10 June 2012
Dear Phyllis,
Today was my turn to speak at Gichikun's church. Recently a new NGO with 20 girls has moved into our muban (housing area) and they have been coming to our church. Seventeen out of twenty of these girls are not saved. This has given me a unique opportunity to preach an evangelistic message. Very few nonbelievers come to church in Thailand. Knowing that I had this shot today, it has been very heavy on my heart that the Lord would give me a message that might bring them to Christ. Around Wednesday, I felt the Lord had heard my prayer and laid a message very clearly on my heart.
Mathew 22:1 says that Jesus taught in parables, but what follows in the next 14 verses is the most direct expression of prophecy of any parable Jesus taught. He said the Kingdom of God was like a wedding a King made for His Son. What an event!
There is no subject that I find more satisfying, and more exhilarating than to consider the relationship between the Father and the Son. We know so little, and hear so little preaching, about this subject; but there is no question that this is the most pinnacle relationships anywhere. To say that the Father is pleased with His Son is a gross understatement. Jesus was with the Father before there was anything that resembled time. It was through His Son that all things were created, and we know that all things were created for Him (Col. 1:16). The supreme gift that God has chosen to give to His Son is a wife. The next to the last chapter in the Bible talks abut the Wedding of the Lamb. Without question this will be the second greatest event since the first moment of creation. The magnitude of this event totally eclipses our imagination. As close as we can come is to consider an earthly royal weddings. Recently, the world was awed by the wedding of Prince William and Kate in England. Needless to say, there was a great deal of thought invested in the guest list. That would be the honor of a life time to be included on that guest list to attend the wedding banquet. But what can we say of someone who is invited to attend the Wedding Supper of God's Son?
In narrating that subject, Jesus tell us that there were seven different responses. The first one was astonishing. They ignored it. “They would not come “(vrs. 3). Can you imagine anything like that; to be invited to attend the wedding of the King's Son and simply not show up?
We might assume that the wedding invitation said RSVP – reply in writing – and the king thought maybe they just didn't get the invitation; or maybe they didn't understand. So he sent a second servant and made it a little more detailed. He explained that a tremendous banquet had been prepared and “all things were made ready: come to the marriage.” The response to this invitation was even more astonishing. They made a joke about it – “they made light of it” (vrs. 5).
Several years ago I was working for a construction company in Karuizawa. Five if us were commuting 45 minutes to and from work. One night the Lord opened up an opportunity to give an excellent witness for Christ. Everyone sat in rapped interest as I explained to them for 40 minutes about salvation. I was thrilled to be able to give such a powerful testimony. The next morning, as we gathered in the office, the job foreman thanked me for the things I had shared with them the previous evening. Then he burst out laughing; “Ha,ha, ha! Man, that was a good one! That was really funny.” I was highly incensed. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is no joke. It isn't funny.
The 3rd response to the wedding invitation was to make excuses. “Oh yes, Thank you very much. I would like to come, but it is rice planting time, and I am very busy on the farm.” Or; “Yes, I would like to come, but I am tied up at the store lately and just can't get away.” (vrs. 5).
In Japan the #1 response to the Gospel is “Mo sukoshi, benkyo ni shimasho” (I need to study a little more). No, you don't need to study a wedding invitation. That is not an intellectual problem. That is a moral problem that simply requires a yes or no answer. This business about needing to study it a little more is simply an excuse that has put millions in hell.
I once was interested in marrying a Christian sister. She was a very fine gal and we discussed marriage seriously. It looked like it might go through, but the bottom line was when she came to me one day and honestly said, “I would like to marry you, but I have a lot of plans for my life. And if I married you, that would be the end of all my plans.” That is true, and may be one of the most major reasons for folks not getting saved. “Yes, I would like to attend the Wedding of God's Son, but I have a lot of plans for my life, and if Jesus came in, that would mess everything up.”
But then the next two responses get a little more serious. Open hostility. The first level is that the messengers get treated spitefully. It is a very strange phenomenon, but anyone who walks with the Lord very far, and shares Christ with others, will encounter open hostility. Many years ago we were having a street meeting in the bar district at Yokota. The response that night was unusually ugly, and we were taking a lot of guff. Bob Black had only been saved about a month, but he got up on the wall to preach. At the top of his lungs, he shouted out quoting John 3:16.“For God so loved the world...” Then he stood there glaring at the hostile crowd and demanded, “What is wrong with that?” That was the question. What is wrong with that? Nothing. But men hate light, and the response to God's gracious invitation to attend the Wedding of His Son will produce anger. I knew an old Japanese pastor who had been saved around the turn of the last century on the west coast of Japan. He said he used to preach standing behind a tatami mat to protect himself from flying stones, eggs and tomatoes.
