The Parables of the Lord Jesus Christ
1 - The Wedding Feast
The first parable that we are looking at is found in Matthew's Gospel chapter 22, verses 1 to 14. I'm calling this parable "The Big Day." I don't know if you know anything about making preparations for a wedding. My daughter was married not so long ago and the amount of preparation was incredible! Here is a king in Matthew twenty-two who is arranging a wedding for his son. It is a big, important royal event. Jesus is using this story to show the Jewish religious leaders, that their attitude and their hardness towards Him is really inexcusable. He tells them that the end result is really very terrible, and in the parable He uses this picture of a wedding to make his point. I have called the first part of this story, "The Invitation Refused."
Jesus says that, "the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son. The kingdom of heaven refers to the great joy in the new heaven when all the redeemed will glory in the reign of God in Jesus Christ. It is all described in the terms of a glorious wedding reception. The Lord Jesus is of course the bridegroom. He calls Himself that in Matthew chapter 9 and the bond between God and his people, and between Jesus Christ and His church, is often compared with bond of love between a bridegroom and his bride.
So the king arranges this royal feast and the invitations go out. It is a gracious, kind invitation to his guests to attend the wedding reception. We see from verse 3 that this king is very patient and long-suffering. He gives first a general invitation or call. When nobody bothers to reply to his invitation, he issues a personal invitation through his servants and makes an urgent, moving appeal. He says to them, "There is no shortage of food to eat. The preparations are all complete." They did not have to worry about things not being quite ready. No expense had been spared. So two invitations had gone out and yet for some strange reason none of the guests was willing to come. And then, as if that were not enough, through his servants he issues a third invitation, this time to people who were not originally invited, to anyone they could find.
Now God himself has spoken to humanity and He has said so often in His Word the Bible, "Just come! Come to me." He called Abraham out of darkness and idolatry and He called him to come to Himself. Eventually through Abraham He made a great nation, Israel the very people of God. God called Moses and He said to him, "I want you to come to me and serve me." God continued to speak and sent He servants the prophets to speak to His Old Testament people. Essentially through the prophets He was saying to them that He was calling them to Himself. "Come to me", He was saying, but so often, sadly, they were unwilling to come.
God's people, Israel, had been amazingly privileged. They had seen God judging the Egyptians for their cruelty and oppression. They had witnessed the plagues that came down on that people and they had experienced a great deliverance by God as they passed through the Red Sea on dry land. They had seen their enemies defeated as the waters came together again to destroy them and they had seen God's hand upon them in the desert as He provided food from heaven and water from the rock. They had seen something of God's glory as He led them in the pillar of cloud and fire and in the Shekinah glory in the Tabernacle. They had seen the very ground shake as God gave the ten commandments to Moses on Sinai.
Yes, this people had been amazingly privileged and yet still their hearts were so very hard. In Isaiah chapter 5 and verse 4 God says, "What more could have been done for my vineyard that I have not done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?" But God sent more messengers, one such was John the Baptist preaching his message of repentance to the people. And then God sent His own dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it is written, "He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive Him." And after this He commissioned the apostles, men of God to preach the Gospel.
The point is this: the king in Jesus' parable symbolises the patience of God. Two invitations had gone out to the main guests, but they had refused to come. Just look at their reaction: verse 5 tells us that there was nothing but indifference. They had other priorities and they had jobs to go to, things to do and they just showed contempt for the king and his invitation. Verse 6 says that others displayed active hostility and they moved from disrespect to murder. Jesus' story goes on to tell that they seized the king's servants and treated them insolently and killed them.
History tells us that this parable is a true picture of people's response to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Himself. Why don't people accept Christ's invitation to come to Him for salvation? Jesus himself gives us a clue in John's Gospel chapter 5 and verse 40 when He says, "You are not willing to come to me that you may have life." This is because people are spiritually blind and dead and lost in their sins. They would rather have their sinful way of life than live for the Lord Jesus Christ, the only one who can save them.
Verse 7 tells us something about the final response of the king to these ungrateful people. When he heard about their rejection of his invitation to the wedding banquet and the murder of his servants, he was furious. He sent out his army and destroyed the murderers and burned their city. This parable of Jesus was prophetic in its picture. The city referred to was almost certainly Jerusalem. We know that in AD 70 Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman troops and the temple razed to the ground and a great number of Jews lost their lives. It was a terrible time of judgement on the people who had rejected Christ and put Him to death. They had refused his invitation to come to Him and find in Him their Messiah, King and Saviour.
The second part of this parable I have called "The Wedding Hall that was Filled." We need to note very carefully that in Jesus' story the wedding reception was never cancelled. The king's plan was that his son should have a great wedding with a great wedding feast afterwards. Nothing was going to change or prevent that plan. The first invited guests were found to be unworthy and undeserving and very wicked in their response to the king's invitation. Now a third invitation goes out. The king says to his servants, "The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find." "Invite as many as you find", the king said. The scope of the invitation was widened to whosoever would come.
What does this mean? As we have discovered, the first guests were a picture of the Jewish people who refused to accept Christ, but now the scope of God's invitation through the Lord Jesus has been widened to include all people. Both Jews and Gentiles are to be brought in so that no one nation has a special standing before God where salvation in concerned. Jesus died for Jews and Gentiles alike and the Gospel offer is for all people.
We see in verse 10 of this story that those who responded to the third invitation of the king were quite a collection of both bad and good, all types and conditions of people. They were not special in any way, it was an invitation open to everyone who would accept it. And so we read that the wedding hall was filled with guests.
So we have "The Invitation that was Refused", "The Wedding Hall that was Filled" and thirdly we have "The Wedding Garment that was Missing." You can imagine the scene. The king smiles at all his guests one after another, but his smile changes to a frown because one guest is not dressed for the occasion. Each guest would have been offered a quality wedding garment on their arrival, but here is a man who sees no need of it. He is indifferent to the offence he will cause to his host. His own, ordinary clothes will be his choice and he refuses the garment offered to him. He comes to the king's table with an attitude of self-satisfaction and there is an arrogance about him.
The king is shocked and amazed and he gives the man a chance to explain himself, but he is speechless because he has no defence. The result is serious because he loses everything and is thrown out of the wedding banquet into a place of darkness and utter despair.
The invitation given in the Gospel of Christ to come to Him for salvation goes out far and wide. Many are reached and yet most are like the man in this parable; they are self-satisfied and defiant. Jesus said that there are two roads through life, one is a broad road that leads to eternal loss, but many are on that road. He said there is also a narrow road and there are just a few on it. This is the road that leads to eternal life.
The man in Jesus story attempted to join the wedding feast improperly clothed and was thrown out. The message for us is that unless we are clothed in the righteousness that the Lord Jesus Christ purchased for us at Calvary by His death for our sins, we can never enter the kingdom of God. We cannot stand before God clothed with our own good deeds for the Bible tells us that "all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags" in his sight.
Have you responded to the king's invitation and trusted in Jesus Christ as your Saviour? Have you ever thought what it cost God himself to provide us with such a wonderful salvation? If you are a Christian are you giving out invitations to the great wedding feast? Are you saying to others "come to the Lord Jesus Christ"? Are you living a life that is full of the king and that commends your Saviour to others?
What is your response to the message of this parable told by Jesus?