is, the treatment which the Jews gave to the message (vv 3-6). Three kinds of refusal are given to the message.
First, they would not come. This was the way in which simple souls treated the message. It seems never to have reached their understanding. Perhaps they were asleep before the messenger got to the end of his message. They have no reason to give, just that they will not come. How many such people there are among us! Simple souls who never yet could understand that the Bible message was addressed to them. How many will not so much as give a hearing to the messenger of Christ – will not come as far as the church to
3Perhaps describing the late 1830s, when M’Cheyne and colleagues visited the East.
hear the invitation! How many have the Bible lying by them and do not read, or even if they do, they do not hear it speaking to them! Or if they do come to the house of God, it is for custom’s sake, or to while away the tedious hours of the drowsy Sabbath Day. Poor simple souls, loving their simplicity, who live and die in their ignorance! All that can be said of you, when you are sinking into hell and begin then for the first time to awake, is: Jesus would often have gathered you, but you would not.
The second class of refusers treat religion with far greater respect. They give the Word, and the ministers of the Word, a full and patient hearing – they hear the description of the feast and try to understand it, but weighing all they hear in the one scale and their farm and their merchandise in the other scale, they make light of the message. These are the thorny-ground hearers over again. How many such people there were among the Jews! How many there are among you! How many of you have set your whole mind on business and say to us in your inmost heart, There is something in what you say and, when I have a convenient season, I will call for you. When Lot tried to warn his sons-in-law, he seemed to them as one that mocked. And so, when we stand here inviting you Sabbath after Sabbath, you treat us as idle talebearers. It is enough to make an angel weep to see such spirits as yours – which, if redeemed and sanctified, might rejoice more loudly than angels before the throne – grovelling all your days without one thought higher than your farm or your merchandise!
The third set of refusers took the servants and entreated them spitefully (v 6). These formed a large class among the Jews – so large that Christ named Jerusalem, “Thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee”. And Stephen asked them the question, “Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?” Again we find Christ warning His disciples that they would be used in the same way, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves . . . and ye shall be hated of all men for My name’s sake”. “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.”
And it is so to this day and specially so in our day. If there is a faithful and godly minister in any place, be well assured that some have hated and spoken ill of him because of his message. When an ardent preacher of Christ comes first into the work of the ministry, he is so conscious of having no motive but love for perishing souls that he thinks everyone will receive him with open arms. Alas, he should have read more deeply how unconverted men treated the Master. If they called Him Beelzebub, what will they not call His servants? “It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master.”
Ah yes, the sooner the romance of life is broken up the better. The sooner he comes to know that there are many who will love him the less because he loves them the more, so much the better. Search and try your own hearts, my friends, and if you feel disgusted by my plainness – if you turn away with dislike from my pointedness – think, on your way home, how much you resemble those who mocked the disciples, saying, “These men are full of new wine”. How like you are in spirit to those who took the “servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them”.
The third lesson which we learn from this parable is: How God rewarded these unbelieving Jews, and sent the gospel message to the Gentiles (vv 7-10). Observe God’s judgement on the unbelieving Jews. “He was wroth, and sent forth His armies.” The armies which destroyed Jerusalem were the heathen armies of Rome, under the command of the heathen emperor Titus, and yet here they are called His armies. Does not this show that all power is God’s, in heaven and on earth – that He is the governor among the nations. The Assyrian and his armies were but a rod in God’s hand – an axe and a saw – even when “he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to cut off nations not a few”. Yet all armies are under God’s control – wars, famines, plagues all fulfil His counsel. “None can stay His hand [from working], or say unto Him, What doest thou?”
O believers, why should you fear any evil tidings? Let your heart be fixed, trusting in the Lord. If He is for you, who can be against you? They are more that be with us than they that be with them. And you who turn away from the invitations of Christ just in the same way as the Jews did – you who will not come just because you will not, you who make light of it and prefer your farm and your merchandise, you who treat His servants spitefully in your hearts, loving them all the less because they love you the more – consider that God is an unchangeable God, that He is a God of principle, not of passion; that He acts from principles as fixed and sure in the world of grace as He does in the world of nature!
If then He did not spare the Jews, do you think He will spare you? If He burned up their city, will He not burn up your city? As surely as Jerusalem is at this day trodden under foot of the Gentiles, and the highly-favoured nation is now composed of strangers and wanderers – a taunt, a proverb and a curse in every nation of the globe– so surely shall you be vagabonds and outcasts in a miserable eternity, if you persist in turning away from this message.
