Grace and peace to you our gracious King who invites all us to the wedding banquet of his Son. Amen.

Thank You, Lord God, for your invitation to the heavenly banquet prepared for me through the crucifixion and resurrection of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Help me to extend this invitation to others. Amen.

In a burned-out house, where a little boy lost his life, two unused smoke detectors were found on a closet shelf. Had they been installed they might have sounded the alarm, and the boy’s life might have been spared. Perhaps the parents wanted to install the smoke detectors at some vague, future time.

A tragedy is all the more painful when we have reason to think it might have been avoided. So it is in our spiritual lives. The Lord doesn’t want anyone to perish. It is his good and gracious will that all people be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:3-4) To that end, God took measures to prepare salvation for all. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, among us to give his life to save us all from sin and its consequences. Salvation is a gift God wants every person to have. He wants the Gospel proclaimed – the Good News that is "the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." (Romans 1:16)

That is what Jesus’ story about the invitation to the king’s wedding banquet is all about. Jesus was saying that God had first invited the Jews, his chosen people to enjoy his wedding banquet. When they came up with all kinds of lame excuses, he invited the Gentiles – everybody else. Notice that at end of the parable, there is no one who is not invited to the son’s wedding feast. And that’s one of the points of this parable. When God throws a party, it is the biggest bash in town, and there isn’t a single person who is left off the invitation list. When Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead to gain salvation, no one was left out.

God’s invitation is extended to people who have lived moral, upright lives since the time they were little children, as well as the dregs of society – the murderers, rapists, and prostitutes of this world. Everyone is invited, "both bad and good." That is what is known as grace. It is one of the things that distinguishes the kingdom of our Lord. By grace, God invites all kinds of people to the party.

The only thing that leaves us out of the feast is our own indifference to that death and resurrection, our own stubborn refusal to accept the invitation, and then it’s entirely our own fault. God’s gift of salvation does us no good if we refuse to accept it or don’t allow it to function in our lives – like those smoke detectors left lying on a closet shelf. Look what we are missing when we pass up so great a salvation! We forfeit peace with God, a good conscience, the assurance of God’s presence in our hearts and homes, the daily access to God in prayer.

God’s blessings are like a delicious, nourishing banquet meal. The sumptuous wedding feast has been prepared, and the heavenly Host declares: "Everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet." (Matthew 22:4) What a pity that many go spiritually hungry or even starve to death when all this food for the soul is available without cost! They ignore the good news that the oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and "everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet." They pay no attention, but instead work in their fields and tend their businesses. They spend their time at work, sleeping in, golfing, chasing their kids from one activity to the next, crowding God and the worship of him out of their lives. And God is not pleased! Swift judgment comes upon these ungrateful guests who ignored his invitations and mistreated his messengers.

There is an urgency about all this – the need to act now, as the Scripture says: "Now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation." (2 Corinthians 6:2) Now is the time to let Christ direct our lives so that the power of his love might bless us.

The beautiful word "Come" fills Scripture. "Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost." (Isaiah 55:1)
"Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. … I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. " (Matthew 11:28-29) "The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life." (Revelation 22:17) Come for cleansing. Come for refreshment. Come for rest. In Matthew 22 our attention is directed ahead to the heavenly invitation: Come for the banquet.

Our King invites us to the heavenly banquet. All things are ready. His Son Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, attends as guest of honor. We do not deserve to attend because of our sin. But the King searches in the streets and alleys: "Everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet." No one can crash the wedding. They can’t come wearing their own clothes of their righteousness. That doesn’t work. They get kicked out where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Our King and God is so gracious that he even furnishes us with the wedding garment of Christ’s righteousness. We must be clothed with his purity and a new holiness and a new righteousness. That is what makes us worthy to enter the banquet hall. Accepting the invitation by God’s grace, we also extend the invitation to others as long as we live: Come to the banquet!

Jesus said, "Many are called, but few are chosen. That’s another way of saying: Everybody is invited, but very few wind up at the table. Why? It certainly isn’t God’s fault. He’s prepared a feast for everyone, but he’s not going to force anyone to eat and drink. If you miss out on the party and you go hungry, you have only yourself to blame. Everyone has the opportunity to enter the kingdom of God, but only a relative few will accept the invitation to enter the kingdom and will be serious enough to be clothed in Christ’s righteousness.

God’s desire is to fill his banquet hall with guests. God wants to throw a party, and he’s invited the world! Amen.

Everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet. Amen.

