We’re beginning a series of sermons based on questions submitted by the people of this congregation, as well as questions from people in the churches at Spring Creek, Pisgah and Walton. As their preachers and I prayed about the responses we received, we found that there were certain questions that occurred again and again.
One of the most prominent of the questions we received was this one: Do I qualify for heaven? Or, another way to ask that question (based on the parable we’re using this morning) - am I properly dressed to get in to heaven?
OPEN: A woman and her young daughter were attending the wedding of one their relatives. And this was the first time the little girl had ever seen a wedding ceremony. She was in awe by the pomp and beauty of everything. The music, the formal atmosphere, the decorations, the bride and groom and their attendants in fine gowns and tuxes.
Sometime during the ceremony, the little girl leaned over to her mother and whispered: “Mommy, mommy.”
“What dear,” her mother replied.
"Why is the bride dressed in white?"
The mother thought about that for moment and struggled to come up with a simple explanation her daughter would understand. Finally, she smiled and said to her daughter: "The bride wear white, because white is the color of happiness, and today is the happiest day of her life”
The little girl thought about this for a moment, and then she said, "So why’s the groom wearing black?"
APPLY: Weddings are usually “dress up affairs”. Not only do the bride and groom generally spend a lot of money on their gown and tux but so the maids of honor and groomsmen. In addition, family and friends generally dress up in their Sunday best to show respect and honor to the newly married couple.
Now, I’ve been to many weddings, and I’ve conducted a fair number of them as well… but I don’t know as if I’ve ever been to a wedding where someone has been kicked out because of how they’ve dressed, or not dressed. (Though I’ve been to a couple where they should have been).
But here in Matthew 22, we find that that is exactly what took place. The King gives a banquet, and becomes irate by the fact that one of the invited guests wasn’t wearing the appropriate wedding garment. Not only was that man kicked out but he was bound hand and foot and thrown outside, into the darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth
I. Now, on the face of it, this reaction by the father of the groom seems a little unfair. I mean – after all – in the parable Jesus tells these guests don’t seem to be wealthy people. Jesus tells us that the people were literally standing on the street corner when they were invited, and it’s reasonable to believe that at least some of them didn’t have the resources to dress in the best of garments.
But the dad kicks this man out of the banquet anyway… and he’s not particularly nice about it.
So then, the first question that comes to mind is… what in the world happened here???
According to Barnes New Testament Notes: “Anciently, kings and princes were accustomed to make presents of changes of raiment to their friends and favourites. To refuse to receive (this gift) was an expression of highest contempt.”
Well… now it begins to make a little more sense. The king had supplied ALL of his guests with wedding robes, and this guy just didn’t wear what he was given.
From the very outset Jesus explains what this parable was referring to:
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son” Matt. 22:2
So, this is a description of how people qualify for heaven.
And from the way Jesus tells the story, it appears it isn’t all that hard to get into heaven.
The servants of the King “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.” Matthew 22:10
It didn’t matter whether they were rich or poor
influential or destitute
good or bad
EVERYBODY was invited…
Now it’s hard for me to imagine that some would have rejected the King’s offer… but they did.
And it’s hard for me to believe that anyone would abuse the King’s offer… but they did.
But it’s really hard to wrap my mind around the fact that this man would be invited to the banquet, accept the offer… and then literally slap his host in the face by refusing to wear the garments the King had graciously supplied!
II. Now, it would appear that the clothing he wore to the banquet “looked” much like the wedding garments everyone else was wearing.
This man seems to be fitting into the banquet scene up until the time when the King enters the room and notices that the robe the man is wearing isn’t the one He had supplied.
Why wouldn’t this guest wear the King’s raiment? I believe it was because he felt his garment was sufficient. This guest believed his garments were good enough to be acceptable. That they looked sufficiently similar to what everyone else was wearing.
And there are people who believe God will accept them with the garments they wear even though their idea of what is acceptable isn’t the same as God’s.
ILLUS: Back in the 1500’s - Ivan the IV became the first Czar of Russia. He ruled a large diverse nation but he wasn’t a good ruler. He wasn’t even a very nice man. In fact he was a very cruel man. He was so cruel they referred to him as "Ivan The Terrible." And he was widely known to be a very immoral and violent man.
During his reign he married 7 women and abused each and every one of them. His idea of a good time was going up on the walls of the Kremlin and throwing animals over the walls to the pavement beneath so that he could watch them die.
