Bulletin:
September 22, 2024 Matthew 22:1-14
Plot Twists in God’s Redemption Story
Embrace Your Unmerited Position (1-10)
Embrace God’s Conditional Salvation. (11-13)
Embrace God’s Sovereign Explanation. (14
Manuscript:
Picture someone sitting in traffic court for being a habitual reckless driver.
They’re standing before the judge.
The judge listens to all of the person’s excuses and explanations of how the person really is a good driver.
Then he starts to tell them a story.
The first story that he tells is about two teenaged drivers.
One says he will obey all the traffic laws but actually breaks them.
The other seems indifferent in drivers Ed and to his parents instruction.
But he ends up abiding by the laws.
Then the judge asks, “Of the two, which teenager do you think deserves to have their license suspended?”
Before the person answers, the judge tells another story about an Amazon employee who takes his truck for a wild joyride through a hundred people’s front lawns.
The driver makes the excuse that he’s supposed to treat the truck as if it was his own and so he did.
He asks, “What do you think Amazon should do to that driver that hey entrusted their reputation to?”
The man standing in the courtroom is starting to notice a theme to the stories.
And he’s pretty sure that the judge is about to make him regret his irresponsible driving.
This morning, we come to the third story that Jesus tells the Jewish Leaders that have come to challenge His authority.
Like with stories that the judge told in his courtroom, King Jesus keeps escalating similar themes the last 2
We read in Matthew 22:1-14
1 And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, 3 and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.” ’
5 But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. 7 The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you
find.’ 10 And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guest
11 “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. 12 And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast 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.”
As this parable takes a few unusual turns, we look at this passage and the -
Title: Plot Twists in God’s Redemption Story
We can definitely see an increased intensity in the nature of the 3 parables Jesus shares as He speaks here.
1st parable - Father asking things of his sons (obligation of family obedience)
2nd parable - vineyard owner’s contractual relationship with his share croppers (contractual obligation)
Today - a king dealing with the privileged residents of his kingdom (obligation of allegiance to their king)
v. 1-4 set the stage of a much anticipated wedding of the king’s son.
1 And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, 3 and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.” ’
Jesus is describing a story in which wedding invitations have been sent out and those invited are expected
When the servants of the king go to let them know they should come to the wedding, the guests refuse to come.
This would’ve been extremely rude and offensive to the king and his son.
The servants go back and let those invited know that the lavish food is going to getting cold
By talking about the kingdom of heaven, Jesus is teaching about the greatest kingdom of all.
To have eternal life is to be a part of and embrace this Kingdom
As in the previous parable with the vineyard owner, we see God represented as the King of the kingdom of heaven.
We see people described as rejecting any sense of obligation and thumbing their noses at Him.
We also see the longsuffering nature of God after having suffered offence from those that He had invited/elevated by His grace.
The “A” List group of people definitely represent the Jewish leaders that Jesus is teaching in this moment.
We see that there’s really not good reason’s given for their absence
5 But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. 7 The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
The people described in v. 5 are basically ignoring the notice of the event.
They’re going off to do their regular day-to-day stuff.
It’s like the way a lady used to tell a man she wasn’t interested in going out with him by saying, “I have to wash my hair.”
The others responded even worse than rudely - with violence toward the messengers.
In that day, to mistreat a person’s emissaries was a huge insult as if it’s done to the one they represent- basically a declaration of war.
The king is described as giving a drastic response.
I think that Jesus is communicating the idea these people will pay dearly for their disinterest & disrespect.
As we saw in the two parables, this response mirrors how the religious leaders had treated God’s prophets.
And this is much of how they had/would treat Jesus’ disciples and even Jesus Himself.
Since Jesus talks about the king destroying their city, it’s pretty apparent that He’s talking about Jerusalem.
The city is in trouble and Jesus says the quiet part outload that when He weeps over it in 23:37
And He let’s His disciples know what would happen to the temple in -
* Matthew 24:1–2 1 Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. 2 But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
But the wedding feast is still going to happen - just with a new guest list.
