The Wedding Garment
“But they made ligtit of it, and their wa)b, one to hu farm, another to his merchandise.” —
Matthew xxii. 6
MAN is not much changed since the days of Adam. In his bodily frame lie appears to be exactly similar, for skeletons many hundred years’ old are the exact counter parts of ours; and sure enough that which was recorded in history as having been done by man centuries ago, might be written again, for “there is nothing new under the sun.” The same class of men is still to be discovered (although, perhaps, differently dressed) as that which existed ages long gone by. There are still men who answer the character given to others, in his day, by the Saviour, “They go their way, one to his farm, another to his merchandise,” making light of the glorious things of the gospel. I am certain I have many such characters here to-night, and I pray the Lord that I may be enabled to discourse to them very solemnly and very pointedly. And I must ask all you who understand the heavenly art of prayer, to pray that God would be pleased to send home every thought into the breast where he intends it to lodge, that it may bring forth the comfortable fruit of righteousness in the salvation of many souls. “They made light of it;” so do too many in this day; and so will a large portion of my hearers to-night. I believe that to think lightly of Christ is a sin; and at all risks of being falsely called legalist, or free-wilier, by those who are wise above what is written, I shall charge it upon you as such, for I hope I shall never belong to that class ot Calvinists who do the devil’s work by excusing sinners in their sins.
In the first place, we shall have a few words with you, concerning what it is that the sinner makes light of; secondly, how it is that lie makes light of it; and thirdly, why it is that he makes light of it. Then a general observation or two, and we shell not weary you.
I. In the first place, WHAT is IT THAT THE SINNER MAKES LIGHT OF? According to the parable, the person alluded to made light of a marriage banquet which a king had provided, with all kinds of dainties, to which they were freely invited, and from which they wilfully absented themselves. The spiritual meaning of this is easy to discover. Sinners who make light of Christ express their contempt of a glorious banquet which God has provided at the marriage of his Son. This is solemn ground to tread upon. Oh! for the teachings of the Holy Spirit.
Taking this parable as the basis of our remarks, we may observe, first, that the sinn.T makes light of the messenger who brings him the news that the marriage supper is prepared. These men refused to come; they went — “One to his farm, another to his merchandise,” and so made light of the messenger; and every sinner who neglects the great salvation of Jesus Christ, makes light of the gospel minister, which i» no little insult in God’s esteem. It is never reckoned ft small offence by our great
No. 98. 7 nation, if our ambassador is treated with indifference; and take it for a truth, it ifc no light thing with God if you despise the ambassadors he sends to you. But this is comparatively little; the ambassadors are men like yourselves, who can well afford to be contemned, if that were all. In fact, we should be glad enough to forgive you if it were in our power to do so, and if this were all your guilt.
But these people despised the feast. Some of them fancied that the fatlings, and other provisions that would be upon the table, would be no better than what they had at home. They thought that the royal banquet would be no very great thing for which to give up their merchandise for a day, or to renounce their farming even for an hour. They scorned the banquet; at least, it appears so, because they did not go to it. Oh! sinner, when thou neglectest the great salvation, remember what thou dost despise; when thou makest light of God’s gospel, thou makest light of justification by faith; thou makest light of washing in the blood of Jesus; thou makest light of the Holy Spirit; thou makest light of the road to heaven; and then thou makest light of faith, and hope, and love; thou makest light of all the promises of the eternal covenant, of all the glorious things that God has laid up for them that love him, and of everything which he hath revealed in his Word as being the promised gift to those who come unto him. It is a solemn thing to make light of the gospel, for in that Word, God’s-spell — good tidings, is summed up all that human nature can require, and all that even the saints in bliss can receive. Oh! to despise the gospel of the blessed God, how mad! how worse than folly! Despise the stars, and thou art a fool; despise God’s earth, with its glorious mountains, with its flowing rivers, and its fair meads, and thou art a maniac; but despise God’s gospel, and thou art ten thousand maniacs in one. Make light of that, and thou art far more foolish than he who sees no light in the sun, who beholds no fairness in the moon, and no brilliancy in the starry firmament. Trample, if you please, his lower works; but ohl remember, when you make light of the gospel, you are making light of the masterpiece of your great Creator — that which cost him more than to create a myriad worlds — the bloody purchase of our Saviour’s agonies.
And, again, these people made light of the King’s Son. It was his marriage, and inasmuch as they absented themselves, they did dishonour to that glorious One in whose honour the supper was prepared. They slighted him whom his Father loved. Ah! sinner, when thou makest light of the gospel, thou makest light of Christ — of that Christ before whom glorious cherubs bow themselves — of that Christ at whose feet the high archangel thinks it happiness to cast his crown; thou makest light of him with whose praise the vault of heaven rings; thou makest light of him whom God makes much of, for he has called him, “God over all, blessed for ever.” Ah! it is a solemn thing to make light of Christ. Despise a prince, and ye shall have little honour at the king’s hand for it; but despise the Son of God, and the Father will ‘have vengeance on you for his slighted Son. Oh! my dear friends, it seems to me to be a sin, not unpardonable, I know, but still most heinous, that men should ever despise my blessed Lord Jesus Christ and treat him with cruel scorn. Make light of thee, sweet Jesus! Oh! when I see thee with thy shirt of gore, wrestling in Geth- •semane, I how myself o’er thee. and I say, “0, Kedeemer, bleeding for sin, can any sinner make light of thee?” When I behold him with a river of blood rolling down his shoulder, beneath the cursed flagellation of Pilate’s whip, I ask, “Can a sinner make light of such a Saviour as this?” And when I see him yonder, covered with his blood, nailed to a tree, expiring in torture, shrieking, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” I ask myself, “Can any make light of this?” Ay, if they do, then, indeed, it were sin enough to damn them, if they have no other sin — that they have lightly esteemed the Prince of Peace, who is glorious and altogether lovely. Oh! my friend, if thou makest light of Christ, thou hast insulted the only one who can save thee — the only one who can bear thee across the Jordan — the only one who can unbolt the gates of heaven, and give thee welcome. Let no preacher of smooth things persuade thee that this is not crime. 0, sinner, think of thy sin, if thou art making light of him, for then art thou making light of the King’s only Son.
And yet, again, these people made light also of the King who had prepared the banquet. Ah! little dost thou know, 6 sinner, when thou dost trifle with the gospel, that thou art insulting God. I have heard some say, “Sir, I do not believe in Christ, but still I am sure I try to reverence God; I do not care about the gospel, I do not wish to be washed in Jesu’s blood, nor to be saved in free grace fashion; but
I do not despise God; I am a natural religionist!” Nay, sir, but thou dost insult the Almighty, inasmuch as thou dost deny his Son. Despise a man’s offspring, and thou hast insulted the man himself; reject the only begotten Son of God, and thou hast rejected the eternal one himself. There is no such thing as true natural religion apart from Christ; it is a lie and a falsehood; it is the refuge of a man who is not brave enough to say he hates God, but it is only a refuge of lies; for he who denieth Christ in that act offendeth God, and shutteth up heaven’s gates against himself. There is no loving the Father except through the Son; and there is no acceptable worship of the Father, except through the Great High Priest the Mediator, Jesus Christ. Oh! my friend, remember, thou hast not merely despised the gospel, but thou hast despised the gospel’s God. In laughing at the doctrines of revelation, thou hast laughed at God; in reviling the truth of the gospel, thou hast reviled God him self; thou hast bent thy fist in the face of the Eternal; thine oaths have not fallen upon the church, they have fallen upon God himself. Oh! remember, ye that mock at the message of Christ! Oh! remember, ye that turn away from the ministry of truth! God is a mighty one; how severely can lie punish! God is a jealous God: oh! how severely will he punish! Make light of God, sinner? Why, this above all things is a damning sin, and in committing it, it may be thou wilt one day sign thine own death-warrant; for making light of God, of Christ, and of his holy gospel, is destroying one’s own soul, and rushing headlong to perdition. Ah! unhappy souls, most unhappy must ye be, if ye live and die making light of Christ, and preferring your farms and your merchandise to the treaures of the gospel.
Again: bethink thee, my poor, pitiable friend, in that thou makest light of all tho things I have mentioned, thou art making liyht of the great solemnities of eternity. The man who lightly esteems the gospel makes light of hell; he thinks its fires are not hot. and its flames not such as Christ has described them; he makes light of the burning tears that scald despairing cheeks for ever; he makes light of the yells and shrieks that must be the doleful songs and terrible, music of perishing souls. Ah! it is no wise thing to make light of hell.
Consider again: thou makest light of heaven — that place to which the blest ones long to go, where glory reigns without a cloud, and bliss without a sigh. Thou puttest the crown of everlasting life beneath thy feet; thou treadest the palm-branch beneath thine unhallowed foot and thou thinkest it little to be saved, and little to be glorified. “Ah! poor soul, when thou art once in hell, and when the iron key is turned for ever in the lock of inevitable destiny, thou wilt find hell to be a some thing not so easy to despise; and when thou hast lost heaven and all its bliss, and canst only hear the song of the blessed, sounding faintly in the distance, increasing thy misery by contrast with their joy, then thou wilt find it no little thing to have made light of heaven. Every man who makes light of religion makes light of these things. He misjudges the value of his own soul, and the importance of its eternal state.
This is what men make light of. “Oh! sir,” says one, “I never indulge in any words hostile to God’s truth, I never laugh at the minister, nor do I despise the Sabbath.” Stop, my friend, I will acquit thee of all that; and yet I will solemnlylay to thy charge this great sin of making light of the gospel. Hear me then!
II. HOW IS IT THAT MEN MAKE LIGHT OF IT?
In the first place, it is making light of the gospel and of the whole of God’s glorious things, when men go to hear and yet do not attend. How many frequent churches and chapels to indulge in a comfortable nap! Think what a fearful insult that is to the King of heaven. Would they enter into Her Majesty’s palace, ask an audience, and then go to sleep before her face? And yet the sin of sleeping in Her Majesty’s presence, would not be so great, even against her laws, as the sin of wilfully slumbering in God’s sanctuary. How many go to our houses of worship who do not sleep, but who sit with vacant stare, listening as they would to a man who could not play a lively tune upon a good instrument. What goeth in at one ear goeth out at another. Whatever entereth the brain goeth out without ever affecting the heart. Ah, my hearers, you are guilty of making light of God’s gospel, when you sit under a sermon without attending to it! Oh! what would lost souls give to hear another sermon! What would yonder dying wretch who is just now nearing the grave, give for another Sabbath! And what will you give, on« of these days, when you shall be hard by Jordan’s brink, that you might havt one more warning, and listen once more to the wooing voice of God’s minister! We make light of the gospel when we hear it, without solemn and awful attention to it.
But some say they do attend. Well, it is possible to attend to the gospel, and yet to make light af it. I have seen some men weep beneath a powerful sermon; I have marked the tears chase each other — tears, blessed tell-tales of emotions within. I have sometimes said to myself, it is marvellous to see these people weep under some telling word from God, which is alarming them, as if Sinai itself were thundering in their ears. But there is something more marvellous than men’s weeping under the word. It is the fact that they soon, too soon, wipe all their tears away. But ah! my dear hearer, recollect that if thou hearest of these things and shakestoffa solemn impression, thou art, in doing that, slighting God and making light of his truth; and take heed how you do that, lest your own garments be red with the blood of your soul, and it be said, “Oh, Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”
But there are others who make light of it in a different fashion. They hear the word and attend to it; but, alas! they attend to something else with it.
Oh! my hearer, thou makest light of Christ, if thou puttest him anywhere save in the centre of thine heart. He who gives Christ a little of his affections, makes light of Christ; for Christ will have the whole heart or none at all. He who gives Christ a portion, and the world a portion, despises Christ, for he seems to think that Christ does not deserve to have the whole. And inasmuch as he says that, or thinks that, he hath mean and unholy thoughts of Christ. Oh! carnal man, thou who art half religious, and half profane; thou who art sometimes serious, but as often frivolous; sometimes apparently pious, but yet so often unholy, thou makest light of Christ. And ye who weep on the Sunday, and then go back to your sins on the Monday; ye who set the world and its pleasures before Christ, ye think less of him than he deserves; and what is that but to make light of him? Oh! I charge you, ask yourself, my hearer this night, art not thou the man? dost not thou thyself make light of Christ? The self-righteous man who sets himself up as a partner with Christ in the matter of salvation, notwithstanding all his trumpery good works, is such a ringleader among despisers, that I would gibbet him in the very middle of them, and bid all like him tremble, lest they also be found slighters of Jesus.
He makes light of Christ, again, who makes a profession of religion, and yet does not live up to it. Ah! church members, ye want a great deal of sifting; we have an immense quantity of chaff now mixed with the wheat; and sometimes I think we have something worse than that. We have some in our churches that are not so good as chaff, for they do not seem to have been near the wheat at all; they are nothing better than tares. They have come into our churches, just as they would into a trade-association, because they think it will improve their business. It gives respectability to their name to take the sacrament; it makes them esteemed to have been baptized, or to be a member of a Christian church; and so they come in by shoals after the loaves and fishes, but not after Jesus Christ. Ah! hypocrite, thou makest light of Christ if thou thinkest that he is a stalkinghorse to get thee wealth. If thou dreamest that thou art to saddle and bridle Christ, and ride to wealth upon him, thou makest a grand mistake, for he was never meant to carry men anywhere except to heaven. If you suppose that religion was intended to gild your homes, to carpet your floors, and line your purses, you have greatly erred. It was intended to be profitable to the soul; and he who thinks to use religion to his own personal advantage thinks lightly of Christ: and at the last day this crime shall be laid to his charge — that he has made light of it;” and the King shall send his armies to cut him in pieces, among those who have despised his Majesty, and would not obey his laws.
III. And now, in the third place, I will tell you WHY THEY MADE LIGHT OF IT. They did so from different reasons.
Some of them made light of it because they were ignorant; they did not know how good the feast was; they did not know how gracious the king was; they did not know how fair the Prince was, or else they might have thought differently. Now, there are many present to-night, I dare say, who think lightly of the gospel, because they do not understand it. I have often heard people laugh at religion; but ask them what it is, and they know no more about religion than a horse, and worse than that, for they believe untruths about it, and a horse does not do that. They laugh at it, simply because they do not comprehend it; it is a thing beyond them. We have heard of a foolish man who, whenever he heard a piece of Latin mentioned, laughed at it, because he thought it was a joke, at any rate it was a very outlandish way of talking — and so he laughed. So it is with many when they hear the gospel; they do not know what it is, and so they laugh at it. “Oh!” they say, 44 the man is mad.” But why is he mad? Because you do not understand him. Are you so conceited as to suppose that all wisdom and all learning must rest with you? I would hint to you that the madness is on the other side. And though you mav say of him, “Much learning hath made thee mad;” we would reply, “It is quite as easy to be made mad with none at all.” And those who have none, and e’pt’dallv those who have no knowledge of Christ, are the most likely to despise him. Well did Watts say —
* His worth, if all the nations knew,
Sure, the whole earth would love him too.”
