Father, we worship You; King of kings, we honor You; the great and the mighty God, we adore You; there is no power like Your power; there is no name like Your name; there’s no authority like Your authority; no wisdom like Your wisdom, blessed be Your name Father. Lord, we declare this morning that we are on Your side because we know that You are on our side in the name of Jesus.
Father this morning even as we share Your word, we ask oh Lord that You speak to us as only You can in the name of Jesus. We command every contrary spirits to be silenced in the name of Jesus. Thank You precious Father, in Jesus name we prayed. Praise God!
Good morning church, God bless you. Once again, I thank God for our lives and thank our father in the Lord, the pastor in charge of the province for this privilege; he’s away briefly but his love and his heart and his prayers are with us, and the Lord will bring him back to us in Jesus name. Praise the living Jesus!
Please let’s open our Bible to Matthew 22: 1-14 (and I want us to follow with attention); “And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said, 2 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, 3 And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. 4 Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.
5 But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise: 6 And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. 7 But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. 8 Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.
Those who were thought were worthy are not worthy after all. 9 Go ye therefore into the highways, (the streets, the nooks and crannies) and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. 10 So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests. Halleluiah!
11 And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: 12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. 13 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. 14 For many are called, but few are chosen. Many come to church, but few are on the Lord’s side.
The title of the message this morning is “Making light of the King’s call”, it’s taken from verse 5, “But they made light of it, and went their ways”. To make light of something means to treat it shabbily, casually or with contempt, with unserious-ness, to take it as a joke or without any form of seriousness, to trivialize it; they trivialized the king’s invitation, the invitations were three (verses 1 & 2); he has sent them a notification of the wedding (as we usually do these days, so it’s not a new thing); then when the reception was ready, he said ‘go and invite those that we have already invited, let them some, it is now ready’ – second invitation, they didn’t still come; then he sent for the third time, ‘go and call them, I’ve killed my oxen; I’ve done everything, the table is ready, let them come’, but the Bible says they made jest of it, they treated it as a joke, what mattered most to the king, they treated with levity, with shabbiness.
Beloved, the crux of this message this morning, (if that’s the only thing we can take away) is that some people will miss heaven, not because of the enormity of their sins but because they decided to treat the matters of the kingdom shabbily. Not because of the enormity of their sins because no matter how great your sin is, God can forgive; so many will not go to heaven, not because they are the most terrible sinners, but because they make light, they treat with carelessness the things of the kingdom.
The summary of the texts we read is that: this king was going to have a wedding for his son, he prepared sumptuous reception; you can imagine a party by a king, everything was ready; he’d killed the best of his oxen, and then because it was the king, you know a king would not invite just ordinary people, it’s those who he thought were his friends, his closest allies, (as far as it is concerned) the VVIPs, the captains of industries, the wealthy people, people of position and class, the timbres and calibers in the societies, you can imagine those that the king would invite. Those that (in his own opinion) were worthy of the king’s table; he invited them to come but they shunned him; they did not only refuse to come, they didn’t even have the courtesy – you know sometimes when people invite you and you are not able to make it, you send an apology, the Bible says they make light, they treated the king’s invitation with levity, with commonness, with carelessness.
The king got angry and disappointed; these people want to humiliate me, they want to disgrace me; he said okay, I thought they were worthy, now I know that they are not worthy, they are not deserving of the dainties of my table, so put them aside; he said now, go out, go and call those that people thought did not matter, go and look for those who are on the streets, the beggars, the common people, those who don’t have anything, even if they are unlovable, just go and bring the people, my efforts must not be wasted, my kingdom must be populated, the feast must not waste; what these my friends intended to do was to disgrace me so that my feast will be wasted, go and bring anybody you can find. And so they went and brought people from the streets, just as Christ brought you and I from the streets, from our to where we are today.
So how and why did these men make light of the king’s call?
Number one: They simply ignored it despite repeated reminders. When you ignore an invitation or a call even when you are repeatedly reminded of it, your attitude shows disdain or disrespect and dishonor for the person who has invited you.
