In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus likens the Kingdom of God to a wedding feast.
A king sends out servants to invite suitably prominent people to attend the wedding of his son.
Every person on the guest list declines the invitation. All said they were too busy with their own personal lives.
One had just bought some land. Another had just bought some oxen and a third had just got married.
The King then sends out his servants to invite everyone and anyone, both good and bad, to come to the wedding.
This is clearly an illustration of evangelism, in which God sends out His messengers to invite people to believe in Jesus. The first round of invitations went to people on a select guest list. Jesus told this story to his fellow Jews and Matthew’s Gospel was written mainly for Jews.
The Jews were the chosen people, the first people to be invited to the Kingdom but the majority of them refused, particularly the prominent Jews and religious leaders.
This should not make us anti-Jewish, because Jesus Himself was a Jew and so were most of the first generation of Christian leaders.
THE NEXT INVITATIONS WENT TO THE PEOPLE IN THE STREET, TO EVERYONE.
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. Matthew 22:9-10 (ESV)
The majority of believers in the early church were common people although there were notable exceptions, such as Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea and later prominent Gentiles like Lydia, a rich businesswoman in Greece, the first Christian leader in European history.
When Jesus invites us to receive eternal life, He does not prefer rich, intelligent, religious, respectable or morally upright people.
- Everyone is invited.
- Everyone is called.
Everyone is welcome because everyone is loved by God.
John 3:16-17 (NLT)
16 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
God loves the world, which means everyone in the world.
17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.
God wants to save the world, which can only mean everyone.
But did the Son of God really die for everyone?
- Did he die for Judas Iscariot, King Herod, Osama Bin Laden, Hitler and Stalin?
Jesus taught us to love our enemies and He practised what He preached.
As He died on the cross, He cried out to the Heavenly Father.
Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." ... Luke 23:34 (NIV)
The Apostles Peter, John and Paul plainly tell us that Jesus died for all and that God wants to save everyone.
- ...He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9 (NIV)
- He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 2:2 (NIV)
For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
- who gave himself as a ransom for all men ... 1 Timothy 2:5-6 (NIV)
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour,
- who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 1 Timothy 2:3-4 (NKJV)
In John’s Gospel, Jesus says He intended to die to save everyone.
But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." John 12:32 (NIV)
- The original Greek does not say all men or all peoples (NKJV) but simply ALL.
Don’t say no to God.
- By rejecting Jesus, you reject God and in the end you reject life itself.
This story of Jesus shows that you have a choice and God will respect your choice, everlasting life or endless misery and darkness.
If we want to understand the Bible, the best place to begin is by reading the Bible.
The most important person in the Bible is God.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1 (ESV)
And God saw everything that he had made,
- and behold, it was very good... Genesis 1:31 (ESV)
God is perfectly and infinitely good and there is no evil in him.
Because God is totally good, everything he made was good in itself and he will never do anything that is not completely good.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James 1:17 (ESV)
However, when we look at our world and our own lives, we see a massive black hole. Where does all this evil come from?
The answer is in Genesis 1, 2 and 3. The answer is not expressed as a theological statement but in the form of a story.
Then God said,
"Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion ..... over all the earth ....
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Genesis 1:26-27 (NKJV)
God created Adam and Eve in His own image, with His own perfect character, good in every way, not contaminated by evil.
Adam and Eve were to be the representatives of God on earth.
- God was (and is) good. Adam and Eve were good.
- God was (and is) the ruler of His creation. Adam and Eve were created and appointed to rule over the earth.
- God is eternal, without beginning or end. Adam and Eve were created immortal.
Not only were they immortal but there was no such thing as sickness or death on the earth in the beginning.
Nevertheless, God sees the end from the beginning. Before there was evil in the world, God spoke about evil.
And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
The tree of life was in the midst of the garden,
- and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 2:9 (ESV)
Before death came into being, God spoke about it.
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
- but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Genesis 2:16-17 (ESV)
Why did God allow evil to enter His totally good creation.
- There is only one logical answer and it is not mysteriously hidden in the majestic counsels of a sovereign heavenly dictator (as God is sometimes portrayed by confused theologians).
