Day by Day with Jesus/Last Week Series
The Invitation
Matthew 22:1-14
Dr. Roger W. Thomas, Preaching Minister
First Christian Church, Vandalia, MO
“For many are invited but few are chosen!” That’s the punch line to Jesus’ parable. Parables aren’t just cute little stories that illustrate a spiritual lesson. Sometimes that’s the case. But other times, Jesus’ parables are more like riddles. They raise more questions than they answer. That may be the case with this one!
We are in the middle of a series of messages leading up to Easter. We are exploring Jesus’ last week. These seven days changed the world. Understanding them can change your life as well.
On Sunday, the crowds cheered Jesus like a king. He wept because he knew what was going to happen—to them. On Monday the tears turn to fire. He curses a barren fig tree and drives the money-changers from the temple. Both events were object lessons of judgment to come. The events of Sunday and Monday were not lost on Jesus’ rivals. Mark’s gospel records that after the temple affair, “The chief priests and the teachers of the law… began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching” (11:18). Tuesday turns into a day of challenge.
Our text comes in the middle of that last Tuesday. As with many of Jesus’ parables, there is more to the story than meets the eye. The story provides a good window through which to view the other events of that day AND this day. It sheds some important light for anyone still trying to figure out what to do with Jesus. The story divides into three acts. Each is about an invitation. In the first, the invitation is offered. In the second, it rejected. In the third, it is neglected.
Act I: the invitation is offered. Ancient wedding customs were much different than the modern version. But they had one thing in common. A wedding was a big, festive event. The concluding wedding feast could last for days. Friends and family came from far and wide. This was the king’s son. To be invited was a big deal. People might boast about being there for years.
Jesus says, “this is what the kingdom of heaven is like.” The Bible often uses the image of a great banquet as a picture of heaven. Isaiah 25 pictures the glorious future of the redeemed like this, “On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines” (5-6). The final chapters of the Bible picture what Scriptures terms “the wedding feast of the lamb. “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb” (Rev 19:9).
Here’s the point. Take the happiest, most joyful experiences on earth you can think of. Imagine the best party or banquet you have ever attended, or the finest food you have ever eaten. God has something even better planned. The Bible says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no man has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him (1 Cor 2:9). Clearly those who picture heaven as a dull and boring place don’t have clue!
God’s planning a party and you’re invited. You do understand that? God has been inviting you all of your life. He began the first time your grandmother told you a Bible story or your parents took you to church. Even if that never happened, the invitation was extended when friends or relatives invited you to Sunday School or a neighbor asked you to go to a special church event. When the Gideons gave you a Bible or left one for you in a motel room, God was extending an invitation to you. Everywhere and every time, you’ve heard a Christian song on the radio or Bible preacher on television, God has been knocking on the door and tugging at your heart. Every time your conscience heated up or you felt an inner yearning for something more from life, He was calling you to the best time of your life. He has spread everything he has on the table. And you have been invited! Even if you didn’t know it before, you do now!
Act II: The invitation is offered, but rejected. In ancient times, two invitations would be sent. The first would go out well in advance, maybe months ahead of time. Messengers would hand deliver the information. “The king’s son is getting married next fall. The banquet will be right after the harvest. He wants you there.” The potential guests would acknowledge the invitation and declare their intention to come. Then when the time actually arrived for the festivities, a second invite would arrive with the details. “It’s a go. Be there next Friday by sun set.”
Here the story turns ugly. Some of the king’s subjects just ignore the message and go about business as usual. They considered their business more important than the king’s. Others respond with anger and violence. The potential guests rejected more than an invitation to a feast. They rejected the king himself.
Do you see the picture? This is the way God deals with us. Both the transformed life that Christ creates and the heaven that follows are by invitation only. But no one is forced. You can—though it makes no sense—decline the Lord’s offer. You can go all the way through life without ever accepting the invitation to the Lord’s great feast. You don’t have to go. We can ignore the Lord’s offer or we get hostile. Either way, the results are the same.
Two things will happen. First, the Lord will respond. Judgment day is coming. It may not be tomorrow. It may not happen for years. But it will. On that day, those who had rejected the invitation and the Lord will regret their choice. But it was theirs!
Secondly, the party goes on whether we choose to go not. The Lord wants every one of us in his heaven. But he won’t force anyone. And he won’t cancel the party just because you don’t show.
Here’s where the context of Jesus’ story becomes important. All day Tuesday, the religious authorities challenge Jesus. They ask trick questions in a vain effort to trap him in a political or theological mistake. Spiritual questions often come with mixed motives. Some are a search for honest answers. Others are a wishful attempt to justify an already made up mind.
