Weddings are such a big deal! I met Lara my first year of college back in 1992. It’s hard to pinpoint that exact moment we ended up on each other’s radars. I was such a nerd. As I left for college, mom sent me off w/a brown leather briefcase. Several days a week I wore this tired “bum” t-shirt. Both became my trademark… people would ask, “who’s the bum w/the leather briefcase?” I had zero style-awareness!
I was the same guy later on who carried a 1st generation Motorola cell-phone around on my hip, always ready to receive a phone call. Phone calls were only like $10 a minute, or totally free between 3am and 6am. Even if I got a call, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to take it. One night after an intramural basketball game, we struck up a friendship, and went out bowling. Let me just say that Lara didn’t fall in love with me for my basketball skills, and I didn’t fall in love with her for her finesse bowling. I was no Christian Laettner then, and I’m no Zion Williamson now.
It wasn’t even a thought that we would get married before we graduated. We moved slow in everything. We did everything by the book. All her dad’s Bible College professor friends watched us like hawks. She wasn’t taking any chances. But what a day it was when we finally got married. June 15, 1996! The church was packed full. We were surrounded by friends and family. I’ll never forget that first night, leaving the reception, married, exhausted, the wind blowing through my hair, where did it all go?
Just about anyone can relate to a wedding. In Matthew 22, Jesus uses a wedding to help us understand what’s at stake with God’s Kingdom. First comes the invitation.
PART #1: PLEASE RSVP! Matthew 22:2-3a, “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to summon those invited to the banquet. . .”
To whatever degree weddings are a big deal, they were an infinitely BIGGER deal in Jesus’ day. Weddings were quite large. A wealthy aristocrat might invite a whole city! If invited, you were expected to stay for the whole thing, and dress in the proper attire. Today weddings are over in a half-day, people wear casual clothes, they bale right after the ceremony. Lara/I were so strategic about how we would take photos ahead of time, dismiss people efficiently to the reception, not to keep people waiting, have refreshments available right away. In Jesus’ day, you were expected to hang around the for the entire seven-day festival. You were to wear special attire. Anything less would dishonor the families. Could you imagine?
This of course, isn’t an ordinary wedding--It’s the king’s son! If invited, you had two choices—attend, and honor the king. Or, risk the terror of displeasing him. If you’ve ever tried to skip a wedding, you know how it can damage relationships. People are just as apt to notice those who skip as who attends. An intelligent person knows it’s better to just go! Only a fool would decline a king’s invitation to a wedding.
PART #2: NO THANKS! (3b-6). In Jesus’ parable the time for the wedding arrives. The servants summon the guests. But then something outrageous occurs. “but they didn’t want to come. . .” (Matthew 23:3b). The guests say NO THANKS! Undeterred, Matthew 22:4 tell us how “Again, [the king] sent out other servants and said, ‘Tell those who are invited: See, I’ve prepared my dinner; my oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’”
To decline the invitation of an aristocrat was scandalous and rude; To decline the invitation of a king was illegal. It’s only by his mercy and grace that the king issues a second, more urgent summons. When I was kid, mom would be cooking dinner and announce, “time to eat.” That was our cue to get to the table. But sometimes we would tarry, we’d be deep in play, or consumed with a TV show. At that point Dad’s voice would boom, “Boys, dinner is getting cold, get in here.” In the Morrissette home if you ignored that second summons you went hungry.
How ironic in this story, that the king has to “beg” people to come honor his son. The people didn’t pay any attention. They go about their own way. One goes off to farm, another tends his business. Now it’s at this point that we need to remember that Jesus isn’t just talking about some old wedding—he is talking about His Kingdom.
From the beginning of Matthew’s gospel, the Jewish people, her leaders, we’re being invited, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near.” But in Luke’s telling of this parable he describes, in Luke 14:18-20, how “. . .without exception they all began to make excuses. The first one said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. I ask you to excuse me.’ 19 “Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m going to try them out. I ask you to excuse me.’ 20 “And another said, ‘I just got married, and therefore I’m unable to come.’”
What are the servants of God to do when people throw up a wall of excuses? One thing we can do is encourage people. Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “4 And let us watch out for one another to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.” As we know however, encouragement only goes so far. How quickly our encouragement becomes unwelcome.
Jesus flat out warned people about making excuses. To Jesus our passive-aggressive, self-serving excuses are seen for what they really are. Excuses are a REVOLT. First comes ambivalence. Then comes distraction. In time, hostility comes. In Matthew 22:5 the king extends his second summons. . . “But they paid no attention and went away, one to his own farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them.”
These servants would have been “ambassadors.” In Jesus’ day the mistreatment of ambassadors (i.e. emissaries, royal representatives) was universally despised. To mistreat a servant of your king was an act of treason, it was a declaration of revolt. To mistreat the servant of a foreign king can be just as treasonous and dangerous. In the U.S., ambassadors from other countries have protected status. Even when their behaving badly, getting pulled over for a DUI in their Lamborghini or whatever… they’re given diplomatic immunity. Why? Because their mistreatment is apt to provoke an international crisis! Whatever you do unto an ambassador, you do unto their king.
What level of tolerance do you suppose a king should have toward passive revolt of his people (for their disobedient excuse making) … or how about outright rebellion of his people (their rejecting, mistreating, harming God’s servants?)
