Verse 14 is a summary of the parable of the Lord Jesus Christ concerning the marriage feast for the King's Son which begins at verse 1 of the chapter. Verses 11-14 can be described as a parable within a parable, about the man who did not have a wedding garment. The Lord is clinching the whole of the teaching of this parable and the subordinate parable in this statement that 'many are called but few are chosen.' He is giving us the reason why, on the one hand, the marriage feast was filled, and on the other hand, why this particular individual was to be bound hand and foot and cast into outer darkness.

I want us to face the facts that lie behind this particular statement because it is really here that you and I have our salvation. Any man who will experience the salvation of God must come to terms with the truth of what Jesus is saying here. This is the way of salvation, and there has never been any other way, and there never will be. There are two emphases we can make from this text.

1. First of all, MANY ARE CALLED. That of course refers to the gospel call, when the servants of the king were commanded to go out into the highways and to compel the multitude to come in. They were to go and preach the gospel, and that basic message has never been abrogated or altered down to the present day. The Scriptures make it abundantly clear that the way of salvation is through the preaching, the hearing and the believing the gospel. And as I understand the Bible, there is no other way of salvation even remotely hinted at in the word of God. That is not just as a matter of chance or the accident of history or through the ingenuity or eloquence of Christian preachers, but because God has ordained this particular way. There is a peculiar suitability about the message of the gospel as the way of salvation. Indeed we could say that the gospel is tailor-made to bring salvation to men, and the gospel alone. We do not need to tailor it to suit men's needs - we present the gospel as it is revealed in the Bible, without minimising or over-emphasising any aspect.

Now we should grasp this fact in such a way that we will never be moved from it, because we are being told increasingly in the Christian church today that the day of preaching is past. We should be gossiping the gospel. We must make the gospel relevant to the twentieth century by house meetings, and personal contacts. Now we have no problem with gossiping the gospel or house meetings. We have no problem with face to face discussion of the Christian gospel. The more we do of these things the better for all of us. But it is the preaching and not the gossiping of the gospel that, according to the Bible, is the power of God unto salvation - not the house meeting. That is what Paul had in mind when he penned those words in 1 Cor. 1:21: 'It has pleased God through the preaching of the gospel to save them that believe.' It was not just the casual passing on of the odd word here and there. He meant proclamation, official public declaration where a man would stand up before a gathered assembly, and declare what the gospel was. And surely even a minimal acquaintance with church history will reinforce that basic biblical truth, for it is a matter of sheer historical fact that the Christian church has always prospered and enlarged her borders, when she was strong on preaching the gospel; when her ministers were not deviated into being administrators, counsellors, marriage celebrants, official buriers of the dead, or baptisers of anyone that came their way. The function of a Christian minister primarily and overwhelmingly is to preach the gospel.

It is this that Jesus is speaking about when he says, 'many are called.' They are called by the proclamation of the gospel. And I believe myself that many congregations are doing themselves nothing but a disservice when they relegate the sermon into some obscure appendage or secondary place in the church service. There are some churches architecturally constructed so that the pulpit is almost hidden behind a pillar. That has never been the architecture of Christian churches in their best days. The proclamation of the gospel is the high point of all Christian activity, because there is a peculiar unction and a peculiar blessing that God himself will give to the official proclamation of the word.

Our task is not to convert people but to present them with the facts of the gospel. We cannot convert anybody. We cannot convince our own children of the existence of God. Only God can bring men to himself. We are not required to make converts, but to preach the gospel, and leave the rest to God.

I would go further and say the gospel is alone quite sufficient to bring men unto salvation. We are being told we need the gospel, but we need the gospel plus drama, etc. The old fashioned gospel in and of itself is too old fashioned for this modern twentieth century. That is not so. What men need is the gospel plus nothing else at all. We dare not add anything to make the gospel more sweet or attractive to men. The gospel of God is never attractive to the natural man. It will be attractive only when men see the beauty and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ against the horrific picture of themselves as lost and undone in sin. 'Many are called.' Jesus is speaking of the proclamation of the gospel.

