An Invitation to the Feast

Good morning! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Anybody have leftovers for breakfast today?

I want you to think for a moment about your favorite Thanksgiving memory. I’m sure you have one.

As I was thinking about this question, several possibilities came to mind. Was it the first time Annette and I hosted Thanksgiving in our own home?

Was it the year we went to New York, watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and then enjoyed a delicious meal with our friends in Queens? Was it the year I came home from college and found that Mom had failed to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner?

All of those are wonderful memories. Each of them appropriately highlights the significance of family and friends to a proper Thanksgiving celebration.

But I think my favorite Thanksgiving memory is from the year when we invited the men’s overcomer class at our former church to join us for dinner.

Since this was a residential addiction-recovery ministry, we had to get permission from the program leader for the men to join us. Then, we had to arrange transportation for them

Of course, Miss Lynn and Annette had to plan and prepare a huge spread of food to feed a dozen or so people.

The house had to be cleaned. The special-occasion dishes had to be unboxed and wiped off. Name cards had to be printed for each of our guests. Ice had to be procured.

This was a Miss-Lynn production, so you can be sure that everything was done to the hilt.

The details seemed endless to me, but once we’d received the go-ahead from the program director, we began moving forward with the plan, growing more excited as Thanksgiving Day approached.

And then, late that afternoon, the church van pulled up in front of our house, and I watched the men pile out.

We had such a wonderful evening of fellowship with these guys. And it was encouraging to see their smiles as we sat around a table where every plate had been wiped clean and yet there were still leftovers.

These men were separated from their own families during Thanksgiving, so it was a special blessing for us to be able to make them OUR family for at least one night.

But how do you think we’d have felt if these men simply had not shown up for Thanksgiving dinner? Suppose they’d accepted the invitation when it was offered but then, when the van arrived to pick them up, they declined to come along? How would we have felt?

Disappointed? Sure. Upset? Yeah. Maybe a little angry.

Well, in the parable we’re going to look at this week, Jesus describes a wedding banquet where the invited guests decline to attend.

We’ll see that their rejection of this gracious invitation constitutes not just an insult, but an act of rebellion. And we’ll see how their insult, their rebellion, results in an even MORE gracious invitation. And finally, we’ll see a warning.

We’ll be looking at the parable in Matthew, chapter 22. You can go ahead and turn there if you like.

To give you some context, Jesus told this parable in the temple during the last week of His life. He had cleansed the temple the previous afternoon, and He had explained the significance of having cursed the fig tree that morning.

And when He’d arrived back in the temple that day, it seems that everyone was still talking about what Jesus had done there the previous afternoon.

The chief priests and elders of Israel came to Him and demanded to know on whose authority Jesus was doing the things He was doing. But, instead of answering them directly, Jesus told three parables dealing with the Jews’ rejection of Him as Messiah.

His first parable, the Parable of the Two Sons, focuses on the nation’s religious leaders and their rejection of Jesus as Messiah.

The second focuses on their lack of attention to God’s calling for Israel — to be a nation of priests drawing others into saving faith in God.

And the third focuses on the contempt Israel’s religious leaders — and, to a lesser degree — its people had shown for God’s grace.

Let’s read the whole parable, and then we’ll go back and answer the questions it raises.

Matthew 22:1–14 NASB95

1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. 3 “And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. 4 “Again he sent out other slaves saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited, “Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast.” ’ 5 “But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, 6 and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them. 7 “But the king was enraged, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire. 8 “Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. 9 ‘Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.’ 10 “Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests. 11 “But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, 12 and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. 13 “Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 “For many are called, but few are chosen.”

When you’re studying parables, one of the first things you need to do is to understand the original audience and context.

In this case, the audience — the “them” in verse 1 — is Israel’s religious leaders.

Jesus was speaking in the temple at this time, and others were surely on hand to hear. But He has been engaging with the religious leaders ever since the previous chapter, when they asked Him, “By what authority are You doing these things, and who gave You this authority?”