PART #3: THE OUTRAGED KING (7). Matthew 22:7, “The king was enraged, and he sent out his troops, killed those murderers, and burned down their city.” I wonder if you have room in your theology for an outraged, rejected, spurned king? The Jewish people and their leaders rejected God’s Kingdom. They repeatedly killed God’s prophets. They would soon crucify God’s One and Only Son in Jerusalem. For the next 40 years after Jesus’ death, starting with Stephen, they would persecute, torture, martyr, kill the missionaries of God.
In this Wedding Story, the king is so incensed. He sends forth his troops, in Jesus’ own words, “to kill those murderers and burn down their city.” Do you realize that in A.D. 70, the city of Jerusalem was lay desolate as an act of judgement by God? Last week we talked about Matthew 23. What does Jesus say at the end of that chapter? In Matthew 23:37-38 Jesus laments, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate.” I wanted to gather you, but you made excuses. I wanted to gather you but killed my servants. Look… your city will not be burned to the ground. The burning of a city signaled the final phase of its destruction.
Do you have room in your theology for an outraged, rejected, spurned king? How many times in Israel’s history, was Jerusalem destroyed, as judgement, for rejecting God as King? They were wiped out by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Romans. Whenever we reject God’s wedding invitation, we don’t just miss the party, we miss our destiny. And when we miss our destiny, we don’t just miss out on eternal life, we miss out on our whole purpose of being. We were created to worship/ honor/ glorify God, and no other. They ignored, neglected, forsook… the wrath of God was unleashed.
PART #4: PLEASE RSVP (8-10). The wedding celebration must go on, and it will. Matthew 22:8-10, Jesus continues, “Then he told his servants, ‘The banquet is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. 9 Go then to where the roads exit the city and invite everyone you find to the banquet.’ 10 So those servants went out on the roads and gathered everyone they found, both evil and good. The wedding banquet was filled with guests.”
Israel was a chosen nation. The Jews were a chosen people. But they would not repent. They would not believe. They would not confess. By refusing baptism, they rejected God’s Kingdom and purpose for their lives. God was willing to gather them, but they were not willing. Because of their excuses, because of their hostility, they forfeited their place of privilege.
In the parable, the invitation goes out from the “chosen people” to all nations, from Jews to the Gentiles, from the holy city of Jerusalem to the street corners, highways, hedges, … from high society to all the unkept/sundry… to anyone who can be found with a pulse! The wedding hall will be filled, nothing will be wasted, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done.” The most outrageous feature of Jesus’ ministry was his taking the Kingdom of God to the Gentiles, the Tax Collectors and Sinners, the sick, the unhealthy, the lowly/despised, the least, the unworthy and unfit, the prodigal sons/daughters, the evil and the good.
You know, the American Church reminds me a lot of the Jewish nation. This nation was birthed out of a love for God. Church growth exploded, churches were built in virtually every city and town. First people stopped paying attention. Then people started making excuses—forsaking the assembly is the norm today, not the exception, for even Christian people. Should we be surprised about the growing hostility that exists against the things of Christ today? God allowed his chosen people to be laid desolate so that another people come fill His Kingdom.
What if all these people pouring in our nation… people of every tribe, tongue, nation, moral/immoral, good/evil, legal/illegal, refugees, asylum seekers, whatever… what if because of our benign neglect of God’s Kingdom God is now ushering in a whole mass of people to occupy the seat that was once reserved for us?
THE CHOSEN FEW (11-14). Matthew 22:11-14, “11 When the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed for a wedding. 12 So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ The man was speechless. 13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him up hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”
This parable has such a crazy twist. Here some guy thinks he can just come waltzing into God’s Kingdom on his own terms. It’s very clear in this story we are invited into the Kingdom of God on the king’s terms, not ours. Even more importantly, to be part of this wedding we must be fitted with the clothing only the king can provide.
I see in these verses a warning to the American Church. First, we want everything on our terms. We want a kingdom without true repentance. We’re not interested in, “thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We want a Kingdom built around our consumer whims and will. We are no committed to Christ’s church than that church’s ability to deliver an attractional experience our way. We want a kingdom without true confession. People are perfectly content to honor the Lord with their lips, but our hearts are growing as hard as ever. We don’t hunger/thirst for righteousness, we hunger/thirst for worldly status, relevance, endorsement. We want a kingdom without true surrender. Baptism? No sir. Take up my cross daily? Die to self? Die to sin? Bury the old man? Take up the new? Walk anew in the Spirit?
Not only do we want everything on our terms, we think we can enter the Kingdom as we are. In this parable, the only reason those found off the street corners, highways, hedges… the good and the evil… the unkept, sundry, smelly, dirty, unworthy, tax collectors, sinners, etc.… they could all be made acceptable is because the king provided festal robes for them all to wear. The poor need not be ashamed of rags. Such is the power of grace. God clothes us with his righteousness.
But here was a man who thought he could enter the Kingdom, that he could come to the wedding in his own garments, in his plain old clothes. But without being clothed by the king, his self-righteousness wreaked of filth. In his pride, he insults the host, he is tied up and bound, and thrown out into darkness.
Isaiah the prophet once said, “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” We literally are not fit to be seen before God, let alone enjoy feast of his kingdom! Elsewhere Isaiah points us in the right direction. He writes, “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.”
We enter God’s Kingdom on his terms, with garments. We enter the kingdom by faith, confession, repentance, baptism, and obedience. The king sets those terms. But we also enter clothed with Christ’s righteousness, not our own.
Galatians 3:26-28, “for through faith you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus. For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus.”