How many of think that when he died, he probably didn’t make it into heaven? (Practically everyone raised their hands).
When Ivan died in 1584, historians tell us that those who prepared his body for burial were instructed to shave Ivan’s head and to dress him for burial in the robes of a monk.
Why would Ivan have wanted them to do that?
He wanted that done, because he apparently hoped that God would only see his garments and think that he was a good and simple monk… and thus Ivan the Terrible would slip in under the radar.
He thought if his garments made him look enough like a Christian, he’d be saved.
III. And there are people today who believe that they look enough like a Christian to be saved
They wear the garments of being “nice people”.
They know that God hates sin, and they believe they are not nearly as sinful as other people they know. They don’t think of themselves as being bad people. And if they’ve done any bad in their lives, they believe their good works will outweigh any bad they’ve ever done.
Symptomatic of this kind of thinking is a survey US News & World Report cited about 9 years ago. (Granted, the people mentioned are a bit dated now, but you’ll get the general idea).
They gave the people they interviewed a list of possible candidates, and asked who amongst those individuals they would think would qualify for heaven
Mother Teresa - 79%
Oprah Winfrey 66%
Michael Jordan - 65%
Colin Powell - 61%
Bill Clinton 52% (he apparently had a 50/50 chance)
Al Gore and Hillary Clinton 55%
Newt Gingrich 40%
Pat Robertson 47%
Dennis Rodman 28%
O.J. Simpson 19% (he may have been cleared of his murder charge… but apparently most people still thought he did it).
And… of those surveyed (on their chances) 87%
Now it’s intriguing. Those who received the highest votes were not necessarily known for their religious affiliation. So why did most of these people receive such confidence in their salvation? Because they were nice people. They did nice things.
Also intriguing was that the people who received the most votes… were the people who were voting. They placed their chances at getting to heaven even higher than Mother Teresa’s!!!
Why? Because most people think of themselves as “nice” decent individuals that God wouldn’t even consider rejecting at heaven’s gates. After all, their garments look so much like what they know He would accept.
But God says that’s not the way it works: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith— and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9
Or, as Titus 3:5 tells us - God will save us “not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit”
IV. Others believe they’ll get into heaven because of their religious affiliation.
If you belong to a church… that should get you in – shouldn’t it?
But Jesus tells us that isn’t how it works: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 7:21
ILLUS: Once upon a time a man died and went to heaven. As he came near the pearly gates he saw Saint Peter standing at the door and confidently approached him believing he would be able to enter the eternal city with no problem.
To his amazement, he was told by Peter that there was a point system he would be required to meet in order to qualify for heaven.
"How many points do I need to get into heaven?" he asked.
"Thirty thousand," replied Peter.
"Thirty thousand?!... Well, I was a member of the Church of Christ at Logansport. How much was that worth?"
"About five points," came the answer.
"Five points!" the man stammered, "Okay, then what about all the good things I’ve done for my neighbors and family. Surely that is worth quite a bit."
"According to our records," Peter, at this point, consulted his clipboard, "that comes to about eight more points."
Worried now, the man cried, "But that makes only thirteen of the thirty thousand required. Why, if it weren’t for the grace of God, no one could make it into heaven!"
"That’s the rest of the thirty thousand," replied Peter.
My point is this: you and I will never qualify for heaven by what church we belong to or by the good deeds we’ve done. Those aren’t the “garments” God will accept at His banquet
Now, those ARE things that Christians should be doing…
We should belong to a good church
And we should be doing good deeds.
Even the world knows that is what Christians should be known for.
But if that’s the clothing we’re relying on to make us acceptable to God, we’ve missed the point.
To believe we have earned our salvation because of what church we belong to and the good deeds that we’ve done is essentially the same as walking into the banquet in our own clothing
V. The only wedding garment that’s going make any difference is that which God supplies
Galatians 3:26-27 tells us about this new garment:
“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”
What garment will God accept? Only the blood of Jesus. Only His righteousness can cloth us and cover our sinful past.
And how do we “put on Christ?” By baptism.
Baptism clothes us with Christ? There are people who have problems with that. In fact they have such a problem with that that they substitute another way to put on a garment they believe God will accept.
In place of baptism, they’ll tell people all they need do is “pray the sinner’s prayer”, or the “prayer of salvation”.
