The Parable of the Wedding Feast: Matthew 22:1–14
Let’s read, please, in Matthew chapter 22. We’ll read from verse 1.
Then Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said: The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding, and they were not willing to come.
Again, he sent out other servants, saying, “Tell those who were invited, ‘See, I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and fatted cattle are killed. All things are ready. Come to the wedding.’” But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business. And the rest seized his servants and treated them spitefully and killed them.
But when the king heard about it, he was furious. He sent out his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned up their city. Then he said to his servants, “The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore, go into the highways and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.” So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. When the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, “Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?” He was speechless.
Then the king said to the servants, “Bind him hand and foot. Take him away. Cast him into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen.
That’s all we’ll read.
An Invitation Freely Offered
A few days before His death, the Lord Jesus told several stories. He told those stories to give some insight as to what was going on. He says, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” He compares the kingdom of heaven to some things.
In one story, He told about a man who owned a vineyard and let some men look after it. When he sent his servants to receive from the vineyard, they wouldn’t give them what the servants were looking for, what they were asking for.
But in the story we read here, servants go out, and they’re not asking for anything. They’re going out with an invitation, and the people won’t accept it. So, in one story, they won’t give what was required. In this story, they won’t accept what’s being freely offered to them.
Really, you have both aspects in the gospel. What we’re telling you tonight, the Lord is looking for something from you in the sense that He expects you to turn from the evil of your own heart. He expects me to do that—to turn against sin. That’s called repentance. That’s what He’s looking for.
But then He wants to give. That’s the wonderful part of the gospel we want to tell you about and emphasize tonight: God wants to give to you. There are those two aspects of the gospel.
You’ve probably heard the little illustration of the competition between the north wind and the sun. They saw a man down there with his coat on, and they had a competition between them: who can make that man take his coat off?
The wind blew and exerted the cold against him, but all the man did was wrap his cloak tighter. Then the sun came out and shone with all its warmth, and it wasn’t very long before the man got his coat off.
Tonight, maybe you’ve heard judgment. You’ve heard the truth that there is a coming reckoning for sin. Maybe you’ve just wrapped your cloak all the tighter. But what about the love of God? Has it ever melted your heart? Can you respond to what God has done for you and wants to give you?
Your Part in God’s Story
We want to look at what happened in this story. Before we look at some of the details, I’ll just say that God is writing a big story, and you’re in it. You’re part of the story that He’s writing. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought of it that way.
Some of my grandkids came up and auditioned to be part of a play a couple of weeks ago. To our surprise, almost everyone who showed up ended up in the play. If they couldn’t be the farmer’s family, then one of them was able to be the farmer’s dog. If they weren’t able to be the farmer’s dog, then they could be one of the farm animals. They could all be something, and they all ended up playing a part.
My grandkids ended up playing the part of the farm animals. We practised all week to be a farm animal. But they were all part of the story.
Tonight, seriously, God is writing a big story, and you are going to be part of it. You’re either going to play the part of the Christ acceptor or the Christ rejector. You will have a part in God’s story, and all will glorify Him. Every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess that He’s Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
What Happens at the Wedding Feast?
Let’s just recap what happened in the story, in case you missed it as we were reading it.
A king wants to put on a big feast, and it’s all in celebration, in honour of his son. There’s a guest list. In today’s world, we might call that the A-list for the wedding.
The servants go out and tell them it’s time. Everything’s ready, but they don’t want to come. They all have reasons for their excuses. For the most part, they just ignore the invitation. Some of them turn nasty and actually kill the servants.
The king’s outraged. He’s furious. The king sends, judgment comes, and he destroys these people. Then the invitation goes out to what I would call the B-list. This list is everybody. Anybody who’ll come, come on in.
These people are all welcomed into this magnificent feast, and it’s a wonderful time. But there is someone who shows up, and he doesn’t take a wedding garment that’s provided for him. So the king has to deal with him, and he’s excluded. He’s turned out of the feast.
What is the Lord Jesus really teaching here? He’s teaching, first of all, that He Himself is King. He’s teaching that He’s going to honour His Son. His Son is the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s teaching that He’s prepared everything for salvation.
He’s teaching that the invitation has already gone out, and there have been people who have refused it. They’ve come under the judgment of God. That has happened already.
He’s teaching now that the invitation is going out into all the world, and you are included in the invitation tonight. He’s teaching that His banqueting house will be filled.