Oh! dear friends, if you once knew what a blessed master Christ is, if you once knew what a blessed thing the gospel is, if you could once be brought to believe what a blessed God our God is, if you could only have one hour’s enjoyment such as the Christian experiences, if you could only have one promise applied to your heart, you would never make light of the gospel again. Oh! you say you do not like it! Why, you have never tried it? Should a man despise the wine of which he has never sipped. It may be sweeter than he dreams? Oh! taste and see that the Lord is good; and so sure as ever you taste, you will see his goodness. I will venture to say, again, that there are many who make light of the gospel, simply through ignorance; and if that is so, I am somewhat in hopes that when they are a little enlightened by sitting under the Word, the Lord may be pleased graciously to bring them to himself; and then I know they will never make light of Christ again. Oh! do not be ignorant, “for that the soul be without knowledge is not good.” Seek to know him, whom to know aright is life eternal; and when you know him you will DC er make light of him.
Other people make light of it because of pride. “What is the good,” said one, “of bringing me that invitation? Step into my house, my man, I will show you a feast quite as good as any you can tell me of. Look here! there is good cheer for you; my table is as well spread as any man’s; begging his Majesty’s pardon, the King cannot give a better feast than I; and I do not see why I should drag my bones about to get nothing better than I can get at home.” So he would not” go, out of pride. And so with some of you. You want to be washed! No, you were never filthy; were you? You need to be forgiven! Oh no! you are rather too good for that. Why, you are so awfully pious in your own conceit, that if it were all true, you would make even the angel Gabriel blush to think of you. You do not think even an angel capable of holding a candle to you. What! you seek for mercy? It is an insult to you. “Go and teli the drunkard,” you say, “go and fetch the harlot; but I am a respectable man; I always go to church or chapel; I am a very good sort of fellow; I may frolic now and then, but I make it up some other day; I am sometimes a little slack, but then I rein the horses in, and make up the distance afterwards; and I dare say I shall get to heaven as soon as anybody else. I am a very good sort.” Well, my friend, I do not wonder that you despise the gospel, for the gospel just tells you that you are entirely lost. It tells you that your very righteousness is full of sin. That, as for any hope of your being saved by it, you might as well try to sail across the Atlantic on a sere leaf as try to get to heaven by your righteousness. And as for it being a garment fit to cover you, you might as well get a spider’s web to go to court in, and think it a dress fit to appear in before her Majesty. Ah! my hearer, I know why thou despisest Christ; it is because of thy Satanic pride. May the Lord pull the pride out of thee; for if he do not, it will be the faggot that shall roast thy soul for ever. Take heed of pride; by pride fell the angels — how can men, then, though the image of their Maker, hope to win by it? Shun it, flee from it; for so sure as thou art proud, wilt thou incur the guilt of making light of Christ.
Perhaps quite as many made light of the good news, because they did not believt the messenger. “Oh!” said they, 4%stop a moment. What! a dinner to be given away? I do not believe it. What! the young Prince going to be married? Tell that to fools, we do not believe any such thing. What! we all invited? We do not believe it; the story is incredible.” The poor messenger went home and told his Master that they would not believe him. That is just another reason why many men make light of the gospel, because they do not believe it. “What!” they say, “Jesus Christ died to wash men from their sins? We do not believe it. What! A heaven. Who ever saw it? A hell! Who ever -heard its groans? What! Eternity. Who ever returned from that last hope of every spirit. What! Blessedness in religion? We do not believe it — it is a moping, miserable thing. What! Sweetness in the promises? No there is not; we believe there is sweetness in the world, but we do not believe there is any in the wells the Lord has digged.” And so they despise the gospel, because they do not believe it. But, I am sure, that when a man once believes it, he never thinks lightly of it. Once let me have the solemn conviction in my heart by the Holy Spirit, that if unsaved, there is a gaping gulf that shall devour me; do you think I can go to rest till I have trembled from head to foot? Once let me heartily believe that there is a heaven provided for those who believe on Christ, do you think I could give sleep to my eyes, or slumber to my eyelids, till I have wept because it is not mine?- I believe not. But damnable unbelief thrusts his hand into the mouth of man, and plucks up his heart, and so destroys him, for it will not let him believe, and, therefore, he cannot feel, because he believeth not. Oh! my friends, it is unbelief that makes men think lightly of Christ; but unbelief will not do so by-and-bye. There are no infidels in hell: they are all believers there. There are many that were infidels here, but they are not so now; the flames are too hot to make them doubt their existence. It is hard for a man, tormented in the flame, to doubt the existence of the fire. It would be difficult for a man, standing before the burning eyes of a God, to doubt the existence of a God after that. Ah! unbelievers, turn ye, or rather, may the Lord turn you from your unbelief, for this makes you think lightly of Christ; and this it is that is taking away your life, and destroying your souls.
Another set of people thought lightly of this feast because they were so worldly; they had so much to do. I have heard of a rich merchant who was waited on one day by a godly man, and when he stopped him, he said to him, “Well, sir, what is the state of your soul?” “Soul!” he said, “bother you, I have no time to take care of my soul; I have enough to do to take care of my ships.” About a week after, it so happened tha-t he had to find time to die, for God took him away. We fear he said to him, “Thou fool! this night thy soul shall”be required of thee; then whose shall those tilings be which thoti hast hoarded up for thyself?” Ye merchants of London, there are many of you who read your ledgers more than your Bibles. Perhaps you must, but ye do not read your Bibles at all, while ye read your ledgers every day. In America, it is said, they worship? the almighty dollar; I believe that in London many men worship the almighty sovereign; they have the greatest possible respect for an almighty bank note; that is the god which many men are always adoring. The prayer-book they carry so religiously in their hands is their cash-book. Even on Sunday, there is a gentleman over “there, he does not think his foreman knows it, but he was sitting in doors all this morning, because it was wet, casting up his accounts; and now he comes here in the evening, because he is a very pious man — extraordinarily so. He would shut the par% up on a Sunday, he would — he would not let a soul get a breath of fresh air, because he is so pious, but he himself may sit half-a-day in the counting-house and yet think it no sin. But many are too busy to think of these things. “Pray!” they say, “I have no time for that; I have to pay. What! read the Bible? No I cannot; I have to be looking over this thing and that thing, and seeing how the markets go. I find time to read the Times, but I could not think of reading the Brble,” It will be marvellously unfortunate for some of you, that you will find the lease of your lives rather shorter than you expected. If you had taken a lease of yout lives for eighty-eight years from this date, you would be foolish enough, perhaprs, to spend forty-four in sin. But considering that you are a tenant at will, and liable to be turned out any day, it is the height of folly, the very climax of absurdity,’ excelling all that the fool, with his cap and bells, ever did, to be living just to gather up the pelf of this world, and not for things to come. Worldliness is a demon that hath wrung the neck of many souls; God grant that we may not perish through bur worldlinessl
There is another class of people that I can’ only characterize in this way: they art
1JAKING I.K.M r OF CHRIST.
Altogether thoughtless. If you ask them concerning religion, they nave no opinion at all about it. They do not positively detest it, they do not mock at it; but they have not a thought about it. The fact of it is, they intend thinking about it by-and-bye. Theirs IP a kind of butterfly existence; they are always moving about, never doing anything, neither for others or themselves. And these are very amiable people, whc are always ready to give a guinea for a charity; they never refuse anybody, and they would give their guinea all the same, whether it was for a cricket match or a church. Kow, if I were forced to go back to the world, and had to choose the cha racter I would wish to be, the last position 1 would wish to occupy would be that of the thoughtless man. I believe thoughtless persons are in the most danger of being lost of any class I know. I like, sometimes to get under the word a thoroughly stout, stiff, hater of the gospel, for his heart is like a flint, and when it is struck with the hammer of the gospel the flint goes to pieces in a moment. But these thoughtless people have india-rubber hearts — you hit them, and they give way; you strike them again, and they give way. If they are sick, and you visit them, they say “yes.” You talk to them about the importance of religion; they say ‘’yes.” You talk to them about escaping from hell and entering heaven, they say “yes.’* You preach a sermon to them when they are better, and remind them of the vows they made in their sickness; “it is quite right, sir,” they say. And they say the same whatever you may tell them. They are always very polite to you; but whatever you say to them is put aside. If you begin talking to them about drunkards: oh! they are not drunkards; they may have accidently got drunk once, but that was a little thing out of the usual way. And bring whatever sin you like to them, you may hit them, and hit them, but it is no good, for they are not half so easily broken (speaking after the manner of n:en) as the real stout-hearted hater of the gospel. Why, there is a sailor comes rolling home from sea, swearing, blaspheming, cursing; he comes into the house of God, and almost the first word is applied by the Spirit for the breaking of Jack’s heart. Another young man says, “1 know as much as any minister can tell me; for my own mother taught me, and my old father used to read the Bible for me till, I believe, I have got every bit of it in my head. I go to chapel out of respect to his memory, but 1 really don’t care at all about it; it is very good for old people, it is quite right for old* women, and those who are dying, and in time of cholera. It is a very good thing, but I don’t care anything about it just now.” Now, I tell you, careless people, most solemnly, that you are the very devil’s lifeguards; you are his reserve;, he keeps you away from the battle; he does not send you out like he does a hlas- 1 hemer, for he fears that a shot may haply light upon you, and you may be saved. But he says, “Stand by here, and if you have to go out I will give you an inpenetrable coat of mail.” The arrows go rattling against you: they all hit you; but alas! there is not one of them that penetrates your heart, for that is left elsewhere. You are only an empty chrysalis, and when you come to God’s house, and his word is preached, you make light of it, because it is your habit to be thoughtless about everything.
Very briefly 1 must touch another case, and then I must dismiss you. You may make light of the gospel out of sheer presumption. They are like the foolish man, who goes on, and is punished; not like the prudent man, who “forseeth the evil, and hideth himself.” They go on; that step is safe — they take it; the next step is safe — they take it; their toot hangs over a gulf of darkness; but they will try one step, and as’that is safe, they think they will try the next; and as the last has been safe, and as for many years they have been safe, they suppose they always shall be; and because they have not died yet, they think they will never die. And so our of sheer presumption, thinking “all men mortal but themselves,” they go on making light of Christ. Tremble, ye presumptuous, you will not always be able to do that.
And, lastly, I fear there are a great many who make light of Christ because of the commonness of the gospel. It is preached everywhere, and that is why you make light of it. You can hear it at the corner of every street; you can read it in this widely circulated Bible; and because the gospel is so common, therefore, you don’t care for it. Ah! my dear friends, if there were only one gospel minister in London that could tell you the truth; if there were only one Bible in London, I believe you *rould be rushing to hear that Bible read; and the man vho had the message would
MAKING LIGflT OF CHRIST.
hare no sinecure of it, he would be obliged to work from morning to night, to tell it out to you. But now, because you have so many Bibles you forget to read themj because you have so many tracts you pack up any article in them; because you have so many sermons you do not think anything at all of them. But why is that? Dost thou think the less of the sun because he scatters his beams abroad? Dost thou think the less of bread because it is the food which God gives to all his children? Dost thou think the less of water, when thou art thirsty, because every rill will afford it to thee? No. If thou wert athirst after Christ, thou wouldst love him all the better, because he is preached everywhere; and thou wouldst not think lightly of him because of that.
“They made light of it.” How many of my hearers to-night, I ask again, are making light of Christ? Many of you are, no doubt. I will give you, then, just one warning, and then farewell. Make light of Christ, sinner! let me say, again, to thee, and thou wilt rue the day, when thou comest on thy death-bed. It will go hard with thee when the bony monster has got the grip of thee, and when he is bringing thee down the river, to steep thee in the lake of death. It will go hard with thee, when thy eye-strings break, and when thy death-sweat stands upon thy brow. Remember, last time thou hadst a fever; ah! how thou didst shake. Remember, last night, how thou didst quake in thy bed, when flash after flash of lightning came through thy window; and how thou didst tremble when the deepmouthed thunder spake out the voice of God. Ah! sinner, thou wilt tremble worse then when thou shalt ses death for thyself, and when the bony rider, on his white horse, shall grasp his dart and plunge it in thy bowels. It will go hard with thee then, if thou hast no Christ to shelter thee, no blood wherein to wash thy soul! Remember, moreover, after death cometh the judgment. It will go hard with thee if thou hast despised Christ, and shalt die a despiser. See that flying angel? his wings are made of flame, and in his hand he grasps a sharp two-edged sword. 0 angel, wherefore dost thou wing thy speedy flight? “Hark!” says he, u this trump shall tell you.” And he puts a trumpet to his lips, and
“Blows a blast so loud and dread,
Ne’er were prophetic sounds so full of woe.”
Look! the sheeted dead have started from their graves. Behold, the cloudy chariot is wheeled along by cherub’s hand. Mark! there upon the throne there sits the King — the Prince. O angel, what in this terrible day must become of the man that has thought lightly of Christ? See there, he unsheathes his sword. ‘* This blade,” says he, “shall find and pierce him through. This blade, like a sjckle, shall reap each tare from the wheat, and this strong arm shall bind him up in his bundle to be burned; and this great arm of mine shall grasp him, and hurl him down, down, down, where flames for ever burn, and hell for ever ’ howls.” It will go hard with you then. Mark this man’s word to-night; go away and laugh at it; but remember, I say to you again, it will be a solemn thing for you when Christ shall come to judgment, if you have made light of him, and worse than all, if you should ever be locked up in the caverns of despair, if you should ever hear it said, “Depart ye cursed,” if you should ever mingle your awful shrieks with the doleful howls of lost myriads, if you should see the pit that is bottomless, and the gulf that has walls of fire. It will be a fearful thing to find thyself in there, and to know that thou canst r.e’er get out again! Sinner, this night I preach the gospel to thee. E’er thou goest, hear it, and believe it; may God grant thee grace to receive it, so thou shalt be saved. “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved. He that believeth not,” so saith the Scripture, “shall be damned.” To believe, is to put your trust in Christ; to be baptized, is to be plunged in water in the name of the Lord Jesus, as a profession that you are already saved, and that you love Christ. “He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.” O may you never know the meaning of th&i l&t word. Farewell!
it an ifabermtcle ulpi
“THE WEDDING WAS FURNISHED WITH GUESTS.”
DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, MAY GTH, 1888, BY
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
“The wedding was furnished with guests.” — Matthew xxii. 10. OUR discourse will follow the lines of the parable. A king desired to honour his son right royally. He loved his son well, for he deserved richly of him; and therefore, as the most fitting time had come, he resolved to honour him. His son was about to take to himself a spouse; should not his marriage, which is a great event in life, be celebrated with honour? The father determined to honour his eon on the joyful occasion by inviting a large number of guests to a sumptuous banquet. Not by the infliction of pain, or the pressure of taxation, but by liberality and festivity, would the king honour the Crown Prince, it should be an extraordinary feast. Surely, it would be the simplest thing in the world to gather together a grateful company of guests. One would expect a competition for admission; everybody in the royal domain would eagerly ask for an invitation. But it fell out otherwise; there was a disloyal feeling abroad, and it now expressed itself; those who were bidden would not come, and means had to be used to secure the result spoken of in the text, so that “the wedding was furnished with guests.”
The parable is plain. The great Father delights to honour Jesus, his Only-begotten Son. The Father loves the Son, with whom he is one. The Son has deserved well at the Father’s hands, for he has been “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” It is the Father’s aim in the work of grace to glorify his Son, who, as God and man in one nature, is the channel of grace to fallen men. He proposes to do this now that the Lord Jesus takes his church into marriage union with himself. The incarnate God calls a chosen company, the bride, the Lamb’s wife, and celebrates thus early in the day this happy union by a wedding breakfast, to which he invitel multitudes to come. It is a feast of mercy, grace, and peace; a marriage feast of delight and joy. The feast is for the glorifying of the Lord Jesus Christ in a very special manner. Can any of us measure the glory which comes to our Lord Jesus by his union with the church? Angels, and principalities, and powers, intelligences
No. 2,022. 8 now existing, and all intelligences yet to be created, will wonderingly gaze upon the riches of his inheritance in the saints. What a spectacle is this! The Word made flesh that he might dwell among us! Immanuel, God with us, taking unto himself a company of chosen men, to be one with him for ever. In the union of Christ and his church all wisdom centres, all grace shines forth. “The excellency of our God” is to be seen in the salvation of the elect and the joining of them unto the Christ. Our glorious Second Adam was like the first Adam in the garden, for whom no helpmeet was found. Neither cherubim nor seraphim, angels nor spirits, could be fit companions for him. He says, “My delights were with the sons of men.” Ho willed that his chosen church should stand to him in the same relation as Eve stood to Adam, to be the solace of his heart and the rest of his love. He chose men to be his companions, his friends, his joy, hii crown.
One would have thought that every man hearing that manhood was thus to be honoured by union with Godhead would flock towards the marriage-feast. It would have seemed certain that all would desire to know this heavenly mystery, and as soon as they knew it would press forward to be partakers in its bliss. Alas! this is not the case; and this morning my business is to tell you the story of how the purpose of divine love appeared in peril, but how, in the end, it is accomplished; and, according to the language of the text, “the wedding was furnished with guests.”
I. Our first point is, that IT SEEMED AS IF NONE WOULD COME. The wedding-feast was prepared: oxen and f atlings were killed, all things were ready; but where were the guests?
Those first invited, and naturally expected, would not come. Previous notice had been given them of the festival, and afterwards a summons had been sent to say that the hour was come; but, instead of joyfully responding, they would not come.
These were, first of all, the Jews, to whom the gospel had been given by the law and the prophets long beforehand. “He came unto his own, but his own received him not.” Israel was not gathered: few out of the chosen nation recognized the Messiah. He came with a feast of mercy for them, but they would have none of it. He called, and they refused.
To-day this same class will be found among the children of godly parents; dedicated from their birth, prayed for by loving piety, listening to the gospel from their childhood, and yet unsaved. We look for these to come to Jesus. We naturally hope that they will feast upon the provisions of grace, and like their parents will rejoice in Christ Jesus; but, alas! how often it is the case they will not come! Some such are here this morning. We greatly grieve over you. You do not choose your father’s God, nor accept your mother’s Saviour. Ah me! if you will not come, who will? If you, who are taught concerning salvation by grace, yet refuse it, how can we wonder that the children of the godless and the profane reject our message? Who will come if you will not?
Dear hearers, some of you are not privileged with godly parents, but you have been for many years willing listeners to the Word of lif a, “THE WEDDING WAS FURNISHED WITH GUESTS.” 255
and yet you do not accept Christ Jesus as yours, nor accept the provisions of his grace. You do not joy with him in his union with his chosen, for you do not love him. How sad is this! Well may the dispirited preacher mourn, and fear in his heart that the great f estival of love will prove a failure! If such as you are will not come, how will the wedding be furnished with guests?
The outlook grew worse still when they came not though they were reasoned with. When they would not come, the king sent other servants to bring them to a better mind; and this was the form of his reasoning: “Behold, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.” No kinder argument could have been used: there was an appeal to all that was noble in them, and had they been worthy they would have come at once. I can well understand that the servants would repeat their lord’s message with special eagerness, as they thought of his waiting in the palace, and watching for the guests. They would cry to those who hesitated, “You have waited long enough, come at once. The marriage cannot be delayed, why should you delay? Tarry no longer. To-day if ye will hear his voice harden not your hearts.” Still they made light of it. When you have been invited to Jesus many a time; when tearful earnestness has pleaded with you, and yet men of God have had to return to their Master, saying, “Who hath believed our report?” it becomes a sorrowful business, and our anxious fears cannot see how the wedding will be furnished with guests. This would have been an overwhelming surprise to us if Jesus had not declared of men in his own day, “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.” If they refused his pleadings we cannot wonder that they reject our sayings. Still it is a mournful fact, that “Many are called, but few chosen.”
The case looks darker still when we notice that, though reasoned with by new messengers, they did not come. It is said, “He sent forth other servants.” I tell you from my very soul that, if my Lord will only bring you to the banquet of his grace, I mind not who shall be the successful messenger. If you will not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life through what I have to say, may the Lord remove me, and send some one else, to whom he will give power by his grace to reach your hearts. I shall be glad to remain in this pulpit for years to come, but not at the cost of a single soul. If somebody else can preach to you more efficiently, if some one else can get at your hearts better than I have done, may the Lord allow me to retire for your good! Do you wish it? “He sent other servants.” A preacher may be too rhetorical: let a plain -speaking person be tried. He may be too weighty: let another come with parable and anecdote. Alas! with some of you the thing wanted io not a new voice, but a new heart. You would listen no better to a new messenger than to the old one. After so many good men and true have spoken; after Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas have all failed, how shall the wedding be furnished with guests?
If you look at the various characters who would not come, you will see more and more cause for sorrow. Of some we simply read that “they would not come” They made no excuses or apologies, but curtly said
256 METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE PULPlf.
they would not come. There was an end of the matter. Many dismiss the gospel at once; they are not to be reasoned with: they do not want it, and will not have it. A large class of the community have heard of the way of salvation, but they care nothing for it. It is not with them want of information, but want of inclination. JChey have neither mind nor will for heavenly things.
A second class made light of it. They were indifferent to roya) honours and duties. They were taken up with the care of what they had in possession, and went their way, each man to his farm, saying,. ‘I have worked hard to get my farm, and I cannot afford to let it lie idle.” Another was taken up with the care of getting an estate, and went to his merchandise, saying,” I have nobody to keep my shop. I must mind the main chance. If you do not look alive, everybody will run over you. I must attend to my buying and my selling.’7 The worldly-wise make up a very numerous class. The rich man cannot be religious, his position in society prevents; the poor man cannot mind the things of God, he is worn out by earning his daily bread. Thus they all make excuse. Lord, when so many are unwilling, and so many more are occupied with other things, how shall the wedding be furnished with guests?
A third class were violently opposed: they would not be bothered, they had no patience with religious cant: they “took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.” These are not so numerous as the others; but yet they are found among us. Sceptics, swearers, revilers of godliness, and “modern thought” men: these revile the cross, and are ferocious against the gospel. When we see these raging and raving, we are apt to ask very mournfully — How can the wedding be furnished with guests?
The most dreadful thought of all remains: some of the invited had already perished. The king in his wrath sent his troops and slew the murderers of his messengers, and burned their city. While I have been preaching, many of my hearers have died. Where are they now? If they died without Christ they are now past hope. Ah me! they can never enter now, for the door is shut. If they died in their sins, they are in the outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. When you think of it, this is a dark prospect. Men are dying, dying without hope; and those who are yet alive are resolved to perish in like manner, for they are earnestly invited to the feast of love, but they refuse to come. How can the wedding be furnished with guests?
The King tells us the real reason why they would not come: they were not worthy. Those who were invited specially, and about whom there was the greatest hope, had nothing in them to encourage that hope: they were not loyal, they were not kind-hearted, they were not honest, they were not worthy, else they would have come to do honour to the son of their King. Their not coming revealed the enmity of their hearts. It was a wretched way of showing their £pite to the Prince upon his wedding-day. It is horrible that men refuse Christ and heaven out of enmity to God. Rejectors of Christ are unworthy of pardoning grace, unworthy of a dying Saviour, unworthy of those marriage bonds into which Jesus enters with believing hearts. They “THE WEDDING WAS FURNISHED WITH QUESTS.” 257
are not worthy in the gospel sense of worthiness, and of course they were far less worthy in a legal sense.
The most mournful spectacle in the world is a heart which refuses the mercy of God. Objection is sometimes made to the doctrine of total depravity. I do not know what adjective can be too strong to describe human depravity when I perceive that it refuses God under his loveliest aspect: God in the greatness of his love, God sparing not his own Son. If men turn away from God in anger I can understand it; if men turn aside from God in justice I can understand it; but when they so hate God that they will not even have his salvation, when they refuse pardon through the precious blood of Christ, when they will sooner be damned than reconciled to God, this shows that their heart is desperately wicked. The cross rejected is the clearest proof of the heart depraved. There I leave this mournful subject, and go a step further. Certainly it did seem as if the wedding would not be furnished with guests.
II. Secondly, IT WAS A MOURNFUL PROSPECT. Imagine that there had been no guests at the wedding feast: what then?
First, it would have been greatly to the king’s dishonour. The Crown Prince is married, and nobody comes to the wedding! The feast is free, costly, plentiful, but nobody will come to it. What an insult? The banqueting-hall is lighted, and the minstrels are in their place, but no eyes or ears are charmed. Oxen and fallings make the tables groan, but none are there to make the hall resound with shout and song. What a wretched spectacle! Empty halls, unfurnished benches, meat untasted carried out to the dogs! History does not record a more deliberate and unmistakable insult. Let me translate the parable. If no souls are saved, if the great plan of redemption does not save, what a farce the whole business will be! What a dishonour to the name of the great God! Look at the supposition, that you may see the impossibility of it. Think for an instant of a defeated, disappointed, dishonoured Jehovah! Can it be? And yet, if the wedding had not been furnished with guests, the king would have been disappointed and insulted in the tenderest point. If the chosen are not saved, if men are not brought to Christ, then the glorious name of the God of grace is dishonoured. Do you think it can be so?
In the next place, suppose none had come to the wedding feast; then the king’s son would have been grieved. His wedding, and nobody there! If it were your own, perhaps you could put up with it; for you do not stand in so public a position as the king’s son, and you have not provided so vast a banquet. But the king’s son! Only imagine that it is his wedding-day, and the servants are mustered in the hall, but not a single guest arrives. He has no one to congratulate him upon the happy day, no one to wish him well, no one to welcome the bride. Now, the same is true of our Lord Jesus Christ: if he dies, and men do not believe in him; if he rises again, and men do not accept him; if he enters heaven as a Prince and a Saviour, and yet no one receives repentance and remission, where is his honour? where is his glory? Look at the dreadful supposition, and think whether it can be. I am sure, as you gaze upon it, you will say, “Impossible! A bleeding Saviour cannot die in vain. Our Christ could aot in death have paid down the ransom price for nothing. He could not have stood a substitute for men, and yet see men lost after all!”
If no guests had arrived, how disappointed would the Bride have been? SLo, too, would have had to share in the failure of the day. Her bridal would not hav« been remembered with pleasure. She would have been happy in the bridegroom, but also unhappy because of theunkindness shown to him. In vain her rich apparel, and her costly ornaments, for there are no eyes to g*aze upon them. If souls are not saved the church misses her greatest joy. When men believe in Jesus, how delighted we are! Our hearts leap for joy when men repent. But if sinners are not saved, if the preaching of the gospel is in vain, if they will not come to Christ, then are saints full of heaviness, and the church cries out in her anguish, “Hast thou forgotten to be gracious?”
Had none come to the marriage feast, a store of provisions would have been wasted. The King says, “My oxen and my fallings arekilled.” See the bullocks roasting whole! See yonder fatted calf killed for the feast! Mark how the sheep are led to the slaughter! All this will remain untasted. Yonder dainty dishes, and flowing bowls, and luscious fruits will have none to enjoy them. It will be a wretched business indeed! I want you to look at the dreadful picture till it vanishes out of sight. Can it be that Jesus has made himself the heavenly bread, and none will feed on him, or at the best a very few? Can it be that he has provided a robe of righteousness, and nobody will wear it? Is heaven prepared, and will it remain half occupied? I do but suppose it for the moment, to make you see what a melancholy fact a fail are in the scheme of mercy would be.
“Would it not have meant, also, the enemy’s triumph? The king’sfoes would have heard of it, and laughed him to scorn. At a royal wedding he could not command guests! How they would scoff at his wasted provision! “Ha, ha! Ha, ha!” The story would have been told on every ale-bench. The sons of Belial would make rart) mirth of it. The King, the Prince, the Bride would all have b«en ridiculed, because of a wedding in empty halls, a feast with phantom guests! I do not believe that God intends to let Satan triumph in this way. I cannot imagine that he will allow the powers of darknessthus to open their wicked mouths against him. If free-will refuses the gift of God, free-grace will come in and win the day. I have shown you already how free-will threatens to empty the banqueting-hall, and dishonour the King, the Son, and the Bride; and if the business had been left to the free-will of man, this is the result <vhich would have come of it: a God dishonoured, and men preferring to die rather than accept life through Jesus Christ. Then it could never have been said that “the wedding was furnished with guests.”
