1. The Garments of EASTER

2. How Do We Follow Easter? By Understanding It’s Great Implications!

3. Matthew 22:11-14 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man…

4. …there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without…

5. …a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, take him away…

6. …and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ ‘For many are called, but few are chosen.’”

7. Pretty harsh treatment for not wearing the appropriate garment!

8. One of our Lord’s favorite metaphors for the Kingdom of God was a wedding or a wedding feast!

9. Really two stories here… …at least two truths!

10. Invitation to a Wedding (v. 1-7) Invitation to a Wedding Feast (v. 8- 14)

11. There is a Work Required to Appropriate Easter!

12. “...we are all invited -- summoned, actually, to discover, through following Jesus, that this new world is indeed a place of…

13. … justice, spirituality, relationship, and beauty, and that we are not only to enjoy it as such but to work at bringing it to birth…

14. …on earth as in heaven.” N.T. Wright, “Simply Christian”

15. A First Century ‘Save the Date’ Invitations went out before time was announced!

16. God has thrown a wedding feast! Put It On Your Calendar!

17. “It is very easy for a man to be so busy with the things of time that he forgets the things of eternity, to be so preoccupied…

18. …with the things which are seen that he forgets the things which are unseen, to hear so insistently the claims of the world…

19. …that he cannot hear the soft invitation of the voice of Christ. The tragedy of life is that it is so often the second bests which shut out…

20. …the bests, that it is things which are good in themselves which shut out the things that are supreme. A man can be so busy…

21. …with the administration and the organization of life that he forgets life itself.” William Barclay

22. Formal or Informal? Wrong Question!

23. The attendees did not come properly prepared! An issue of Grace!

24. Colossians 3:9-11 “Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds…

25. …and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is…

26. …neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.”

27. Grace is not only a gift, It is a awesome Responsibility!

28. You cannot go living the life you lived before you met Jesus!

29. We must be clothed with a new holiness & goodness

30. Garments of the mind, heart & soul

31. This teaching has nothing to do with the clothes we wear, but it has everything to do with the spirit in which we travel

32. Not Come As You Are, but Come with an Anticipation of what Can Be!