Matthew 22 verses 1 through 14, let us now hear God's word. And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said, the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding and they were not willing to come. Again, he sent out other servants saying, tell those who were invited, see, I've prepared my dinner. My oxen and fatted cattle are killed and all things are ready. Come to the wedding. But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business. And the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully and killed them. But when the king heard about it, he was furious, and he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Then he said to his servants, the wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore, go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding. So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, bind him hand and foot, take him away and cast him into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word this morning. We ask that you would help us to love it more than gold, more than fine gold. Father, if we're honest, probably most of us would admit that we don't love your word as we ought to. And so we pray with the psalmist that you would work in our hearts and help us to love it more today. Help us to see its truth, its beauty. And we pray, Father, that we would leave this place, not only loving your word more, but believing your word and acting in obedience to it. We ask your blessing in Jesus' name. Amen. How lonely sits the city that was full of people. How like a widow is she who was great among the nations. The princess among the provinces has become a slave. She weeps bitterly in the night. Her tears are on her cheeks. Among all her lovers, she has none to comfort her. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her. They have become her enemies. Judah has gone into captivity. Under affliction and hard servitude, she dwells among the nations. She finds no rest. All her persecutors, overtake her in dire straits. The roads to Zion mourn because no one comes to the set feasts. All her gates are desolate. Her priests sigh. Her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness. Her adversaries have become the master. Her enemies prosper. For the Lord has afflicted her because of the multitude of her transgressions. Her children have gone into captivity before the enemy. And from the daughter of Zion all her splendor has departed. Her princes have become like deer that find no pasture, that flee without strength before the pursuer. In the days of her affliction and roaming, Jerusalem remembers all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old. When her people fell into the hand of the enemy with no one to help her, the adversary saw her and mocked at her downfall. Jerusalem has sinned gravely, therefore she has become vile. All who honored her despise her because they have seen her nakedness. Yes, she sighs and turns away. Her uncleanness is in her skirts. She did not consider her destiny. Therefore, her collapse was awesome. Do you know what that's from? That is the opening portion of the book of Lamentations in the Old Testament. That is the lament of the great prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament. What's he talking about? He's talking about the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of Judah at the hands of the Babylonians. He's describing all that has happened in God's judgment upon the great city. and why it befell her. Why did Jerusalem fall in 586 B.C.? Why was she destroyed? Why all these terrible things that happened to her? Well, it was because of her sins. Her trespasses were so great. And God had sent prophets. Rising up early and sending those prophets one right after another to call the people of Judah back to the Lord to repent of their sins and Believe in the Lord and return to him in penitence. They refused to they refused to answer God's invitations God's call to come back to him and so judgment came well now fast forward to Matthew 22 and And where are we? We're in the city of Jerusalem and judgment and destruction is nigh. It's about 35, 40 years off or so. And Jesus is telling a story that indicates that illustrates why Jerusalem will be punished so severely. It is because they have refused God's invitation. We're here in the parable of the wedding feast. And we began last time by thinking about the context for this. The setting is a king and a marriage for his son. And so what does the king do? He's going to throw a party, right? We usually don't use the word feast or banquet or things like that. We might use the word party instead, but that's what we have here. We have a celebration. that is going to be given for the occasion of the marriage of the king's son. And so you would expect the invitations to be sent out. The king sends out his servants to deliver the invitations, no doubt to those who were pre-selected to receive those invitations. And what do they do with those invitations? Well, some of them just completely disregard the invitations. They're not willing to come. They're not interested. They don't want to be a part of this. Others, disregarding it, go back to their business and do whatever they want to do rather than going to the king's wedding feast. What all does this illustrate? Well, the king in the story symbolizes God the father. Of course, the son in the story symbolizes God the son. What has God done? He has chosen and ordained a bride for his people. He has sent his son with the good tidings of the