How you treat an invitation is a measure of the regard and esteem in which you owned the one who has invited you. There are invitations and there are invitations, there are invitations you are supposed not to take, you are not supposed to every accept invitation but there are some invitations that you have to honor, there are invitations that are life-defining, destiny-defining invitations that many have rejected, many have overlooked, many have treated casually and it has affected their destinies.
As long as you continue to ignore the invitation to surrender your life to Christ – many of us have come to church, we’ve gone to everywhere, we have heard many calls of the King, the King of kings to come; these people heard it three times, you and I have heard it many times, many sermons, ‘come, come, come’, but you just simply ignore it. That king there is a symbol of the King of kings, of the almighty God who has been calling you, calling you and I ‘come, come’; as long as you keep rejecting and refusing to answer the call of God in any area of your life, but more particularly in the area of surrendering your life to Him, you are in the same boat as these guests of the king who treated his invitation with levity.
In Matthew 19:16-22, Jesus preached to one rich young man; that rich young man was a man who lived a life without sin, he was a man who kept the Ten Commandments; he came to Jesus and Jesus preached to him and made an altar call to him, He said come to My Father’s kingdom, since you have kept all the commandments, there’s no sin in you, you don’t steal, you don’t kill, come; the man treated it with levity, he looked at himself and what he had, he ignored that destiny-defining, that eternity-defining invitation, just as many of us are still doing. The Bible says the man walked away, we never read or hear that he came back again, that was the end of him.
There are times that even God would stop calling; after the third occasion, the king did not call them anymore, he said he’d had enough, go and call other people. I hope and pray that this would be the last time that you would hear the call of God to come to Him and you would not respond because you will respond today to His call because you never know when God (like that king) would say ‘no more, . Praise God!
Number two: why and how did these men make light of the king’s call? The Bible says they made light of it and they went to their farms, to their businesses, they prioritized their own personal affairs above the business of the king, above the call of the king.
Jesus said in John 4:34, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work”; in other words, the call of the King is always urgent. He said in John 9:4, “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work”, night is coming when there will no longer be a call; the moment God stops calling you, your night has come. Hallelujah!
Luke 2: 49, Jesus Christ said “And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” Each time you prioritize your own affairs of business above kingdom business just as those people did, you are simply wrapped up in self interest, you are making light of the King’s call.
Don’t get me wrong beloved, it’s not that we should not work, we must work, we must do everything, we must work hard, we must be diligent, God commands it, but God’s requirements, God’s command to us is that we must know how to prioritize, nothing else in this world should come before the call of God, before the things of the kingdom. Whenever there’s a conflict, God must prevail because He’s number one in everything; He’s the One that gave you life, that gave you strength to do that work, to do that business that is successful.
But these men heard the king’s call, they rejected it, what did they now do? So it wasn’t that they were sick, it wasn’t like they didn’t like the king, it wasn’t like the king was a bad man, no, the only reason why they denigrated his call was – I’m sure maybe some of them intended to go later but said let me go and do my business first, then I can come back, but they never came back, there was no time to come back. Oh, let me go to the farm first, let me go to my business first, let me go to the office first, when it is convenient, I will attend to church matters; many of us only want to serve God in our convenience whereas God attends to us at every time.
The Bible says ‘He neither sleeps nor slumbers’ because of us, not because He wants to keep awake; we are God’s priorities, the apples of His eyes; He doesn’t sleep, He doesn’t slumber, just because of you and I. Hallelujah! But we want to serve Him, we want to answer Him, we want to do His bidding, you’d say oh, I will give my life to Christ when I become a rich man, when I’m comfortable; these people, they can serve Him because they are comfortable, let me go and hammer first, when I’ve hammered, then I can now come and hear what they are saying, oh, that time will never come.
There was a man in the scriptures; he was very close to Jesus, his name is Nicodemus; in John 3, this man was close to Jesus, Jesus preached to him many times, he had the opportunity, he heard the call but he made light of it; he was a good man, Jesus broke down the principles of the kingdom to him because He loved him, but the man never answered the call, we never heard of him anymore.