He’s also teaching that you must have a wedding garment. We’re not talking here about a dress code to attend a church. We’re not talking about a literal dress code. We’re talking about the garment of righteousness that God provides to make you fit to be with Him and in His presence.
Five Lessons from the Parable of the Wedding Feast
I just want to look at five lessons really briefly—five lessons that I’ve appreciated from this passage.
1. The Gospel Is About the King and His Son
The first one is that the gospel is about the king and his son.
We like to think that the gospel is about us, about, “How do I come into the good of eternal life?” That’s so important. That’s true. But the gospel is primarily about God wanting to honour His Son.
His Son is the One who created the world. Did you know that? This very world that we live in tonight was created by the Son. “By Him all things were made. Without Him was not anything made that was made,” John says.
God is going to honour Him. God’s going to see to it that He’s honoured. He’s arranging it. He’s setting it up.
Listen to the words of the Lord Jesus: “All should honour the Son just as they honour the Father.” There are people tonight who say they honour God. They’ll pray to God. They’ll speak about God, but they’re not honouring the Son. The Lord Jesus said, “He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father that sent Him.”
I ask you: have you honoured the Son?
If you want to insult somebody, it’s easy. Sometimes we do it inadvertently. It’s easy to insult. If you want to really insult somebody, don’t believe what they say. Or, secondly, turn down an invitation that they give you with no good reason. You’ll insult them real good.
People tonight are dishonouring the Son. This gospel is all about the king and his son.
You can dishonour your teacher at school, and you’ll probably get in trouble over that. You get some bad marks. You don’t respect your teacher.
You can dishonour your parents. If you do that, you’ll regret that for the rest of your life. The Bible says, “Honour your parents.” But if you dishonour God, it’s a disaster. It’ll end in total disaster for you, because God is to be revered. He is to be feared.
2. The King Has Made All the Preparations
The second lesson: the king has looked after all the preparations. He says here, “I have prepared.” I love that statement. That’s what the gospel is all about.
It’s not about you preparing anything to merit God’s favour. God has made all the preparations needed for that.
This king went to a lot of expense. It’s a great feast. He’s going to honour his son. I’m sure no expense was spared. What about the God of heaven? What kind of expense has He gone to, to provide salvation for you and for me?
Could I say it cost Him everything? It cost Him all that He had to provide for you, to provide salvation. There’s no more expensive gift in all of the universe of God than what He’s provided in the gift of His Son. He wants to give Him to you. Have you received Him?
The king says, “All things are ready.” You can’t fit much on these slides, but I do want to put that on there. If that could just get into our minds: all things are ready.
God’s not up in heaven trying to make arrangements in case you will come. All things are ready. Wonderful. Before there ever was a world, He planned how this would happen. All things are ready.
3. Ignoring the Invitation Is Rejecting It
A third lesson: many have rejected the invitation by ignoring it. It says they made light of it. They went their ways, one to his farm, another to his business.
If you want another rendering of that, in the Amplified it reads this way: they paid no attention. They disregarded the invitation. They treated it with contempt.
To reject an invitation, all you have to do is just ignore it. Just don’t reply.
I want to read you a little excerpt from J. C. Ryle. He writes in a way that’s short and concise. I find it very helpful. He says it this way:
There are thousands of hearers of the gospel who derive from it no benefit whatever. They listen to it Sunday after Sunday, year after year, but they don’t believe to the saving of their soul. They feel no special need of the gospel. They see no special beauty in it. They do not perhaps hate it or oppose it or laugh at it, but they do not receive it into their hearts.
They like other things far better—their money, their land, their business, their pleasures. They’re all far more interesting than their souls. It’s an awful state of mind to be in, but it’s awfully common. Let us search our own hearts and take heed that that is not us.
Open sin can kill its thousands, but indifference and neglect of the gospel will kill its tens of thousands. Multitudes will find themselves in hell, not so much because they openly broke the commandments, but because they made light of the truth. Christ died for them on the cross, but they neglected Him.
I thought that was well said.
The rejection for these people ended up in disaster. Picture in your mind just a few years after the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, and the people who said, “His blood be on us and on our children.” Look at Jerusalem in flames. See the temple burning, and see those people being driven out from their city as it’s ruined and destroyed. Judgment fell on those who rejected the invitation.
4. God’s Invitation Includes You
A fourth lesson: the invitation includes you. It includes me. Boy, that’s good news—that God would include you and me in His invitation.
It was about ten years ago now, October 2015. There was a high-class wedding arranged in California. With the time value of money, it would cost more now, but at that time the expense for the day was going to be around $35,000. So it would have been a nice meal.
