1.
Please
pray with me. May the words of my mouth
and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock
and our Redeemer. The message from God’s
Word for us this morning is taken from Matthew 22:1-14. Today we see in another parable of Jesus that
God has invited us to a beautiful wedding
banquet (vs. 1-4), but many people
refuse this invitation (vs. 5-8). Thanks
be to God that He still is patient with us to invite us to the wedding feast
(vs. 9-10). The message is entitled,
“The Wedding Hall Will Be Full!” Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. Mealtimes are often filled with emotion of
all kinds. Peter knows. Sunday dinners with his mother, Ada, his father, Fred,
and three siblings were always lively, relates Peter. “On one occasion all of us except Mother were in a silly mood, and we
began requesting, in rhyme, items at the table. “Please pass the meat, Pete.”
“May I have a potatah, Ada?” “I’d give the moon for a spoon.” After several
minutes of this, Mother was fed up. She stood up: “Stop this nonsense right now! It’s Sunday, and I’d like to enjoy my
dinner with some good conversation, not this silly chatter.” Then she sat
down, still in a huff, turned to my father, and snapped, “Pass the bread, Fred.”
3. In the Parable of the Wedding Feast that
Jesus tells us here in Matthew 22 we hear that we’re warmly invited to “The Party of the Year.” The king is planning his son’s royal wedding.
There he might also announce that this is the son chosen to succeed him. When the invitations went out, those invited rejected
them with excuses based on possessions, purchases, and all sorts of busyness.
4.
Jesus’
parable causes us to stop and think. An
invitation to a wedding rarely leave us uninterested. Either it brings up within us great
excitement as we joyful anticipate joining the celebration, or else it brings
up a dreaded frustration about how to tactfully excuse ourselves from the event. Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast demonstrates
that there were these opposing reactions to Him. At this point in the Gospels opposition to
Jesus was mounting. So, too, were the
pressures on those who followed Him.
5.
In
our busy, consumer-oriented society it’s easy to turn down invitations and
“offers.” When we’re invited to a party or a dinner, we usually ask ourselves
two questions: Do I really need to go?
Will there be a problem if I don’t go?
Will the event help me socially?
(Teenagers in High School often ask themselves this question). Will
people I know be there? Those invited in the parable answered these questions
in all the wrong ways.
6.
Jesus’
parable moves us to examine our spiritual condition and confront the obstacles
to faith in Him that have been built by Satan, the world, and our sinful flesh. The verb in Matthew 22:5 is an especially
harsh, but true, accusation of the Law upon us.
Matthew 22:5 says, “5But
they paid no attention [to the invitation] and went off, one to his farm,
another to his business.” The original
Greek text is translated as “they paid no
attention,” but this is more than just a lack of focus and concentration. There
are strong overtones of neglect and even disdain & scorn towards the
invitation to the wedding feast implied by Jesus in this word as well.
7.
Does
this describe our lives as Christians on occasion? Unfortunately it does. Like those who spurned the invitation and
went off to their farms, businesses, and daily routines, we sometimes separate our
calling as followers of our Lord Jesus from our everyday tasks. The hurry and flurry of worldly
responsibilities rob us of the joy of belonging to the heavenly
Bridegroom. We think that there are more
urgent needs than worshiping and serving Him, reasoning that we can do it
later. We become so concerned about
daily life that we lose our focus on our Lord and Creator God who gives it to
us. Procrastination on spiritual matters
leads to the absence of Jesus from our lives—by our neglect, not His.
8.
So
what can we conclude from the parable of the wedding feast Jesus tells us here
in Matthew 22. Well, when we apply this parable to God’s inviting us to eternal
fellowship with him, if we turn it down, there will
be a problem. In our present situation in America what is called “right and
wrong” is perceived as thoroughly individual and relative. What’s right and wrong for you, people say,
isn’t necessarily what’s right and wrong for me. God’s eternal values, the 10 Commandments He
has given to us, aren’t accepted as absolute by most Americans. God says, “Don’t
worship other gods, treat my name with respect, remember the Sabbath day by
keeping it holy, respect and honor your parents and others in authority, don’t
murder, be loyal to your husband or your wife, don’t steal, don’t lie or hurt
your neighbor’s reputation, don’t envy people or what they own.” Today, many Americans treat what’s good
and bad as what the majority says is right, but if that were the case then the
people of Ninevah, of Noah’s day, and of Sodom and Gomorrah were right, because
the majority were doing what they thought were right, yet God thought otherwise. No, God’s 10 Commandments, His Law is still
the same and God is still calling sinners to repent, to turn to Him and be
saved through His Son Jesus Christ so that the wedding hall will be full.
9.
So
Jesus says in the Parable “Go to the
street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you
find,” the king commanded. The
servants were instructed to invite “all
the people they could find, both good and bad.” As
in the parable of the net (Matthew 13) there are two stages of activity: spread
the net and gather all kinds of fish, and then
separate the good from the bad. Later God’s “angels
will . . . separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them
into the fiery furnace.”
10.
My
dear brothers and sisters in Christ. Don’t
be put off by the free invitation. God
wants his wedding hall to be full in heaven. It comes freely to you at the
price of the life of the Son of God. Having covered the cost of your invitation,
Christ has risen and ascended to heaven to host the banquet of all banquets. Even if it’s not politically correct, it’s
still true: the one who answers God’s call with humility is the one God
respects: “This is the one I esteem: he
who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Is
66:2b). God values inviting anyone, even
us.
11.
And
God has given to you a wedding garment to wear to the party. You have this garment already now by virtue
of your Baptism. The king in the parable
announced that the wedding feast was fully prepared. Christ fulfilled these hosting
responsibilities by His life and work on our behalf. He adorns us for the feast and makes us His
honored guests. He “has clothed me with the garments of salvation; He has covered me with
the robe of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10).
“For as many of you were baptized
into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). This baptismal garment serves as our “wedding clothes” but also our “work clothes.” We never take it off, for we can never truly
separate our lives in Christ and our lives in the world. Our entire lives are joyfully lived as God’s
children.
12.
When
you got up this morning, maybe you hesitated for a moment whether you would
come to worship or not. It sure would be nice to “veg out” at home with the Sunday papers, you thought. But a small
voice suggested you accept the invitation. That was the Holy Spirit delivering
Christ’s invitation to you. When God rules,
you see, the invitations to eternal joy and peace just keep on coming and
coming until we die or until Christ comes once and for all. In the meantime we
have time to celebrate the invitation and to invite others. May God’s wedding hall in heaven be full! Prayer:
Heavenly Father, thank You for
preparing a table before us in the presence of our enemies and graciously
calling us to dwell in Your house forever.
Remove from us, dear Lord, all vanity of heart and self-glorification,
and clothe us in the robe of Jesus’ righteousness. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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