Now, what is the gospel? The gospel is not 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' If you or I gossip the gospel and tell our neighbour that the gospel is 'Be a good neighbour, be a good citizen, love your neighbour as yourself', we are telling our hearers lies. That is the law. It is the law that says, 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' If the good news, the gospel, the way of salvation were to love God with all my heart, and to love my neighbour as myself, then I have no hope of salvation, because I do not love God with all my heart, and I certainly do not love my neighbour as myself. To love my neighbour as myself is not good news to me, because I do not have the ability to begin to love my neighbour the way I love myself, with all the intensity and all the consumption of time and energy that I expend in loving myself. My neighbour always takes second place to myself - so it is with everyone of us. But the gospel is good news because it says to us that, despite the fact that we have not loved God with all our heart, (that is our sin) and despite the fact that we have not loved our neighbour as ourselves (that is our sin ) - yet God loves us. Despite the fact that we have done nothing for God, God has done great things for us. In other words, the gospel by which many will be called, is the great things that the Lord has done.

What were these servants to go into the highways to say? 'The King has made a feast; the King has made a provision; the King has done it, and all the King requires of you is to come into his marriage feast. You do not have to contribute anything to the marriage feast. The King has borne the cost; he has slain his animals and provided the sacrifices and all the feast is at his expense. All that is required of you is to come in and sit down and take of the great things that this King has provided.' That is the good news. It is good news for you and me, that in the depths of our sin, the blood of Jesus Christ God's Son cleanses us and keeps on cleansing us from all sin. That is good news to me, because I sin in thought, word and deed daily. I drink down iniquity as water, as the Scripture says. My heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and the good news for me is that God has said, 'I will give you a new heart, I will blot out your transgressions, I will forget your iniquities and I will remember them no more. I will change your nature, I will give you a nature that will hunger and thirst after righteousness. I will give you a heart that is sensitised to the things of God, whereby you will be able not only to take an interest, but to have a desire for more of the things of God.' The gospel is good news in that it tells us that God has prepared a heaven for those of us who were inevitably destined for the place of darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth, because that is what our sins deserve.

That is what the world needs to know. The tragedy of our age is that to a large extent it does not know what the gospel is. It comes into contact with many professing Christian churches and it gets a garbled gospel that is no gospel. It is not being faced squarely with the reality of sin, with the existence of God, and with the provision of heaven and eternal blessedness for those who are unclean but who believe in Jesus Christ. That is what men need to know. We will never see great blessing until we actually give men information concerning the gospel. The gospel of God in the Bible is a gospel of propositions - God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. That is not just a pretty saying - it is a fact of history. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. That is not just something written in a book; it is a record of an event that took place in the history of this world. Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures - again not an invention of religious fanatics but an event under Pontius Pilate the Roman governor. He was crucified that day at that place on that cross. His blood was really shed, physical blood, the emblem of the pouring out of his life. In other words, the gospel is not just something in a book, in the way that fairy stories are in a book, or in the way that men write novels - it is only in their head. We are dealing with FACTS, rooted in the history of this world, and if we are not dealing with facts, then let us close the book, and close the churches and forget all about any gospel.

The gospel is not just giving men the facts, but trying to bring these facts into their hearts. We are to preach the gospel but we are also to INVITE men to come. That was the point of sending out those servants. 'Compel them to come in.' Do not tell men, 'God exists, heaven and hell exist. You are a sinner, Christ is the Saviour of sinners' - and leave it at that, as if it made no difference whether they believed or not. We are to say to men, If you come, you will be welcomed. God says that he will adopt you as his children. Your past with all your inexcusable guilt will be blotted out. God says, I will betroth thee to me for ever. And I will never let you go. 'If you believe in me', says Jesus, 'I promise you on my word that you shall never perish.' We are to say to men, If you believe, you have life; if you do not believe in Jesus Christ you do not have life. Jesus gave the invitation, 'Come unto me all ye that labour, and I will give you rest. You learn of me, and you learn how to take my yoke that is easier than the yoke of sin.'

That same tone of entreaty must surely be in our voice and in our whole demeanour as we go and call men to come. We are to make no distinctions or qualifications. We are to go as freely as these servants were to go into the highways and say to the multitudes of the highways and byways of this world, without any exception or any mental reservations, 'If you come, you will have life.'

But then we are not only to give them the facts, and to give them the invitation, we are to give them WARNINGS too. We are to tell them of the consequences of not coming. They may say, 'Well, that is all right if you are inclined that way. Some people, they say, are almost genetically more religiously orientated than other people. It is all in the genes, or all in the upbringing.' But we are to say to men, 'It does matter. On the one hand you will have life that is beyond all our comprehension of life, life that is life indeed. And on the other hand, if you do not come, the wrath of God abides upon you. He that hath the Son hath life, he that does not have the Son of God does not have life, but the wrath of God.' Not just that there is the absence of life, but the positive inflicting of that wrath of God. And again we must emphasise to them it is in the Word of the Lord that endures for ever. The wrath of God is as real as the love of God. Indeed those who have studied these things tell us that Jesus spoke more about the wrath of God than he did about the love of God. Now, it may well be true. But one cannot read the sayings of Jesus without being convinced that here was a man who preached often on the wrath of God. And we are to do the same because it is through hearing the word of God that men come to faith. It is the foolishness of preaching the gospel that God has been pleased to bless and to own as the power of God unto salvation.

