THE MARRIAGE FEAST
David Hutson
Matthew 25: 1-10; 22: 1-6, 8-10; 24: 44
I saw an advertisement near us at home which said, ‘They are ready, are you?’ I thought that was a good gospel text, ‘They are ready, are you?’ and also of course we have been thinking about a wedding. So these scriptures speak about a wedding, but it is a very different kind of wedding from what we have had. Our brother here has made a wedding feast for his daughter but the remarkable thing about the weddings in the gospels is that, so far as I know, they do not speak about the bride. I suppose one thing we were anxious about yesterday was to see the bride, but here a King made a wedding feast for his son and nothing is said about the bride. The gospel is all about one glorious blessed Man and God wants you to come and enjoy Him with Himself. He is the One in whom God has found His infinite delight, our Lord Jesus Christ, and He wants you to come to this wedding feast. He wants you to enjoy Christ as He enjoys Him. We sometimes sing:
And to know the blessed secret
Of His preciousness to Thee (Hymn 277)
So that you might know why Jesus is so precious to God, so precious to His Father, and that He might become precious to you, and so He is inviting you. Most here were invited to a wedding feast yesterday but this is a wonderful wedding feast that God is saying that He wants you to come to because it is a wedding feast for His Son; He wants you to give place to this glorious Person, even as He has given place to Him as the centre of heaven’s delight, and He would say to you that all things are ready. There is nothing to keep you away, everything is ready. Do you know how it has been made ready? He speaks of what is prepared. That is a word that comes somewhere else in the Bible. It speaks about the things that have not entered into the heart of man, things that God has prepared for those who love Him (see 1 Cor 2: 9). Do you love God? If you love God you can have part in this wedding feast and all that He has prepared for those that love Him, but the preparation in order that you might be there is that everything that would hinder you from being there has been dealt with to God’s absolute and eternal satisfaction by the One who is the centre of the wedding feast. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the One of whom we have spoken earlier today, the One who was in the form of God, and as to His Person it says, “God, blessed forever” (Rom 9: 5), came into this world that His hands had made, for He Himself, let us all realise, is the Creator of the universe. It all enters into the glory of His Person; we were speaking of it earlier. The One who “spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast” (Ps 33: 9), came here into this world and took upon Himself a bondman’s form and learned obedience. He did not learn to obey; you and I have to learn to obey. You children, you young ones here, we older ones; we are all the same, we all have to learn to obey because naturally we are disobedient, self-willed. It was said in a preaching once, that there was a competition for children at a Sunday School to say what they liked doing best, and the one that got the prize said, ‘What I like doing best is doing just what I like!’, and that is how we are; we are not obedient, we just want to do our own thing as they say, to exercise our own will and we have to learn to be obedient, but Jesus did not. He learned obedience, He learned what obedience involved and He knows what it is for you to be obedient. As you come to know Him as your Saviour, the scripture speaks of Him as our great High Priest, and you find He can support you and help you in the pathway of obedience because, “becoming obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross”, Phil 2: 8. Oh, the obedience of Jesus! Why did He go that way? Did He have to go that way? No, not for Himself, dear friends, not for Himself, but for you. He went that way and there bore the sins of all who put their trust in Him, all those self-willed persons like you and me who put their trust in Jesus, all their sins were laid upon Him. The Lord Jesus “suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God”, 1 Peter 3: 18. That is that we might have part, may I say simply in the words of this parable of Jesus, in the wedding feast, to share with God in His delight in His beloved Son. Are you delighted with Jesus because of what He has done for you? Can you say, He bore my sins in His body on the tree (see 1 Peter 2: 24)? It does not say that He bore the sins of all; it says He was, “once offered to bear the sins of many”, Heb 9: 28. The question was asked of Jesus once, “are such as are to be saved few in number?” (Luke 13: 23). He did not answer exactly, He said, “Strive with earnestness” (v.24). That is, make sure you are one of them.
