Good morning everybody — happy Sunday. Welcome to The Edge Church online. My name is Steven Van Denend and I'm one of the pastors here. We’re really glad to have you joining with us today as we continue on in our sermon series that we're calling The Parables.
In this series we're looking at some of the different parables we find in scriptures. Parables, if you remember, are short stories with a moral and a spiritual truth or lesson behind them. We're looking at some of the parables that Jesus teaches us in the gospels about the kingdom of heaven.
This morning we're going to look together at a parable that's often lesser known than some of the other parables. That’s the parable called The Parable of the Wedding Banquet. We'll look together at this and then, as always at the end of our message, I'll leave you with some questions just as a way to reflect upon the message — a way for you to process, a way for you maybe to spend some time journaling or to take some time just to talk together with the people in your home or the house church that you're gathered with.
I want to start by just praying for us, inviting the Lord to speak to us through his word, and then we'll jump into the message together. Let's pray.
Father, thank you for this morning. God, thank you for this time. Thank you for your word. God, I thank you that your word is true and God that you say, Lord, that your word is living and active. That God, your word accomplishes its purpose. And so I pray, Father, that as we open up your word, God, that you would speak to us — that you would minister by your spirit. God, give us ears to hear from you today. Lord, give us hearts that are open just to receive of you. Help us to see in our story today God, what it is that you have for us individually, for our hearts and our lives. God, for the work that you want to do in and through us. Lord, we just invite you into this time. Have your way and pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So if you have your bible open it up to Matthew 22 and before we read this together I want to just give you a little bit of context. Jesus here has been teaching in the temple courts where he's being questioned by the religious leaders who have really been plotting against him. They've been looking for ways to trap Jesus in his own words. They were questioning him about his authority and about these claims that he is making that he himself is the Messiah — the promised one sent from God. So in response to these questions, Jesus shares three different parables that all essentially make the same point in addressing them.
Our parable today is the third of these parables. It's the Return of the Jedi parable, if you will, that Jesus is using to teach them and us about the kingdom of heaven. Here's what it says.
Matthew 22: 1-2
The Parable of the Wedding Banquet
22 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.
When Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven he's not talking simply about you going to heaven someday when you die. He is talking ultimately about the rule and the reign of God in the world and in a person's life. He's talking about the way of God and of those who are a part of him in his kingdom — those who are fully submitted. Their whole life — relationships, careers, calling, purpose, physical life, emotional life, thought life, spiritual life — all placed under the rule and the reign of God. It's talking about God's way.
Matthew 22: 3-4
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.’
The King here in this story is God, and God is preparing a wedding banquet for his son — his son being Jesus. So this is the picture, the God of the universe preparing, inviting people to join him in the celebration and the honoring of his son, Jesus — to come into his kingdom, to come into his presence.
Notice how the people respond. At first we see that they refuse to come. They said they would, they said yes, they would come, and the invitation went out. Now they refuse to come. So rather than just dismiss them, God, the King, sends out another invitation because that's just how loving and gracious God is. God pursues us again and again.
Then next we see in verse five, it tells us:
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.
Here in this context, Jesus is specifically talking about the nation of Israel, the chosen people of God and their rejection of him as Messiah. But though he's talking about Israel, this certainly applies to us as well. Jesus is saying to Israel, listen, I have come for you to show you the real and the true way to be the people of God — the real way to be a part of God's kingdom. It isn't by your religious works. It's not by your religious rules and your tradition. It is by relationship with God, through his son, Jesus. It’s by putting your trust and your hope in him. Jesus is saying, listen, I want you to receive me, I want you to accept me — to accept my invitation for you to come to God through me, but you won't. You're too busy or you're too stubborn. You're too caught up in your own ways and in your own works, and you've even mistreated and even killed some of my profits, my messengers, that I have sent to invite you.
By rejecting the Son then, you are rejecting the King and the King is against you. So in verse seven, where it says that the King sends an army to destroy them and to burn their city. This is a prophetic declaration that Jesus is making about Israel because ultimately some 40 years after the death of Jesus, the Romans do come into Israel and they destroy their temple and their religious life. They burn it all to the ground. And so Israel rejects God's invitation through Jesus.
The real question for us is, what about me? What about you? Will you receive Jesus' invitation to turn from your sin and to put your hope and trust in him and his finished work for you on the cross? Or are you more like those in the story who maybe just refuse altogether, or who refuse to listen? Maybe you're just too busy living your own life on your own terms, in your own way, caught up in your own pursuits, trying to earn salvation or heaven by your own good works — even religious ones.
