Matthew 22:1-14 Sermon

Josh Pardee

The Table • Sermon • Submitted 6 years ago

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Wedding attire. High invitation - High Challenge

Need to talk about the context of the 3 parables and Jesus point in all of them.

There is definitely this connotation of warning. Warning for the american who thinks they are saved because they are American. Warning for the person who goes to the wedding “attends church, looks the part,” but who’s attitude is indifferent.

This story should be understood as two separate parables.

This story is incredibly uncomfortable. It is a hard one to understand, apply and yet incredibly important to internalize.

The invitation is the idea of a save the date and formal wedding announcement. It’s a double invitation.

The invitation is there before you. The question is, will you live into it. Maybe a story about how not everyone accepted a crazy good invitation?

Vs. 14 is the proof not the cause of their salvation.

In Luke Jesus tells that version of the story when he is sitting with an important group of people and the point of the story is that more people are welcome to the table than you first thought. In matthew, it is holy week and he knows the religious leaders are plotting against him. That context calls for a more intense version. Same idea, but different.

The KOG is like this in a certain way and what it isn’t like. It’s the point of parables. It forces us to engage and wrestle with the story. To discern what Jesus is saying about the kingdom.

The Kingdom is described through a meal and celebration.

Jesus asked to be remembered by bread, cup, and table. Joining together in community that God finds important. It wasn’t to remember the cross, or the fish, or the steeple. It was the dinner table that he invites us too. When we sit together, when we share a meal, what we are doing is we are sharing more of who we are. I am picking up parts of who you are. The dinner table invites us to come to a place of unity.

Jesus uses pictures of everyday life to root us down into the premise of how the KOG works.

We have all been hungry, and we have all been satisfied after a filling meal. Perhaps there is an experience that Jesus wants to tap into to describe his kingdom.

If we refuse God, then what is happening here with them being destroyed is a picture of what the people want. It’s there heart’s desire to think they don’t need the king, they don’t need his invitation. And ultimately, it leads to destruction and death. It’s not that God is pushing destruction, he is allowing them to decide and then letting them live into the consequence of the path they chose.

So the king still has a feast, and decides I want to party. He goes and invites anyone in for a second chance. Invite the bad and the good. (The word for bad is worse than our understanding.) That sounds like Jesus. He invites people in and we see grace.

But the story isn’t over. He sees a man that isn’t wearing appropriate wedding attire. How did you get in here? He was speechless. So they through him out.

2 main interpretations - Augustine suggested that they were offered wedding clothes. After all he would need to provide it to people because they would not have it themselves. This aligned with an old rabbinic parable at the time about a king who entrusted royal robes to his loyal subjects. The wise ones put them in place for sake keeping. The foolish paraded them about in front of the others. When the king came back the wise ones got their robes out and were ready while the foolish ones had to attend in dirty attire. The point of this is that the idea the king would provide the clothes he would have expected. Augustine says he refused to dress in the robes the king offered. That can make a lot of sense. However, it makes the first half the same as the second. God invites, people refuse. God offers clothes people refuse.

The second is people are to go home and get ready. The thinking is that the invitation is there for anyone to come. But there are responsibilities to prepare yourself or to live into the way the king desires. So anyone can come, but once you receive the invitation you still have to get ready. It’s works and fruit. That one works too to some extent. There is a call on our life for us to become more than we are, to grow, to mature to be holy. Both interpretations are good and helpful.

We have to accept God’s grace, and we have to keep accepting God’s grace.

We have to accept God’s grace and we have to respond to that grace with growth and transformation.

There is still something missing here. It comes from the non-response of the guest. How did you get in here? I don’t think this is a trick question. I don’t think he expects him to have an excuse.

Instead its conversational. Tell me how you got in here. Tell me your story. Who are you and why aren’t you dressed for a wedding my friend.

Not because I sold my suit to cover some bad choices. I didn’t know what was happening and followed the crowd. You see these are all good answers in the presence of God. Because they don’t presume the party depends on you.

Each of us have been handed a golden ticket based on the grace of God. Everything that you think you have earned or have made you worthy to come to the dinner has been judged invalid. Whatever you point too as why you earned it will be judged unworthy.

Because the only thing you have to do to experience the feast you are invited to is to learn to believe that you are welcome only because God says you are.

The only problem for the kingdom of God and you with the kingdom of God is if you aren’t willing to fully accept that God has already solved every problem in the kingdom. That he did it all on his own.

When the king asks you how did you get in, the only response, is that I was invited in and I accepted the invitation. It’s not a diminished view of who we are, but a recognition of the greatness of your kingdom.

In this story we have non disciples, false disciples, and real disciples.

We are invited into the joy of a wedding day! It’s not gloomy or dark, sure, there are responsibilities, but it is exciting.

It reminds us that the appeal of Christ is not so much to consider how we will be punished as is to see what we ill miss if we do not take his way of things. Those who would not come were punished, but their real tragedy was that they lost the joy of the wedding feast. if we refuse the invitation of Christ, some day our greatest pain will lie not in the things we suffer, but in the realization of the precious things we have missed.

It reminds us that that in the last analysis God’s invitation is the invitation of grace. Those who were gathered in from the highways and the byways had no claim on the king at all; they could never by any stretch of the imagination have expected an invitation to the wedding feast; still less could they ever have deserved it. It was the grace which offered the invitation and grace which gathered them in.

Story of the barn staff and how it would be like them being invited but not changing out of their clothes. They would still stink.

The leaders knew that he was talking about them....Could we make it clear to talk about us today?

Am I ever not good enough? If you are trying, you are good enough. If you delay, you are not.

They aren’t worthy to come because they have rejected him. They feel they are good enough on their own.

None of us were invited to the royal wedding. But the king invites everyone! The King wants to be with his people. He wants to celebrate with them about the son’s wedding. He is devastated and enraged by the refusal and disrespect of the people.

The garment is a picture of the guests heart.

Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment? A startling question to one that was priding himself in the place he securely possessed at the feast. Friend! That was a cutting word; a seeming friend, a pretended friend, a friend in profession, under manifold ties and obligations to be a friend. Note, There are many in the church who are false friends to Jesus Christ, who say that they love him while their hearts are not with him. How camest thou in hither? He does not chide the servants for letting him in (the wedding garment is an inward thing, ministers must go according to that which falls within their cognizance); but he checks his presumption in crowding in, when he knew that his heart was not upright;

(2.) How he was convicted; he was speechless: ephimoµtheµ-he was muzzled (so the word is used, )

Zechariah passage

many called to the wedding feast, but few chosen to the wedding garment, that is, to salvation, by sanctification of the Spirit. This is the strait gate, and narrow way, which few find.

In this parable," as TRENCH admirably remarks, "we see how the Lord is revealing Himself in ever clearer light as the central Person of the kingdom, giving here a far plainer hint than in the last parable of the nobility of His descent. There He was indeed the Son, the only and beloved one ( ), of the Householder; but here His race is royal, and He appears as Himself at once the King and the King's Son ( ).

But observe carefully, that THE BRIDE does not come into view in this parable; its design being to teach certain truths under the figure of guests at a wedding feast, and the want of a wedding garment, which would not have harmonized with the introduction of the Bride.

I don’t think it matters whether scholars think he brought his own dress or it was provided. The point is he didn’t take the step that everyone else did. He didn’t do his part.

It’s Jesus last day of teaching on the week he gets crucified.

The Robe we have been given to wear is nothing of our own accord?

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