That is the word in the gospel. The word is ‘make sure you are one of them’, make sure you are one of the many whose sins Jesus bore; He is available to you. He has satisfied God and His judgment against sin, His wrath, He has satisfied Him completely in the work that He did when He suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, on the cross. As another could say, “he is the propitiation for our sins; but not for our alone, but also for the whole world”. That is why we can put a notice board outside and invite anybody in to hear the gospel and tell them that Jesus has satisfied God in relation to the whole matter of sin and sins. Have you put your trust in Jesus? Can you say, He bore may sins in His body on the tree? Can you say that He was made sin for me, Him who knew not sin? That holy spotless sinless Lamb of God, made sin. I am sure all who serve in the gospel here would say that they hesitate when they use that expression, “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us”, 2 Cor 5: 21. Can we understand, can we penetrate it? We have been speaking of things today that we cannot penetrate or understand but we believe it; that is the thing about the gospel, it is too wonderful in a sense to understand; but the whole root question of sin, that poison which courses through the veins of the human race, has been solved and settled, never to be forgiven but condemned in the Person of Jesus; how wonderful! But a penalty was due; God had said, “in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt certainly die” (Gen 2: 17, and “the wages of sin is death”, Rom 6: 23. So the Lord Jesus bore the penalty that was due to you and to me, having borne the sins of all who put their trust in Him, having been made sin. “God … has condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8: 3), in the Person of Jesus who bore the penalty, He died. He suffered for sins alive upon the cross. Can we penetrate what it means for my sins would have involved an eternity of suffering and banishment from the presence of God for me, yet the sins of all who put their trust in Him were born by Jesus in the three hours when He could say, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, Mark 15: 34. The God who delighted in Him, the God whom He had glorified on the earth, for the kindness and love to man of a Saviour God appeared in Jesus. Then He says, “Why has thou forsaken me?”, He was forsaken because of my sins, because He was made sin, then, having exhausted the judgment of God, He died. He gave up that life in that condition; His precious blood was shed, “and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from every sin”, 1 John 1: 7. Have you put your faith in the blood of Jesus? It speaks of putting faith in His blood, that precious blood speaking of the life laid down, for the life was in the blood; what a gift!
Of all the gifts Thy love bestows,
Thou Giver of all good! (Hymn 1)
God says, I have given it to you upon the altar for it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul. God can come out in perfect righteousness and forgive the sinner who puts his trust in Jesus, not now on the cross but in the glory. He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification, so that God can view the sinner who puts his trust in Jesus, can view you if you put your trust in Jesus, as clear of sin as that blessed Man is in His presence; it is wonderful! It is all ready.
We spoke in the reading about what God has done, He has done it all Himself; God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing trespasses, (see 2 Cor 5: 19). When He came down here how near He came to men and He has wrought this great work of salvation Himself in the Person of Jesus. Some of these men who have taught us in the past have said things that some of us would not have dared to say. Mr. Raven said that God Himself came under man’s judgment, an amazing thing; it was God Himself who did it in the Person of Jesus. Blessed glorious Man, He became a Man to do it and now He lives a Man in heaven, glorified at God’s right hand able and willing to save all who put their trust in Him. Have you? Will anyone go out of this door without having put their trust in Jesus, however young you are?
All things are ready, come to the wedding feast. Are you going to make light of it? You say, I have heard all that before and it is still being preached but when I get a bit older, when I have enjoyed myself a bit more, I will think a bit more about it. You make light of it. “and went, one to his own land, and another to his commerce”. It did not say they were wicked people, it did not say they were going on in sin, just the ordinary things of life for their own pleasure and satisfaction, but “none but Christ can satisfy”. The only way of satisfaction is to come and accept the invitation to share with God His thoughts of Christ, to accept Him for yourself as your own personal Saviour. Well, he says again, “The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy; go therefore into the thoroughfares of the highways, and as many as ye shall find invite to the wedding feast. And those bondmen went out into the highways, and brought together all as many as they found, both evil and good; and the wedding feast was furnished with guests”. Will you be among them? Are you going to accept the invitation to come to the wedding feast to give place to Christ, to give Him the place in your heart as your Saviour which God has given to Him in glory?
