October 9, 2005 Matthew 22:1-14
1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 "The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.
4 "Then he sent some more servants and said, `Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’
5 "But they paid no attention and went off -- one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
8 "Then he said to his servants, `The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11 "But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 `Friend,’ he asked, `how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ The man was speechless.
13 "Then the king told the attendants, `Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
14 "For many are invited, but few are chosen." (NIV)
I wouldn’t be surprised if most of you have “Daytimers” or monthly calendars that you display in order to plan for upcoming events. Usually you don’t put the every day events like school or work on these things. Those are taken for granted. What we’re talking about are the big things - the big game or concert that you bought tickets for, the deadline for quarterly taxes, or the date your term paper is due. These are what we would consider “big dates” that we definitely don’t want to miss. So we put them on our calendar.
There’s one Day that you won’t be able to miss whether it is on your calendar or not. It is the Day that Jesus comes for the Final Judgment. Revelation 1:7-8 says, “Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” Prior to this Day, like with a big wedding, God sends out invitations. Sometimes God compares us to the actual Bride. Today Jesus likens us to the guests. Like with any wedding, God sends out invites. These aren’t in the form of Hallmark Cards or e-mails, but they are out there. You’ve been invited too.
You’ve Been Invited to the Wedding Banquet
I. As seen from those invited in the parable
Weddings take a tremendous amount of time, money, and effort to prepare for - at least the big ones do. By the time you get the wedding hall, the cake, the tuxedos, the wedding dress, the order of service, and the limo all lined up, most married couples are absolutely exhausted and actually eager for the big day to be done. In preparation for the big wedding banquet the servants are supposed to say, `Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ The picture that this parable draws of salvation is tremendously comforting. EVERYTHING is ready. The FATTENED cattle and oxen have been sacrificed. The meat is hot. It’s been sauteed perfectly. There’s an absolutely huge table ready to feed millions of people. This is symbolic of Jesus - of course. Galatians 4:4-5 says, “when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” After years and years of preparation and making sure that the time was right, God was finally ready to set into course of action the salvation of the world. Luke 19:10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. After approximately thirty three years of life on this earth, the sacrifice was ready to be made. Hebrews 10 describes this sacrifice -
(Jesus) said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” . . And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Once for ALL. What a key statement that is. There is no way that God is going to run out of forgiveness. There is NOTHING else that needs to be prepared. ONCE for all. No other preparations are needed. God won’t somehow run out of salvation and heaven by the time the 144,000th person gets there.
This couldn’t be made any more clear than in this parable, could it? Who does the king invite to the banquet? First of all, he sends his servants to those who had originally been invited and waiting for the banquet from the get-go. But when they don’t come, what does he say to do next? “Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.” Imagine even if you were the richest person on earth - had money to feed the whole world three times over. Would YOU go so far as to invite ANYONE you could find - both good and bad - for your wedding? The king didn’t care WHO they found - as long as he or she lived and breathed, they were welcome to come.
The sad thing is that there are still many people that wonder if heaven is really for them - if God really wants them in church. When you ask yourself questions like, “why would God want ME in His kingdom?”, you don’t get it. If you are human, God wants you. If you are ANYONE, God wants you. John 3:16 couldn’t be any more clear. God so loved the WORLD. That means God loves YOU. God wants you. Why else would He have sent His son? Why else would He have given us the Bible? You don’t have to bring anything. You don’t have to meet any credentials. You don’t have to be better than anyone else in the world. You don’t have to be wearing any special clothing to be invited. You can be naked and lying in a gutter for all God cares. The banquet will be full of people from all walks of society - both high and mighty and low and dirty - good and bad. There is no way you could read this parable any other way than that God wants all to be saved.
II. Do you want to come?
Just because God wants everyone to be saved, and just because He has prepared a banquet big enough for the world to eat, that doesn’t mean that the world will be saved. At the end of this parable God says that out of the many which are invited, only few end up in heaven. What is the first and foremost reason? He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Literally it says that they DID NOT WANT to come. This is the same thing that Jesus said of Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37-38 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but YOU WERE NOT WILLING. Look, your house is left to you desolate.” Far from being robots, God gives each and every one of us the ability to reject Him. When He offers Christ, people can say, “no, I don’t want that.”