In the roles of those who mattered to God in the scriptures, we only remembered Nicodemus with all his goodness as a man who came to Jesus at night, hallelujah! Many of us who come to church, we come to church many times, we are close to church but we are like a man who come to Christ only at night. Unless you answer the call, Jesus cannot use His discretion to say Nicodemus, I know him, he’s always in church, he’s always in my house, come to the kingdom, no, even God follows His principles, even though He has discretion, He’s a fair and just God, hallelujah!
Number three: how did they trivialize the call of the king? They did not appreciate the enormity of the sacrifice that the king had made. The king had made a lot of sacrifices, he had done a lot of things, he had planned the wedding for a long time, he had spent money, he had killed; he said go and tell them, I have killed the best of my sheep for their sake. In fact when they heard that, some of them got angry and they killed the king’s servant.
Matthew 22:4, “Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed”; beloved, each time you sin as a believer or hear the altar call and refuse to hearken, you are showing ingratitude to God for the sacrifices He made in sending His Son to die at Calvary for your sake.
These people, it didn’t matter to them that the king had made that sacrifice; John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. God had killed His Son, the ultimate sacrifice, just as the king had killed his oxen. The killing of the oxen was a metaphor for what was going to happen at Calvary; Calvary is our own King’s banquet, it’s our own table where God had His Son, He’s so precious and slaughtered Him and made Him a feast for you and I; Calvary was a feast which many people are still ignoring; Calvary was a feast, God killed His only Son for our sake and yet, He keeps saying ‘come, come, come, the feast is ready, My Son is already killed for your sake, don’t let His death be in vain, don’t let My sacrifice be in vain’, yet many of us are still ignoring, not only when we refuse to answer the altar call, but each time we do things that don’t glorify God even when we are already born again, we are showing ingratitude, lack of appreciation for the great sacrifices that God and Jesus made at Calvary; we are making light of God’s sacrifice.
You disdain the pain and the shame that Jesus went through for your sake. He was wounded for transgression; He was bruised for iniquity; the payment of all that causes us lack of peace was put upon Him and by His stripes we are healed. He did all these for our sake, and yet, we trivialized the sacrifice; each time we say no, each time we put other things before Christ, we are saying that that sacrifice, yes You made it, but okay fine, You have just made it but I think I have better things to do.
Number four: How and why did these people make light the king’s call? Because their actions, their responses, their attitude was an act of rebellion and disloyalty to the king. You see, it’s not about when you carry arms and you engage in physical insurrection that you are a rebel or you show disloyalty; when the King calls you and you refuse to answer, that is an act of rebellion, that shows you that you are telling the King you are no longer my King, I don’t respect you; it’s an act of disloyalty. Each time God calls you and you are not available, not because you are constrained, not because it’s beyond your doing, but because you just decided that something is more important, you are acting in rebellion, you are acting out of disloyalty.
Those guys, the king assumed they were loyal to him because they were his friends, they were members of his inner circle, he thought that on the day of his need they would be there for him. How many times have your friends, those in whom you have entrusted trust failed you? They failed him when he needed them most, they were disloyal; many of us today are still disloyal to God, not only when we refuse the altar call but each time we step out of what God wants us to do, each time we fail to do things that God expects, it’s an act of rebellion.
The moment we see it in this light, we will know by ourselves how far away we are from the kingdom of God. And as we see in our text, those who rebel against God are always visited with dire consequences; the king was angry, he killed them. Those who rebelled God by rebelling against Moses, God killed them; those who rebelled against God in the wilderness (on the way to Canaan), God killed them. Every act of rebellion, every act of disobedience, every act of trifling, treating lightly what belongs to God, it is an act of rebellion; God does not tolerate rebellion.
When you disdain the things of God, that’s why Jesus said you don’t give up what is sacred to pigs; whether by commission or omission, deliberately or not, each time you trifle with the things of the Kingdom… there was a man in the scriptures, he thought he was doing good, the ark of God was shaking and he just touched it, what happened? The man died; he took it lightly.