But at the last minute, things went, I guess you could say, sideways, and the wedding was called off. The parents who had arranged this meal felt strongly that it shouldn’t just be wasted.
The people who were invited didn’t end up at that meal. Her name was Quinn Duane. For the wedding meal, they did something unusual. They went out to the homeless and went to the local shelters, and they told them, “There’s a four-star meal being served. Come on in.”
They brought people in from the street, people who had never seen a meal like this. People eating salmon and sirloin: “We’ve never had anything like it.” The place had people there who never expected to be there.
That’s just like the gospel. God is inviting people to receive tremendous blessing in Christ. There are going to be people who were invited who will never taste of it. And there are going to be people who never thought they’d have any part of God’s favour, and they’ve accepted, and they’re going to be there.
What about you? Will you come into the good of what God’s providing?
In the story, the king sends his servants out into the roadways, into the place where the roads meet. It might have been the intersection of the highways. All the passersby: come on in. As many as you find, invite to the wedding.
What’s the word of the gospel? Don’t take my word for it. What does Christ say? The words of the Lord Jesus: “Whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
Are you accepting what God is offering?
The gospel goes out to all tonight. You’re listening to it here in Canada, in a favoured country, but the gospel is also going out in less favoured places. It’s going out in Pakistan. It’s going out in hospitals, in prisons, schools, missions. It’s going out to people who are poverty-stricken.
People around the world are accepting it, and God is going to fill His banquet hall with people who never expected to be there. Will you be there? Are you going to accept what God gives?
5. You Need the Wedding Garment
The fifth and final lesson that I want to draw from this passage is that you do need a wedding garment.
There was a man in this story. He said he’s going to come. He accepts the invitation, from all appearances, but he accepts it on his own terms: “I’ll come, but I’ll come my way.”
If I understand correctly, back at that time, when you came to a wedding feast, they gave you the clothing, the special garments to wear, on the way in the door. So there’s no excuse for this man. If he was there without a wedding garment, it wasn’t because he couldn’t find one or couldn’t afford one. It’s because he turned it down. He came on his own terms. He says, “I’ll come, but I’ll come my way.”
Is anybody like that here tonight?
I was trying to think this afternoon: what was the motivation? What was in this man’s mind that he would turn down a wedding garment? It appeals to me this way. He’s seeing all these people come in off the street, these street people, and he’s saying, “We’re not like them, right? They all look the same now. You can’t even tell that they were off the street. They’ve got this wedding garment on, but I’m fine just the way I am.”
God wants to receive you the way you are, but you must take the wedding garment.
What Is the Wedding Garment?
What is the wedding garment? It’s His righteousness.
Think about the two accounts. Your account: sin. The account of the Lord Jesus: His perfect righteousness. God credits righteousness to the person who trusts in Jesus. It’s the great exchange.
In all my sin, all my need, I appeal to Him, and He gives me the garment of salvation. With His perfect righteousness, then I’m fit. I’m fit to be at His banquet. I come into His banqueting house. In the Song of Solomon, he says, “Your banner over me is love.”
Everybody tonight, everybody in this building right now, if you’re saved, if you’ve accepted Jesus as your Saviour, you have the wedding garment on.
I don’t want to confuse anybody and make it complicated, but if you insist on having it your way, if you will not accept the righteousness that God provides, you’re in your sins.
To presume on the favour of God, to come into His holy presence in your own standing, in your own righteousness, in your own being a good person, is blasphemous, an offence, and an insult to grace.
God expects you to accept the righteousness that He provides. He gives it freely. It cost Him everything, but He gives it. Will you accept His gift of grace?
I want to quote from Charles Spurgeon. He was a preacher in the 1800s, and he said things in a way that was very helpful. He said:
One of the requirements of the feast is that you, with your heart, believe on the Lord Jesus; that you take His righteousness to be your righteousness. Do you refuse this? If you will not accept the Lord Jesus as substitute, bearing your sins in His own body on the tree, you have not on the wedding garment.
It’s that simple. So God invites. He provides. Do you have His provision?
What Will You Do With God’s Invitation?
We get invitations through our lifetimes. You get invitations from colleagues to attend different functions.
If you happen to get an invitation from an earthly dignitary, from a monarch, the king of wherever, a prime minister, a president, then you would pay more careful attention to it. “What am I going to do with this invitation?” Not just because I’m invited, but because of who it is that’s inviting me.