III. Let us go a step further and notice that in the parable THIS CATASTROPHE WAS GRACIOUSLY PREVENTED. “The wedding was furnished with guests.”
We are very much in the same case to-day as the servants were in when the invited ones would not come. We preach and teach the gospel, but we have to complain that so many will not come to the-” THE WEDDING WAS FURNISHED WITH QUESTS.’* 259
banquet of grace. God gives us many souls, but not so many as we desire. We are eager for many more, and we begin to be afraid lest, after all, God should not be glorified as we wish that he should be. In the parable an unfurnished banquet was prevented, and so it will be in the reality. How was the calamity averted?
It was prevented, first, by a fuller invitation. At first the heralds only called those who had been previously bidden, a sort of aristocracy of hopeful persons. As these would not come, we read, “Go ye therefore into the highways, arid as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.” They went out, not to a select band, but to all whom they might find. Brethren, it is a grand thing when we get a clearer idea of what the gospel really is. The more evangelical our notions be come, so that we are prepared to preach the gospel to every creature under heaven and to say, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved,” the more we may hope for large success. If, by my preaching, I lead a man to look at himself, to see whether there is anything in him which entitles him to believe, I practically hide the gospel from him. If I preach up character unduly, so that the man mainly enquires whether he has that character, I fix his eye upon himself; and this is not what I should aim at. If I go forth and gather together as many as I find, both good and bad, then their thoughts are on the banquet rather than on themselves. We want men to look to Jesus, and therefore we cry, “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” When we get upon clear gospel lines, and keep there, we may expect to see the arm of the Lord revealed, and the wedding furnished with guests.
Again, the invitation was now given more publicly. They had simply gone to the houses of the invited guests, and said, UA11 things are ready: come.” But now the servants go to the chief places of concourse; and they cry aloud, and spare not among the crowds of men. One has gone to the market-cross; another is preaching where four ways meet. Hark to the voice of one upon the village green, and to the songs of others as they traverse the back slum. You cannot now go along a street without hearing the news of the great wedding feast. Many will be brought in when many are eager to bring them in. God is pleased to own the means which he has himself ordained. The more constant and public the proclamation of the gospel becomes, the more numerously will men be saved through the Spirit of God. Then is the set time to favour Zion come. We are not to hide our lamp under a bushel. He that knows the gospel should speak it out as plainly as he can, and let his voice be as the silver trumpets of jubilee, that every ear may hear. It came to pass that the king’s message was more widely made known, and thus” the wedding was furnished with guests.’*
Another matter assisted: the servants were now thoroughly aroused. I am sure I should have felt dreadfully agitated to see all those provisions and none coming to eat them. Think of the halls decorated, the cooks working day and night, the big fires burning, bullocks roasting, the wines on the lees set abroach, and yet no guests. It would have worried me greatly, and you too. You would have said, “It cannot be, it must not be, we cannot bear it. The king, how sadly he must feel! The good prince, how bitter it is for him! The dear bride, what must be her sadness when this great insult is put upon her! Here, I must fetch in some guests, or die in the attempt.” I am sure we should have travelled six ways at once if we could; we should have invited with a thousand mouths if possible. Getting hold of one man’s coat and of another man’s sleeve, we should have compelled them to come in. This, also, is the Lord’s way of blessing men. He arouses his own people, makes them sorrowful for the sins of the times, and then they grow earnest and troubled, and so they lay themselves out to snatch men as brands from the burning.” As soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.” The want of travailing causes the absence of conversion. When we begin to sigh, and cry, and mourn, because the ways of God are forsaken, then our earnestness moves the heart, both of God and man, and the guests come to the wedding.
Again, the calamity of a wedding without guests was prevented by a certain secret power which went with the messengers. We read that they “gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good.” They did not merely invite them, but they gathered them in. Now
Eeople are not to be gathered in in great numbers all of a sudden, and 3d to a feast by mere words. Words are but air. There is nothing in our words to make men come to Jesus unless the Lord works by them. Yet the guests did come in shoals. An influence went with the words of those servants which drew the people together; they could not wish to stay away; they came gladly. Their wills were sweetly inclined, and they thronged the palace. Beloved, all the hope of our ministry lies in the Spirit of God operating upon the spirits of men. I want all the members of this church to feel this more deeply and practically than ever. Do not put trust in the preacher: if he happens to be away, do not think that God is tied to him. Look for a blessing upon the gospel itself whoever preaches it. If the Holy Ghost be with us we shall see thousands flocking to Jesus. No sinner will over come to Christ apart from the quickening, enlightening, drawing, converting power of the Holy Ghost, supernaturally exercised upon the conscience and heart. Let us believe this; and next, let us be assured that the Spirit of God is with us, and let us then go forth with all boldness. To the street-corner, the cottage, the lodging-house, the wayside, let us go forth and publish abroad the invitation of the great King: “My oxen and my f atlirigs are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.”
Thus you have seen the outward means by which the Holy Spirit brings men to Jesus, and the wedding is furnished with guests.
IV. I close by noticing, in the fourth place, that IN THE END THE FEAST WAS A GLORIOUS SUCCESS. “The wedding was furnished with guests.” Guests are a part of the furniture of a wedding feast. You may pile on your gold and silver plate, hang up your banners, load your tables, and sound your music; but if you have no guests the feast is a failure. It is our solemn conviction that the Lord our God has never failed yet, and that he never will fail. We believe that the Lord’s eternal purpose will stand, and that he will do all his pleasure. We believe in no blind fate, but we trust in a predestination which is “THE WEDDIXG WAS FURNISHED WITH GUESTS.” 261
full of eyes, which accomplishes its purpose to the least jot and tittle. God’s greatest work is redemption; will he fail in it? Salvation is the focus of his glory; shall this be frustrated? If God were to fail in connection with the cross, it would be a failure indeed; God would bo dishonoured, and his crown jewels cast into the mire. But it shall not be.
Turn to the parable, and we find there were sufficient guests: “the wedding was furnished with guests.” There were as many guests aa were necessary to the honour of the King, and his Son, and his Bride. Oh yes, in the gathering up and consummation of all things, the wedding of the Lord Jesus will be amply furnished with guests: “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.” There will be no disappointment to Christ at the last great day. Satan may whisper disaster and disappointment to us at this hour, and for the moment it may seem as if the forces of darkness triumphed; but the end is not yet. The will of God, so full of grace and mercy, shall be accomplished, the preparations of grace shall be used, and the purpose of love fulfilled. As the wedding was furnished with guests so shall heaven be filled with “a number which no man can number.”
The feast was more of a success than it would have been had there been no opposition. The persons who came to the wedding were more grateful than the first invited might have been if they had come. The richer sort had a good dinner every day. Those farmers could always kill a fat sheep; and those merchants could always buy a calf. “Thank you for nothing,” they would have said to the king if they had accepted his invitation. But these poor beggars picked off the streets, they had not tasted meat for months. Their half-starved bodies welcomed the fatlings. How glad they were! One of them said to the other, “It’s a long time since you and I sat down to such a joint as this,” and the other answered, “I can hardly believe that I am really in a palace dining with a king. Why, yesterday I begged all the day, and only had twopence at night. Long live the king, say I, and blessings on the prince and his bride!” I warrant, they were thankful for such a feast. They said it was an ill wind that blew nobody any good: because their betters had refused to come, there was now room for them. When the Lord saves great sinners, such as you and me, he wins warm hearts for himself. When the Lord saves unlikely ones, he gets unusual thankfulness. When he brings in the drunkard and the profane, the unclean and the hardened, and makes them pure, and holy, and puts them among the children, what gratitude he gets! The Pharisee may ask Christ to a cold dinner, but it is the woman that was a sinner who will wash his feet with tears, and wipe them with the hairs of her head. If some of you moralists get saved — and God grant you may! — you will never prize the precioua blood so much as those do who are washed by it from foulest stains.
The joy that day was much more expressed than it would have been had others come. Those ladies and gentlemen who were first invited, if they had come to the wedding, would have seated themselves there in a very stiff and proper manner. Dear me, what a fine thing propriety is! And yet, what a dead thing it is! One said to me the other day,” I have gone to my place of worship for many years, and nobody ever did speak to me that I know of, and nobody ever will; for we are all too respectable to know one another.’’ You know the’ dignified style of self-satisfied people. Among such there is no cordiality, no freshness, no sweet naturalness. Did you ever attend a breakfast or a dinner of beggars? Did you ever see a company of very hungry people feeding, to their heart’s content? They make a merry clatter; they are not muzzled by propriety; they are glad at the sight of every dish. They look at the waiters as angels; and when the hurrahing comes to be done, you admire the strength of their lungs. The dull monotony of respectability knows no joy like that which conies to poverty when it feasts to the full at the table of bounty. The Crown Prince was happier that day among his poor subjects than he would have been among the grandees and the fashionables. Those paupers, those labourers, those tramps, those hedge-birds, those were the fellows to make merry. To whom much is forgiven, the same loveth much. Up in heaven they sing like the voice of many waters and like great thunder, because they have been cleansed from many sins and have partaken of great grace. Let the Pharisee and the moralist refuse the gospel; there are those about who, in accepting it, will do it greater honour than their dull souls could ever render to it. Thus the wedding was furnished with guests, who expressed their joy enthusiastically.
How the provisions were relished! It does one good to see a hungry man eat his food. To him even every bitter thing is sweet. He does not turn over his food and cut off every little bit of gristle, as some of TOU do because of your delicate appetites. The true gospel hearer nearkens to the text — “Eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” He does not act the critic, and cavil at this expression and that. He is too sharp-set to be particular about the dishes and the carving. We marvel sometimes at the capacity of hungry men; there is no end to it; and it is the same with spiritual as with natural hunger. I think I can tell what happened at that wedding: the Bride nudged the Bridegroom and said, “See these poor people eat! Is it not a pleasure to give one’s oxen and fatlings where they are so much needed?” The Bridegroom was as happy as he could be, for he was of a sympathizing heart, and he greatly rejoiced in the joy of the poor people around him. The king himself that day was gladdened as he saw what a gallant company of trenchermen they were, and how there was no niggling, nor finding* fault, but only unbroken enjoyment and gratitude. The choicest kind of guests had been collected if the object was to give joy. Ah dear friends! if you have a deep sense of sin, you will greatly love fre& grace and dying love. This is the lack of certain gentlemen who are always finding fault with the gospel: they never knew their own state by nature and by practice, and therefore they do not prize salvation. If they had felt a few lashes of the ten-thonged whip of the law upon their bare consciences, they would relish gospel forgiveness far more. He that has been in the prison of conviction prizes blood-bought freedom. He that has felt the chains of sin values the liberty where with Christ makes him free. So I say, that inasmuch as these poor creatures wore brought in from the streets, and their splendid appetites enjoyed tho feast, the wedding festival was no failure, but all the “THE WEDDING WAS FURNISHED WITH GUESTS.” *?63
greater success, because of the king’s enemies. The wedding was furnished with guests — guests who enjoyed the abundance provided by the King.
Certainly, the occasion became more famous than it would otherwise have been. If the feast had gone on as usual it would have been only one among many such things; but now this royal banquet was the only one of its kind, unique, unparalleled. To gather in poor men off the streets, labouring men and idle men, bad men and good men, to the wedding of the Crown Prince — this was a new thing under the sun. Everybody talked of it. There were songs made about it, and these were sung in the king’s honour where none honoured kings before. In the kitchens, among the servants, this was a fine story to tell by the fireside, while Mary and Jane wished they had been there to see. In every lodging-house for years to come this would be the favourite story — the tale of the poor man’s prince, and the needy man’s queen. On the exchange and in the market men talked of the brave bride and bridegroom who had defied the customs of fashion, and had done a deed so daring in its goodness. Was ever such a thing heard of before? Here was a feast for men who never feasted before! Sensible men said, “And nothing could be better: they were feeding those that wanted feeding: they were giving good cheer to those who have little enough of it.” Among the poor themselves the Prince’s name was very famous, while the portrait of the Princess was nailed up over the mantel-piece. Children said to one another, “My father went to the wedding of the imperial prince.” To many it seemed like a story out of the Arabian Nights. It did not read like a piece of common history at all, but like a fairy tale of the age of gold. Dear friends, when the Lord saved some of us by his grace, it was no common event. When he brought us great sinners to his feet, and washed us, and clothed us, and fed us, and made us his own, it was a wonder to be talked of for ever and ever. We will never leave off praising his name throughout eternity. That which looked as though it would defame the King turned out to his honour, and “the wedding was furnished with guests.”
One thing more: the king’’ 8 liberality was all the better seen. If those who were first bidden had put in an appearance, they would have come arrayed in their own scarlet and fine linen. Some of the gentlemen would have bought a new suit on purpose. You may depend upon it, all the cunning women in the city would have been employed to get their ladyships ready for the banquet, that they might have honour in the court that day. Now these fine clothes would have been more for the glory of those who came in them, than for the honour of the King. There was nothing of this among those who were gathered from the highways. They were in sorry gear. It was difficult, perhaps, in some cases, to tell which was the original stuff of their garments, so patched and mended were they. Anyhow, they were a ragged regiment; and what was the consequence? Why, then they must all bo dressed in the Prince’s own livery, and all the glory of their apparel must be unto him. He said to his servants, “Go to my wardrobe. Bring forth changes of raiment.” Everyone that came in to the feast was invited to put on the king’s wedding garments*
When he came in to see the guests, it was a grand sight, for everybody was royally arrayed. The king’s wedding robes were much better than his subjects’ best suits. It was a grand sight to see so many all in one royal livery; every guest wearing the uniform of mercy. So is it with us poor sinners, saved by grace. If we had possessed any true righteousness of our own we should have worn it; but now we count our own righteousness but dross and dung that we may win Christ and be found in him. His righteousness decorates all the saints: they could not be better arrayed. Thus is the feast made more glorious than it otherwise would have been, and the wedding is furnished with guests.
How I wish that I could gather in many this morning, both bad and good! I mean by good, those who are comparatively so as to their moral conduct. You are bidden to come to the wedding-feast of love. But even if you are bad, and obliged to own that you are so, I am equally anxious to gather you in to the feast. Do you ask me: What are we to do? What were these persons to do? To come just as they were, and freely receive what the king had freely provided. Sometimes at our treats for Sunday-school children every child is told to bring his own mug and plate; but it is not so with our great King. His banquet is too royal for that. You are to bring nothing. Still, everybody must go home and wash, must he not? No, the washing and the clothing shall all be done for you at the King’s palace. Come as you are. “But what do you mean by coming?” We mean trusting: trust your soul with Jesus Christ, and he will save it. Trust him, and you shall know that he died in your room, place, and stead, so that, believing in him, you shall not perish, but have everlasting life. May the Holy Spirit lead you to believe in Jesus, that is, trust him.