The logical answer is clearly implied in the creation story and it is so plain that a little child can understand it.
God gave Adam and Eve a choice.
- Either they would trust his word and obey him or they would eat the forbidden fruit and suffer death.
The reason for evil is that God values freedom so much, that he gave human beings the freedom to choose to love Him or to turn away from Him.
There is no conflict between Divine Sovereignty and human free will.
Why?
Because God created humans in His own image and likeness. God is the ultimate decision maker, so He has also given us the power of free choice.
- This is the sovereign decree of God Himself.
Creation is the result of His free choice to bring the heavens and the earth into being, together with all the angels and the human race.
When Adam and Eve chose evil, God chose to forgive them and to restore the entire fallen human race.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 (ESV)
But clearly not all are restored, only those who choose to believe and are willing to come back to their loving creator.
Who or what is God? Who am I? What is truth?
So many people are so confused.
If you pick up a magazine, you see articles about UFO’s and advertisements for fortune tellers, psychics or astrologers.
There has to be something more, something or someone out there.
There is great confusion all around but also a deep hunger for spiritual reality.
Fifty years ago, socialist atheism was very popular. The supernatural dimension of life was explained away as primitive superstition. There was a great power struggle between Socialist Atheism and Democratic Capitalism.
The news media are full of politics and economics but our hearts are sick and our souls are left empty.
- You and I long for a sense of supernatural reality, to know there is something waiting for you after you die. You go to a funeral and people talk with a vague wishful longing about what that special someone is thinking up there.
- People are hungry for adventure, so they do crazy and dangerous things that put them in wheelchairs.
- The tame orderliness of our materialist society is driving us crazy.
- Plasma TV screens and super fast internet create fleeting glimpses of superficial excitement.
- But hi tech entertainment cannot compensate for the frustration of senseless red tape, control freaks in work places, broken family relationships and lives without purpose.
What is the answer?
The traditional Christian explanation is sin. What is sin? Turning away from the only true God.
- The trouble is, that people look at Christians and often they do not see enough supernatural drama to make them think this God is worth turning back to.
- Unfortunately there are some Churches like food companies that sell tasteless milk with water added.
Why don’t you read the story of Jesus for yourself? Jesus was never boring or mediocre.
- Jesus went to a wedding and turned water into wine.
- Jesus went to funerals and bodies came to life.
- Jesus went to “church” (the Jewish synagogue) and scandalised the leaders by performing healing miracles in deliberate defiance of the rules and doctrine of his day, and he did it over and over again.
- Jesus met a demon possessed maniac and instantly transformed him into a sane and immensely influential evangelist.
Many churches today don’t want to have their tame routines interrupted by people screaming as demons are driven out of them.
- I know a man who interrupted church routines by healing sick people and he had to leave his church.
- Real Christianity can and will dramatically show people who Jesus really is.
- Everywhere there are also Christians in churches and not in churches, believers who long to rediscover real Christianity.
There are real followers of Jesus today who do what Jesus did, making friends with social outcasts and prostitutes, visiting suicidal people and loving them back to a life of hope and meaning.
- I know a group of women in Germany who decided to do something about human trafficking. They regularly visited brothels and in one year they helped four women escape from prostitution and return to their homes and families.
For the last few years I have been involved with a church where we expect the unexpected and we are not disappointed.
I have a friend who sacrificed his life to show people the love of Jesus. He spent his savings preaching and teaching about Jesus in a poor country and he died before his time, exhausted.
Before he died, he was ministering in a small church. He spoke to a girl who came to church and he asked her if she was happy. She said she was a Hindu and he said she was welcome. He gave her a New Testament to read. She read it and was impressed but did not understand many things.
One night Jesus walked into her room and told her to pick up a pen and paper. She wrote the message Jesus gave her and she became a believer.
Jesus is the Eternal Creator, the Son of the Heavenly Father.
- If you meet Him personally, your life will never be the same again.
- Why not ask Him to come to you and show you who He really is?
"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Matthew 7:7 (NIV)