arrival of the kingdom of heaven. And he's invited men to come and take part in this. And that initial primary audience was the Jewish people. They had received God's servants over and over again. And now we have the culmination of it. We've got John the Baptist and Jesus who come and announce the kingdom of heaven has arrived. It is nigh, it's at hand. And what did the Jews do with it? They did exactly what the people in this story did with it. Some disregarded the invitation. Others went back to their business as they neglected the king's invite. All of this is symbolic of what Israel has done in rejection of God's call to come and be a part of the great wedding feast for the Messiah. Well, that's where we were last time. Let's pick it up now in verse number six. Jesus says, and the rest, that is the rest of those who were invited, seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them. So we've had different responses from different people. You had people who just neglected it and made light of the invitation, but now you have something far worse. What do some of these other people who were invited to the wedding feast do? Well, some of them seize the servants of the king. Now, how the king's servants are treated is how you're treating the king himself, right? Because they represent the king. They're there on behalf of the king. Some of them are seized. Some of them are treated spitefully. In the original language, this is hubrizo. We get our English word hubris from it. It's the idea of insolence, of arrogantly treating someone badly. And so these original guests, if you will, treat these servants very badly, but that's not all. Verse six, at the end of the verse, treated them spitefully and killed them. So some of these people put the servants who have come with the invitation to death. They murder them. Now this matches up with the previous parable, right? Go back to chapter 21. And chapter 21, we had the parable of the wicked vine dressers. Remember the story there was the owner of the vineyard sends his servants to get the fruit from the harvest. And what happens? Verse 35, and the vinedressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. So you see the connection between these two parables in how the servants are treated. Now you say, this is shocking. I mean, think about it. If you sent someone with an invitation to your child's birthday party, and what happened was they killed the person you sent. you would be absolutely outraged and you would be ready to take action against the people who did such a thing. But this is what they do. Now, why is Jesus giving the story in this way? What does this mean to illustrate or symbolize? Well, again, this symbolizes the Jewish people in their unbelief and their rebellion against God's call and how they treat the servants of the Lord. And you have a long history of that in the Old Testament. We've talked about some of that recently, about how the prophets were sent by God to speak on God's behalf and call the people to come back to the Lord. And it is so amazing, even in the book of Jeremiah, where there is this You know, dark tone, if you will, this heavy tone of judgment. Even then, God calls through Jeremiah, come back to me and I'll bless you. Come back to me and I'll help you. How could you refuse a call like that? How could you stop your ears and say, no, I'm not going to listen. I'm not going to do what you say, God. But that's what they did. And not only that, they didn't stop there, but many of those prophets paid the ultimate price. They died at the hands of their countrymen who did not want to hear what God said. For example, 2 Chronicles 24, yet he sent prophets to them to bring them back to the Lord and they testified against them, but they would not listen. Then the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest who stood above the people and said to them thus says God Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord so that you cannot prosper? Because you have forsaken the Lord. He also has forsaken you Now what would be a proper response to that to humble yourself in repentance and come back to God? What did the people do? So they conspired against him. And at the command of the king, they stoned him with stones in the court of the house of the Lord." How shocking! Not only did they kill him, not only did they stone him, but they did it in the precincts of the temple. Wow! You say, why is it so terrible? If you read the book of Lamentations and you see just how horrible it was, the destruction of Jerusalem and God's judgment on the people. Sometimes people look at that and they're like, how could God be good? How could God be loving? No, this is God's justice. These people deserved what fell upon them at that time. Well, have things changed by the time you get to Jesus' day? Unfortunately not. Again, think of John the Baptist. What did they do with John the Baptist? Well, John the Baptist preached a real feel-good message to make everybody happy, keep everybody entertained, and so he was the most popular preacher in Judea. No, he told Herod, you can't have that woman as your wife. Undoubtedly, she's mad about it and she wants his head. And you know the story. They cut John the Baptist's head off. They execute. Well, now we've got the ultimate. What is ultimately going to happen is Jerusalem, the religious leaders, the unbelieving Jews are going to reject the Messiah. They're going to reject Jesus himself. They're going to murder the Son of God himself. What is to happen to such a people