I don’t know if you’ve ever really thought of in quite this way, but the gospel accounts of Jesus show that He really enjoyed a good party. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been reading John’s gospel account and there we find that the very first miracle that Jesus performed occurred at one of the most joyous and important parties in the culture of that day – a wedding feast. And by turning water into wine, Jesus made sure that the party would continue as planned.
When Jesus calls a tax collector named Matthew to follow Him, He goes to Matthew’s house and joins in the party that is already going on there. And a number of the parables that Jesus taught, including the one we’ll look at this morning, also revolve around parties.
So it’s not surprising that when the religious leaders wanted to criticize Jesus, about the only thing they could come up with was to accuse Him of going to too many parties – especially parties that were frequented by the wrong people like tax collectors and other notorious sinners.
Sometimes, I think we can be a lot like those Pharisees and forget that Jesus compared God’s invitation to be part of His kingdom to a king inviting His subjects to a great party. And as a result, we not only lose our own joy that comes from being part of a great party but we lose our enthusiasm for inviting others to join the party as well. My prayer is that the parable that we’ll look at this morning will be used by God both to restore our own joy and to reinvigorate our passion to invite others to join us in the kingdom.
You can turn in your Bibles to Matthew 22 and in just a moment, I’ll read the parable that begins in verse 1. But first, let me take a moment to set the stage.
If you turn back to chapter 21 of Matthew, you can see the events that lead up to Jesus telling this parable. Jesus enters into Jerusalem on what we normally refer to as Palm Sunday. Although it’s difficult to be absolutely sure about the exact chronology of Jesus’ last week, there is some good evidence in the text to suggest that that event actually took place on Monday.
The next day Jesus entered the Temple and for the second time in His ministry drove out the money-changers and healed the blind and lame there. He then went to Bethany for the night.
The next day, probably Wednesday, less than 48 hours before His crucifixion, Jesus returns to the Temple. According to Luke’s account, Jesus was teaching and preaching the gospel when He is confronted by the Jewish religious leaders who question His authority to heal and to teach.
Jesus responds with a series of three parables that are in essence messages of judgment against those very religious leaders. The first is a parable about two sons, the second is about a vineyard leased out to some tenant farmers and the third is the one we’ll look at this morning. You can follow along as I start reading in verse 1 of chapter 22 of Matthew’s gospel account:
And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.”’ But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’ And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.
“But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”
(Matthew 22:1-14, ESV)
As I pointed out the first week of this series, we need to be careful not to allegorize or over-interpret the parables. We need to determine the main message of the parable and then make sure that any other conclusions and applications that we draw from the parable are consistent with the main message. So we’re certainly going to follow those guidelines this morning.
Keeping those guidelines in mind, we can see that this parable actually functions on three levels. Although they are equally important, I’m going to just briefly describe the first two and then spend most of our time focusing on the third since I believe that is the one that is most relevant to us.
This parable functions on three levels:
1. It is a message of judgment to the Jewish religious leaders
I’ve already mentioned that this is the third of three parables in which Jesus responds to the Jewish religious leaders who questioned His authority to heal and to teach by condemning them and pronouncing judgment on them. This is undoubtedly the main message of this parable.
Since this parable is about the kingdom of heaven, then it is obvious that the king in the parable is God Himself. And this king invites a number of people to what in those days was the most important and joyful kind of party that anyone could hold. Even in the poorest of families the wedding feast was a full week long and the family of the groom would serve the very best food and drink that they could possibly afford. And certainly when that wedding was a royal wedding, no expense would be spared.
Probably the most anticipated wedding of our time was the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Because of England’s high unemployment and fiscal austerity measures, the royal family promised to make this a slightly more subdued event, so they “only” spent $34 million and invited 1,900 guests to the wedding. And if you were one of the fortunate 1,900 on the guest list, there is certainly no way you would turn down that invitation.
Jesus begins the parable by explaining that the kingdom of heaven is like the greatest celebration imaginable thrown by the wealthiest and most important person imaginable. So the idea that anyone would spurn an invitation to that event seemed ridiculous to everyone, including the religious leaders.
When the king sends out a second group of servants to invite for the second time those who had refused the first invitation, they got two reactions. Most of the people were just indifferent and returned to those things that they considered more important, like their farms and their businesses. But there were some who actually became hostile and persecuted and even killed the servants. Because of their rejection of His invitation, the king, God, sent His troops to destroy those who had mistreated His servants.
So the king sends out another group of servants to go out into the world and invite everyone they find – good or bad – to come to the feast. And as a result the wedding hall was filled with guests.
Jesus is clearly speaking about the Jews and their religious leaders here and the religious leaders knew that. After Jesus told the first two parables in this sequence we clearly see that these religious leaders knew Jesus was speaking about them:
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them.
(Matthew 21:45, ESV)
The message here is pretty clear. God invited Israel into His kingdom, but they had rejected His invitation. So God sent additional servants, like the prophets and people like John the Baptist to extend one last invitation. But the Israelites were indifferent and even hostile to those servants and some of them, like John the Baptist, were even killed. So God was going to judge Israel and destroy their city. And true to that promise, Titus led the Roman army to conquer the city of Jerusalem and destroy the temple about 40 years later, in 70 AD.