8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’ 10 And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guest
In the parable, the king and His son would be dishonored to not have guests at the wedding.
So, the king sends his servants to invite as many people as they could find.
We’re told specifically that they gathered all whom they found, both bad and good
The servants didn’t vet the 2nd group of wedding guests.
It’s not that the king wanted a good mix of good and bad people
It’s pointing to the idea that the king didn’t have requirements of merit that his guests needed to meet.
His servants were successful in completing their task and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
This is where we (the church) come into the story.
Rather than preaching about others in this parable, I’m focusing on what this should tell us about a relationship with God today.
What I think God wants us to take away from this parable as His church is that you should -
1. Embrace Your Unmerited Position
Applying the 1st parable, Jesus tells the religious leaders that the repentant tax collectors and prostitutes would enter the kingdom of heaven before them.
In the 2nd parable - Jesus interprets His teaching and tells the religious leaders,
“the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.”
The religious leaders expected God to honor them for their moral excellence.
Jesus’ parables are giving fair warning that something bigger is going on while they are rejecting Jesus
And their rejection of Jesus would lead to them being set aside as God’s privileged people.
The people that would replace them would be a new group (the church) consisting of Jews and Gentiles.
This new group of people wouldn’t end up thinking “I deserve to be a part of God’s privileged people.”
No, it would be clear that the church is God’s people because of God’s grace and not their merit.
I was visiting the home of a pastor friend in Albania.
He was growing several different kinds of lemons.
But he was growing them all from the same lemon tree.
?- How’s this possible? - grafting
He would cut open the branch of the tree and connect limb from an expensive, bouji lemon variety.
This would allow that branch to be supplied with what if needed to produce the different lemons
Like a lemon branch grafted onto tree, we need to be grateful we’re a part of God’s family
Embrace Your Unmerited Position
Romans 11 uses the illustration of grafting olive branches into a tree to describe the church as His people.
As in our parable, we’re the people brought from around town for the wedding feast
And we’re a branch that’s been grafted into the tree - the privileded of people of God
and this is what Roman’s 11 tells us about the attitude we should have about it.
* Romans 11:17–18 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches….
I don’t know if you noticed the difference between us (the church) and my friend’s lemon grafting.
Typically, you graft branches from better trees into the wild tree.
Romans describes us as the wild branches being grafted into a cultivated tree.
What this is saying is that it’s all a matter of grace - God’s unmerited favor.
We weren’t worthy of it. We weren’t going to bear better fruit than the original tree of the Jewish people.
God just wanted to show His amazing grace by making a rag tag bunch of good and bad people into His privileged people.
And we should be grateful for it.
Jesus adds a layer to this set of parables that He hadn’t included in the previous two.
It helps us to see that (while a relationship with God is unmerited) it is not unconditional.
This happens when the king goes to check on his guests.
11 “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. 12 And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
One of the guests stood out like a sore thumb because he wasn’t’ wearing a wedding garment.
Recall these guests were a mix of good and bad guests that were invited in off the streets.
I like the understanding that the wedding garments were provided for all of them.
But it may be that (in that culture) it was expected that the invitees would go home and change clothes
The king is asking how it was that the man didn’t receive a wedding garme
Or he’s asking how the man how he got through the door dressed as he was.
The man was speechless, meaning he was in the wrong and couldn’t say anything in defense of himself.
This seems to be an act of supreme disrespect and disregard for the kind provision of the king.
The king’s response reflects the brazenness of the man’s actions.
And the king exercises absolute authority (much like we’re accustomed to seeing in a Mob movie).
“take this guy out and make him disappear permenantly”
From this interesting twist, I want to encourage you to -
2. Embrace God’s Conditional Salvation.
The condition that needed to be met was for the guests to wear a wedding garment.
I’m inclined to agree with my hero, Augustine, and say the garment represents the righteousness of Christ.
We can definitely say that the NT teaches that Christians are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
But what we know is that the wedding feast wasn’t filled without any conditions placed on the attendees.
[liberation theology]
This requirement of the attendees is important as there are many teachers that would say,
“This parable teaches that God rejects the people that are in power.