The 5th and the worst level of evangelism is murder. I personally know three pastors in Laos who have been killed for preaching the Gospel. And church history is a bloody trail of martyrs for the past 2,000 years sharing the love of God. The only possible explanation for this is that the devil hates the Lord Jesus, and the Gospel that was his undoing. He expresses his hatred through the hearts of unregenerate humanity that' are under his control.
When Jesus came to this 5thresponse to the invitation He inserted, “The king was wroth and sent forth His armies to destroy those murders and burn their city.”(vrs. 7).
If anyone thinks it is safe to snub their nose against God's grace, they have only to look at history. That is exactly what God did to Israel. God sent His Son to His people. The response was that they murdered Him. Forty years later God sent the Roman army and completely burned Jerusalem. They killed tens of thousand of Jews, and Israel was scattered all over the world for the next 1900 years
Then God did another amazing thing in that He opened up the invitation to the Wedding of His Son to“whosoever will”. Everyone is invited today.Unbelievable!!!
The 6th response to the Gospel is a good one. “Say, that is a good message. I like that. Will I go to the wedding of God's Son? Of course, I would be delighted to attend.” There is only one problem with this invitation; a wedding garment is required. This is passed out free, but it is required that all who attend must be clothed in this garment. The garment, very clearly, is the Lord Jesus Christ. Rom. 13:14 admonishes us to “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh.” For those who are Christ, they know what this is. They know what it is to be clothed in Christ. This is nothing more than Jesus living in me.
The fellow without the wedding garment is simply that man who is positive towards Christianity. He calls himself a Christian. He supports the Christian cause and attends church. But he flat isn't saved. I know several. My very dear friend Wirt Edmans is one. Wirt's parents were Pentecostal evangelists. He went to Bible school, married a Christian woman, and has attended church all his life. He is 100% on the side of the Gospel, and has done a great deal for the Lord. But I have always been greatly perplexed in talking with Wirt about spiritual matters, that there simply is no one home. There is zero echo in his soul. I have never seen the first indication that Wirt knows the Lord. I love him dearly. He is a very outstanding man. He is a very honest and fairly moral man. But there is no evidence of Christ living in him.
Tragically there are millions like him. We see them every Sunday in church. They give money to missions and vote Republican. But when you say, “What has the Lord been saying to you lately?”; you get a blank look on their face. Theirs is the dusty unread Bible on the shelf. Prayer is an unknown language to them. Because they call themselves Christian, and try to live a reasonably decent life, they think that should qualify them to at least gain admission in heaven. But the bottom line for the man without the wedding garment is that he was bound hand and foot and cast into outer darkness (vrs. 13).
Obviously the 7th response to the invitation is the ones who will be seated at the Table at the Wedding Super of the Lamb. In thinking about this message this past week, I have been utterly overwhelmed at the mystery that I have a place at that Table. This morning, in trying to express to the folks in church the inexpressible honor it is to be invited to attend the Wedding of God's Son, I was reduced to silence and tears. The honor of this – the grace of this – is so astounding that it almost seems insulting to talk about it. It simply is totally beyond human words.
Inasmuch as this is an invitation to attend this royal wedding, I was determined to make it an invitation. I was going to ask for a show of hands how many wanted to accept God's invitation to attend His wedding, but I feared the soulish intrusion of social pressure. Who could say no to a message like that? Instead, I gave an inverted invitation. I asked for a show of hands of everyone who knew that their name was someplace at that Table. Surprisingly about 2/3 of the hands went up. I thought there were more unsaved than that. I had Pastor Gichikun and two other pastors who attend our church stand up. Then I pleaded with the unsaved, “If you want to respond positively to God's gracious invitation, please speak to one of these three men this afternoon”If they are serious enough to say yes to Jesus by stepping forward to speak to one of the pastors, that will make their decision more real. You can move people with soul-force and social pressure, but there is little reality of the Holy Spirit in that decision. I did warn, “If you walk out of that door this morning the same way that you came in, I failed.”
I thought we had an unusually good service. The singing was wonderful. The Lord seemed to attend His Word with gripping power. But I fear my thundering diluted the power of the Holy Spirit. I gave it my best shot, but sat down embarrassed that I had done so poorly in discussing such a profound text.
Looking forward to seeing you the Table,
bill
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