as that? Well, we'll get to that in a moment. But let's think about these messengers for a minute. These messengers in the story represent those who come with God's message. from prophets to apostles, and what the people did back then, they still do today. God's messengers are still mistreated today. Now, we may not be used to that here in America, and maybe we have a milder form of it, but around the world, in lands where there's persecution, God's messengers are still rejected, still murdered, still put to death. Why? Because they bring the message of the Lord to a rebellious people who don't want to hear from God, who don't want to hear from God's messengers. Now you would think everybody would want to hear from God, right? You would think everybody would just welcome and embrace an invitation from God himself. But know what happens many times is the messengers are mistreated and even murdered, even though they come bearing God's message. How do you treat God's messengers? Well, you might say, well, I've never murdered any of God's messengers. Good. But sometimes we mistreat God's messengers by refusing to listen to them. Has anybody ever come to you in the name of the Lord with the truth of God and you didn't want to hear it? You didn't want to listen. I imagine that most of us could testify, yes, at some point I had no ears to hear what grandma said. I didn't want to hear what my dad said. I didn't want to listen to my mom talk religion again. So we're not some kind of better people than those in these days who rejected and mistreated God's messengers. So for those who come with the invitation, we cannot expect to be celebrated, welcomed, and rejoiced in by the world or even by the visible church. Those who come preaching the good news of the gospel have to, unfortunately, expect mistreatment because of that gospel. Think about the Apostle Paul. Listen to how Paul describes his ministry at one point. 1 Thessalonians 2, but even after we had suffered before and were spitefully treated at Philippi, he uses the same word that's used here in this passage, hubrizo. As you know, we were bold in our God to speak to you the gospel of God in much conflict. Paul went to many places and in many places he was mistreated, even though he was God's messenger, bringing an invitation from the great king himself, to come and be a part of the kingdom of God. So you say, well, I'm not a pastor. I'm not a preacher. Okay, maybe you're not, but we need to recalibrate our thinking about things because we often want to be, we want people to be happy with us. We want people to embrace us, to celebrate us, but that is very rarely. the position of the true messenger of God, the true servant of God can expect to be rejected and mistreated. If you're gonna be a Christian, and you're gonna be a servant of God, and you're gonna carry the message of God's invitation to other people, you need to have that expectation in mind. You need to not have rose colored glasses on that says, everybody is just gonna think you're just the greatest thing since sliced bread. It's just not gonna work that way. You know, sometimes when we go out to share the gospel with people, like on that Saturday once a month when we go door to door, you know, most of the people are very cordial. But every now and again, You get somebody who doesn't like you and they don't want you there and it's pretty clear and sometimes we're like Yikes, what's going on here? Why because we don't expect that we don't expect to be treated in that manner in that way but you see it's what happened to the servants here and that symbolizes the treatment that God's messengers have gotten in history and still get today and Now, what will the king do in response to how his servants have been treated? Verse seven, but when the king heard about it, he was furious and he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers and burned up their city. First response to the king is fury. It's anger. I should say so. I mean, I hope you see that and you're like, yeah, that's the exact right response to that situation. Anger, burning, red hot, fiery, judgmental, fury. It's the response of the king. What would you do? How would you respond? How would you feel? Put yourself in this situation. I think you would feel anger and you would feel it rightly. Well, remember who the king in the story symbolizes, symbolizes God himself, right? So here we are reminded of something that is so very important about God's character, especially the day in which we live. We live in a time in which it is very popular for people to talk about God's love and to deny and be very uncomfortable with any talk of God's wrath, or his anger. But here we have a story in which the king unleashes his fury upon these wicked men and their city. And that illustrates God himself. Who is God? God is love. Yes, it's absolutely true and precious. But God is also a God of wrath against sin and against the wicked. Make no mistake. Hear the words of the prophet. God is jealous and the Lord avenges. The Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries and he reserves wrath for his enemies. That's who the God of the Bible is. Now, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense because here is the king in his grace, in his love, sending out an invitation to bring people into a time of blessing. And how do they respond to that? They respond to that by mistreating and murdering his servants. What would you expect? from the king in that scenario. I think we ought to expect fury and that's