Are You Taking God's Grace For Granted? Series

SERMON TOPIC: “The Wedding Banquet”

SERMON TITLE: “Are You Taking God’s Grace For Granted?”

SCRIPTURAL TEXT: Matthew 22:1-10

OPENING WORDS

Indeed, it is a great privilege to be able to share God’s Word with all of you this morning. Let us pray.

OPENING PRAY

Dear Lord, thank You for this morning that we can once again come before Your Presence to worship You and learnt from You. I ask now that You will use me as Your mouthpiece, to speak Your message that You want Your Church to hear. Amen.

Our passage today is on the parable of The Wedding Banquet taken from Matthew 22:1-10. And the title to my sermon is: “Are You Taking God’s Grace For Granted?”

1“Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying:

2‘The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.

3He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

4Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

5But they paid no attention and went off – one to his field, another to his business.

6The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them.

7The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

8Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come.

9Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’

10So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.”

INTRODUCTION

Q: “How many of you here have been invited to a

wedding dinner before?”

Many of us have, at one stage of our lives, been invited to attend a wedding dinner. But have you known of any of your married friends who have shared how they felt when the guests they’d invited for the wedding dinner didn’t turn up?

As many of you know, I had just gotten married this year, in May. I remember that my husband and I had been very busy with all the wedding preparations. There were just so much details to look into – from the selection of the Hotels all the way to the dinner guest list. It was like madness! Yet, there was great joy and excitement as both of us, like any wedding couple, fuss about as we welcome the Wedding Day!

Being a perfectionist person, I remember the numerous days I kept working through the Dinner guest list – who sit where, who sit with who…. I tell you, there was so much to look into, because some relatives wouldn’t want to sit with this or that person. Some of them would call me up and insist which table they should sit. The fuss didn’t end even till my Wedding Day itself!

One thing happened that really struck my attention actually. I didn’t know it initially as I was too preoccupied with my Wedding and my guests. It was only after my Wedding Dinner that I learnt what had happened. Apparently, my family was most angry that my cousins (who have been rather close to me) and their parents didn’t turn up at all for my wedding dinner. Worse of all, they didn’t even call my mother to inform her anything. Well as you know, to the traditional mind-set elders, Wedding Dinner is the most important part of the Celebration apart from the Tea Ceremony, as it is a time for the couple to show respect to their parents for their upbringing, and for the guests to rejoice wholeheartedly with the parents of the couple. Hence, my mother took it as a personal insult. It was weeks after my wedding that we learnt that one of my cousins actually met with a car accident the night before my Wedding. So you can imagine the fuss, the disappointment, and the anger that was in the air when my relatives didn’t turn up for my Wedding Dinner.

In this parable of The Wedding Banquet, we see quite a similar scenario. The very guests whom the king invited to his son’s wedding, were the very guests who rejected the king’s invitation and ignored him!

BODY

The king had happily prepared a great feast to celebrate his son’s wedding. The king had kindly sent out his invitation cards to all his guests, requesting for their presence as the king celebrates and rejoices over his son’s marriage. The king had wanted his guests, to rejoice together with him. The king even sent his slaves to remind and call his guests to come for the feast, when all preparations have been made ready.