Matthew 22:1-14 – The Parable of the Wedding Banquet
Matthew 22:1-14 – NIV
1Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.
4 “Then 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.’
5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.
13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.” The description of the events leading up to the return of Christ are illustrated in this parable very clearly. We would do well to take heed that we do not attend the feast without proper wedding clothes. Also note that the King destroys the murderers and burns the city, a reference to those persecuting and mistreating the kings servant, believers, and the burning of the city by fire, a reference to the woes of Revelation. He is coming soon.
When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
11The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 1 Kings 19:11-13, NIV
When Elijah ran for his life after demonstrating God’s power by rebuilding the altar and having God answer by fire, he was instructed to go on a journey for 40 days and 40 nights to the Mountain of God, Mount Horeb, also known today as Mount Sinai.
We can learn a number of lessons from this encounter, including the fact that God is not restricted to appearing with massive displays of energy and power, as we are often tempted to think. As we wait upon God, let us all realise that it is often in the stillness that He is at His most powerful and we become able to clearly hear His voice. As we await the outpouring that is about to be released, let us not be of a mind that restricts God’s manifest presence by our expectations, but be assured that He is about to glorify Himself as He pours out His Spirit on all flesh.
Mt Sinai today.
What the Father will pour out is a desire to seek His face and fellowship and to be like Jesus rather than His hand and power and gifts. Indeed the power of love is what compelled Jesus to heal the sick, help the poor and oppressed and He will give us that same compassion and love fr one another and for Him. When the love of God overwhelms us and overruns our carnal desires, we seek nothing else but to know Jesus and to walk with Him and in His power. Then truly shall we do greater works than those that He did, as He promised us. That hour is now upon us. Be hungry and be blessed!
Following the trauma of World War II, spiritual life reached a low ebb in the Scottish Hebrides. By 1949 Peggy and Christine Smith (84 and 82) had prayed constantly for revival in their cottage near Barvas village on the Isle of Lewis, the largest of the Hebrides Islands in the bleak north west of Scotland. God showed Peggy in a dream that revival was coming. Months later, early one winter’s morning as the sisters were praying, God give them an unshakeable conviction that revival was near.
Peggy asked her minister James Murray Mackay to call the church leaders to prayer. Three nights a week the leaders prayed together for months. One night, having begun to pray at 10 pm, a young deacon from the Free Church read Psalm 24 and challenged everyone to be clean before God. As they waited on God his awesome presence swept over them in the barn at 4 am Mackay invited Duncan Campbell (1898-1972) to come and lead meetings. Within two weeks he came. God had intervened and changed Duncan’s plans and commitments. At the close of his first meeting in the Presbyterian Church in Barvas the travel weary preacher was invited to join an all night prayer meeting. Thirty people gathered for prayer in a nearby cottage. Duncan Campbell described it:
“God was beginning to move, the heavens were opening, we were there on our faces before God. Three o’clock in the morning came, and God swept in. About a dozen men and women lay prostrate on the floor, speechless. Something had happened; we knew that the forces of darkness were going to be driven back, and men were going to be delivered. We left the cottage at 3 am to discover men and women seeking God. I walked along a country road, and found three men on their faces, crying to God for mercy. There was a light in every home, no one seemed to think of sleep.”
When Duncan and his friends arrived at the church that morning it was already crowded. People had gathered from all over the island, some coming in buses and vans. No one discovered who told them to come. God led them. Large numbers were converted as God’s Spirit convicted multitudes of sin, many lying prostrate, many weeping. After that amazing day in the church, Duncan pronounced the benediction, but then a young man began to pray aloud. He prayed for 45 minutes. Once more the church filled with people repenting and the service continued till 4 am the next morning before Duncan could pronounce the benediction again.
Even then he was unable to go home to bed. As he was leaving the church a messenger told him, “Mr. Campbell, people are gathered at the police station, from the other end of the parish; they are in great spiritual distress. Can anyone here come along and pray with them?”
Campbell went and what a sight met him. Under the still starlit sky he found men and women on the road, others by the side of a cottage, and some behind a peat stack all crying to God for mercy. The revival had come.
His mission continued for five weeks. Services were held from early morning until late at night and into the early hours of the morning. The revival spread to the neighbouring parishes from Barvas with similar scenes of repentance, prayer and preaching. People sensed the awesome presence of God everywhere.
That move of God in answer to prevailing prayer continued in the area into the fifties and peaked again on the previously resistant island of North Uist in 1957. Meetings were again crowded and night after night people cried out to God for salvation.
The Hebrides revival, experienced in a Presbyterian context, illustrates how the impact of the Spirit floods and transcends any context. Campbell emphasised the importance of a baptism in the Spirit, as had been a common theme in the Welsh revival.
“I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty.