This parable marks the conclusion of His “answer” to them. And even though the answer is couched in the form of a parable, when we consider His teaching for the previous three years, it’s clear from verse 2 that Jesus was claiming to have come with the authority of God Himself.

The king in verse 2 is God, who rules the kingdom of heaven. The son in verse 2 is Jesus, the bridegroom to be honored at the wedding feast.

We read about this still-to-come wedding feast in Revelation, chapter 19, where it’s clear that the bride is the church.

But in this parable, neither the bride nor the groom are significant actors. God the Father is the main character here. And He is planning a great feast to honor His Son.

Now, you should understand that a Hebrew wedding of this time would have included three stages. In the first, the parents of the bride and groom would legally bind the young couple, and a dowry would be paid.

Following a potentially long engagement that could only be broken by a form of divorce, the groom would claim his bride from her parents’ home and take her to his own to consummate the marriage.

And then, the family and invited guests would celebrate with a wedding supper, which was actually a series of feasts over several days.

So, what we see in verse 3 is the king’s slaves being sent out to tell the previously-invited guests, “Hey, it’s time. Today is the day. It’s time to celebrate.”

But verse 3 introduces a couple of new characters to the story that need to be identified. Who are the king’s slaves that are sent out to tell people to come? And who are the people who’d been invited to the banquet?

The slaves or servants refer to the Old Testament prophets. Those prophets had been charged with bringing God’s word to God’s people.

And as often as not, that word was either a reminder of the blessings for obedient faithfulness or a warning of the curses for disobedient faithlessness.

The feast itself is a picture of the fullness of salvation blessings. And the original invitees were the Jewish people, God’s chosen people, whom God called to salvation through faith in Him.

The job of the Old Testament prophets was to point the Hebrew people to Jesus, to prepare the way for His coming, to teach them that God honors faith.

But what we see throughout the Old Testament is that Israel never really wanted to hear the message of the prophets. The truth is, they didn’t really care to hear from God at all.

And so, the prophets were largely ignored — or worse.

But God is gracious and patient. And so, we see in verse 4 that the king sends out more slaves — these are probably John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Apostles.

And this time, they have a very specific message: “Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast.”

Everything is ready. It’s time. Or, as Jesus put it: “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

But, instead of responding to Him in faith and joining the heavenly celebration, the religious leaders of Israel rejected Jesus.

The Old Testament is littered with accounts of God’s prophets being abused and murdered. John the Baptist was beheaded while Jesus was still ministering here on earth. Jesus was crucified. Stephen was stoned to death. All but one of the Apostles would be martyred.

Actually the two categories of response that we see in verses 5 and 6 are very much the same as the categories of response to the gospel, even today.

Some people are apathetic to the gospel message. They’re more worried about school or career or family or politics or entertainment or any of the myriad other things that compete for our hearts every day than they are about eternity.

“They don’t necessarily want the churches’ doors or the preachers’ mouths closed, they just don’t want their ears opened. They pay no attention and go about their more ‘important’ business.” [Douglas Sean O’Donnell, Matthew: All Authority in Heaven and on Earth, ed. R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 624.]

Others receive the message of the gospel with irrational aggression.

In the parable, killing the second set of messengers was irrational, because the king intended only good from his invitation. He certainly wasn’t obligated to have invited anyone. His invitation was a demonstration of grace.

But the truth is that we hate grace. If we define grace as God stooping down to bless those who deserve condemnation, then grace makes us admit first of all that God is greater than me. And second, it forces us to admit that we deserve God’s wrath.

We’d much rather think we are our own gods. We’d much rather think we can earn our way into God’s favor. We’d much rather think we’re good, rather than evil.

And sometimes when people are confronted with the truth about themselves, they turn violent.

That’s what happened to Jeremiah. That’s what happened to Jesus. That’s what happened to most of the Apostles.

Folks just didn’t want to hear their call to repent and turn to Jesus in faith that only His sacrificial death and supernatural resurrection can reconcile man to God.