exactly what we get. What should we expect for those who reject God's good and kind and gracious invitations to salvation in Jesus Christ? What should we expect for those who do that? You should expect the same thing, wrath. You should expect God's fury to come down upon those who do such things. Thus the bad news is that our sin, our wickedness brings God's wrath down on us. Every one of us by our nature and by our lives deserves this kind of fury, this kind of righteous anger to proceed from God and come down directly on our heads. So don't listen to the world. The world doesn't wanna hear about this. The world doesn't want to listen to any message of God's judgment. The world wants to paint God, paint a picture of God in their own image, what they think God ought to be like. But we must not do that. We must look to the scriptures to tell us who God is and what God is like. And according to the Bible, from start to finish, God unleashes His wrath on wicked men. Now, the good news is that we can escape the wrath of the king through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what Jesus is doing on the cross, right? Jesus is absorbing and taking the fury of God upon himself so that you and I can be forgiven. God's wrath is assuaged. His divine justice is satisfied through Jesus Christ and His death at Calvary. And it's through Jesus, when you repent of your sin and you believe in Him, that God's wrath is satisfied for you in Christ. And now you have peace with God. You're reconciled to God. You have a relationship with Him. He's your friend and not your enemy any longer. Why? All because of the Son of the King. who brings salvation to all those who will respond to God's invitation. So flee to Jesus for salvation today, if you have not already. Number two, not only is the king furious, but he moves into action. And he moves into action to destroy these people and their city. Verse seven. And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. So the king's anger leads to retribution against these men, and they are executed themselves. They're put to death. And not only that, but their city is destroyed, set on fire, burned to the ground. Now, what does that symbolize? Well, we're roughly around 33 AD here. And in 70 AD, the Romans are gonna come against Jerusalem and the Jews and going to destroy them. They're gonna destroy the city. They're gonna set it on fire. And that is what is symbolized here in this story. Jesus knows that it is coming. And he tells this story in such a way so that it points to that time. You may know about Josephus. Josephus was a Jewish author and historian from this time period. And he describes the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in this way, quote, So he gave orders to the soldiers both to burn and to plunder the city. who did nothing indeed that day, but on the next day they set fire to the repository of the archives, to Acre, to the council house, and to the place called Ophlus, at which time the fire proceeded as far as the palace of Queen Helena, which was in the middle of Acre. The lanes also were burnt down, as were also those houses that were full of the dead bodies of such as were destroyed by famine." End quote. There's a description of what happens years later after Jesus tells this story. But what does this point to? Again, this points to divine judgment. God is going to judge the unbelieving and rebellious Jewish nation because of their sins and ultimately because of their rejection of their Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus comes with the invitation. They reject it. And there is nothing left to be had except judgment. And that is true for each and every person who hears the invitation and rejects it. That's what's coming, is judgment. Not the destruction of a physical city, but the destruction of a soul in hell for all eternity. That's the judgment that awaits all those who reject God's invitation. You see how serious this is? You see how important this is? So you must accept God's invitation while there is time before judgment falls, because judgment will come. There are many people who convince themselves there is no such thing. There's no such thing as divine wrath for all eternity in hell. And so people have conversations about hell and, you know, is it real? Is it not real? Maybe the fundamentalists made that up or something like that. No, don't listen to any of that. Listen to Jesus. Jesus says the divine retribution ultimately falls on the wicked. And we're not going to cover this part today, but drop down and look at it quickly. The man who is found without the wedding garment, what happens to him? Verse 13, then the king said to the servants, bind him hand and foot, take him away and cast him into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. You've heard that language from Jesus before, right? What's Jesus describing there? He's describing hell, the place of eternal torment and what it will be like for those who reject God's invitation. So again, as I asked you last week, I ask you again this week. Have you rejected God's invitation? Or have you responded to it? Oh, I don't mean in some superficial way. I mean in true repentance, real faith, believing in Jesus Christ unto salvation. Have you done that? Don't flatter yourself in thinking that, no, I haven't. There'll be more time for me later. No, I haven't but I shouldn't have to do on that all that because I'm a good person and I get I just can't see God doing that to me or anybody else That's the argument that many