And God accepts without any conditions the people that are oppressed or downtrodden by society.”
This is the teaching of liberation theology or Critical Theory - both applications of Marxist ideology
The facts are these.
God has graciously invites anyone to be a part of His kingdom.
The invitation isn’t limited to the Jewish leaders or even to just Jews.
But a relationship with God is begun by meeting His condition.
That condition is faith (total trust) in the death and resurrection of the God-Man, Jesus Christ.
The grace that God showed to Abraham by making a covenant with him is amazing for sure.
From all the people in the world, God chose to make a covenant with Abraham & turn his descendents into a nation.
It was all by God’s grace (His unmerited favor).
But it wasn’t unconditional.
First, God told Abraham to get up and move his family to a land they’d never seen.
And Abraham believed God and went by faith.
As with anyone, Abraham needed to be declared righteous by God in order to stand before Him forgiven.
In Gen 15:6, we’re told that Abraham had a forgiven relationship with God because
“he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”
This verse is later quoted in Romans 4:3, Gal. 3:6, and James 2:23 because it’s important for us to known that Abraham was made righteous by God’s grace through FAITH.
Just as Abraham met the condition of faith and was made righteous as a result,
all who are saved have made the condition of faith in Christ Jesus as our Savior.
The evidence of saving faith is the inwelling Holy Spirit…
Jesus throws one more twist into His teaching with what He says as an explanation after the parable.
The explanation that Jesus gives for all the twists and turns of this parable is this.
14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”
There’s a lot of examples of people being called/invited in this parable.
The invitation goes out to a lot more than the number that are chosen to be a part of God’s Kingdom.
Really everyone in the parable aside from the king’s household are invited/ called.
This includes those originally invited that chose not to attend and those good and bad that later came.
It includes the man that refused to wear his wedding garment as well.
But Jesus adds a twist by bringing up the idea of people being CHOSEN.
Along with embracing your unmerited position & embracing God’s conditional salvation, you should
3. Embrace God’s Sovereign Explanation.
In this statement, we find one of those intersections of the sovereignty of God and our moral responsibility.
Everyone in the parable ends up where they are due to their decisions,
But we’re told that they also ended up where they were due to the choosing of God.
Jesus describes those who end up in the privilege position as “chosen.”
Jesus is basically saying
“All this looks like the choices of these characters, but sovereign choice of God is also involved.”
we often think of entering heaven as entering through a gate.
Maybe you’ve heard of how, if there was a gate of heaven, it might have one statement on the outside -
“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”
This general call of salvation is certainly consistent throughout Scripture.
We’ve read in Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
He says to us in Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
Jesus calls out in John 7:37 “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”
So, we can understand the sign at the entrance of heaven would be one of general invitation.
And the words on the other side would tell a different story of God’s sovereign grace in our salvation.
And once you enter in, you see the sign on the other side saying,
“Chosen before the foundation of the world.”
This is in agreement with Jesus’ statement in John 6:44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”
It’s as if, in that moment, we realize
In the thoughts about God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility in salvation, I will share one certainty.
The Bible tells us that we choose to trust Christ as Savior because we are chosen for salvation.
It doesn’t tell us we are chosen for salvation because we will trust Christ for salvation.
And we’re also told that every person that trusts Christ as their Savior actively chooses to believe the gospel
Once again, I love how Ephesians 1 describes it.
* Ephesians 1:3–4, 13-14 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him… In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
Or as Jesus weaves together God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility to believe in John 6:39-40
* John 6:39–40 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
?- Are you willing to embrace Jesus’ sovereign explanation of God’s grace?
“Many are called but few are chosen”
It’s supposed to leave the Christian in awe of God’s amazing grace and stand as a warning to those who are rejecting Him.
An eternal relationship with God is available to anyone for the asking.
God’s grace is through Christ’s sacrifice can never be deserved - that’s what makes it grace.
Still, God’s saving grace comes to us on the condition of faith in Christ.
And through it all, God’s sovereign grace is magnified by the fact that those who are saved are chosen before they could ever even think of doing anything to earn i