Now we are told here that MANY are called. And we are being reminded of the sheer generosity of God in extending this message. In more than one place in the Scriptures we are told that God delights in mercy. And we must be careful, in the midst of presenting God as the great Judge who will by no means clear the guilty, that we also present him as the one to whom judgment is a necessary but an unpleasant task. He delights to save. He will cast men into hell but he will do so reluctantly. His justice demands it, but he has no delight in the death of any man. And the great multitudes around us are in the eye of God, and in the heart and compassion of God in the way that perhaps we will never begin to understand. Even against the background of their lostness, there is a yearning and a certain pathos of feeling of God towards these people. We have the vision and revelation of God in Christ, when he looked upon the multitudes who were lost, and he was moved with compassion because they were as sheep without a shepherd. That leads us into the heart of God which lies behind this great statement, 'Many are called.' God calls the many. 'To you, O men I call.' He stands at the gates of our ways and he calls us.

Now there are many who have never heard the gospel in any meaningful way, but there are many who HAVE heard the gospel and they have resented and rejected it. But when God calls many, he calls them because he has a concern for them; because he realises what they are. All of them are his image, no matter how dissolute and debased their lives may be. There is something akin to God in a man who is lying in the gutter. That man is made after the likeness of God and God has an affinity with that man. God has a claim upon him, even though he may never in his whole life have any thought higher than his own will. He is God's creature. His one purpose in existing is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever. We have no other reason to exist than to do the will of God, to glorify him in all things.

We might say, It looks as if the gospel has failed, and yes, there are questions that perplex all of us, but the secret things belong unto the Lord. There are questions which we want to have answered instantaneously, but for which we are promised no answer in this world. We must remember that the gospel has not failed. Paul makes that very plain in his letter to the Romans. When the Jews fall away, does that mean that God has failed? No. Even when men are lost in perdition it is not that the word of God has failed. The word of God is the only thing suitable for salvation, as we have said. It is peculiarly constructed to bring salvation to men. It is sufficient for salvation, but the preaching of the gospel is not only intended to bring salvation, and that is where we often make a fundamental mistake. We imagine that the only function of the gospel is to save men. That is not the way the Bible presents it. The gospel is to some a savour of life unto life, because it is intended to be, and to others it is a savour of death unto death, because it is intended to be. Now I know at first sound, we find these truths horrific, and John Calvin, who speaks perhaps more of these things than any other scholar in the history of God's church, calls this a horribile (that is, awesome) decree. But it is biblical. 'They stumble at the word because they were ordained to stumble.' We are not saying that we know, looking at men and women, those to whom the gospel will be a power from life unto life, or death unto death. We do not make distinctions in that way. Personally we would will that the gospel be to everyone who hears it a savour of life unto life. But we must not be over perplexed or cast down. There comes a point beyond which if we are cast down at the state of the world, we are dishonouring God, because he holds all things in the hollow of his hand. And there are things that are kept back from us, for so it seemed good in his sight.

The gospel is a word of life and hope, but it is also a word of condemnation and criticism. I believe that the twentieth century contempt for the Christian gospel is precisely because it has not been presented to a large segment of our age, either as something that challenges them to live for holiness, or condemns and rebukes them in their ungodliness. It is so insipid it is hardly worth their consideration. It has no power to stir them, either to obey or to the slightest remorse for their ungodliness. I believe that that is because the church has not only been too apologetic and enfeebled in its presentation of the gospel but because it have presented the gospel in a way in which the New Testament never does - God on his bended knee pleading with men to be saved, and they will not have it. No, men may reject and they will reject the gospel, but God is not on his bended knee pleading with men who will not be saved.

In my early Christian days I used to be amazed and confounded at the way that men could sit under this gospel concerning the glories of Christ and heaven, with a glazed, bored look in their eyes. They could not have cared less. I used to think, How can these things be? I have since learned that the word of God explains it. 'Many are called but few are chosen.' Those who are called and never respond in faith and repentance are left without excuse. They are left in a worse state than they were before they heard the gospel. The gospel has an effect one way or the other, bringing men to life, confirming them in life, moulding them for heaven, or on the other hand, it is a savour of death unto death, confirming them in death, moulding them for death.