Many times some of us take the things of God lightly, we crack jokes; last week I had to leave a platform; somebody posted, he said ‘it’s only in Nigeria that we patch our roads with the blood of Jesus’; the thing revolted me, I was very angry. Of course I first kept quiet, but I said each time I kept quiet, I felt a sense of guilt as if I am an accomplice, so I wrote, explained and exited the group, then I have peace of mind.
We laugh, people joke with our God, people joke with the name of our God; I’m not saying like other people do who are beginning to kill people, who are beginning to burn them, no, but we accomplice it, call comedians to come, we even pay them money and they make jest of the Bible, they make jest of the men of God and we laugh. You are making light the things that God takes seriously, it’s an act of rebellion.
Number five: how did these people trifle with the things of God? Because really, they were not fit for the honor. The king thought they were fit for the honor, the king thought they were honorable because of their association, because of their position, because of their status, because of their extent, because of what society calls them, because of the way men saw them, so the king thought these were men of honor, but in truth, they were undeserving of the honor as it proved in the end.
And this is what I want many of us to put to heart; many of us who God has blessed, God has blessed everybody but in various ways; God has blessed you, people see you and say oh, because God has blessed you so much you are the younger brother of Jesus, you are the sister of Mary; you are blessed materially, you are blessed in everything and then you let it get into your head, you have a big position, you are the MD of this, Chairman of that, oh, even in church, people bow for you, everywhere, don’t let it get into your head.
It’s not the honor of men that leads to the kingdom; it is God’s impression of you. I’m sure if we say okay, let’s list the names of those that will be in the kingdom of heaven, they will take a paper and start ticking those they know would make it. In the eyes of men, the king thought they were honorable but the king himself was deceived by appearance, in the end they proved who they were that they were not men and women of honor.
Listen beloved, we think we are fit for God’s kingdom because of our titles and positions and the privileges that we have, but we are not fit for the kingdom, many of us are not fit in the eyes of God, so we need to still strive to ensure that we are fit, don’t get carried away.
Jesus even said it’s not all who call Me Lord and Master that are fit, they are not fit; Judas was with Christ for many years, he was respected, but in the end he proved to be unworthy of his place in the kingdom. So these men were really not men of honor in the sight of God even though they were men of honor in the sight of men, and they had this sense of self-importance that if we don’t go, the man will know; we will not go, let’s teach him a lesson, but there can be no void in the things of God. May God find you honorable in His sight in Jesus name.
Number six: apart from these men who heard the invitation and rejected, even when the king said go into the streets and bring other men in, verses 11-14, that’s so painful; the king now came in, he saw everybody fully dressed, but in that tradition, what they did was that the wedding – especially the king’s wedding, they give wedding garment to everybody, everybody wears the same thing, one of the reason is to remove status to nothing, to make everybody equal just as we are all equal before God, otherwise some people would come with cheap clothes, some with expensive ones just as we have in the church today; so everybody wears the same thing, you don’t know who is rich and who is poor. But the king came in, he saw one man, he wasn’t wearing the wedding garment; he said Mr., how dare you come in here, who let you in without the wedding garment? Bible says the man was speechless; again, the man was cast out, why? Because he handled the call carelessly; he saw other people with the garment, he didn’t even bother to say where is my own? Or maybe they gave him and he said oh, I don’t need it, you know this self sometimes.
The man also handled the call, that rare privilege with levity; the garment that Christ spoke about here for you and I is not a physical garment, it’s a symbol of the garment of righteousness which Christ puts on all of us so that we all look the same when God looks down on us; it’s not a garment that you earn by what you do or who you are, but the garment that Christ inputs on you when you surrender to Him, when you are His; without being His, you can’t have that garment.