This rejection plays out in different ways and through different excuses. The first group “paid no attention and went off -- one to his field, another to his business.” Perhaps they thought, “I don’t have time to be partying. I have work to do - fields to prepare - business to attend to.” In their minds, business was more important than feasting at a wedding. You may know this feeling. Most of us have probably been invited to a wedding or a social gathering that we feel obligated to go to because of our association with the person - but we really don’t want to go to. So we conveniently “forget it,” or throw the invitation in the trash because we feel we’ve got better things to do - even though the party is offering free food and drink. Your time is more important.
The second group responded in a more militant way. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. This seems incredible. Why would you do such a thing to someone who simply wanted you to come and enjoy a wedding feast? It doesn’t make sense at first. However, the Greek might help us understand it better. The word for “mistreat” carries a connotation of arrogance with it. When you remember who is inviting these people, it is the King for his son. These arrogant people didn’t like the king and his influence over them. They were too arrogant to have a king, much less come to a banquet for his son! This seems to be an obvious reflection of the mistreatment that the many Old Testament prophets had to undergo from the Jews - in how they mistreated Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah and many other prophets as well.
Since Jesus is speaking these parables primarily to the Pharisees and chief priests, the application goes to those who are brought up within the Word in our society. It speaks for itself. Work is very important in our society. We accumulate plenty of bills with our taste buds and lifestyles and credit cards that need to be paid. We are a “busy” society - and we like this - it makes us feel important to be “doing” something. In the midst of this “business” God offers a banquet - a free banquet of love and forgiveness. We taste it in the Word of God. We enjoy it in worship. We drink it at the Lord’s Supper. We eat of it in Sunday School. It tastes good. It’s free. It quenches our thirst for love and holiness. Yet these mini-banquets are often ignored by those who were brought up in the Word - because they’re just too busy. They have to pay the bills after all.
The excuses are even worse than that though. “We had company. I was at a party this weekend. I don’t want to miss the kickoff to the game at noon. We had a game to go to.” It’s amazing how people can pay big bucks to go to a Chiefs game, drive over an hour, wait in line, sit through the rain and the freezing snow, pay big bucks for food and drink and then return and say, “I had a great time.” Yet the same people who go through all that hassle complain that church lasts too long or all it wants is their money. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that you can manage to get up before dawn to get up to work five days a week, but you can’t get up an hour later to come to Sunday School or Bible class? When as your pastor I suggest that your excuses show a lack of willingness, are you getting angry with me and defensive? Do you also want to mistreat and kill me for even suggesting that you are being unfaithful by not putting God’s banquet on a higher priority than you do?
When push comes to shove, what is the problem? Jesus said of the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law, “they refused to come”. Most of the time, this comes down to what YOU WANT. You don’t have to enter the sports leagues, but YOU WANT TO. You don’t have to have the nicest cars and clothing, but that’s WHAT YOU WANT - so you “have to” pay it off. You don’t have to sleep in on a Sunday morning, but YOU WANT to. It simply comes down to the question - “what do you want?” This doesn’t mean that if you ever stand up God that you are going to hell. The danger is that when you start accepting your own excuses, they will continue on in your life until your whole life becomes an excuse. As a result of your guilt, you’ll have to find someone to blame - even God - for why you aren’t doing what you should be doing. “All the church wants is my money, the people there are unfriendly,” the list goes on and on. God isn’t going to buy it.
Even if you stand God up once, however, I still want you to recognize is that this isn’t just any wedding invite you’re ignoring. You are ignoring the invite of the King - the same King who gives you the ability to play your games, work your jobs, and do the things you want to do. By putting entertainment and work ahead of your spiritual needs, you are not honoring Him. There is a great danger in this. What did the parable say about how the king responded to those who actually murdered his servants? The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. The city of Jerusalem was destroyed and burned to the ground in 70 A.D. The temple that was destroyed has never been rebuilt to this day. For those who want to respond in anger to God’s servants - they will end up in hell. For those who are even brought up in the Word that end up continually ignoring His invite, they also will be like the many invited - but who ended up in hell. God doesn’t want this, but He can’t simply ignore the fact that many aren’t coming to His banquet. This parable is warning the busy bodies of our society and warning the arrogant - make no doubt about it.
