Big Idea: Who are you going to share your Golden Ticket With? (2)
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Intro
What’s going on Grace Youth, if we haven’t met before my name is Brandon and I have the privilege of being on the teaching team here and I hope that on the other side of this screen you are all having a wonderful night so far and I am super excited to jump into the Word of God with you all. (This will be changed for the in-person meeting.). We are wrapping up the end of our series tonight called “The Relationships that Form Us”. If tonight is your first night at Grace Youth, first I want to say welcome, and so far we have covered family, dating, and friend relationships; and tonight we are going to be covering our relationships with people we haven’t met before. Specifically, how we can minister to those people about the Good News of Jesus.
Now before we dive in, by show of hands, who has ever seen the movie Willy Wonka? And for bonus points, who has seen the 1971 Willy Wonka featuring this handsome fellow? (Slide 1). Now for those who haven’t seen the movie or need a quick recap, Willy Wonka follows the story of a young boy named Charlie Bucket and his grandpa Joe. Now these two were incredibly poor. Charlie lived in a rundown house with his parents and his 4 grandparents who all shared 1 bed (Slide 2). Every night they would have cabbage soup for dinner, and some incredibly rare occasions, a chocolate bar. To make sure I don’t spend too much time on this, Charlie, his grandpa, and several other families were lucky enough to find the Golden Ticket (slide 3) contained in only 5 chocolate bars around the world to compete to see who would be the next owner of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Now spoiler alert, if you don’t want the ending ruined cover your ears, Charlie and his grandpa end up winning the competition, making the Charlie the next owner of the chocolate factory.
So why am I telling you this story? Plainly put, Charlie and his grandpa were under-qualified to own the chocolate factory, but ended up “heirs to the throne” in the end. The same can be said about the love story of Jesus and our future in Heaven. As we will read today in Scripture, through Jesus, God the Father invites us into His Kingdom even though we as humans are under-qualified and unworthy. Now if that’s not good enough news, I have better news. This “Golden Ticket” that is Jesus’ salvation is not luck based like the Golden Ticket in the movie, and there aren’t only 5 of these Golden Tickets. Jesus’ salvation is available to every single person. A lot of you guys are probably in either middle school or high school, and maybe you’ve gone through some hard times that threaten what you believe are your qualifications. Maybe you’ve been battling anxiety, and worry a good God would want nothing to do with you. If you’re anything like me, maybe you’ve gone through or are going through a season of depression in your life where the motivation to put in the effort just isn’t there, and you feel like God wouldn’t want someone who can’t be bothered to actively pursue Him. I have good news for you, if you have Jesus in your heart, you are never under-qualified, that Golden Tickets is yours, because of a God who just wants you. And as we will read soon, we have been given the task as Christians to tell others of this gift that Jesus gave us, we have been tasked with sharing Golden Tickets with the world. And so with that, my big idea today is actually a question: “Who are you going to share your Golden Ticket with?” (Slide 4)
Scripture (Slide 5)
1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 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.” -Mt. 22:1-14 NIV
Context
Now to better understand this parable, we need to go over some information. First, this parable is directed towards two people groups— the Jews and the Gentiles. (Slide 6) The Jews occupied Israel and exclusively believed God to be only their God. The term “Gentiles” originally referred to people from nations outside of Israel. Now before the church began, back when Jesus still roamed the earth, the Jews and the Gentiles often separated themselves, which takes us to our Scripture today. The Jews, who Jesus was speaking to and who claimed that God was only theirs, have become wicked and rejected God, so Jesus tells this parable to compare the rejection from the Jews to the acceptance of the Gentiles.
Now that we have some information on the passage, for the remainder of the night I want to look through 3 parts of this parable. Now as we remember our big idea, “Who are you going to share your Golden Ticket with?” I want go over 3 Reactions to Sharing a Golden Ticket
Rejection (v. 3-7) (Slide 7)
Now I think it’s best to start off with some comforting news, God desires everyone to be saved. 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not delaying the promise, as some consider slowness, but is being patient toward you, because he does not want any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” (Slide 8). However, if we read the Scripture, it is clear that not everyone will want to know Jesus, this is often seen through a constant rejection to the Gospel. Maybe some of you have experienced this first hand how being a Christian and speaking about Jesus can get you made fun of, or if your story is similar to mine, maybe you lost some friends or your friends always walk away every time you bring up God. Maybe your own family rejected you for loving Christ, the ones you thought were closest to you turned their back on you. If you have experienced any of that I want you to know I am deeply sorry, and you have a God in Heaven who loves you more than anyone on this Earth ever could, and He will never leave you. I want to say I am very confident that Scripture tells us exactly how to deal with those people: Matthew 5:44 “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” (Slide 9). And I want you to be comforted by knowing that John 15:18–19 “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you.”. (Slide 10) Do not let rejection stop you from sharing your Golden Ticket, people will reject it, that’s fine. We pray for them, we move on, we keep bringing Heaven down, which brings me to my second point…
2. Acceptance (v. 8-10)
What specifically caught my eye here is how verse 10 makes note that they “gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good”. Do not limit the Gospel to only being spread to those you think will accept it. We see this with Jesus in the New Testament sitting with Tax Collectors and sinners, people that the Jews separated themselves from. When you tell someone about Jesus and they accept it, it is not because they are “less bad” than those who rejected it, it is because in the moments leading up to, and including the conversation with you, God has prepared their heart to receive the Good News of Jesus. We could never tell how God has prepared someone’s heart from the outside, because acceptance is shown from evidence of change on the inside. If you are going to share your Golden Ticket with others, imitate the servants in our passage and gather all the people you can find, the bad as well as the good.
3. Fake It (v. 11-14)
In these last few verses, we see the King notice a man who is not wearing the proper clothes for the wedding. When the man was confronted about it, verse 12 tells us that he was speechless. Verse 13 goes on to show that because the man was not wearing the proper clothes, and could not tell the king why he was there, he was kicked out from the wedding. As Jesus takes you on your journey to tell people about His Goodness, you will meet others who on the outside look like they have made it to the wedding, but on the inside they are not wearing the correct clothes. They act like a Christian in public, but their hearts have not been dressed with Jesus’ righteousness. If that is the case, then they have not genuinely found a seat at the table with Jesus. You may know people like this in your own lives, who you see at church every Sunday putting on their best performance during worship, but outside of the doors of the church building they are someone completely different. They’re cussing in school, they’re acting inappropriate with others, they’re smoking in the bathroom. If you know someone like that, first and foremost you have a duty to pray for them that they would be properly dressed by the Holy Spirit and that God would change their hearts to always be set on serving and glorifying Him. If that is you and you are in this room, know that I am not condemning you, but I hope that God shows you a mirror to yourself through this, and that you would allow Him to change your heart so that you can sit at the table with Jesus forever.
Ending
Now there is one detail about Willy Wonka that I purposely left out until now. Yes, Charlie and his family were poor, but the rest of the families who competed with him were seen as wealthy, rich, perfect, well-dressed, they looked like people who were worthy of inheriting the chocolate factory. But just because they looked the part, didn’t mean their hearts were prepared to inherit the reward. Charlie didn’t look the part, but his heart was prepared to receive the gift of inheritance. You may think other Christians seem more worthy than you, that is not true. You cannot tell the hearts of the believers and unbelievers around you, you can only pray that God would reveal and work with your own heart. And if your heart is in the right place, then Jesus says that you are worthy of inheriting Heaven. But there are people out there who don’t know this, there are people who do not know there is a Golden Ticket waiting for them. So GraceYouth, Who are you going to share your Golden Ticket with?”