The man stood out like a sore thumb because he had no garment; that garment was what was recognized, that was his access card, so he was seen as an intruder to the wedding. If you attend a wedding and you don’t have an access card and you are let in and you sit on a table, when the organizers or the host sees you that this one doesn’t look like my guest, your dress may make him say ‘Mr., who invited you’? Because you are not looking well-dressed, but this is not on the table; he will just go and tell the serves don’t serve that man, I don’t know him; but when you sit down with your access card on your table like this, nobody will come and say anything. That man had no access card, may you have access to the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus.
What are the consequences of making light of the things of God?
Number one: these people because they dishonored God, they too lost honor before the king. In 1st Samuel 2:30, God said to Prophet Eli, “Those that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed”; when you dishonor the King, when you dishonor God, God will dishonor you, that’s what God is saying ; they dishonored the king and the king also dishonored them, he packed them aside, he replaced them.
In Esther 1, Queen Vashti dishonored he king and what did the king do? He set her aside; every time we dishonor God, God is going to set us aside. I pray that mercy will prevail this morning; even if God has set you aside, by His mercy this morning, He will bring you back in, in the name of Jesus.
Number two: these people forfeited their place on the king’s table. Matthew 8:11 & 12, “Jesus said, that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. 12 But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth”. Note that scripture, He didn’t say ‘unbelievers will be cast out’, He said ‘the children of the kingdom’, God help us.
He said the children of the kingdom will be cast out while strangers will come; in other words, they are already there, they will be cast out like that man that the king asked to go out. I pray for you today, your place in God’s kingdom, may another not take it in the name of Jesus. So they forfeited their place on the king’s table.
Number three: because they forfeited their place, they missed out on the king’s delicacies. Salvation, Calvary, was a feast of delicacies; when you refuse to answer the call of God, you not only become an enemy of God, you forfeit the delicacies that come with answering the call.
Those who ignore the call of Christ miss out of the delicacies of Calvary; Romans 5: 1-21, you will see the delicacies of Calvary. Salvation is a feast of delicacies, the menu include; redemption, reconciliation and peace with God, justification, righteousness, joy of the Lord, deliverance from Satanic oppression, divine healing, glory in tribulation, eternal life. It’s like when you go to a party and they give you the list of the menu, ‘oh, what do you want? I want ofada, I want pounded yam. What do you have? We have everything, we have ikokore; the rarest thing we have it’, even these days they serve garri and fried fish; men want to satisfy you at their parties with anything you want, you can now imagine God who has everything, the God of heaven and earth, hallelujah!
Everything we want is in God, it’s encapsulated at Calvary; in Christ alone we are filled up, we are full, without Him we are empty.
Let’s rise to our feet; the tragedy of those who make light of the kingdom is that they miss out, they miss out big time. I don’t know what you want this morning as I’m going to make the call even as I will ask all of us to please kindly close our eyes and bow our heads and begin to pray; begin to pray for yourselves, say Father, don’t let me ever be cast out from Your kingdom.
[Altar call]
Say Father, forgive me every act of dishonor I have committed against You; in any area I’ve dishonored or disdained Your call in my life, please forgive me, in .Jesus name we pray
Say Father, from now, don’t let me ever trivialize Your call upon my life anymore; don’t let me ever do anything that will dishonor You, knowingly or unknowingly, consciously or otherwise, don’t let me ever trivialize Your call upon my life. Give me the grace to treat with urgency and importance things of Your kingdom, in Jesus name we pray.
Say Father, whatever will cause me to miss eternity, separate me from it; whatever will cause me to miss Your kingdom, Lord, separate me from it, take it away from me Lord, in Jesus name we pray.
Father we thank You; Father Your word always has a purpose, we have heard Your word this morning, let it accomplish Your purpose in every life in the name of Jesus. Wherever we have disdained Your call, wherever we have treated carelessly that which You hold sacred, Father pour down your mercies upon us this morning in the name of Jesus.
No matter how inconvenient and difficult, give us the courage and the grace to always put You above all other considerations in the name of Jesus. Father we pray, every blessing of Calvary, everything Lord that Christ died for for our sake, let us not miss out of it in the name of Jesus.
Thank You King of glory, in Jesus mighty name we prayed.