Do you scoff at the gospel of Jesus Christ and his salvation? Do you mock those who talk about him and make much of him? There's this warning for us here in this parable, as we keep reading.
8 “Then he [the King] said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So 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, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
Here's the point of that part of our passage; it's that everyone is invited to be part of God's kingdom through Jesus. Israel thought that the Messiah was just for them and for their salvation. But God sent Jesus for the sake of all of mankind to be set free from sin and death, to be invited into his life and into his eternal kingdom. Everyone and anyone is welcome to come to Jesus — into his kingdom, into the family of God. Not just the people that you might think deserve to be there, not just the people you think are worthy of God, but Jesus came for the unworthy.
Jesus came for:
The sinner.
The people that maybe you think are bad.
The people that do things that maybe you despise.
The people who are maybe different than you.
The people who think differently than you.
The people who look differently than you.
The people who vote differently than you.
The bad people.
Jesus came for all of them. So all of us are the same when it comes to Jesus.
One of my favorite verses in all the scriptures is 1 Timothy 1:15, and the apostle Paul says:
15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the worst.
I love this because though this is the apostle Paul saying it, this scripture applies to every single one of us. All of us are sinners in need of the grace of God to forgive us and to save us. When we realize that, when we recognize the depth of our own sin, that separates us from God, we realize how much God has paid on our behalf. Then we also realize, listen, there isn't anybody worse than me. So that makes me able to be with anybody. Because I’ll never meet anyone who is worse and more needing of God's grace than I am. I'll never meet anyone or be with anyone better.
Like Dave said in his message last week, then the good news here is that everyone is invited to Jesus. You are invited to Jesus and his eternal life — to be part of the kingdom of heaven — regardless of who you are and what you've done, or what you've had done to you, you are invited right now today, and that's amazing grace.
But that's not the end of the story that Jesus tells. Look at this, starting in verse 11, it says:
11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.
This is interesting because that phrase where it says ‘he came to see the guests’ in its original language means more like ‘to inspect the guests.’ So as the King comes in, as he's inspecting the guests, he recognizes this man who is there, who is not wearing the wedding garments and the King asks, “how did you get in here? You're not wearing a tuxedo. You don't have on the tie. You're not wearing what everyone else is wearing at this party.” The point here is this; when it comes to salvation, salvation is personal. Though everyone is invited, God deals with you as an individual.
This man here, he's not wearing the wedding garments that would have been given to him by the King to wear — the wedding garments that everyone else had on them, but apparently he chose not to. You could say that he wanted God's kingdom, he wanted God's benefits, he wanted God's salvation but he wanted them on his own terms and in his own way. You could say that he wanted the things of God but he didn't want to have to change in response. He wasn't willing to put off his old self and to put on Christ — to put off his old way and to put on the way of Christ.
Jesus says to us in places like John 14:6, he says:
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Jesus says, there's only one way to God. There's only one way to be saved. There's only one way to receive the wedding garment of righteousness and to be welcomed into the kingdom of God. And “I” Jesus says, “am that way.”
So when the man must give an account to the King [to God], he has nothing to say. He is speechless, it says, because he knows that before God, he is guilty and without excuse. God invited him and he offered him his robe of righteousness in place of his sin, only he rejected that and wanted to receive his own way. So what does the King do with him?
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.”
This right here, to be honest, is why this isn't a real popular parable. It’s not one that pastors tend to often talk about and people know very well because, for us in the modern Western world, we don't really like versions of God that look anything different than some nice old grandfather in a rocking chair who just loves and accepts everybody without expectation — without any kind of standard. We struggle to see God as this King of everything, including us, who displays righteous anger toward sin and exercises judgment upon those who reject his son. We say things like, “I could never follow a God that [fill in the blank],” as if somehow the King of everything answers to us. Not realizing we are the man in the story, not wearing the wedding garments, unwilling to yield to the rule and the reign of God.
Most people love the idea of Jesus as savior, who generously gives up his own life for our sin and offers us his grace. But many people struggle to receive Jesus as Lord, where in turn we surrender our life fully unto him and his way.
Jesus doesn't shy away from the eternal consequence of our response to God's invitation. When you and I choose to reject Jesus, when we say with our words and our actions, “I don't want you or your way;” when we reject the rule and reign of God in our lives, the natural implication is for us to end up in outer darkness because the scripture says, God himself is the light. In him, there is no darkness. To be apart from him is to be in the darkness. So this parable, in a sense, is a rebuke to Israel and its religious leaders, but it's also a warning and an invitation to us.