In chapter 25 again we have a wedding feast. I have spoken about God being ready and everything being ready; there is a word, a solemn word that would not be right to overlook in the preaching; it is not exactly glad tidings but Peter tells us in his epistle that God is ready to judge the living and the dead (1 Peter 4: 5). He is ready; there is no reason why God could not close this time of grace when the gospel is being preached and you are being invited to the wedding feast. He has a basis for it in the fact that Jesus has died and settled the question to His own satisfaction and glory, He has a basis to come in in judgment on the world that has cast Him out and He is ready to do it, He is ready to judge the living and the dead. But here we have persons who are ready and again there is nothing about the bride, it is the bridegroom, and the word is, “Behold, the bridegroom”, and that is the gospel, “Behold, the bridegroom”; look at Jesus. None of us can say much as to ourselves. I suppose we have all grown heavy and slept. Wake up, it is a wakening call, “Behold, the bridegroom”; the Lord Jesus is being presented. It does not say, Behold the bridegroom is coming, it says, “Behold, the bridegroom”; that is the great thing. Yesterday I suppose everybody was saying, behold the bride, but it is “Behold, the bridegroom; go forth to meet him”. Will you be ready to go forth to meet Him? He is coming. A dear brother, Dr Roberts said, the last time he was at a meeting, ‘Lord, we are expecting Thee to come tonight’. Our brother is now with Christ. Is that how you feel, on the tiptoe of expectancy? “Go forth to meet him”; if you have put your trust in Jesus, the love of God is shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit and you have oil in your vessel and you are ready to meet Him. Some of them were foolish; outwardly they appeared the same. May I put it simply, outwardly they all came to the meetings, they looked just the same; you see them going down the street, coming in the door, they all looked the same, but they had not got oil in their vessels; they had not put their trust in Jesus, they had not received the Holy Spirit, and the time came when it says, “the door was shut”. There will a time literally one Lord’s Day when that door will be shut and there will not be a gospel preaching here and there may be somebody who had seen that notice board and they say, I will go tonight, and the door will be shut. Will it be you? Father and mother, where are they? Gone to be with Jesus. These things are very real. A brother was preaching locally at Plumstead and he said he remembered coming down one night when he was a little boy to make sure father and mother were still there. It was so quiet that he thought that Jesus had come and had taken them and he was left. It would be terrible if that happened to you. You come along and you think, I will go to the meeting, but they have gone. I do not want to frighten anybody but these things are real; we want to realise that the gospel is real and we are speaking of matters not only of life and death but of time and eternity. Will you be ready when the Bridegroom comes? Will you have oil in your vessel? These other five foolish ones were not ready and it was too late and the door was shut.
Forgive me telling stories, but there are a number of young ones here and they might just help to bring the thing home to them. A brother was travelling in a railway train and he had a way of just putting in a brief word; a man came in just as the train was about to go, slammed the door and sat down, and all this brother said was, ‘and the door was shut’. That was all he said. Some years later they met again and this man recognised the brother and he said to him, I have accepted the Lord Jesus as my Saviour through that word you gave, ‘the door was shut’. It had impressed him. Somehow I suppose he had read this scripture, he had read it in the Bible, the time when the door was shut. He was now like Noah, God shut him in. We are all going to be shut in one day, the door will be shut. Dear friend, accept the Lord Jesus, be ready for Him so that you might have the joy of sharing in the wedding feast. A wonderful time is coming, the marriage of the Lamb; He is going to have His Bride and she is going to be ready. It says that she, “has made herself ready … clothed in fine linen, bright and pure; for the fine linen is the righteousnesses of the saints” (Rev. 19: 7); the saints with oil in their vessels, the righteous requirement of the law fulfilled in them, walking not after the flesh but after the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit of God is here so that we might be ready with oil in our vessels and ready for when the Bridegroom come, “Behold, the bridegroom”; that is the word in the gospel, look to Jesus. As the hymn says:
I looked to Jesus, and I found
In Him my Star, my Sun;
And in that light of life I’ll walk
Till travelling days are done. (Hymn 248)
Look to Jesus.
I read the previous chapter, “ye also, be ye ready, for in that hour that ye think not the Son of man comes”. A wonderful thing as to the place into which He has come as a Man is that there are things that He says He does not know. It is a wonderful mystery of the Person of Jesus that of that hour He does not know. The Father has reserved it in His own authority. Do you know God as your Father, having the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of His Son, so that you can cry, Abba Father? The Father knows the hour: we do not know. It is the hour that we think not; we need to be expectant, waiting for Him, looking for Him so that we are ready for when He comes. Everything is ready on God’s side; He has done everything, He could not have done more, but such is the wonder of the love of God that He would not do less. He has given “his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”, John 3: 16. Those who are outside the door when it is shut will perish. God wants you to have life eternal. The wonderful gift of eternal life is being offered through putting your trust in Jesus and in the work that He has accomplished and His precious shed blood; “all things are ready; come to the wedding feast”. The word to you, dear friend tonight is, ”be ye ready”. It is an emphatic word, “Wherefore ye also, be ye ready, for in that hour that ye think not the Son of man comes”. May everyone here be ready for Him and come into the present enjoyment and blessing of sharing with God in His delight in His beloved Son. For His Name’s sake.
EDINBURGH
10 August 2003