A man who rejects the gospel today will find it easier to reject that gospel tomorrow. And the convictions that rise up today will not be quite so strong or so long-lasting tomorrow. Men's passions, convictions and impressions fade. A man can reach a point where he knows all the gospel but there is no movement in his soul one way or the other. He has been called but he is as dead and as much outside the kingdom as if he had never heard the gospel, and indeed, as the Scripture says, it is better not to know the way of salvation than, having known the way, to turn away from it. It is better to be ignorant because those to whom much has been given, of the same shall much be required. And those who knew the master's will and did it not shall be beaten with many stripes. Those who did not do the master's will because they did not know, they shall be beaten, but with fewer stripes. It is a matter of fact that a large part even of this godless and ignorant age has heard the gospel, has been exposed to the preaching of God's word and is not brought into the kingdom. So we ask the question, What is it that makes the difference?

2. In the second place FEW ARE CHOSEN. Jesus is not saying that everyone that is called is going to be converted, and instantly enamoured with the gospel. No, he says, there is another side and that is, Few are chosen. Here we are faced with the doctrine of election.

This doctrine comes to us far too frequently in the word of God for it to be ignored. 'Those whom he foreknew he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son.' In Acts 13:48 when the apostle Paul was preaching the gospel at Antioch of Pisidia, 'As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.' Why did they believe? Because they were ordained to eternal life. According to Peter, many stumble at the word. Why? Because they were ordained to stumble at the word. In Acts 2:47, it is said the Lord was adding to the church those who should be saved. We see this great truth, not as a disincentive to preach the gospel to every creature, but as the greatest incentive, because if there is no doctrine of election and none are chosen by God to eternal life, then there is no point in calling many. There would be absolutely no encouragement to preach to any man that is dead in trespasses and sins, and who cannot believe.

It would be the height of folly to ask a dead man to live and believe, to repent and be holy, to pray and read the word of God, and to live a life of self-sacrifice, a life in which he would mortify the flesh and cultivate holiness. How can a man who is dead in trespasses and sins live a life that is to the glory of God? How can such a man be filled with the Spirit? How can such a man pray, listen with hungering and thirsting after the word of God and the righteousness of that word? How can that man endure affliction for the sake of the gospel? It cannot be done. It is because God says there are some chosen that we go and preach and call men, for amongst those multitudes there are those chosen in election. Paul writes in 1 Thess 1:4 of his confidence that these Thessalonians were indeed the people of God. He reminded them that the gospel had come to them not as the word of man but as the word and power of God. 'Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.' How did he know their election? Because their faith was already beginning to be spoken about. Their love and their labour of love were spoken about in the vicinity. They were emphasising and manifesting all the Christian virtues.

Now we know that this doctrine of election needs to be handled very carefully. But we would emphasise first of all, that this great doctrine which ought to be the most comforting truth to every Christian heart in times of affliction, is a truth that is revealed to the people of God in their conversion. You and I tonight who worship and trust in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, what makes the difference between us and other men? The moment that we bend the knee and call upon the name of the Lord we are acknowledging, tacitly at least, no matter how Arminian we may be, the sovereignty of God in our salvation. When we pray that God would pour out a blessing upon us, what are we doing? We are asking God to do something that we cannot do. We pray to God to bless us. Why? If he does not, we will not be blessed, because we cannot bless ourselves. All our efforts will not bring a soul into the kingdom - God must do it. Election is not a vague thing, it is never in a vacuum. 'Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him, having predestinated us in love, to be his children to the adoption of children.' That is the way that the apostle Paul speaks of election, in terms that are positive, leading to a life of glory in God and ultimately enjoying the glory of God for ever. If there is no election then there will be not one soul who will enjoy the glory of God, and enter into his kingdom. It has to be revealed to us in such unmistakable terms that we will come to the conclusion that we have been elected by God. There is no suggestion of any boastful spirit in such an assurance that we are among the elect of God.