Jesus foils every attempt. He turns their questions back on them and tells parables to drive home the point. He tells a story of two sons who change their minds. The first promises to obey the father’s instruction, but then doesn’t. The second says he won’t but then does. The point: doing, not just saying you will do the father’s will is what counts He then describes wicked tenants who mistreat the land owners messengers and then kill his son when the owner sends him to straighten things out. No one was confused about the picture Jesus painted.
In this story, the king tells his servants, “Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10So 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.” No one is too poor, too bad, too messed up or too old for the king’s party. You do know that, don’t you? A lot of people don’t. “I’m not the religious type.” “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” We’ve probably all heard some version of that from folk who were convinced that God could never be interested in them. Worse yet, I’ll bet some of us have voiced similar conclusions about other folk.
Act III: the invitation neglected. Jesus could have stopped his story right here and it would have ended well. The king offers an invitation. When his potential guests refuse, he extends the invitation to others. His servants gather a crowd of outcasts for the feast. Everybody lives happily ever after. That would make a nice sweet, generous ending to an ugly story. But Jesus doesn’t stop there.
Party-goers fill the banquet hall. The poor, folk from the street corners, good and bad, all gather for the royal feast. Then the king shows up. All is well until he notices one man not properly dressed. The king asks for an explanation. The man offers no excuse. The king orders him tossed out. “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.” Anyone familiar with the Bible recognizes the terminology used for eternal punishment. In plain language, hell!
What’s the point? First, what it’s not about. This is not a lesson about dress code in church. A lot of us, myself included, were raised to dress up for church. We wouldn’t think of going without our Sunday best.
My generation never thought we would live to see the day when anything other than white shirts and ties would be the norm at church, not to mention jeans, t-shirts, and every other kind of grubby outfit. Times have changed. To those of us who are uncomfortable with the casual attire of younger folk: we need to get over it. We have bigger fish to fry than worrying about whether the next generation dresses like we dressed when we were their age. You don’t judge a book by its cover. You haven’t a clue about the heart based on what a person wears to church.
But I would also say, how we dress does affect how we act. Our dress can reflect our attitude. Casual attire may be okay at church, but not a casual commitment or an indifferent attitude toward worshipping our God and coming before his Table of Remembrance. If dressing in your best helps prepare you to give God your best, then I suggest doing “whatever it takes.”
Back to the parable. At first blush, the king seems unfair. How could he expect someone off the street to have wedding attire ready to wear? That would be a fair question today, not then. Apparently, Oriental kings supplied the guests to a royal feast with robes. Regardless, everyone else dressed for the occasion. The man had no excuse.
This guest wrongly assumed he could come on his own terms. Maybe he was stubborn. “Nobody’s going to tell me what to do or how to dress.” Perhaps his actions reflected arrogance. “I’m good enough the way I am. If the king doesn’t like the way I dress, then he knows what he can do with his party.” I guess the guy showed the king who was boss!
Jesus fires a shot across the bow of anyone who dares presume upon God’s grace. That heavenly feast is by invitation only. The invitation can’t be bought or bartered for. But neither can it be taken for granted. You can’t crash the party. You dare not ignore the terms. If the Lord says stand on your head and count backwards from one-hundred, he has every right in the world to do so. It’s his party. Now he hasn’t asked for that. He has asked that you acknowledge Jesus, repent of sin, confess him in baptism, take his teachings seriously, and serve him with your all. Never make the mistake of thinking that because we are saved by grace, we can approach faith with a casual, anything goes attitude. That could be fatal!
I suspect the New Testament may have the lesson of this parable in mind when it later uses the picture of changing clothes to describe the Christian way of life. “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:22-24). Or in another place, “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Col. 3:9-10).
Conclusion. A king throws a party for his son’s wedding. The invitations go out. But the potential guests reject the invitation. Some are indifferent; some down right hostile. They pay a price for their rejection of the king. The party goes on. Strangers and outsiders fill the house. But one guest makes the mistake of thinking it doesn’t matter how you come or what you do. He, too, would live to regret his miscalculation!
Now for that punch line. Jesus said, "For many are invited, but few are chosen.” That’s another way of saying, “everybody is invited, but few wind up at the table. Why? It certainly isn’t God’s fault. Anyone who misses heaven, only has himself to blame. Only a relative few will accept the invitation to enter the kingdom and are serious enough to clothe themselves in God’s righteousness. Enough of that negative talk.
We would do better to remember the other side of the story. Behind this parable lies a verse from Isaiah. I suspect this was in the back of Jesus’ mind all along. Isaiah 61:10, “I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
There is a wedding feast planned. You’re all invited. Let’s get ready to party!
***Dr. Roger W. Thomas is the preaching minister at First Christian Church, 205 W. Park St., Vandalia, MO 63382 and an adjunct professor of Bible and Preaching at Central Christian College of the Bible, 911 E. Urbandale, Moberly, MO. He is a graduate of Lincoln Christian College (BA) and Lincoln Christian Seminary (MA, MDiv), and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (DMin).