I have told you the gospel, and the whole of it. Trust the crucified Saviour, and you shall live. Jesus says, “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” Do not look within to see what is there, but look to Jesus hanging on the cross. A look at Christ crucified will save you. Look, dear girls, young as you are, look to Jesus now! Look, ye grey-headed men and women who have never looked before: look now! Strangers and foreigners, who have not heard this word before, there is life in a look at the Crucified One for you! Ye guiltiest of the guilty, and ye most amiable of the amiable, turn away from anything there is in yourselves, bad or good, and look to Jesus only. Receive from Jesus all he brings you — pardon, righteousness, sanctification, redemption, himself. He that comes to a wedding feast has nothing to do but to eat and to drink. Give your mind up to this delightful exercise. Take the food which Grod provides you. You shall do good works afterwards, for they will follow as a consequence of the strength which comes of receiving heavenly food through faith; but just now eat, drink, and be merry, as becomes a Prince’s marriage. May the Father be pleased, his Son be honoured, and his church be comforted through you! Anien, and Anien.
PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Matthew xxi. 33 — 46;
xxii. 1 — 14.
HYMNS FROM “OUR OWN HYMN BOOK” — 42 (Vers. I.), 504, 488.
Jflrtroptitmt SMrermtde fhilpit
WHAT IS THE WEDDING GARMENT?
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DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, MAY 20TH, 1888, BY
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
“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 earnest 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.” — Matthew xxii. 11 — 13.
Two Sabbath mornings ago I preached from this parable, and I trust many were encouraged by it; but I noticed among enquirers who came to see me afterwards, a desire to know about the wedding garment; for they feared lest, in coming to join the church, they should come like the man of whom I shall now speak. Many true hearts are extremely sensitive to the impression of fear, and they seem to be on the watch for reasons for anxiety. I do not condemn them; on the contrary, I wish there were more of such holy tremblers. It is much better to be afraid of being wrong than to be indifferent as to what you are. I perceive among the very best of the saints a considerable number who are deeply anxious as to their state before God. Those who will one day be cast out of the wedding feast are feeding themselves without fear, while those who have the most right to enjoy the banquet are full of gracious anxiety. Solomon says, “Happy is the man that feareth alway “: he will cling closely to his God, and that will make him happy; he will not run risks like the presumptuous, and so he will be happy. Holy fear spreads few banquets, but it takes care that when there is a feast we go to it in a wedding garment.
My chief object this morning will be to allay the fears of gracious ones. If they understand what the wedding garment really is, they will probably discover that they are wearing it; and, if not, they will know in whose wardrobe that garment of joy is to be found, and they will gladly ask to be arrayed therein. May the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, give a wedding joy this morning to each wedding guest, by causing him to see for certain that he is clothed in the wedding robe.
Immediately after our text, we find these solemn words: “Many are called, but few are chosen.” This is a conclusion drawn from the KT0. 2,024 9 whole parable, in which we see processes at work, which separate the chosen few from the many who are called. A distinction was made by the summoning of the invited guests. The simple delivery of the invitation set a difference between the loyal and the rebellious — a distinction most marked and decisive. So it is in the preaching of the gospel: we preach it to every creature ’ within our reach. Lovingly, tenderly, earnestly; not so well as we would, but still with all our heart we call men to the royal feast of grace; and straightway the very invitation begins to gather out the precious from the vile. Pure
fDspel preaching is very discriminating. You can tell Cain from bel as soon as the sacrifice is the subject. Preach salvation by grace, and you find that some will not have it at any price, others postpone all consideration of it, and a third party raise questions without end. Still do men make light of it, and go their way to their farms and to their merchandise. Thus, dear friends, every Sabbath day, without our attempting to sit in judgment on men, the gospel is in itself a refining fire. In the gospel the Son of David has a throne of judgment as well as of mercy. When men will not have Christ and his grace, the Word preached by his humble servant drives them away, and they go with the chaff. But the work of discrimination is not finished after the gospel has been heard and men have been brought into the church. Alas! even in the church division has to be made; indeed, it is there that this is most fully carried out. “His fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor.” If he uses a scourge nowhere else, he will be sure to use it in his own temple. Among the sheep there are goats; among the virgins there are foolish ones; and among the guests at the wedding feast there are those who have not on the “wedding garment. Until we come to heaven itself we shall always discover necessity for the work of self-examination. Even in the apostolic college, Judas carried on his knavery, as if to warn us that no rank in service, no honour among brethren, no length of experience can screen us from the necessity of saying, “Lord, is it I?” when his warning voice saith, “One of you shall betray me.” In our text we see a man who has hearkened to the invitation and has come into the feast, and thus has passed the first test; and yet he is unable to abide the second; he has been received by the servants, but he cannot deceive their Master. The King detects him as a spot in the feast, and he is cast out from the palace of mercy into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. May none of us be of this sort.
I shall endeavour to answer four questions naturally arising out of the parable. First, What is meant by the king’s coming in? — “when the king came in to see the guests “; secondly, What is the wedding garment? thirdly, Who is he that hath it not; and fourthly. Why did h& stand speechless when he was asked, “How earnest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?”
I. May the Holy Spirit help us while we consider, first, WHAT ia
MEAXT BY THE KING’S COMING IN.
“The king came in to see the guests.” They were all reclining at the tables, for “the wedding was furnished with guests.” They .gathered while the sun was up, but darkness covered the world outside when “the king came in to see the guests.” They had feasted, and now the king came to honour the assembly.
It was the crown and the culmination of the feast. No matter how dainty the viands, nor how bright the hall, the feast has not reached its height till his majesty appears in gracious condescension. It is so with us, beloved, in reference to our greater King. When we are gathered in this house, which has often proved to us a palace of delights, we never reach the height of our desire till the Lord manifests himself to us. You delight to hear the preacher, and to join in the song, and to say Amen to the prayer, but these are not all. Your heart and your flesh cry out for God, for the living God; you Ipok to behold the King in his beauty. When the glorious Father reveals himself in Christ Jesus, then the Sabbath is a high day, for our prayer is answered, “Make thy face to shine upon thy servant.” Our glorious King is not always equally manifest in our solemn assemblies. Doubtless because of our sins he hideth himself. In truth he is always with us; for the feast is his, and the hall is his, and every guest is brought in by his grace, and every dish on the table is placed there by his love; but yet there are times when he is specially seen among his people. Then our communion with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ, is sweet indeed.
These are seasons of gracious visitation: times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord. When the King comes into the assembly, the preaching of the word is in demonstration of the Spirit, and in power. Then the day of Pentecost has fully come: the Spirit is abundantly outpoured, souls are saved, saints are edified, and Christ is glorified. The spiritual soon detect the divine presence, and the shout of a King is heard in the camp. When I think of it, my heart cries out with Isaiah,” Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence!” The presence of our God brings with it heavenly happiness, solemn content, and overflowing joy. Well does Dr. Watts sing: —
“The King himself comes near,
And feasts his saints to-day;
Here we may sit and see him here,
And love, and praise, and pray.
“One day amidst the place
Where my dear God hath been
Is sweeter than ten thousand days
Of pleasurable sin.”
Beloved friends, you know better than I can tell you when the King is near, and you know sorrowfully when he is not in the assembly. Alas, from how many congregations is he absent, and that absence unmourned! When the Lord is gone we spread our sails, but there is no wind: we bring the sacrifice, but there is no fire. The wedding would have been a failure without guests; but what would the feast have been if the host had refused to come in and see the guests? But the King came in in due time. Ay, came in among that crowd of wayfarers gathered from the highways at a moment’s notice, and his presence crowned the festival with honour and rapture.
This coming in to see the guests indicates a glorious revelation of himself. When the King saw the guests, the guests saw him; but, inasmuch as his sight of them was the more important sight of the two, the chief thing is mentioned while the minor matter is implied. Do we know what it is to see God? This is the special privilege of the pure in heart. When the Lord’s way is in the sanctuary, then his sanctified ones behold him. Spiritual eyes have looked to Jesus by faith, and he saith,” He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Have you never been like John in Patmos, ready to swoon away because of the revelation of the Father in Christ? When Jesus has been set forth evidently crucified among us, we have in him beheld the face of the great K?ng, and our hearts have leaped for joy, so that we have been ready to leap into heaven itself if the word had been given. When Augustine read those words, “Thou canst not see my face and live,” he was bold enough to answer, “Let me die to see thy face.”
Blessed vision!
“Lord, let me see thy beauteous face!
It yields a heaven below;
And angels round the throne will say,
‘Tis all the heaven they know.”
The King delights to see his guests, and his guests delight to see him. Then is our worship full of bliss, and no place out of heaven is so like to heaven as the place of our assemblies. We read in the Gospel of John: “Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord “; and well they might be. Then are we glad also when we distinctly discern him as our Lord and our God. My own soul knows this joy unspeakable, but because it is unspeakable, I say no more.
For the King to come in and see the guests includes a manifestation of special favour. He comes in, not to judge the guests, but to look upon them. You that were here last Thursday might will remember my text: “Look thou upon me, and be merciful unto me, as thou usest to do unto those that love thy name.” The Lord is accustomed to look with favour upon those who love his name, for he is pleased with them. 0 brothers and sisters, when the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost; when the Father lifts upon us the light of his countenance, then our summer weather is come. Can anything be compared with the favour of God? The smiles of kings, the friendships of emperors — do not mention them in the same day. Some of you know that the Lord loves you; yea, that he loved you from before the foundation of the world, and he will love you when the world has ceased to be. Oh that the King would come here this morning in that sense, and look into all your faces, and give you all the full assurance that you are in his heart, and shall be there to all eternity! Oh that this whole church may be a living temple in which the Lord shall delight to dwell; may every stone of it be brilliant with the reflected light of his favour; may all our testimonies and labours be acceptable unto him, and may he be very gracious at the voice of our cry! 0 Jehovah, manifest thyself here as thou didst between the cherubim! For thy sake we have borne reproach; Lord be our glory! We have held fast thy truth; we beseech thee, let the light of thy countenance encourage us!
But here is the solemn point to which I call your attention: this visitation brings with it a time of discovery and searching of heart. When the King conies in to see the guests, the light grows stronger, and hidden things are revealed; for all things are naked and open to the eves of him with whom we have to do. When the Lord visits his church, his fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem; then the man without a wedding garment is winked at no longer. You can go on sleeping as a church when God is away, and no members will fall off; for those who know not the Lord will come in and go out among you as aforetime. The dead will remain quiet till the Lord sounds the trumpet of resurrection: mere professors will not know that they are making a false profession, but will remain at ease in our solemn feasts. But when the King comes in all things are changed. “Who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ sope.’’ You cannot receive abundant spiritual life into the church without the discernment of the unworthy, and the explusion of the spiritually dead. One goes away because he is offended at the doctrine, another is grieved at the heart-searching experience, and a third feels himself too sternly rebuked as to his life. Thus the Lord’s visitation of grace becomes an assize of judgment, and the finger of the Lord writes upon the wall, “Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.” If the Lord our God were to come into his church to-day there would be an awful shrinkage among the number of his guests; a panic would seize the assembly, and the door would be blocked with men hastening to escape his eye.
Look how the king’s discernment is recorded in the text. One man only had refused to put on a wedding garment; but the king at once fixed his eye upon him. The Saviour, by a kind of heavenly charity, mentions only one intruder, but I fear we must regard the one as the type of many. If the King should come in at the time of our communion, I am afraid he would detect more than one. Still, if there were but one, he would concentrate his gaze upon that one, and speak to him by himself. If you are the only person who has dared to enter the church knowing that you are not converted, the King will spy you out. If you make a profession of religion out of bravado, and keep it up by sheer deceit, you may hide yourself away among your family connections, or think that your respectability will screen you; but you are mistaken. You have to deal with one whose eyes are as a flame of fire, and he will so unmask you that you will not have a word to say in your own defence. This is a solemn matter. It will not make the true-hearted wish the King to stay away, but those who are wilful deceivers may well tremble. The King does come to this church. He is specially pre sent in the midst of this people, and the consequence is that his judgment is strict with us. I have seen the rod of his discipline here in a very striking manner. I have seen the fair professor wither in the heat of love, and the rootless Christian dried up in the noontide of grace. He might have gone on very well in any other church, but he has not been able to abide the brandished sword of the Spirit, and its dividing asunder soul and spirit, joints and marrow.
He has not been able to sit it out, but has been obliged to go away and find an easier rest. Just in proportion as we really have the King in the midst of us making glad the saints, we shall have the King in the midst of us discerning the false and casting them out, first into the outer darkness of the world, which lieth in the wicked one, and at last into the outer darkness of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Still, be the result what it may, our prayer this morning is, “God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us.”
II. Now I would answer the second question: WHAT is THE WEDDING GARMENT? You are probably aware that this has been a point greatly disputed among theologians. Is the wedding garment justification, or sanctification, or what? I am not going to be theological and bring doctrinal matters to the text; but I shall read the parable as it stands, and interpret its details by its general run. It is called a “wedding garment” — a garment suitable for a marriage feast. Let us translate the figure, rather than attempt to rivet a doctrine to it. What does a wedding garment mean? What is that which we must have in connection with our Lord’s marriage or be cast out for ever?
I think I may say plainly that it must signify a distinguishing mark of grace. Everybody does not wear a wedding garment: he who wears it has put it on because he is a wedding guest. You know the wedding guest at once by his attire. He dresses in a way which would be considered singular if he were so arrayed every day. Your steady citizen indulges in a white waistcoat on the nuptial occasion, but he never dreams of going down to his office in the city in such gear. True members of the church of God wear a distinguishing mark. If you are not different from other people, you have no right in the church of God. If a servant can live with you for years and never discover your love to God, I should think there is none to discover. If you are just the same as those you lived with in your former days, if you have undergone no change, and are like the rest of men, you have not the distinguishing mark which sets forth your right to be in the church of God. There ought to be a some thing about us which sets us apart — a something which can be seen and understood by common people, even as a wedding garment could be seen, and its meaning at once perceived. Your religion must not require a microscope to perceive it, nor should it be so indistinct that few can discover any meaning in it. It should be as visible as the white garment which was worn by Easterns at a marriage. Is it so?