The second thing that I would say is that we have to work it out. In 2 Peter 1:10 we read, 'Make your calling and election sure.' How are we to do that? By adding to our faith virtue, patience, godliness, temperance, long suffering, all these great virtues. If we do these things we shall never fall. And so there shall be provided for us richly an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Now we are emphasising this for a particular reason. We have all heard men boast of their relationship to God in a most arrogant and presumptuous way. And their lives are very often opposed to anything that is remotely Christian. We have no business assuming anything about our relationship to God if we are not adding to our faith virtue etc. Assurance comes only by applying biblical principles to our lives and our assurance of salvation will be false if we are not adding to our faith, if our lives are careless, dissolute, and downright anti-Christ-like. We are deluded if we imagine that in disobedience and indifference to what the Scriptures actually teach, we claim to be chosen of God. Alas, there have been multitudes down through the ages and they have prided themselves on their position in the Christian church. There have been whole denominations and congregations that have been so deluded and they have shown anything but the marks of true Biblical election.

On the one hand, many are called, but few are chosen. This is God's prerogative. The Lord knoweth them that are his. Charles Haddon Spurgeon used to be a great man for preaching the universal free offer of the gospel - whosoever will may come. Someone once remonstrated with him, 'Mr Spurgeon, you are a Calvinist. Surely you can't preach to the non-elect. How can you say to these non-elect people to come to Christ?' And Spurgeon's reply was as usual pungent and witty, but so Biblically true: 'You show me who the elect are and I will preach to them.' On another occasion Spurgeon preached to his congregation, people obviously perplexed, 'Never mind whether you are among the elect, you just come to Christ.' Our business is not to know whether we are elect or not, our business is to come to Christ. Our business is to do the will of God, and if we do God's will everything will fall into place in its due time. It is God's prerogative. He knows who are his. But it is God's purpose to save a people by choosing them in Christ before the foundation of the world. Many are called, but FEW are chosen. And the Lord here seems to be drawing a contrast between the many on the one hand, and the few on the other. Are there few chosen? Is that what the Lord means when he says, Few are chosen? In actual numbers, just a handful?

Sometimes perhaps we imagine it is so, perhaps we pride ourselves that it is so. After all, we say, it is quality and not quantity. But the Lord is saying, On the face of it, it looks as if there are just a few. 'Fear not, LITTLE FLOCK, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.' The little flock, the Christian church has always been the minority church. The Christian community has always been that little group who believed in the risen Christ. There is nothing strange in small congregations. The abnormality is large congregations. The New Testament congregations were probably little handfuls of people in comparison to the great multitudes going on in indifference. Sometimes we ask, Does God care? Is God concerned? Can God save them? Yes, God can save them. It seems to be so few to us, but the word 'few' is not the only word that is used with regard to the actual number of those whom God chooses to salvation. What about the word 'many'? It is an official word that we find both in the Old and New Testaments to constitute the number of God's people who at the last shall be perfected before him. It is written concerning the Lord's Messiah in Isaiah 53, that he made intercession, he bore the sin of MANY. Jesus said in Mark 10:45, The Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for MANY. John saw in the book of Revelation a great multitude that no man could number, from all kingdoms and nations.

We do not know what are the relative strengths of those who are lost and those who are saved. We do not know whether there will be more in heaven than in hell. Theologians have argued that point - the Bible does not say. It does say this: There shall be many. Few at any given time in any given place, but all these little rivulets of the few which have been since the beginning of the history of God's word all merge together into the great river of God's salvation, that great company. There are those who believe that before the end comes and before the Lord returns there shall be such an outpouring and a revival as this world has never seen before. That may be so. I believe that God is merciful to infants - I believe that God deals in his own way with men and women who ordinarily cannot hear and be reached with the gospel. God has his own way of dealing with the defectives.

Let us never be overmuch cast down by the dark and cloudy day, by the fewness of our own numbers. In many ways we are quite a large number, because after all, it is where even two or three are gathered together in his name that we have the assembly of the church. And we believe that the Lord made it as few as two and three because he knew in the history of his church there would be many groups which would not number more than two or three, in order to comfort them.

So this parable is one of evangelistic effort, a parable that guarantees that the marriage supper shall be filled. We are living in a pessimistic age, because we have forgotten the optimism of the gospel which is good news. The false gospel, the half gospel is not good news, it is bad news. The gospel that God saves sinners is good news. To quote Charles Spurgeon again, 'The universal atonement, the Arminian presentation of the gospel, is a broad bridge - it includes everybody but it only goes halfway across the stream. The limited or particular atonement, the Calvinistic doctrine of election, is a narrow bridge but it goes the whole way across.' The gospel is 'God saves sinners', and it is true today. It is still through the foolishness of preaching that God saves those who believe, and if you and I believe in the gospel with the weakest of faith, let us rejoice because we are among those who have been chosen in Christ to everlasting life and we shall praise him for ever and ever.

May he bless his word to us for his Name's sake.