You’ll see the “prayer of salvation” listed in the backs of Gideon Bibles
You’ll find it advertised in salvation tracts that are sold down at the Bible Book store
You’ll hear it proclaimed at Billy Graham revivals…
… and in churches across the nation.
But there’s one place you’ll NEVER find the “sinner’s prayer”. You’ll never find the prayer for salvation anywhere in Scripture.
Why?
Because that’s not how God wanted to do things.
There are at least 11 examples in the Book of Acts of people being baptized into Christ… but there isn’t one reference to a “sinner’s prayer” anywhere in the Bible.
How then did this prayer appeal get started?
ILLUS: Well, it began in the late 1700’s with something called the “mourner’s bench.” An altar call would be given, and people who desired to become Christians would come down front to a bench at the front and pray until they “felt” saved. They would be seeking a “strange warming of the heart” as they called it. Unfortunately, many people prayed and prayed and prayed and still never felt this movement of God’s Spirit in their hearts. Some became so inconsolable by this that they committed suicide.
In 1835 a great evangelist by the name of Charles Finney emerged and changed some his approach to the mourner’s bench, renaming it the “anxious seat”. In his book “Revivals of Religion” (1868) he wrote
“The church has always felt it necessary to have something of this kind to answer this very purpose. In the days of the apostles, baptism answered this purpose. The gospel preached to the people, and then all those who were willing to be on the side of Christ were called out to be baptized. It (baptism) held the precise place that the anxious seat does now as a public manifestation of their determination to be Christians.” (Russell E. Boatman “The Mourner’s Bench” The Kentucky Evangel, Glasgow KY)
Now frankly I’m preaching to the choir here. At our church we’ve come to accept the idea that baptism is part of the salvation plan. But as much as baptism is a part of “putting on Christ” we must be careful not to use water baptism as the source of our hope for salvation.
It isn’t the baptism that saves us… it’s the “putting on of Christ” that saves us.
Peter addresses this in I Peter 3:18-22. Turn there with me now
“For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and… (notice this now)
this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also— not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God.”
Peter was trying to clarify in people’s minds that there was no magic in the water, nor was it the washing away of dirt that made these people clean. It was an appeal to God for salvation.
Notice what Peter says next:
"It (baptism) saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand— with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.”
The power of baptism lies in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. God wanted us to use water baptism to remind us that – by our taking part in the death / burial / and resurrection of Christ – we had laid hold of that power of a resurrected Christ.
You see… it’s only Jesus that saves us. And we accept Him as our savior - we put Him ON when we respond by our:
Ø Faith
Ø Repentance
Ø Confession of Jesus as Lord
Ø And by taking part in His death, burial and resurrection in water baptism
My point is this: we should never try to substitute anything for wedding garment God has given.
Everything that looks like Christianity is actually a reflection of the Jesus we put on when we believe/repent and are baptized.
CLOSE: Rick Stacy tell s the story of a man named Ken who was a laborer on the Alaska Pipeline back in the mid 70’s. Ken worked up in the icy cold for a year and came back with $30,000. That was a lot of money 30 years ago! He blew it all in a month.
He went back and in six months made another $18,000. He came home again and this time he decided to visit church.
The first Sunday he walked through the doors and sat in the back seat I had two thoughts –
1) He looked just like Grizzly Adams - beard and all and
2) 2) Here was a man that would never become a Christian.
Rick said “I preached the message and gave an invitation and the instant the music began Ken came rushing down the aisle. I thought he was going to crush me! Tears came down his face as was baptized into Jesus.
The next Sunday he came back to services and I didn’t recognize him - he was dressed in a 3 piece suit and no beard! When I asked what caused him to shave and dress up he said, ‘Jesus changed me on the inside and I want people to know it - so I changed the outside.’”
It is the blood of Jesus that makes us acceptable at the wedding banquet in Heaven. If we depend upon anything else, we’re just relying on window dressing.
OTHER SERMONS IN THIS SERIES (Got Questions?)
* Do I Qualify For Heaven? Matthew 22:1-22:14
* Freedom From Guilt. John 8:31-8:36
* How Can I Know God’s Will For My Life? Romans 12:1-12:8
* What are you like, God? Isaiah 6:1-6:7
* God, why do you allow suffering? 2 Corinthians 12:1-12:10