III. Has God chosen you to come?
Maybe by this time in the sermon you feel that you have been so unfaithful and so “busy” that God is just going to give up on you. In all honesty, He should have given up on all of us a long time ago for the many times we continue to put him off. But God is more gracious with us and patient with us than you could ever imagine. God still wants you until the day you die. Good or bad, He always has. He always will. He wants you at the banquet. He wants you to taste of God’s love and forgiveness. The invite is still clearly there.
So what does it come down to? The final question - some might think - is - “how badly do you want it?” You would think if we can ignore it and get damned, then all we have to do is want it and be saved. That is not the right question or answer. The answer is much more gracious than that. Look at the final part of the parable. when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 `Friend,’ he asked, `how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ The man was speechless. 13 "Then the king told the attendants, `Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 "For many are invited, but few are chosen." Here was a man who WANTED to be at the banquet - but was still rejected - even WITH an invite. Why? Not because he didn’t want to be there - but because HE WASN’T WEARING WEDDING CLOTHES. Jesus then concludes by saying, “many are invited, but few are CHOSEN.”
What is the meaning of this? It means that salvation depends on the CLOTHING and the CHOICE of the LORD. The one man who somehow “got into” the banquet, didn’t want to put on the clothes the host gave him to wear. Because of this, he stuck out like a sore thumb. He wasn’t nearly as sharp as the rest of the guests. Even though the host regarded him as a “friend”, the man didn’t want to eat there on the hosts terms. He wanted to maintain his own identity. That was unacceptable to the king, because the man chose to keep looking like a SLOB. This was the a banquet for his son - not some bum. He wanted his guests to look perfect - so he provided the clothing for it. That’s what salvation depends on - the clothing. When you come to the banquet - when you read the Bible, take the Lord’s Supper, get baptized - do all the things where God promises you His riches and grace, salvation all stems down to one thing. Are you wearing the clothing that God has provided for you? Paul describes this clothing in Galatians 3:26-30 -
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
There are plenty of people who seem to come to the banquet and eat God’s Word a lot more often than some of us - just like the teachers of the law and Pharisees did. The difference comes down to Christ. When you are brought to faith in Christ and baptized into His blood - it is as if you are all wearing the same clothing - Jesus’ clothing of holiness and perfection. When you come to this Feast feeling unworthy of such an invitation - and yet believe that Jesus is your righteousness and Jesus is your holiness - then you are wearing the proper clothing. I want you to trust in this fact this morning - that no matter if you’re good or bad in this society, if you are sorry for your sins and believe that Jesus is your only righteousness - you are wearing the clothing of Christ. You may not feel like you belong. But it’s not about how good or bad you’ve been - it’s all about Christ. Let me say it again, you know that if you believe in Jesus for your complete holiness, you’ve also been chosen by God. It’s as simple as that. When God looks at you on Judgment Day, He’s not going to judge you based on how many meals you come to. He’s going to judge you based on what clothing you’re wearing at the meal. That’s what God’s choice is based on.
If President Bush or your favorite movie star or sports hero invited you over for dinner one night, I bet most of you would be nervous. You wouldn’t know what to wear, how to act, what to say - you would be a nervous wreck. One day each and every one of will have Jesus Christ - God Himself - come into our living rooms and work rooms and sports arenas and demand a one on one with Him. How will you approach such a “date”? It all depends on how you approach it NOW. C.S. Lewis once said, “there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who say ‘Thy will be done’ and those to whom God says ‘thy will be done.’” God’s will is that you be clothed in Christ and enjoying a wonderful meal of God’s grace now and God’s glory in heaven. You don’t need to worry about whether you’re worthy of such a meal. You don’t need to worry about whether you’re worthy - when you’re clothed in Christ. Just know that He wants you here - at church - and He wants you there - in heaven. To Him we say in faith, “not my will, but thy will be done.” Amen.