2 But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4 and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.
5 “So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty. Malachi 3:1-5, NIV
Was it a coincidence or did God have a purpose on pouring out His Holy Spirit in such a manner as to set of the fire that was the Pentecostal movement on Pesach weekend of 1906, also known as Easter? Here are some excerpts from the Renewal Journal that document what happened then. I am convinced that there is a pattern for the manifestation of the glory of God that we know as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
It seems rather clear that God begins by pouring out a desire to pray which then culminates in these incidences where He shows up and does only what He can do. William Seymour was a man whom all the odds were against but had one important trait….a hunger for God. That hunger was so intense that he enrolled himself into classes that he could not sit in due to the segregation laws of the day. When the hunger overtook him he accepted a call to be a pastor at a church in Los Angeles but was immediately fired after his first sermon was made which was based on Acts chapter 2 and the infilling of the Holy Spirit.
He then began a fellowship at what is now a monument to the beginning of the outpouring in a shabby little space that again demonstrates that God is not interested in our productions and buildings and adornments but is interested in our hearts. This is a common thread in His manifestation everywhere, beginning with a child king born in a manger and sealed by the worst death possible on a cross with thieves. Revival is about to break out with a level and force that has never been experienced before. 2021 will go down in the history books, but there may not be time to write them as this is the last great outpouring. People are having dreams and visions of the Messiahs return, the bridegroom coming to get His bride, and a hunger and thirst is building that is unprecedented. The trumpet is about to sound and the bride is being prepared.
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Early in 1906 William J. Seymour (1870-1922), the Negro Holiness pastor, studied briefly at Charles Parham’s short term Bible School in Houston, Texas. Segregation laws in that state prohibited Negroes from joining the classes. Most reports indicate that he sat in the hall and listened through the doorway.
William Seymour
Julia Hutchins, the pastor of a small holiness church in Los Angeles, heard of Seymour from a friend, Luci Farrow, who had visited Houston. Hutchins invited William Seymour to preach in her church with the possibility of becoming pastor of the church. His first sermon there, from Acts 2:4, emphasized being filled with the Spirit and speaking in tongues. He soon found himself locked out of the building.
Seymour then began cottage meetings in the home of Richard Asbery at 214 Bonnie Brae Street, which still exists as a Pentecostal landmark. Many there, including Seymour, fell to the floor and began speaking in tongues at the prayer meeting on Monday, April 9. Numbers grew until the weight of the crowd broke the front verandah, so they had to move. They found an old two-story weatherboard stable and warehouse at 312 Azusa Street which had previously been an African Episcopal Methodist church.
So Seymour, now leader of The Apostolic Faith Mission, began meetings there on Easter Saturday, April 14, 1906. About 100 attended including blacks and whites. The Spirit of God moved powerfully on that little mission. Many were baptized in the Spirit with speaking in tongues and prophecies. Four days later on Wednesday, April 18, the day of the San Francisco earthquake, the Los Angeles Times began carrying articles about the weird babble of tongues and wild scenes at Azusa Street.
Not only was the racial mixture unusual, but the newspaper reports, usually critical of those noisy Pentecostal meetings, drew both Christians and unbelievers, poor and rich, to investigate. Soon crowds crammed into the building to investigate or mock. Hundreds were saved, baptized in the Spirit and ignited for apostolic style mission which included prayers for healing and outreach in evangelism and overseas mission.” – Renewal Journal
It is said the services ran non-stop for three years, if at all you would call them services, as there was generally no order. Frank Bartelman gives the following account of his first hand experience there:
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Brother Seymour generally sat behind two empty shoe boxes, one on top of the other. He usually kept his head inside the top one during the meeting, in prayer. There was no pride there. The services ran almost continuously. Seeking souls could be found under the power almost any hour, night and day. The place was never closed nor empty. The people came to meet God. He was always there. Hence a continuous meeting. The meeting did not depend on the human leader. God’s presence became more and more wonderful. In that old building, with its low rafters and bare floors, God took strong men and women to pieces, and put them together again, for His glory. It was a tremendous overhauling process. Pride and self-assertion, self-importance and self-esteem, could not survive there. The religious ego preached its own funeral sermon quickly.
No subjects or sermons were announced ahead of time, and no special speakers for such an hour. No one knew what might be coming, what God would do. All was spontaneous, ordered of the Spirit. We wanted to hear from God, through whoever he might speak. We had no “respect of persons.” The rich and educated were the same as the poor and ignorant, and found a much harder death to die. We only recognized God. All were equal. No flesh might glory in His presence. He could not use the self-opinionated. Those were Holy Ghost meetings, led of the Lord. It had to start in poor surroundings, to keep out the selfish, human element. All came down in humility together, at His feet. They all looked alike, and had all things in common in that sense at least. The rafters were low, the tall must come down. By the time they got to “Azusa” they were humbled, ready for the blessing. The fodder was thus placed for the lambs, not for giraffes. All could reach it.”
May we hunger and thirst for the outpouring that fills us with His presence and transforms the world. I do not know about you, but I am eagerly looking forward to those days that are about to come upon us, for in His presence there is fullness of joy and restoration.
