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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Clyde Makamure

A Season of Preparation

It's always a blessing to come and worship with God's people on a Sabbath.

I was helping out with some students who are on campus.

And just being here is relaxing because I get to interact with other people without the worry of having to do all those things to try and get this program going and I have been blessed so far and I hope you have been blessed as well.

Our message this morning is a season of preparation.

Dear Heavenly Father, we'd like to pray that you may be with us at this moment.

I pray that the Holy Spirit may be amongst us.

May you speak through me and I pray that you may also prepare the hearts of everyone, including my own, to receive your word.

And Lord, I pray that after you have spoken we may be able to receive your love and that we may be able to share it with others and to prepare for your soon return.

They're always a joyful occasion and they give us an opportunity to celebrate love.

I'm assuming that many of you have had an opportunity to attend a wedding.

If not, hopefully you will get an invitation soon.

If not to someone else's, maybe to your own wedding.

God loves weddings and they give us an opportunity to see a public demonstration of love between a man and a woman uniting their lives together for 1 purpose.

It is no surprise that Jesus' first miracle on this earth when he was ministering to us on this earth was at a wedding.

And not only that, we find that in a number of parables Jesus uses the illustration of a wedding to teach important lessons about eternity.

So we're gonna be looking at 1 of those parables this morning and we'll draw some lessons from this particular parable about a wedding.

So the theme of marriage I know is a favorite at Advent Hope.

Every time we have marriage or relationship seminars, this room is full, it's packed, because people want to know how to fall in love.

They want to be able to find their partner, but we're not gonna be talking about how you can prepare for your wedding or for another wedding, but we're gonna be talking about how to prepare for the wedding, the wedding of the lamb.

My wife and I were married during the pandemic and prior to that event, there was a work of preparation to be done.

She was in Zimbabwe where we come from and I was here in Loma Linda.

So a lot of work needed to be done, even though we're separate, to make this event a success.

And because it was also during the pandemic, there were some other things that were required at the time to try and comply with the requirements of the government of Zimbabwe.

1 of the things that was there was we had to invite a few guests.

If you've ever been to an African wedding, you will know that people show up.

They don't, you know, We don't have this thing where we have weddings where you attend by invitation.

In some places, it's starting to be a thing.

But generally, I remember when my cousin got married, they were limited on space.

So they invited, I think, probably 200 people to be part of the guests.

The whole family showed up and the security officer was at the gate saying show me your invites and I'll let you in.

And they said, how can you tell us we cannot come in?

And that place was packed with almost 800 people.

But because of the pandemic, we had to limit the number of guests at our wedding.

And those that were invited also had to prepare.

They had to make sure that they complied with the requirements that they can be there on the day of the wedding, including getting their masks as well.

So there was a lot of preparation that was necessary.

They needed to RSVP on time, get their wedding clothes, get their masks, and arrange for appropriate transportation to come and celebrate with us.

And praise the Lord, everything worked out.

And we're gonna be talking about how we can prepare for the marriage supper of the Lamb.

In Revelation 19, verse 9, we're told of a marriage, of a marriage supper that's gonna be taking place in the very near future.

And we're going to be exploring how best we can prepare for this wedding event.

And we'll study a parable that is in Matthew 22.

So that's where we'll camp and we'll draw 3 key lessons that will help us as we prepare.

So that's hence the reason for the title, A Season of Preparation.

We are in this season where the wedding Supper has not yet started.

So in Matthew 22, verses 1 to 3, it reads, And Jesus answered and spake to them 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.

Ever since the creation, we see a running theme throughout the Bible.

In the garden, you remember, when Adam and Eve had just been created, Jesus would walk in the cool of the evening and he would come and commune with his people.

And even after the fall, that's the same thing.

He wants us to come into relationship with Him.

And in this parable, the king, who in this case represents God, invited his servants, so they can come, invited his people, so they can come and celebrate the marriage that he had arranged for his son.

Ellen White, commenting on this particular parable in Christ's Object Lessons, page 307, paragraph 1, writes this, by the marriage is represented the union of humanity with divinity.

So this marriage that is taking place between the son and his bride is a marriage of, is a union between humanity and divinity.

God wants us to be united with him as humanity, corporately as humanity, but he does not want to end there.

He also wants to invite us personally to be there.

Hence the invitation that comes to this people.

It is a personal invitation to come and witness what is going on as God is lavishing his bride with love.

But the people sadly refused and they did not want to come.

If this was an earthly king, he would not have been happy.

And I'm pretty sure he probably would have sent his armies to get rid of all those people because there's a lot that goes into saying no to a king's invitation.

And earthly kings, because they are lofty and they consider themselves high above everyone else, they would not take that well.

And in Christ's object lessons, Page 307, Ellen White says, the call to the fist is a king's invitation.

It proceeds from 1 who is vested with power to command.

It confers high honor, yet the honor is unappreciated.

The question that I have for you personally, the question that also rings true for me personally, how do we treat the invitation that God gives us?

Do we treat it as something that is honorable, something that we ought to respond to with promptness and with joy, or do we say, nah, you know, I have other more important things to worry about.

This is how the people in this parable responded to the invitation, despising the authority.

In Matthew 22 verse 4, it says, Again he sent out other servants, saying, Tell those who are invited, see, I have prepared my dinner.

My oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready.

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A Season of Preparation

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