So because Israel had rejected Him, God sent His servants out into the rest of the world, particularly to the Gentiles, and invited them to enter His kingdom. And many of those people responded. The apostle Paul later goes into great detail about this aspect of the kingdom of God in Romans chapters 9-11.
Although, as I’ve already pointed out, this is the main theme of this parable, there are two additional related ways in which this parable functions. The second aspect of this parable is that…
2. It is a call for each individual to evaluate his or her response to God’s call
You’ll notice that the king issues a number of invitations, but never an edict. He never forces or requires anyone to come to the party. The choice of whether to accept the invitation rests with each individual. That means that every one of us here this morning has to respond individually to the invitation that God has issued to each one of us to be part of His kingdom.
So if you have never accepted God’s invitation to enter His kingdom or if you’re not sure whether you’ve done that, I need you to listen very carefully for the next few minutes, because both your current joy and your eternal destiny depend on your response to God’s invitation to you.
God has issued His invitation to enter His kingdom by sending His Son, Jesus, to this earth to die on a cross and make it possible for you to enter God’s kingdom. In His conversation with one of those Jewish religious leaders, Nicodemus, Jesus described God’s invitation like this:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
(John 3:16-18, ESV)
God loves you so much that He was willing to send His Son to die in your place. And He promises that if you’ll trust in what God has done for you through His Son that you will receive eternal life. That eternal life is not only a quantity of life in which you will live forever in the presence of God, but is also a quality of life that you get to experience beginning right now.
If you’ve never accepted that invitation, it is because you’ve been prevented by doing that by one or more of the three barriers that we see in this parable.
Three barriers to accepting God’s invitation:
1) Indifference
Some in the parable refused to accept the king’s invitation because they were distracted by the normal things of life – things like their families and their jobs. They weren’t openly hostile to God. They just didn’t think they needed Him. But what they failed to realize is that accepting the king’s invitation would not only not detract from those things, but that life in the kingdom actually brings fullness to every other area of life.
Perhaps that describes you. You’ve never been openly hostile to God. You’ve just been too busy with your life to really consider His invitation to enter His kingdom. But by doing so, you’ve missed out on all that His kingdom has to offer in every area of your life.
2) Hostility
There were some in the parable who were openly hostile to the king and to His servants. And obviously we still have a lot of people like that in our culture today. They are not merely indifferent to God, but are openly hostile to Him and His kingdom.
Perhaps you’re one of those people. If so, the good news is that it’s not too late and accept God’s invitation and become a part of His kingdom. But please don’t wait to accept His invitation, because, as we see in this parable, certain judgment awaits those who refuse that invitation.
3) Selfishness
This is where the last part of the parable in verses 11-14 comes in. Once the wedding feast began, the king noticed that one of the guests wasn’t wearing the proper wedding garment. And the king dealt very harshly with that guest, binding him and casting him out in to the dark. I don’t know about you, but that seem pretty severe to me. After all, the king had invited everyone. In a similar parable in Luke’s gospel, the servants are instructed to go invite the poor, crippled, blind and lame. So we shouldn’t be surprised that some of them might not have the right wedding garment.
But the fact that only one person shows up without the proper garment is instructive. In the culture of that day, the king would often supply the proper clothing to anyone who desired to come into His presence. We don’t have enough information in this parable to know for sure the king had done that. But what we can conclude for sure is that everyone had access to the proper garments somehow, since only this one person showed up improperly attired.
I’m pretty sure, based on God’s Word, that I can identify the improper garment that the one guest wore. I’m confident in saying that this man tried to enter the kingdom by wearing the garment of his own righteousness. The prophet Isaiah makes it clear why this is the wrong garment:
We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
(Isaiah 64:6, ESV)
When we attempt to enter God’ kingdom based on our own righteous deeds, we are being quite selfish because we are in essence telling God that we are going to enter His kingdom based on our own criteria. And there is certainly no shortage of people who mistakenly think they are part of God’s kingdom because of what they have done. They may even believe in God, read the Bible, pray, go to church every week and give their money to help others. But God tells us clearly that in his eyes that is the wrong garment – it is nothing but filthy rags.
So what is the proper wedding garment then? The words of Isaiah are also helpful here:
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;
my soul shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
(Isaiah 61:10, ESV)
I can’t clothe myself with righteousness. I have to let the king provide the right wedding garment for me. I have to allow Him to clothe me with His righteousness. And the only way that occurs is when I humble myself and trust completely in what Jesus did for me on the cross. As Paul writes, I have to allow Jesus to be my righteousness:
For our sake he made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
(2 Corinthians 5:21, ESV)
So this morning if you have never moved beyond these three barriers and accepted God’ invitation to join the party and enter His kingdom, please don’t leave here today until you get that right with God. We’re here to help you do that. At the end of the message I’ll share several ways you can ask for that help.
I spent a lot more time here on this second aspect of the parable than I originally intended, but I’m sensing that there may be some people here this morning that still need to enter God’s kingdom, so I didn’t want to rush through this important aspect of the parable.