This morning I am going to briefly discuss the background and motivation for the Morning Praise service, its songs and prayers. This is something that I hope to do with each of the different services that we have in our Lutheran hymnal. For many of us, we have worshipped the same way and done the same things for years in church that we may have forgotten the reasons behind what we do.

The Morning Praise or Matins has its roots in early Christianity as these early Christians continued to observe some of the prayer times of their counterparts in the Old Testament. These prayer times would have been at the third, sixth, and ninth hours of the day or 9:00 a.m., Noon, and 3:00 p.m. Centuries later, the monks used the Matins for their worship. Martin Luther approved of Matins, Vespers, and Compline (late evening) services because they contained no false doctrine, only the words of Scripture. These three services were used primarily in schools for centuries.

Today, as so many churches look to the entertainment industry to interest people in worship, with this order of Matins we look to our past. We see what has been spiritually beneficial to Christians through the centuries. These older services give us such scriptural gems as the Te Deum (God we praise you), Magnificat (Song of Mary), Nunc Dimittis (Song of Simeon), Kyrie (Lord have mercy), Sanctus (Holy, holy, holy) Short Prayers, the Lord’s Prayer and the Benediction, that it is difficult to improve on this.

The opening sentences in Morning Praise reflect these Bible passages: "O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise." (Psalm 51:15) "Hasten, O God, to save me; O LORD, come quickly to help me." (Psalm 70:1) "Give glory to the LORD your God before he brings the darkness, before your feet stumble on the darkening hills. You hope for light, but he will turn it to thick darkness and change it to deep gloom." (Jeremiah 13:16)

If you listen to popular Christian music on the radio, you will hear a lot of praise music. There is a big difference between popular praise music and ancient, biblical praise music. The praise music of today generally focuses on the Christian’s feelings and actions. Biblical praise music focuses on who God is and what he has done for us. That is our reason for praising him. "Come, Oh, Come, Let Us Sing to the Lord" is a song that praises God for who he is – our saving Rock, a great and wondrous God, who has created the world, and is the shepherd of his flock. That is our reason for praising him.

There are two psalms sung this morning. The first psalm, Psalm 63 is a song of praise. The second psalm fits the theme of the day.

In the past soldiers put down their weapons and kings removed their crowns when the Gospel was read. Christ – his life, his words of law and gospel, his suffering, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, his assignment to his Church, his promise to return – is the center of the Gospel. The faithful have waited for this moment, this reading. They stand in reverence.

The children’s devotion is not a part of any ancient Christian worship order. It is a fairly new addition to the worship of our times. The worship service generally is designed for adults and older children who can understand the deeper truths of Scripture. Sadly, as a result, many younger children become bored and restless. The addition of the children’s devotion in our worship services is meant to give a simplified lesson that even a little child may understand it. And I have had a lot of grown-ups admit that they learned more in the five-minute children’s devotion than in the twenty-minute sermon. Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." (Matthew 19:14)

Each of the hymns chosen for a Sunday fit the theme of that particular service. A lot of time and effort are put into finding the right hymns to fit that theme. Today’s opening hymn focused our attention on being the servants in Jesus’ parable inviting others to the banquet of the Bridegroom. The Hymn of the Day is the major hymn of the service. It is a hymn that is representative of the best of hymnody in the Christian church and carries the main theme for that day. Today’s closing hymn reminds us of the saints in heaven who have been clothed in the white wedding clothes the King has provided and are already now enjoying the feast of salvation.

The Te Deum or God We Praise You is an ancient and majestic canticle of the Christian church, a confession of faith, a mighty hymn of praise to God. Luther loved the Te Deum and called it the fourth of the Christian creeds, alongside the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds.

As a response of faith, gifts of money are received and presented to the Lord. Believers know that God’s work must be done. God’s Word of salvation, the Word just heard in worship, must be proclaimed to the ends of the earth. Now is the time to bring an offering into the courts of the Lord!

As you have worshiped in a Lutheran church, you may have noticed that at different times we stand and sit. Some have lovingly called this "Lutheran Gymnastics." There is a reason why stand or sit. You can think of the entire worship service as a conversation between God and us. When we are speaking to God in our confessions, creeds, and prayers, we stand. When God is speaking to us in his Word in the lessons, psalms, and sermon, we sit. We stand now in humble reverence as we speak to God in our prayers.

At the end of the service the pastor turns to the holy people of God and extends to them the favor of the Lord in the words of the blessing given by Aaron to the people of God: "The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace." (Numbers 6:24-26) God’s people respond with an Amen meaning "so shall it be, let it be so now."