Just a few things for you here and I'll wrap us up. First notice that the first group we read about accepted the invitation, they RSVPed already, if you will. They said “I'll be there.” But when the time came, they rejected it and they didn't show up. The caution for us here is to be sure that we aren't doing that very thing where we would say I accepted God's invitation, but ultimately then in the end we don't show up.
Maybe you prayed a prayer once when you were a kid, when you were at that church camp or bible school or wherever you were to receive Jesus or you got baptized some time ago, and you said, “I will follow Jesus,” or you show up to participate in communion where we remember Christ with the rest of the church — all those things are you saying, God I'm coming. But ultimately saying a prayer, doing religious things, doesn't save you.
Furthermore, salvation isn't so much about a moment of your life but a whole life lived by faith in Christ until the very end. So the real question then here for everyone, is not, did you say yes to Jesus at some point in your life? The real question is, are you saying yes to him now? Are you following Jesus today?
Secondly, notice it says Jesus’ servants are the ones that he sent to go out and to give his invitation — to invite others into his kingdom. So the question for us is, what about us? Are we doing that? Are you inviting others to Jesus? Are you sharing Christ with others and his invitation for them to come to him? Are you sharing the good news of the gospel? Are you sharing your testimony? Do the people in your life even know that you're a Christian or know anything of Jesus because of you?
Notice here that the King tells them to go and invite others. He doesn't tell them to go set up a lemonade stand and hand out some water on the road and hopefully they'll figure out in the end that they're invited to come into God's kingdom and be a part of him. I'm not making little of good deeds or of practical works, but ultimately the gospel is a proclamation that we make with our mouths and our works.
The apostle Paul says in Romans 10:14-15, talking about reaching those who don't yet know Christ. He says:
14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
This is the call of the servants of God — to proclaim him, to invite others to him. Is that true of you this morning? Are you sharing Christ and his invitation to come? This is our calling as the people of God and the church — to know Christ and to make him known. Is that true of us?
Finally, I'll leave you with this. God, the King of the universe is inviting you to himself. God, the King of the universe is inviting you to be a part of his kingdom, to be a part of his family, to receive his grace and his life for you, to receive Christ as your savior and your Lord, to turn from sin and to put your hope and your trust in him and his finished work for you on that cross. That’s the trade. It's your sin for his righteousness.
That's the wedding garment. It's not your good works. It's Jesus' righteousness. The question for you this morning is, will you accept his invitation?
As always, there's so many things that we could get into with this story. I want to leave you with some questions for you to ponder, for you to consider, for you to chew on and think about, to pray about, to talk about with the people in your home or in your house church gathering. There are three questions I'm gonna leave you with, and then I'll close us in prayer. Then you can process through this message.
Question number one is really simple. We do this one regularly. What's your biggest takeaway from this message and from this parable? What is it that really stands out to you? What is it that speaks to your heart and where you're at today?
Here's the second question. How have you responded to God's invitation to you? What has God's invitation to you, through Christ, looked like in your life?
Here's the third question. How are you sharing God's invitation with others? How are you taking this good news that the King of the universe is inviting you to be a part of his kingdom? How are you taking the good news of salvation through Christ to the people around you?
I'm going to just pray for us and close us, and then invite you to spend some time thinking about this message, talking to the Lord about this message and talking about those you're gathered with about it as well.
Let's pray:
Father, thanks for this morning. God, thank you for your word. Jesus, thank you for teaching us. God, thank you for loving us enough to teach us about who you are, what you're like and God, how it is that we might be a part of you and your kingdom, how we might receive your grace in your life.
Father, I pray that for every single person today, God, every person watching, every person who will at some point later, Father, that you would speak to them. God, by this word, by your word, Lord God, that you would minister truth in every heart. God, that eyes would be open to see the reality of who you are. God, to see the reality of who we are apart from you and God, that by your grace Lord, that we could receive you and your invitation. Would you move in every single heart this morning? God, I pray for the families that are gathered in the house churches, that are gathered Lord, in their time of just sharing together, talking together. Lord, I pray that you would use that time, God, for them to minister to one another, to encourage one another, to be sharpened by one another. God, that by your spirit, you would minister to us. Have your way in us, Jesus, I pray. Amen.