So far, we’ve seen that this parable is message of judgment for the Jewish religious leaders and that it is a call for each person to evaluate his or her response to God’s call. Finally…
3. It is a call for all Christ followers to invite others to God’s party
I couldn’t help but think a lot about the king’s servants in this parable, because that is probably where most of us fit into this story. Once we accept the king’s invitation and become part of His kingdom we also become His servants. There is no doubt that we get to enjoy the party, too. But we are also given some tasks and responsibilities by the king.
I can really relate to these servants. As a follower and servant of Jesus, I can see the goodness of the king and I’ve experienced the joy of being part of His kingdom. So I am often baffled by those who would refuse the invitation to enter into His kingdom because of indifference, hostility and selfishness.
And as a servant who has been given the task of inviting others into His kingdom, I have certainly been treated with a degree of hostility at times from those who reject God’s invitation. So I’m really encouraged that in this parable, we can find some very practical guidance about how we are, as God’s servants, to be about the task of inviting others to His party.
In this parable, there are three commands that the king gives to his servants – the very same commands God gives to us.
HOW TO INVITE OTHERS TO GOD’S PARTY
1. Go (v. 9)
In verse 9, the king commands his servants to go to the main roads and invite and many people as they find. In a similar parable in Luke, we find some further instruction about how the servants were to go:
‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.
(Luke 14:21-23, ESV)
The implication here is that in order to invite others into the kingdom we are not just to sit here in the comfortable, unthreatening confines of the church and design some attractive invitations and stick them in the mailbox or email them. God calls us to leave the comfort of the church and to personally take the invitations to where the people are – to our homes, our jobs and our community.
That kind of going requires a whole new mindset. Every day when I wake up, I need to consider myself to be God’s servant who is going to deliver personal invitations to enter His kingdom wherever I go today. I need to think of myself as a missionary who is cleverly disguised as a husband, father, wife, mother, business person, shopper, driver, or any of the myriad of other roles that I take on during the day. And I need to ask God to show me who needs to be invited into His kingdom as I go throughout the day.
And as Luke’s account makes clear, we are to go quickly. None of us knows when God will quit issuing invitations to join His kingdom, but we do know our task is urgent because once that time comes, God’s judgment will come quickly upon those who have refused His invitation.
2. Invite (v. 9)
The second command that the king gives in verse 9 is to invite. And he tells His servants to invite as many as they find. Again, Luke’s account gives us some additional insight when we see that the king commands His servants to invite the poor, crippled, blind and lame. In other words, our job is to invite everyone. We are not to discriminate in our invitations based on outward appearance.
As we saw last week, the invitations aren’t based on what we deserve, because if that were the case, none of us would ever receive an invitation. So it is not our position to try and determine whether or not someone deserves an invitation and we are not responsible for how each person responds to the invitation when it is given. Our job is just to do the inviting on behalf of our king.
You’ll also notice that in Luke’s account, the king instructs his servants to “compel” the people to join the party. The idea there is that we are to use every means at our disposal to encourage the other person to accept the invitation.
But as we do that, let’s remember that God’s invitation is a summons to joy – it’s an invitation to a party, the best party ever. So many people, including a lot of Christians, seem to totally misunderstand what it’s like to be part of God’ kingdom. They think that God’s kingdom, both here on earth in the present and in for eternity in the future is bland and boring.
But Jesus tells us in this parable that God’s kingdom is like a joyful party, one in which the food and drink never run out, one where there will be friends and loved ones, and most of all one where the King and His Son will be present forever. How could we not want to invite others to be part of that joy?
3. Tell (v. 4)
The third and final command is found back in verse 4 where the king gives the servants instructions about what they are to say when extending His invitation.
“See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.”
The essence of the message that we are to share is this: The king, God, has made all the preparations for the party. He sent His very own son to this earth to be slaughtered on a cross so that you and I can join the party. He has made everything ready for us to enter the kingdom. All we have to do is to put on the right wedding clothes by trusting in what Jesus has done for us and join the party.
Let me close with two things for you to consider this morning:
1. Are you experiencing the joy of living in the kingdom of God? If not, there are only two possible reasons:
• Either you’ve never entered in to that kingdom like we discussed earlier, or
• You don’t understand the true nature of the kingdom. You don’t understand that it is like a great party that is full of excitement and joy.
In either case, if that describes your life, will you allow us to help you either enter into that kingdom of joy for the first time or help you restore the joy of your salvation? There are several ways you can let us know if you would like some help. I’m going to ask our elders to stand so that you can identify them. Any of these men, including myself, will be happy to assist you so just grab one of us after the service. You can also fill out the Connection Card on the flap of your bulletin, tear that off and give it to one of us or to one of our Greeters and we’ll be in contact with you this week. Finally you can go to the “Contact Us” page on our website and contact us by any of the several ways available there.
2. If you’re already part of the kingdom, are you inviting others to join the party by going, inviting and telling? If so, great, that is exactly what God has called you to do. If not, why not? If there is something we can do to help you be more effective in that task, please let us know as well.