And so, the prophets of the Old and New Testaments were ignored. They were abused. And they were murdered. And what we see in verse 7 is the king’s execution of judgment.

Note that an invitation from the king is also a command from the king. So, in declining the invitation the invitees were not just insulting him, but committing an act of rebellion.

What Jesus has been warning here is that by denying Him, the religious leaders of Israel have scorned God’s grace. And verse 7 serves as a warning of the judgment that would come to that people because of their rebellion.

It’s widely believed that the destruction described in verse 7 is a prophecy of what would take place in 70 A.D., when the Roman emperor Titus sacked Jerusalem, burned the temple to the ground and killed many of the Jewish residents.

What’s clear from this parable is that everything was ready at this time for Jesus to begin His millennial reign.

He would still have to die on the cross to secure forgiveness for sin. But if the Jewish leaders had accepted Him and turned to Him in faith, His resurrection would have marked the beginning of His millennial reign on earth.

And the nation of Israel — God’s chosen people, the ones who’d already been invited to the feast — would have been the honored guests.

But in verse 8, the king declares the original invitees to be unworthy. And the feast, as well as the kingdom, are put on hold for a time so that the feast hall may be filled.

Rebellion carries a stiff penalty. Until this point in history, God had been dealing with the NATION of Israel as His chosen people.

So, now that the original invitees have refused to attend, the king sends out his slaves to find new people to invite. They go into the main highways and to the crossroads where people gathered. And they bring back, as Jesus puts it in verse 10, “both evil and good.”

Now, the reference to “evil and good” is probably a way of saying, “both Gentiles and Jews,” since the Jewish religious leaders thought of themselves as good and the Gentiles as evil.

But the idea here is clear, regardless of how we define that phrase. Since the original invitees had spurned the invitation, it would now be extended to all who would listen.

And many of them would be outcasts — people the original invitees would never have imagined being invited to the king’s table.

Similarly, since the Jews had rejected Jesus, God would now turn His attention temporarily from the nation of Israel to another group — this one composed of people from all races, all nationalities, and all classes.

God will once again turn His attention back to the nation of Israel, and He will bless them, and they will have a significant role in the kingdom of heaven.

But for now, He has turned His attention to individuals, both Jew and Gentile, inviting every one of us to be part of the wedding feast of the Lamb through faith in Jesus.

We might expect the parable to end there. We might expect it to end with everybody having a good time at the wedding feast. That would bring the whole story to a nice, neat conclusion.

Instead, it ends on a dark note of warning.

The king comes into the feast hall and notices a man there who isn’t dressed in wedding clothes.

Now, I don’t know about you, but there are certain expectations in my home about how one is to dress for special occasions. I’d never get away with wearing shorts and a T-shirt to a wedding, even if I weren’t the one officiating it.

And if you’ve been invited to the wedding of a prince, you’d better dress the part. Indeed, for a wedding as special as the one in this parable, it wasn’t unusual at the time for the host to send special garments to be worn by his invited guests.

So, what do the clothes represent in this parable?

Some commentators believe they represent good deeds. They base this conclusion on the angel’s explanation in Revelation, chapter 19, that the “fine linen, bright and clean” worn by the saints at the marriage of the Lamb represents “the righteous acts of the saints.”

They suggest that the poorly-dressed man is a believer who hasn’t done good deeds and therefore loses his rewards in heaven.

But the king’s command in verse 13 pictures something that sounds a lot like hell. Outer darkness. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. The man was bound hand and foot, meaning he couldn’t get back in to the feast.

This doesn’t sound like losing rewards. This sounds like being sent to hell.

I think the better interpretation is that the wedding clothes are the righteousness of Christ in which we are clothed when we place our faith in Jesus.

The prophet Isaiah talks about this in a verse that echoes this parable’s wedding theme.

Isaiah 61:10 NASB95

10 I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, My soul will exult in my God; For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, As a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

And lest we misunderstand the source of this righteousness, look what Paul says about it in Philippians, chapter 3.