I may boldly add here that the wedding garment was a distinguishing mark of grace; for as these people were fetched in from the highways they could not have provided themselves with wedding garments. It is the custom in the East for a king to provide robes for his guests; therefore this wedding garment was a mark of grace, freely given and received. Is there, then, a something about you which the Lord in love has given you? Do you differ from others, not in natural attainments, but in spiritual grace? Does the difference mainly lie in what God himself has done for you? That is the question involved in the symbol of the wedding garment. Do you differ from what you used to be. Do you differ from what you were years ago? Do you differ from those with whom you used to associate, so that you seek other company and turn aside from those who once were charming fellows to you? If so, you have on the wedding garment. It is a distinguishing mark. I do not mean to put this in a way that would grieve anybody here unless they ought to be grieved; but if they ought to be grieved, then we would have them cry to God for renewal by his grace. May the Lord make you to wear his livery! May he give you the spot of his children, and cause you no longer to be of the world! A distinguishing mark is plainly the first meaning of the wedding garment.
In the next place, it was a symbol of respect for the king. To be fit for his company, the dress must be special. The absence of such a dress was, in the case before us, the badge of irreverence and disloyalty. This man said to himself: “I will feed at the feast without acknowledging its intent. Whoever stops me, I will push my way in, and I shall sit there in my everyday garments, to let the king know that I do not respect him in the least, and will not wear the robes he provides.” It is as if you had lost a son, and some wretched man should say, “I will attend the funeral in a wedding suit. I shall thus wound the feelings of the mourners, and show my contempt for the whole affair.” What an insult it would be! To turn the picture. Suppose you were being married, and somebody forced his way into the wedding dressed in mourning, with crape upon his hat, and black kid gloves upon his hands. What a wanton insult! If such impudence were met with a horse-whip, who would be surprised? Now, this man acted in that fashion: he had no respect for the king: he showed his traitorous nature in the worst possible manner, spiting the king in his own halls upon a tender occasion. Dear friends, I trust that you can truly say, “I have on the wedding garment of reverence for the King. I do not despise the Lord God; but I bow before him in true worship. I would come into his church, not to dishonour him, but to give glory to his name.” The wedding garment was a token of respect to him who had provided the feast and presided over it: judge you this day whether you have on the wedding garment, by enquiring whether you honour and reverence the Lord God, and labour to be obedient to him in all things.
The wedding garment was, moreover, a token of honoitrfor the Prince. Those who put on the wedding garment did as good as say, “We join in the joy of the Prince, and come hither to-day to show our attachment to him, and to wish him joy of his bride.” My hearers, do you feel a love to the Lord Jesus Christ? Many do not. I grieve to say we have a race of men sprung up nowadays who call themselves Christians, who pour contempt upon his precious blood, and ridicule the substitutionary sacrifice. Dreadful assertion 1 but it is a matter of fact. The name of Jesus, why, it is to our lives what the sun is to the skies, what the rivers are to the plains. Nothing makes us so glad as thoughts of Jesus. I am sure when I hear a sermon about Christ, my Master, my very heart grows warm within me. Is it so with you? Well, then, you have on the wedding garment; that is to say, you do truly, though it be but in a simple way, pay homage to the
Prince of Peace; you love the name and person of Jesus, xnd you come into his church because you do so.
The wedding garment also signified a confession of sympathy with the great occasion. Every man who ate of the failings, every man who drank of the wines, every man who gave his presence, was a helper in the honours of that wedding feast, save only this one intruder, who would not even pretend to join in the joy, for he refused the simple act of putting on a robe fit for the feast. Dear friend, do you feel sympathy with the Lord’s purposes of grace? Do you rejoice that Jesus finds a bride among our race? Do you bless Q-od for the covenant of grace, which includes incarnation, redemption, and sanctification? Do you bless the name of the incarnate God for taking into everlasting union with himself a people prepared of the Lord? Well, then, you are in sympathy with the marriage of the Lamb, and you have a right to be present at the feast. You evidently wear the wedding garment which denotes your joy in Christ, your interest in his Church, your part and lot in the joyous work of his salvation.
The wedding garment means, in a word, conformity to the requirements of the occasion. It was a wedding, and the guests must put on a suitable dress. This man refused to put it on. He was proud, and would not wear the gift of grace; he was self-willed, and must needs be singular, and show his independence of mind. The regulation was by no means irksome, and to the rest of the guests the commandment was not grievous; but this man would have his own way in defiance of the Lord of the feast. What could come of such folly? Now, beloved, one of the requirements of the feast is, that you with your heart believe on the Lord Jesus, and that you take his righteousness to be your righteousness. Do you refuse this? If you will not accept the Lord Jesus as your substitute, bearing your sins in his own body on the tree, you have not the wedding garment. Another requirement is that you should repent of sin and forsake it; and that you should follow after holiness, and endeavour to copy the example of the Lord Jesus. You are to possess, as the work of divine grace, a godly and upright character. Have you such a character? Even though you are not perfect, yet, inasmuch as you follow after righteousness, you have the wedding garment. You say that you are a Christian; do you live like a Christian? Are you in a position and condition which agree with the gospel feast? If so, you have on the wedding garment.
Those who came unto the feast were, when they came, both bad and good; so that the wedding garment does not relate to their past character, but relates to something with which they were invested when they came to the banquet. The putting on of a wedding robe cannot refer to an elaborate ceremony, or a feat of the intellect, or to a deep experience of the heart; and yet it involved joining in the wedding, or not joining in it. It involved reverence for the King, and homage to the Prince, and sympathy with the whole matter. Look well to yourselves, and see whether you truly yield yourselves to the Lord, and agree with him in the whole matter.
III. Thirdly, WHO is THE MAN THAT HAS NOT ON THE WEDDING
GARMENT?
I should say, first, he is the man who rejects God’s revealed gospj that ke may follow his own thought and his own wisdom. He says that he ia loyal to Christ, and he expects all his fellow guests to be firm friends with him, for is he not in the banquet as much as they are? But he does not mean by loyalty what they mean by it. He is among believers, but he is not truly of them. He talks about atonement; he does not mean substitution. He talks about the divinity of Christ; he does not mean the Godhead of Christ. He talks about justification by faith; but he does not mean the old-fashioned doctrine. He speaks of regeneration, but means evolution. He girds himself with the garment of philosophy, but he refuses the robe of revelation, for the cut of it is too old-fashioned for him. He is no more a wedding guest than he is a merry-andrew; perhaps, not so much so. He wears raiment in which the robe of righteousness and the garments of gladness are not to be seen. The looms of free grace and dying love have never woven him a wedding dress. His robe is not of God’s provision; it is from his own wardrobe. He glories in his own culture, and not in the revelation of God, nor yet in the work of divine grace upon the heart. He is in the church, but he is not in Christ. He has a name to live, but he is dead.
The next person who has not on the wedding garment is the man who refuses the righteousness of God because he has a righteousness of his own. He thinks his work-day dress good enough for Christ’s own wedding. What does he want with imputed righteousness? He scouts it as immoral. He who is himself immoral! What does he want with the precious blood of Jesus? He does not need to be washed from crimson stains. He writes a paper against the sensuousness of those persons who sing —
“There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Iminanuel’s veins.”
His own righteousness, though it be of the law, and such as Paul rejected, he esteems so highly that he counts the blood of the covenant an unholy thing! Ah me, the insolence of self -righteousness! Its pride is the very chief of sins, for it slights the righteousness of God. Practically, the self-righteous man does not see any wedding in the gospel system; he does not see anything in the gospel to make him glad, nothing for him to sing about, nothing to make him shout for joy of heart. He will not praise the Prince. Not he! He is under the law, and he is content to be a slave; he is trying to save himself by his own works, and law knows no holidays. He is not a wedding guest, but a mere drudge.
Another sort of person has profession without feeling. If he were outside of the church his conscience might trouble him: he has come inside of it, and now he says to himself, “It is all right.” He does not care to watch his feelings; he never had any: he would rather not have any. To the power of the Word he is a stranger, though he knows the letter of it. As to repentance, and the burden of sin, he never knew them, and does not want to know them. He thinks Mr. Bunyan must have been superstitious or morbid when he wrote “Grace Abounding.” Joy in the Lord is equally a thing unknown co him, for lie hates all excitement. He has no solemn depression! and no raptures, for he has no spiritual life. As he has no holy feeling, so he has no holy action: he is a Christian, he says; but having put up the sign-board, he drives no trade. His religion operates far more upon his boots and his hat than it does upon his heart: that is to say he comes out respectably dressed on a Sunday, but his religion never affects his conduct. Nobody can find much fault with him except that he is as dead as a door nail. He commits no gross sin, he certainly performs no brilliant deeds of piety. Spiritually he is a very well washed corpse — that is all.
We have others who are in the church, who think that what they have done themselves, or what nature has done for them, is quite enough. They do not seek anything supernatural. They do not want any wedding garment more than their every-day coats. They are quite reputable in appearance even now, and with a little touching up they will be good enough without the new birth, and without the Holy Spirit. Alas, my hearers! all that nature can ever do for you will leave you on the wrong side of heaven. You may cultivate nature to its utmost, it will never bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. “Ye must be born again.” If you have not come into living contact with a living Saviour by the work of the Holy Ghost you may be in the Church, but you are not in Christ, and have not on the wedding garment.
Why, some dare to come into the church who have not even common morality. It is shocking we should have to say it, but nowadays, we meet with those who call themselves Christians who can drink upon the sly, who can commit uncleanness with their bodies, who can be dishonest in their trading, who can be liars, who can hate their own flesh and blood and be at enmity with their brethren, and yet dare to come to the communion table. In the highlands of Scotland it was at one time difficult to get Christian people to come to the Lord’s Table, for they so trembled under a sense of their unworthiness. We do not want to push this too far, but that is a great deal better than that unholy daring, which is to be found in the minds of so many who serve Christ and Belial. Q-od save his church from degradation! Unholy professors have not on a wedding garment: their outward robes by no means befit the King’s feast: but they are a dishonour to him.
I do not see how that man can be said to have on a wedding garment who takes no interest in the work of the church. You see when a man put on the wedding garment, he did as good as say, “I am interested in the wedding. I wish God’s blessing to the bride and bridegroom.” But many come in now to the King’s feast who do not care a snap of the finger for the church of God, nor for Christ either. They come in because a sort of selfishness makes them anxious to be saved; but as to the bride, the Lamb’s wife, they do not care whether she starves or flourishes. Sad and wretched business this! If members of the church only can distribute tracts or attend meetings for prayer — if they are doing this, and show an interest thus in the wedding — they have on the wedding garment. But if all they do is simply to hear, either to criticize or to enjoy, but never work for Christ, nor pray for Christ, they have no sympathy in the wedding feast, and therefore they have not on a wedding garment.
IV. To close, WHY WAS THIS MAN SPEECHLESS? We do not often meet with people who have no excuse. Excuse-making is the easiest trade out. A man can make an excuse out of nothing at all, or out of what is less than nothing, out of a direct lie. But here was a man who could not speak? Why was that?
Well, I think, first, the affront was too bare-faced. “How earnest thou in hither?” If he did not like the king he could have kept outside. There was no need why he should come in at all, and there display his malice. If any of you are resolved to be lost, you need not add to your eternal ruin by making a profession of religion, for hypocrisy is a superfluity of naughtiness. But this man wilfully refused the wedding garment. Now those dear souls I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon do not wilfully refuse the Lord’s grace: I am sure they do not. Oh no, they are afraid they are not right, but they do not wish to be wrong. Such are not among those whom this parable condemns.
Next, the affront was so audacious. “How earnest thou in hither?1’ said the King. He must have pushed by the deacons at the door. The fellow would come in. When the king said, “Bind him hand and foot,” I think it was because he had used hand and foot to get in. He would get in; he said, “I will get in. I will defy the king to his face, and sit in among his guests without a wedding garment.” You, dear friend, do not wish to do that: I am sure it is the last thing you would do. Why, we have to persuade you to come in at all; for you are so tenderly jealous lest you should be mistaken Do not let this parable condemn you.
But why was the man speechless? I answer once more, because it was the king himself who spoke to him. Ah! if I speak to you, what am I but flesh and blood? You do not mind me! But if the King him self were here to-day, and he said to any one of you, “Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?” the tone of his voice, the glory of his presence, would flash in upon your hearts, you would be obliged to feel it, and you could not invent an answer. If you do not love him, if you have no reverence for him, no sympathy with his Son, you will be speechless before his bar.
Lastly, the reason why he was speechless was because, even if he could have spoken and been free from terror, there was nothing to be said. He could not cry, “Lord, I did not know it.” He saw all the rest with wedding garments on. He could not say, “Lord, I could not get a wedding garment “: each one had received a garment gratis, and he might have received the same. He could not say, “Lord, I was pushed in here by somebody else.” No, he had willingly chosen to come, and to defy the rule. The guests had all looked at him: some had edged a little way off from him. Some had tenderly said, “Brother, will you not put on the wedding garment?” He answered, “No.” “Will you not go out before the king comes in?” “Why,” he said, “I came on purpose to defy him. I mean to keep my place.” I do not wonder that the king said, “Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Our Lord Jesus Christ says very strong things about the future of the wicked. I have been accused of representing the state of the lost in too horrible a manner. I have never gone beyond the dreadful descriptions given by our Lord himself. Do not risk your eternal future. Come to the church of God and join it, but do not join it unless you love the Lord. Do not come to the gospel feast unless you reverence the King; unless you love the Prince; unless you are in sympathy with the great work of grace which is pictured as a wedding feast. If you have sympathy with the wedding, love to the Bridegroom, and delight in the bride, then come and welcome; for you have the wedding garment. I am thinking just now of all those other hundreds of people at the wedding, all of them clothed with the wedding garment. What joy they felt! Many had been bad, and all had been poor: but they all had the wedding garment, and not one of them was cast out. If you will but put your trust in Jesus, and so honour the Son; and rest in the love of the Father, and BO honour the King, it is written, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” God bless you for Jesus’ sake! Amen.
PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Psalm cxxi., cxxii.
HYMNS FEOM “Oun OWN HYMN BOOK” — 122 (Song I.), 721, 873.
DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 19ra, 1871, BY
C. H. SPUUGRON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
44 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 camt st 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.’1 — Matthew xxii. 11 — 14.