Observe how God sends the message to the Gentiles (vv 9,10). Before this refusal, the disciples were to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But now the message is, “Go ye into all the world”; and, accordingly, we go to every door; we carry the message to every bosom. And the effect of the
call is just as Christ represents it. We gather together as many as we find, both bad and good. The parable of the tares shows that we are to expect bad and good together in the professing Church. The parable of the net shows the same thing, that the last day will be the time of separation.
These three parables seem to teach us the impossibility of ever having what has been called a pure communion of the faithful on this side of eternity. There is but one assembly and one feast where the unclean cannot enter, and that is the general assembly and church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. Remember it is no sure test of you being a Christian that you partake of the Lord’s Supper with Christians. Both bad and good will be found sitting at that table. The blood, the garment, the peace, the witness – these are the only true tests that you are a Christian indeed.
The fourth lesson we learn from this parable is: A day of separation and judgement is coming. “And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: and he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen” (vv 11-14).
(1) Learn from this that, however much unconverted men may mingle with the godly on earth, they shall be at once detected in the judgement. The tares are in this world growing up with the wheat in the same families, in the same congregations. The good fish and the bad fish are drawn to shore in the same net. Indeed those who have put on the righteousness of Jesus, and those who are dressed in the filthy rags of their own righteousness, sit down together at the same gospel feast and at the table of the Lord. And, however much godly ministers may warn and beseech the unconverted not to come to the Lord’s table until they come to Christ, yet it ever will be so.
In our congregations, the bad and the good grow together till the harvest, but no longer! The king comes in to see the guests – the King of kings, the searcher of all hearts, who searches Jerusalem as with candles. His saints are all a goodly company, sitting with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all dressed in spotless white garments; for the white linen is the righteousness of saints. In themselves, they were naked and vile, altogether unworthy of the presence of a king, and their best righteousnesses were as filthy rags. But they heard the message, “All things are ready”, and they came, standing in need of everything, and they put on Christ’s white raiment, even the righteousness of God – a more comely raiment than that of angels – they obeyed the word of Christ, “Put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem”.
But the Christless soul, how naked and vile he shall be on that day! On
earth he was perhaps unnoticed; he lived on in decency and worldliness, waited on ordinances and partook of sacraments. But in the judgement, how naked and deformed, how vile and polluted he seems in the midst of the redeemed, who are all clothed with the righteousness of God. Like an ugly toad crawling in some lovely garden, like Satan when he appears in the ranks of the holy angels, so shall the Christless soul appear in that day, when he shall hear the awful words, “Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment?” It is easy to pass for decent religious men among your neighbours; it is easy to deceive ministers, and to deceive the world; it is easy to join with the people of God, and to sit down with them at the same sacrament.
But there is one whom you cannot deceive. There is one eye upon you at the feast that knows at a glance whether or not you have put on the righteousness of God, which is Christ’s wedding garment. And at the forthcoming Lord’s Supper you may venture to sit down at that feast to which none but believers are invited, yet not having this garment and not caring anything about it. It is true that He may suffer you to sit quietly and unchallenged here, but the day is at hand – at the very doors, for many of you – when the King shall say to you, “Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment?”
(2) Learn that every Christless soul will condemn itself. “And he was speechless.” So, my friends, it will be with you. Every Christless soul before me this day may be ready to give a thousand excuses why you are as you are. Indeed I dare say not one Christless soul shall sit down at the sacrament but shall have some kind of defence for so unreasonable and so unmeaning a profanation. But in that day you will be speechless; you will condemn yourselves. Think what blushes shall cover you when you have not a word to say. You that are stout-hearted and boasters, think how you shall be quashed and silenced. And will it not be the hardest part of your condemnation that you must condemn yourselves? If you could cry out, It is unjust, that would be some relief. But to feel that it is a just condemnation, this is the very hell of hell!
(3) Learn that outer darkness will be the home of such souls. The man thought he would enjoy the brilliance and joy of the feast, but instead he is cast into outer darkness. How much darker because of his former light! How dismal will your change be, you that sit down at our sacraments here and think of sitting down in heaven, who have no wedding-garment! You lovers of darkness, how just that outer darkness should be your portion!
(4) Remember that many are called but few chosen. When we speak to the unconverted, we speak to the many. You are all called this day, and all things
are ready. Are you of the many or of the few? How sad to think that most of you will not heed; most of you will not turn; most of you will go away to your “farm” and your “merchandise”, and will finally stand “speechless” before the throne! But, little flock, whose hearts the Lord has touched, who have put on the wedding garment, welcome to the feast of love! Take it as a pledge of your Father’s love, and that you shall never lack any good thing. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.