Philippians 3:8–9 NASB95

8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,

The point here — and it fits the context of both the passage in which this parable appears and that of the Gospel of Matthew in general — is that the only thing that qualifies us to be a part of the kingdom of heaven is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

The only thing that will qualify me to stand before God one day is the fact that I will stand there clothed in the righteousness of JESUS, and not that of Res Spears.

When God looks at me, He sees someone who is being conformed to the image of His Son. Instead of my great sins, He sees Jesus’ perfect righteousness.

If I were an unbeliever and somehow was able to sneak into the marriage supper of the Lamb, I’d stick out like a sore thumb, just like the poorly dressed man in the parable.

But as a believer — as someone who has given his life to Jesus — I have received the appropriate clothes for this wedding feast. I have received the righteousness of Christ.

The warning is clear: Nobody sneaks into the kingdom of heaven. There is no back door. There’s no negotiation. Notice the man’s response when he’s confronted by the king. He’s speechless.

People like to say that they’ll take their chances before God. The suggestion is that they’re going to stand before Him and make an impassioned argument about why they deserve to be in heaven.

But I think what’ll happen to unbelievers as they stand before God is the same thing that happened in this parable: They’ll be speechless.

Confronted with the perfectly holy and perfectly righteous one they have rejected all their lives, there will simply be nothing they can say.

They were invited to the feast, but they rejected the invitation and the gracious Savior who gave His life so they could receive it.

You have been invited, too. But you won’t be allowed in without the right clothes. You won’t be allowed in unless you’re clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

Giving His life at the cross, He took upon Himself your sins and mine. Though He had never sinned, He died clothed in sin so that all who place their faith in Him might LIVE clothed in His righteousness.

The invitations have been delivered. But what clothes are YOU wearing?

Will you trade the filthy, tattered rags of your own righteousness for the perfectly clean robes of Jesus? Will you turn to Him in faith today?

The feast is coming soon. Please don’t wait any longer.

Now, today is Lord’s Supper Sunday. This observance is important to the fellowship of the church. It brings us together in a unique way and reminds us that we belong to one another in Christ Jesus.

It reminds us of the love that He has for us and the love we are called to have for one another.

Jesus commanded us to observe the Lord’s Supper as an act of obedience to Him, as a way of proclaiming that we who follow Him in faith belong to Him, and as a way of reminding us what He did for us.

The Lord’s Supper reminds us that our hope for salvation rests entirely on the sacrifice that He made on our behalf at the cross. It reminds us that our life is in Him.

And the fact that we share bread from one loaf reminds us that we are, together, the one body of Christ. It reminds us that we are called to unity of faith, unity of purpose, and unity of love.

And it reminds us that, just as He gave up the glory that He had in heaven, we who’ve followed Him in faith are called to give up any claims we might think we have to our own lives and follow Him.

It reminds us that, as we’ve been given the testimony of the Holy Spirit within us, we are to share OUR testimony of salvation by grace through faith.

And finally, the Lord’s Supper is a picture of the wedding feast of the Lamb, when the Church, the Bride of Christ, celebrates her union with the groom who gave His very life as a dowry.

If you are a baptized believer who is walking in obedience to Christ, I would like to invite you to join us today as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.

Now, this sacred meal dates all the way back to when Jesus shared it with His disciples at the Last Supper on the night before He was crucified.

The conditions during the Last Supper were different than the conditions we have here today, but the significance was the same as it is today.

Jesus told His disciples that the bread represented His body, which would be broken for our transgressions.

Let us pray.

Matthew 26:26 NASB95

26 While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”

As Jesus suffered and died on that cross, his blood poured out with His life. This was always God’s plan to reconcile mankind to Himself.

“In [Jesus] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us.”

Let us pray.

Matthew 26:27–28 NASB95

27 And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; 28 for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.

Take and drink.

“Now, as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”

Maranatha! Lord, come!

Here at Liberty Spring, we have a tradition following our commemoration of the Lord’s Supper.

Please gather around in a circle, and let us sing together “Blest Be the Tie that Binds.”