APPARENTLY the parable of the marriage feast would have been complete without this addition, but there was infinite wisdom in appending this sequel. This is seen practically in the experience of the church of God. Those who are permitted to see large additions to the church will find this parable of the wedding garment to be singularly appropriate arid timely. Whenever there is a revival, and many are brought to Christ, it seems inevitable that at the same time a proportion of unworthy persons should enter the church. However diligent may be the oversight, there will be pretenders creeping in unawares who have no true part or lot in the matter, and hence, when the preacher is most earnest for the ingathering of souls to Christ, he needs to couple there with a holy jealousy, lest those who come forward to make a profession of faith should be moved by carnal motives, and should not really have given their hearts to God. We must use the net to draw in the many, but all are not good fishes that are taken therein. On the threshing floor of Zion the heap is not all pure wheat, the chaff is mingled with the grain, and therefore the winnowing fan is wanted. God’s furnace is in Zion, and there is good need for it, for the gold is yet in the ore, and needs to be separated from the dross. Wood, ‘hay, and stubble building is quick work, but it is a waste of effort; we need continually to examine our materials, and see that we use only gold, silver, and precious stones. It is most needful in times of religious excitement, to remind men that godliness does n«>t consist in profession, but must be proved by inward vitality and outward holiness. Every thing will have to be tested by a heart-searching God, and if, when he comes to search us, we are found wanting, we shall be expelled even from the marriage feast itself; for there is a way to hell from the very gates of heaven. In a word, it is well for all men to be reminded that the enemies of the great King are not only outside the church, but they are even in it; while a part refuse to come to the wedding of his Son, others press into the banquet and are still his foes. May God grant that this subject may have a heart-searching effect. May it be as the Nos. 97G north wind when it blows through the marrow of the bones. May it lead us to desire to be searched and tried of God, whether we be truly in the faith, or are reprobates in his esteem.
The parable may be discoursed upon under five heads. Here is an enemy at the feast; here is the king at the feast; that king becomes the judge at the feast; and hence the enemy becomes the criminal ai the feast; and swiftly is removed by the executioner at the feast.
I. We see in the text AN ENEMY AT THE FEAST.
He came into the banquet when he was bidden, but he came only in appearance, he came not in heart. The banquet was intended for the honoui of the son, but this man meant not so; he was willing to eat the good things, but he intended no respect to the prince. He did not, like others, say “I will not come, for I will not have this man to reign over me;” but he said, “I will come, but it shall be in such a way that the royal purpose shall not be served, but rather hindered. I shall be present as an onlooker, but take no share in the ceremony; I will, on the contrary, show that I have no care for the business in hand, except so far as it serves my turn.” The man came in the full exercise of self-will and self-love. He resolved to yield no homage, but to assert his independent self-sovereignty. He would show the king even at his table, where his bounties were so largely dispensed, that he was not afraid to affront him. When he came to the door of the feast, he found the guests all putting on the garment suitable for the marriage banquet. As here, in our own country, at a funeral, each mourner is expected to put on the articles of mourning which are provided, so at the wedding feast each person was expected to wear the bridegroom’s favours, the garment which, as a badge, marked him as an attendant at the wedding, and as one who rejoiced in it. While others cheerfully put on this wedding dress the traitor would not; he resolved to defy the rules of the palace, and to insult the king by appearing in his own garments. He scorned to wear the livery of respectful joy, he preferred to make himself conspicuous by his daring insolence. The badge was intended to show that the wearer was a real participator in the joy of the feast, and for that very reason he would not put it on. He did not acknowledge the king nor the prince, nor care one atom about the gladsome event. He had no objection to be there, to eat the dainties, or recline upon the seats, and see the pomp and the show, but he was only in it, and not of it; he was there in body, but not in spirit. Are there not crowds of people whose union to the church is nothing better than an insult to God? Custom sways them, and not sincere faith. They have no regard to the great Head of the church or to the heart-searching God. They treat church-membership as a trifle, and have no tenderness of heart touching the matter. They, in effect, say, “The table of the Lord is contemptible.” “Spots are they in our feasts, feeding themselves without fear.”
Many a time the question has been asked, “What was the wedding garment?” It is a question which need not be curiously pryed into. So many answers have been given that I conclude that if our Saviour had intended any one specific thing he would have expressed himself more plainly, so that we should have been able, without so much theological disputing, to have understood what he meant. It seems to me that our Lord intended much more than any one thing. The guests were bidden to come to the wedding to sho their respect to the king and prince; some would not come at all, and so showed their sedition; this man came, and when he heard the regulation, that a certain garment should be put on, comely in appearance and suitable for the occasion, he determined that he would not wear it. In this act of rebellion, he went as far in opposition as they did who would not come at all; and he went a little further, for in the very presence of the guests and of the king, he dared to declare his disloyalty and contempt. Alas, how many are willing enough to receive gospel blessings, but they are still at enmity with God, and have no delight in the only Begotten Son. Such will dare to use the forms of godliness, and yet their hearts are full of rebellion against the Lord. The wedding garment represents anything which is indispensable to a Christian, but which the unrenewed heart is not willing to accept, anything which the Lord ordains to be a necessary attendant of salvation against which selfishness rebels. Hence it may be said to be Christ’s righteousness imputed to us, for alas, many nominal Christians kick against the doctrine of justification by the righteousness of the Saviour, and set up their own self-righteousness in opposition to it. To be found in Christ, not having our own righteousness, which is of the law, but the righteousness which is of God by faith, is a very prominent badge of a real servant of God, and to refuse it is to manifest opposition to the glory of God, and to the name, person, and work of his exalted Son. But we might with equal truth say that the wedding dress is a holy character, the imparted righteousness which the Holy Spirit works in us, and which is equally necessary as a proof of grace. If you question such a statement, I would remind you of the dress which adorns the saints in heaven. What is. said of it? “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Their robes therefore were such as once needed washing; and this could not be said in any sense of the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ; that was always perfect and spotless. It is clear then that the figure is sometimes applied to saints in reference to their personal character. Holiness is always present in those who are loyal guests of the great King, for “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” Too oiany professors pacify themselves with the idea that they possess imputed righteousness, while they are indifferent to the sanctifying work of the Spirit. They refuse to put on the garment of obedience, they reject the white linen which is the righteousness of saints. They thus re veal their self-will, their enmity to God, and their non-submission to his Son. Such men may talk what they will about justification by faith, and salvation by grace, but they are rebels at heart, they have not on the wedding dress any more than the self-righteous, whom they so eagerly condemn. The fact is, if we wish. for the blessings of grace, we must in our hearts submit to the rules of grace without picking and choosing. It is idle to dispute whether the wedding garment is faith or love, as some have done; for all the graces of the Spirit and blessings of the covenant go together. Ko man ever had the imputed righteousness of Christ
with out receiving at the same time a measure of the righteousness wrought in us by the Holy Ghost. Justification by faith is not contrary to the production of good works: God forbid. The faith by which we are justified is the faith which produces holiness, and no man is justified by faith which does not also sanctify him, and deliver him from the love of sin. All the essentials o£ the Christian character may be understood as making up the great wedding garment. In one word, we put on Christ, and he is “made of God unto us wisdom, righteousness, ganctification, and redemption.”
The wedding garment is simply mentioned here as being a test of loyalty to those who came to the marriage feast, and as a mode by which rebellion was avowed and loyalty made apparent. Here was a man then who came in to the gospel feast, and yet refused to comply with the command which related to that feast. He wilfully preferred self to God, his heart was full of enmity and pride, he despised the gifts of grace, he scorned the rule of love, he stood a defiant rebel even at the banquet of mercy which his King had spread.
His sin lay, first of all, in coming in there at all without the wedding garment. If he did not mean to be of one heart with his fellow guests and his lord, why did he come? If a man does not intend to yield himself up to God’s will, why does he profess to be of God’s church? If a man is not saved by the righteousness of Christ, why does he profess to be a believer in Christ? If he will not be obedient to Christ’s holy will, why does he pretend to be a follower of Christ? It is a grave mistake for any person to imagine that he can be in the church of God to his own advantage unless his heart is renewed, unless he means what he declares, and sincerely loves the rule under which he professes to put himself.
The intruder’s sin was aggravated by the fact, that after he had unlaw fully come into the feast he still continued there without the wedding robe. He does not appear to have had any compunction, or to have thought of amending his error. Only when the king came in and said, “Take him away,” had the insolent rebel any idea of removing. Had he come in there, as I fear some of you have come into the church, under a mistake, thinking that there was no need of the wedding dress, when he looked around and saw all other persons wearing it, and observed that it was the peculiar mark of a guest, he would have felt uneasy and have gone to those who kept the royal wardrobe to get such a robe for himself; arid then his sin in the matter would not have been laid to his charge. But he persisted in remaining where he was, and as he was. 0 my dear hearers, if you have already perpetrated the sin of union with the visible church of God without having the prerequisites, without being indeed submissive to God in heart and desirous to honour Christ, I entreat you, seek what is wanted, seek faith in God, seek a new heart, seek holiness of life, seek to become a loyal subject of the king, and be not content until you have these things, for the King will soon come in: he gives yon time as yet, may he also give you grace to see to it that, being now where you ought never to have been, you may yet make your position a right one by obtaining that which will justify you in remaining where you are. The guest in his own clothes was a speckled bird amongst that company, it was possible for him even then to have become one of them; but he would not, he continued to defy the King.
This persistence he retained though he probably knew the fate o f those who had refused to come. He knew that the king had sent forth his armies and destroyed those wicked men who had molested his messengers, and yet he dared to recline at his ease in the very teeth, and defying the terrible power of the monarch. He made his brow as brass and hardened his heart as adamant, and forced his way into a position where his seditious spirit would be able to display itself conspicuously. He said within his soul, “I care nothing for this marriage. I will make sport of it; I will intrude myself into that feast and show my contempt. I will take the provisions, but the son shall have no honour from me, and the king shall not find me bend my will to his command.” Thus he had the audacity to disport himself as a wilful rebel at the feast of mercy. Are there any such among you here? The tendency will be for those who are not so, to begin to condemn themselves. I know already one who has said, “I am that guest that had not on a wedding garment.” She is not that one, for she is not even a member of the church, and therefore it cannot concern her; but many like her write bitter tilings against themselves. Another will be saying, “I am that one,” whereas, if there be one that lives near to God and whose desire is to be like Christ, and to be in all things conformed to the divine will, he is the man. You who are most assuredly right will probably be suspicious that you are not, and you who are insincere and have never submitted yourselves to the will of God will probably say, “What does it matter? I am doing as well as others, I give as much, I attend the means as much, surely there can be no cause for concern in me.” God grant that you may feel anxiety and fear before the Lord.
II. We pass on to the next point — THE KING AT THE FEAST. “The king came in to see the guests.” What an honour and privilege this was to the poor creatures whom his royal munificence had brought together! Was it not indeed the chief point of the entire festival? One of our greatest joys is to sing —
u The king himself comes near
And feasts his saints to-day!’*
What would church fellowship be if it had not the fellowship of God with it? To sit with my dear brethren and rejoice in their love is exceedingly delightful; but the best wine is fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. The king did not provide the banquet and leave his guests to eat by themselves, but he “came in;” and into every gospel church gathered according to his command the King will come. I am sure the most fervent desire of this church is that the King may personally visit us. We trust he is with us, but we want him yet more fully to reveal himself. Our cry is, “Come, great King, with all thy glorious power, with thy Spirit and with thy glorious Son, and manifest thyself to us as thou dost not unto the world.”
When the king came into the banqueting chamber he saw the guests, and they also saw him. It was a mutual revelation. Ever sweet is this to the saints, that their God looks upon them; his look brings no terror to our minds when we are loyal and loving. “Thou God seest me” is sweet music. We desire to abide for ever beneath the divine inspection, for it is an inspection of unbounded love. He sees our faults, it is to remove them; he notes our imperfections, it is to cleanse them away. Behold me, 0 great King, and lift up thine eyes upon me, accepting me in the Beloved. What joy it is to us who are saved in Christ Jesus that we also can see him! “Through a glass darkly,” I grant you we behold him, for as yet we are not fit to behold the full splendour of his Godhead! but yet how sweetly doth he reveal himself to our souls and unveil his eternal love. Then it is that the feast is most fully a banquet of wine, when the banner of love waves over us, and the king’s voice fills us with unspeakable delight.
“The king came in to see his guests.” This, I say, was the crowning point of the entire banquet. Observe, that he came in after they were in their places. They did not see him before they had entered his halls. When an inferior entertains a superior he always advances to the door to meet him and waits till he comes. If her Majesty the Queen were entertained by one of her nobles, he would be in waiting, and at the threshold would meet her; but when a superior entertains an inferior the inferior may take his seat at the table, and when all is ready the noble host will come in. It is so in the banquet of mercy. You and I see nothing of God, by way of communion with him, until first we have been brought in by the message of mercy to the marriage-feast of the gospel; for, indeed, until then a sight of God would strike us with terror: —
“Till God in human flesh I see,
My thoughts no comfort find;
The holy, just, and sacred Three
Are terrors to my mind;
But when Immanuel’s face appear,
My hope, my joy, begins;
His name forbids my slavish fear,
His grace removes my sins.”
When I get to the banquet of mercy, then it is that I can dare to look at the King of kings, but not till then. What a joyous sight, a vision of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory as he appears in the gospel, feasting us upon his fatlings. An incarnate God makes God visible to us and makes us happy in the sight. “How canst thou see my face and live?” was the old question, but, behold, it is answered this day. At the marriage union of Christ with his people we see the face of the King in his beauty, and our souls not only live, but we have life more abundantly.
Observe, dear brethren, that the King has special times for this. He is not always in the festal chamber; to our sorrow we sometimes miss the King’s presence at his table. We have the ordinances always,, but we do not always enjoy the God of ordinances. The means of grace are abiding, but the grace of the means will come and go according to the sovereign good pleasure of our God. The King has his times of coming in. These are glad times to his people, but they are trying times to the mass of professors. When are these times? So far as unworthy guests are concerned, the times of God’s visitation are those seasons when character is manifested. All times and periods do not reveal character. A lion may lie all day asleep, you may scarce know but what it is tame; but when the night brings the time for it top go forth to its prey, then it howls, and displays its ferocity. And so an ungodly man may lie down in the church of God with the lambs of the flock, and nothing may lead you to suspect his true character,, but when the time comes for him to make profit by sin, or to get pleasure by sin, or to escape from persecution by sin, then you find out what he is. These providences are the King’s coming in to scrutinise the guests. Changes in the conditions of the church, changes in tho condition of the individual, all sorts of providential events go to make up the great sieve by which the wheat and the chaff are separated.