people have against hell. I just don't understand how that could be. I Just don't see how a god of love could do that Don't take that chance if I can put it that way I What a terrible mistake that would be to think, oh, no, I think God is love. There'll be no wrath. There'll be no hell. Therefore, I just do what I want to do and then die and find out God's wrath is very real. And you're going to experience it for all eternity. So today is the day. Today is the day to turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ. Come to him. Accept God's invitation in Christ. All right. The murderers have been destroyed. Their city has been burned up. Now what? We still have a wedding to put on. What is to happen? Verse eight. Then he said to his servants, the wedding is ready. But those who were invited were not worthy. Now we need to look at the replacement guests. Who are those who are brought in to fill the wedding hall? The first thing the king says is, The wedding's ready, but those we invited weren't worthy. Yeah, for sure. They were not worthy of the invitation, and they demonstrated it by their behavior, by how they treated the king's servants. It's interesting that this is the very language the apostle Paul later used to describe the unbelieving Jews who refused to accept the gospel. Acts 13, 46. Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said, it was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first, but since you reject it and judge yourselves, what unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles. And so what does the king tell his servants to do now? Verse nine, therefore go into the highways and as many as you find invite to the wedding. So we go from this undoubtedly carefully curated list of guests, and now the King says, go out everywhere, go out into the roads leading out of the city, into the country, and invite everybody you can. Invite everybody you see to come to the wedding. And what a glorious thing that is, that the invitation goes out to, as we'll see here in a moment, the good and the bad. And what was previously somewhat exclusive is now thrown open to anybody who will listen, to whosoever will, to whoever will respond. You know, we believe in the sovereignty of God. I hope you believe in that. I believe that before the foundation of the world, God foreordained all things, including the eternal destiny of every single person who has ever lived. You say, well, pastor, that must mean that you don't believe in the free offer of the gospel. That must mean that you're not gonna invite anybody and everybody. You're just gonna try and find the elect. Figure out who the elect are, confine your appeal to them. No, we don't do that. Why don't we do that? Because God's way is to go out and indiscriminately send out the call to repent and believe and come to Jesus Christ and receive salvation. Now, make no mistake, it's only the elect who are going to respond to that call by the grace of God. But we go out and we spread the invitation far and wide. And that's what the apostles are going to do in the book of Acts, right? They're going to go and they're going to preach to whosoever will. Whoever will come and believe receives the promise of salvation. And that's what we do as well. All right. So what happens? Verse 10. So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests. So picture the scene in your mind, the servants scatter and they're going out into these paths and these byways and all these areas just inviting whoever. And you got this motley crew of people who gather for the wedding. You know, to use the parallel, it's not exactly parallel, but it's similar. The story that Jesus tells in Luke 14, listen to this. So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind. Now, usually in the first century, when you throw a party, those aren't the people you want. Those aren't the people you want at your wedding festivities. a well-to-do Jewish man or a royal person in the first century, he's gonna have a royal guest list. But now what happens is that the invite just goes out to whoever, and you're gonna get all sorts of people that come in. It would kind of be like if your kid had a birthday party, and everybody on your invite list refused to come, And so you sent some people out into the streets of Sanford just to invite everybody. You say, pastor, I wouldn't do that. There's no telling who might come. Well, right. That's what you have here. Good and bad. Gather, but the wedding hall is filled with guests. That's the result. What is this about? What is this part of the story? Well, ultimately, I think it symbolizes what is going to happen later. God comes with the invite to his people, to the Jewish people. They reject it. And what happens is the gospel is going to go out and where is it going to go? It's going to go to the Gentiles. And the Gentiles are going to flood into the wedding hall, so to speak. And they're going to fill it up. Now, that's not to say there won't be any Jews in it. There are Jews in it. The original apostles were Jewish. But the invite is going to go out into the highways and the Gentiles are going to stream into the church. And you're going to have all of these sinners all of these unclean Gentiles now coming into the kingdom of God. Now that would have been shocking to the first century religious leaders. They don't want tax collectors and prostitutes. They don't want those people and they don't want to have anything to do with those people, nor do they want Gentiles either. Gentiles are unclean and