A great and most solemn coming in of the King to see the guests is, when having looked over the church, unknown to us, he decides that such and such a hypocrite has had space enough for repentance and time enough for mischief, and must now be summoned to the dread tribunal by death. The time when the King comes in to see his guests is not the last judgment, for that is the coming of the Son and not of the Father; and if it were intended in the parable, we should read that the prince came in to see his guests. “We are led to view the King himself as continually judging professors and detecting the rebels who place themselves among the saints; by this judgment of God men are taken away from the church in their transgressions, bound Land and foot, and cast into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. I do not know, my dear brethren, when God may be visiting this church, and taking away the men that are rebels in our midst, but I do know that when professors die it is not certain that all of them sleep in Jesus, but some of them are rooted up, like tares from among the wheat, and are bound up in bundles to burn. The division is going on constantly. The King’s presence is known to believers in the joy which they feel, but it is made known to hypocrites by his cutting them off and appointing them their portion in eternal woe.
If, however, there is any one time when we may be quite sure that the King comes in to see the guests, it is after large ingatherings from the world; for notice here, when the servants had gathered in guests in large numbers, it was then that the king came in. Now it will be after the time of revival which we are feeling just now, when I hope a great many will be added to the church, that the Lord will search and sift us. If there has been no visitation of the church before for purposes of love or judgment — for they go together — we shall be quite sure to have such a visit from the great Lord himself at this time.
III. Solemnly think of THE JUDGE AT THE FEAST. To all the rest at the festival he was the king, the beloved monarch, the munificent donor of a splendid banquet, and all eyes feasted as they looked at him: it was joy enough to behold the king in his beauty, and to see his Son with all his royal jewels on, attired for the wedding feast; but he was a judge to the hypocritical intruder. The day of comfort to his saints is also the day of vengeance of our God. He who comes to comfort all that mourn, comes at the same time to smite the rebellious with a rod of iron.
The judge begins, as you perceive, by seeing, “He saw there a man. Wluit eyes are those of Omniscience! The parable represents but one such man as present, yet the All-seeing King saw him at once, he fixed his flaming eyes on that one. I suppose it was a greater crowd than this, but the king fixed his eyes on the solitary offender at once. Does the parable speak of only one because we may expect to find only one hypocrite in a church? Alas 1 there have been many such at the treading feast, but one only is mentioned to show us that if there wereout one, God would find him out; and, being many, the sinners in Zion may be the more sure that they will not escape. It is possible that none of the guests may have noticed the man’s garments; the parable makes no remark upon any expostulations made to him by others; perhaps they were all so taken up with the sight of the king, and so glad to be at the feast themselves, that they had no heart to make remarks upon others. But this is certain, that the king detected at once the absence of what was requisite to the marriage feast. It was not the presence of anything offensive, but the absence of something which was requisite. He did not say to the unworthy guest, “Thou hast rags upon thee,” or “thou art filthy,” or “thou hast an unwashed face:” he enquired solely into the absence of the peculiar badge which denoted a loving guest. God will judge, and does continually judge his church upon this question, the absence of what is absolutely necessary to being a Christian, the absence of honouring the Son, and obeying the Father. 0 soul, if thou art a professor of religion, and yet dost not love Jesus, and dost not fear the great King of kings, thou lackest the wedding robe, and what dost thou here? The king will see at once that thou lackest it. Thy morality, thy generosity, thy high sounding prayers, ay, and even thine eloquent discoursings, these cannot conceal from him the fact that thy heart is not with him. The one thing needful is to accept loyally the Lord as King.
The king next began to deal with the rebel. Note how he spoke with him. He took him on his own ground. It was too high a day for the king to use rough speech; the man pretended to be a friend, and he addressed him as such, but though the word I doubt not was uttered softly, it must have stung him if he had any feeling left. Judas exemplified in his own person this character. When he gave the Saviour the traitor’s kiss, our Lord addressed him as “friend.” He pretended to be a friend. A friend, indeed, to insult his king at his own table, and to select for the insult the delicate occasion of the prince’s marriage to which he had been hospitably invited! This was infamous! Friend indeed! Where will you find enemies if such shall be called friends? The king put it to him, “How earnest thou in hither? What business hast thou here? What could have induced thee so maliciously to defy me? To smite me in my tenderest point, and mock my guests, and trample on my son? Didst thou intend such daring insolence?” How earnest thou in hither? In hither? Was there nowhere else to pour ibrth thy sedition, no other spot in which to play the traitor? Needest thou come into my palace, and to my table, and before my son on his wedding day reveal thy enmity? Was there a need to do this?” So may the Lord say to some of us.” Were there no other ways to sin, but that you must profess to be my servant when you were not so? Were there no other bowls that you could drink from, that ye must profane the cups of my table? Was there no other bread that you could put into your wicked mouths but the bread that represents the body of my Son? Had you nowhere else to sin in that you must needs sin in the church? Could you do nothing else to show your spite but that you must make a lying profession of faith in my Son, who bled upon the cross to redeem the sons of men? Could -you assail me nowhere else but through the wounds of my only-begotten Son? Could you vex my Spirit by no other means than by pretending to be my friend, and thrusting yourself in hither, while defiantly rejecting that which was necessary to do me honour, and to do my
Son honour, at the festival of my grace?” I dare not dwell upon the topic. I give you the text; I pray that your conscience may preach the sermon.
Notice, however, one thing, and that is, that the king, when he thus turned a judge, dealt with this man only about himself. “How earnest thou in hither?” Did I hear a whisper in some one’s mind, “Well, if I am unfit to be a church member, there are a great many others who are in the same condemnation.” What is that to thee? See thou to thyself! When the king came in to see the guests he did not say to this man, “How came yonder persons here without the wedding garment?” His dealings were personal with him alone: “How earnest thou in hither, not having on the wedding garment?” Professor, look to thyself, look to thyself. Let thy chafity begin at home. Cast out the beam from thine own eye, and then mayst thou see clearly to cast out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye. He fixed on the one man, made him his entire audience, and directed to him the solemn question, “Friend, how earnest thou in hither?” Ah, my dear hearers, as the pastor of this church it has been a very great joy to me to see our numbers increased; many have been added to us, and many have gone forth from us to form other churches; my joy has been constant in God concerning this matter. Our beloved brethren associated with me in office have done their best to keep any of you back who have sought membership in whom we could see no fruits corresponding. We have not used our office deceitfully; as in the sight of God we have tried to be neither too severe nor too lax, but for all that I cannot but know that there are some of you who are not Christians though you bear the name. Like those of old, you say you are Jews and are not, but do lie. I am not now speaking of any who have fallen into sin and have suffered our rebuke, or have been separated from us by excommunication and yet remain in the congregation; I mean others of you whose lives are all that could be desired openly r and yet there is a worm at the heart of your profession; you are not vitally godly, you have a name to live, and you keep that name un tarnished as yet, but you are dead. Search ye yourselves; do not from this tabernacle descend into hell; let your prayer be, “Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men.” I am as concerned about myself as about you, that I should be found “accepted in the Beloved;” lest after having preached to others I myself should be a castaway! Do let it be a matter of solemn anxiety- with each one. If you have never come to Jesus, come now; if you have never sought holiness of life, seek it now. If you have never had the wedding garment, it is yet procurable; go ye to him who freely gives it, the Lord will not refuse you; go to-d;iy and he will accept you.
IV. He who was the unworthy guest is now THE CRIMINAL AT THE FEAST. The king has now become a judge to him; the question has been personally put to him, and he is speechless. Why is he silent? Surely it was because he was convicted of open, undeniable disloyalty No evidence was required; he had come there on set purpose with malice aforethought to display his disloyalty, and had done so in the presence of the King. I do not think he represents at all a person who enters the church through ignorance, with a sincere but ignorant intention, hut he pourtrays one who makes a profession without care to make it true — wilfully despising the Lord’s commands. He is a man willing to be saved by grace, and professing to be so, but refusing to acknowledge his duty to God and his obligations to the Son. He was speechless; he could not have chosen a worse place, nor a more impertinent method of ventilating his disloyalty than that which he selected; there was nothing he could say in self-defence. At that moment, when the King looked him through and through, he saw the full horror of his position; his loins were loosed, like Belshazzar of old when he saw the handwriting on the wall; he saw now that his time to insult was over, and the day of retribution had come. He was taken in the very fact, and could not escape. He had been guilty of a superfluity of naughtiness, of an unnecessary extravagance of wickedness in coming into the feast to air his pride. He had committed a suicidal intrusion. He might have kept himself away at any rate, and not have thrust himself into the Judge’s presence. He saw now that the cause of sedition was hopeless, the King was there and he was in his power and none could rescue him. Why did he not burst into tears? why did he not confess the wrong? why did he not say, “My King, I have insulted thee, have pity upon me?” His proud heart would not let him. Sin made him incapable of repentance. There is a verse in one of Hart’s hymns which runs thus —
“Fixed is their everlasting state:
Could they repent, ’tis now too late.”
That is true enough, but it supposes an impossibility, and I think it would have been lar better to have said —
“Fixed is their everlasting state;
They can’t repent, ’tis now too late.”
Because the sinner goes on to sin he continues still to suffer; he will not turn, he cannot turn. As the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots, so when sin has reached its height the man cannot bend, or bow, or retrace his. steps. Oh, if he could have repented even then!. But he could not; and the tears that came after the king had pronounced the sentence were no tears of penitence, but only of despairing pride. He stood speechless. It was not only that he had no excuse, but he would not confess his wrong. Have I any one here in such a condition of heart, that while he has been sinning by making a false profession, and knows it, yet he sullenly refuses to confess his fault? Yield thee, man! Yield at once. Fall at the King’s feet at once. Even if you are not a hypocrite, if you have any. suspicion that you are, fall down and say, “My King, make me sincere; I submit myself to thy will, and am ready to put on the wedding badge; if there is any method by which I can honour thy Son, I cavil not at it; let me wear his colours, and be known by all men to be truly a lover of the great Prince.”
Y. But now, lastly, while he stood speechless in the king’s presence, the king gave place to THE EXECUTIONER, for he uttered these words, “Bind Mm hand and foot” He was lawless, make him feel the law; he said, “I am free, and I will do as I like,” let him never be free again; bind him, pinion him. Executioner, do your duty, prepare him for death. .. Alas, there are some who are bound and pinioned
even before the breath is out of their bodies. In their dying hours false professors have often found that they could not pray, and could not repent; like dying Spira, that arch- hypocrite and apostate, they have been sensible of misery, but not penitent, and no gospel promise has availed to comfort them. Their hearts were seared, they were twice dead before they were dead. Then came the sentence, “Take him away” which is sometimes executed by the church in her excommunications — deceivers are taken away from the gospel feast by just discipline; but which is more fully carried out in the hour of death, when the man’s hope fails him. Ah, sirs, what will ye do if ye have no true grace in your hearts when you are taken away from the Lord’s table, taken away from the baptism in which you gloried, taken away from the doctrines of the gospel which you understood so well by head, but which you did not know in your heart. John Bunyan’s description of the man dragged by seven devils, bound with cords, comes up before my mind. “Bind him hand and foot and take him away.” How thankful I am that the servants who brought them in are not the same who were commanded to take them away. The Douloi brought them in, the diakonoi took them away, the king has a special order of servants for the taking of deceivers away; his angels do that in the hour of death — they execute his vengeance. He gives us ministers a better office, he bids us be his heralds of mercy. Then the judge said, “Cast him” fling him like a useless, worthless thing. That wretch has dared pollute my marriage feast, cast him away, as men fling weeds over the garden wall or shake off vipers into the fire. There is none in heaven or earth thought more despicable, more fit to be thrown away as rubbish and offal, than a man who had a Christian name, but had not the essentials of the Christian’s nature. Cast him away. Where? “Into outer darkness” far from the banquet hall where torches flame and lamps are bright; drive him out into the cold, chilly midnight air. He has once seen the light, it will be all the darker now for him when he is driven into the dark. There is no darkness so dark as the darkness of the man who once saw light. Cast him into the outer darkness. What will he do there? We are not told what would be done to him, it was not needful, we learn elsewhere as much as could be revealed to us, but we are told what he did, for “there shall be weeping,” not the gush of tears which gives relief but the everlasting dropping of scalding tears which create fresh sorrow and enlarge their own source. The outcast shed no tears of regret, but of sullen disappointment, because he could not after all dishonour the king, and had even served to illustrate the royal justice and power, and so had brought glory to the king whom he hated in soul. Then came the “gnashing of teeth,” caused by wrath and envy because he could do no more mischief. No sorrow is equal to that of a malicious spirit, that having attempted a daring deed of atrocious wickedness, has been defeated and has contributed to the triumph of the good and excellent. The misery of hell is not a misery which God arbitrarily creates, it is the necessary result of sin, it is sin itself come to ripeness. Here you see the picture of the man who was insolent enough to come into the church without being a Christian, and now for ever he gnashes with his teeth against that glorious Majesty of heaven which it will never be in his power to injure, but which it will always be in his heart to hate; and this will be his hell — that he hates God, this his darkness — that he cannot see beauty in God, and this the outerness of the darkness — that he cannot enter into God’s will. “Depart ye cursed,” is only love repelling that which is
not lovely, it is only justice giving to man what his fallen nature craved after. “Get away from me, ye did not honor me; when ye did come to me it was with your lips only. Go where your hearts were; depart from me, ye cursed.” Oh, may God grant that not one here may come under the lash of this terrible parable, but may we be found of the Lord in peace in the day of his appearing. You see. then, how the Lord sifts us. First, we are sifted by the preaching of the gospel, and many will not come — there is one heap of chaff: next, by the judgment of God in his church, and others are found wanting — there is another heap of chaff. Ah, when this is done, and the two great sieves are used, shall we be found among the wheat?
Do you say, “the sermon has nothing to do with me, I never made a profession, I shall go home easy enough.” Come hithor friend, I must not let you go. There is a vagabond brought before the magistrate accused of theft, he says he is perfectly innocent, but he is convicted, and has to suffer for it; after him comes a bragging fellow, who says, “I do not make any profession of being honest, I rob anybody I can, and J mean to do so, I do not pretend to keep the law.” Why, methinks the magistrate would say, “I condemned the man who did at least pretend to something decent, but to you I give double punishment, you are evidently incorrigible, and your case needs no consideration.” You who do not say you are Christians, who confess you are not, you avow yourselves the enemies of Christ; get no comfort therefore out of this parable I pray you, but yield yourselves to the Saviour, and believe in him, for he that believeth and is baptised shall be saved.
PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Epistle of Jude,