they don't want to be around them lest they be defiled. But what's going to happen is these men are going to reject Christ and the offer of God through him. They're going to be judged, and the Gentiles are going to flood in. But see, that was all part of the plan. That was the plan all along, for God to bring in a people from the nations. Paul says in Romans 11, I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not. But through their fall, that is the Jews, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Now if their fall is riches for the world and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness. Now this goes with what we saw in the previous chapter. So go back there for just a moment. After Jesus tells the parable of the wicked vinedressers, Jesus is explaining things. Let's start at verse 41. The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it. Now, if you remember our study of that passage of scripture, we said the nation bearing the fruit was the church, that the church was going to be given the kingdom. Well, now we have the same idea in a slightly different way and in a different story. The original guests, they didn't come and were destroyed. Now we've got some replacement guests. And aren't you glad that you're one of the replacement guests? That's you, that's me. Most of us, if not all of us, ethnic Gentiles by birth. And what God has done is he has done exactly what Jesus said he would do in this parable. He sent out the invite and it came to you. It came to you at some point. Who are you that you should be a part of the kingdom of God? Well, it's nothing but God's grace in sending out the invitation far and wide to people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And thus the church is now composed of Jew and Gentile and people of all different flavors, colors, and nationalities. This was God's plan to fill his wedding hall with guests. And he's done it. God was not going to allow his sons, the occasion of his son's marriage to a bride, to be scarcely attended. No, it is gonna be full. So when you get to the end, to the book of Revelation, what do you find there? Well, there's about 10 elderly people. And they're all singing rather pitifully. But glory to God, that's heaven. Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with 10 elderly people singing pitifully, provided they do it for the glory of God. But what you do find, when you get to the last book of the Bible, you get up into heaven and you find people that you can't count. There are so many there, they're uncountable. They're like the stars in the sky and the sand by the seashore. Can't be numbered. Why? Because God determined that his wedding hall would be filled with guests. Both good and bad. Those that were seen as respectable members of society, morally virtuous, that sort of people. People like Paul. You know, you got somebody like Paul, zealous Jew. What does God do? He saves him and brings him into the wedding hall. What about somebody who's like Mary Magdalene? An outcast. Someone that was seen as sinful. What did God do for her? He saved her and he brought her into the same wedding hall. Glory to God. Have you been invited? If you haven't, the invitation is here for you today. Repent and believe in Jesus Christ and become a part of this. And if you have responded to that invitation, then praise God that you're part of the celebration. Praise God that you're one of those guests seated at the wedding festivities. And one day you'll be at the ultimate, the consummation of all these things in glory. And words that we could use now wouldn't describe it perfectly or do it justice, but it will be glorious on that day when the marriage supper of the lamb comes and when Jesus and his bride are united forever. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this story from the Lord Jesus. So many sobering things here. It is sobering to read about judgment, knowing that we deserve judgment, knowing that we were born children of wrath. But we thank you, Lord, that you have saved us from the wrath to come through Jesus, your son. And now we have peace with you. And we are among the chosen. We are among the elect. Who are we that we should be invited to the great wedding feast? But yet you have given us the invitation and you've given us the grace to respond to it rightly. And so we thank you for that, Father. Thank you for what you've done for us. Thank you for taking guilty sinners who should have been on the outside and bringing them in. Lord, I pray for the person here today who does not know the salvation that is found in Christ. You know who they are, Father. And I pray that you'd be at work in their hearts today. By your Holy Spirit, please open their hearts to the gospel. Please grant them the gift of repentance and faith and bring them into the wedding hall today. Lord, we thank you for all that you have given to us in Christ and all that we have to look forward to. And we do look forward to that great day when we'll be in glory and we'll be there with that innumerable multitude, worshiping you and rejoicing in all that you have done for us. And so we thank you, Father, ahead of time for all that you've given us in the salvation of your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, We ask, Father, that you would bless us, give us your blessing as we leave this place and help us to appreciate what you have given to us. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen. As you leave today, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, amen.