Matthew 22:1-14 Unwilling to Celebrate

Listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in.

Gathering After COVID and the Call to Church Unity

Well, welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I am so glad to be back with you guys. As most of you know, my family all experienced a dance with Rona for a week or so, a couple.

Weeks ago.

And so, just to say, my family's all doing well. We've all recovered from all of the primary symptoms, and we are cleared to be here. So, I know that that makes some people nervous, and at the same time, we are supposed to be immune for 90 days or something like that.

I do still have, and I say this in a lot of context because it's a little awkward. I have asthma, and so I still have some lung irritation, and because of that, occasionally I'll cough. And so, everybody, what do you say when somebody coughs in your presence?

What are you supposed to say?

COVID.

Everybody says COVID.

So, you know, feel free to do that this morning if I cough, and we'll get through it together. But I want to say this. Just even knowing that you guys were gathering the last couple of weeks and taking part in the live stream made me a little sad, to be honest.

I wake up every Sunday morning excited, and I mean this sincerely. For 11 years now, I wake up on Sunday morning, and I'm excited to gather together with you. I love the chance to gather with my church family, and it's been a privilege to serve all of you over all of these years.

I'm very grateful for the way, and again, when it comes to recovery from COVID, we know that it doesn't always go that way, and so we give God all the honor and glory for that, and we thank Him for that.

We recognize that it's His hand in our lives. We don't deserve it. We deserve quite worse circumstances than that, but because of His grace, I'm standing here before you this morning. And so, thankful that we have a church that has had and experienced significant unity over the years, and even though we're in a two-service format, and there's going to be another group that comes in at 1030, we are still a church together.

I look forward to that day when we can all gather together again, and what that looks like, we don't know, and when that happens, we don't know, but let me encourage us all to remember our need to continue to grow in faith and community and service together.

We all need to trust God to live out His word, that we would live out His word, and we need to trust Him for that. We need to love one another, and we need to serve one another in community, and even maybe more so at a time like this, when everything is still consistently up in the air, and we don't know what the future holds, but we know, and as cliche as it is, we know the one who.

Holds the future.

The Kingdom of Heaven as a Royal Wedding Feast

And so, this morning, we're going to be looking at another parable of Jesus as He continues to take it to the religious leaders. That's kind of His MO in the last week of His life. Really, He kind of turns a corner in that last week as He comes into Jerusalem, and He really takes the religious leaders to task.

He pushes them. And let me start with a fundamental question before we jump into the controversy that's in this parable that He tells. Fundamental question, and I'm looking for a response, a raised hand.

How many of you like to celebrate? Do you like to celebrate? You like to enjoy things. Do you remember what those things were like? You remember what it was like to celebrate and to have a party? You like a good party?

How about if they're serving prime rib? Anybody? Does that sound like a good party? Anybody down with that? What if there's dancing? Anybody there? I lost a lot of the guys on that one, of course. But yeah, some people like to dance, and I personally, I really love weddings.

I love to go to weddings. I love to participate in weddings. I love to officiate weddings. I enjoy celebrating with the couple, their new life together. I love good food that's usually associated with weddings.

I love the laughter and the fun of hanging out. I mean, I'm an extrovert by nature, and so I have done some weddings in the past where primarily the only two people I know are the bride and groom, and I still love them.

Like, I love to get together at the reception and meet new people and talk around the table and all of that stuff, but I have never been to, and I'm guessing that nobody in this room has checked this box yet.

I have never been to a royal wedding. But God likens His kingdom to a royal wedding for His son. He likens it to a royal wedding. A king has a wedding feast prepared for his son. The kingdom of God is like that.

But there are two devastating realities that Jesus brings out in this parable that are kind of surprising as we talk about celebration, as we talk about the joy and the delight of seeing two people married and then celebrating that through good food and good fellowship and all of that stuff.

There are two things that He highlights through this parable. There are some who will not celebrate. There are some who refuse to celebrate the son. And further, He kind of draws out through nuance at the end of this parable, further there are some who will try to look like they're celebrating the son, while really at the end, what they're really doing is rejecting His offer of generosity.

So let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to Matthew chapter 22, verses 1 through 14. Again, Matthew 22, 1 through 14. We're going to read this in its entirety and recast. Remember, this is God's holy word, a word that is powerful and wants to transform us by the understanding of it and then the living out of it.

And so, let's read it together, Matthew 22, 1 through 14. And again, Jesus spoke to them in parables saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come.

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. But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully and killed them.

The king was angry and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their.

City.

Then he said to his servants, the wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go, therefore, to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you can find. 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 guests. But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?

And he was speechless. 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, for many are called, but few are chosen.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for the power that it has in our lives to transform us and to change us in that we see here a faithful teaching from Jesus about His kingdom, about our need to check on what we're wearing as we purport to be celebrating the Son.

And I thank you that your kingdom is like a call to a celebration. Man, do we need celebration during this season of our lives. So many things are down. So many things are discouraging. So Father, I pray that you would renew the swing and the step of your people who hear this message this morning, Father, that you would be with the hearing of your word and by your spirit encouraging us to celebrate and to draw others into the celebration.

Father, we know that you have such a good future for your children, such a good future for those who hope in you and have their sins forgiven by you. So, Father, I pray that you would guide us and direct us into your word this morning in Jesus name.

Announcements and Ministry Updates

Hey Recast! I'm Jason.

And I'm CJ.

We're so happy you're here.

But we have some announcements for you before we get started. The worship folder has announcements and upcoming events.

Also, inside it is a connection card. If you're new to Recast, we'd love to get to know you. Please fill this out and drop it off at the welcome table up front.

And also, we don't pass an offering plate here at Recast, so if you feel like you give, just put it in the envelope and drop it in the table up front. Once again, Recast is supporting the Matawan Area Pantry for the Christmas distribution.

There are roughly 200 families that this covers, so therefore we need 300 to 400 items.

We're collecting items starting next Sunday through December 6th. So we're having flag football here at the church from 9 to noon on Friday the 27th. If you guys would like more information, go to recastchurch .com.

Recast is having two identical Christmas services, one on December 18 and one on December 19.

This event is a combo of two well-loved Christmas events here at Recast. The Recast Kids Christmas Program and the Christmas Party.

We'll plan to pre-record the Kids Program, watch it together as a church family, and worship God during this Christmas service. More details to come. And that's not all going on here at Recast. If you're interested in more information, go to recastchurch .com.

Or you can check out our YouTube channel, Recast Church. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell for notifications.

I would love to get any feedback about those, so send those to the office if you have any feedback about the way that we're doing. Obviously, has anybody noticed we're doing announcements differently the last few weeks?

So we're doing those differently, but obviously trying to bring creative information to you. And that's compliments of Hope Klein, our communications director. And so she's been doing a great job with those, and I really appreciate that.

So make sure your Bibles are open right now to Matthew 22, verses 1 through 14. Reopen those and get comfortable. And as Dave said at the start, if at any time you need to get more coffee or juice or donuts, take advantage of that.

But we're going to jump right in to the message here. And then we'll sing some songs afterwards for those of you that are unfamiliar with the way that we're doing things right now during COVID. So in context, in this context of Matthew 22, verses 1 through 14, just to remind you, because it's been a few weeks since we've been in the book of Matthew, Jesus is speaking all of these parables to the religious leaders of Israel who have come into the outer court of the temple.

Jesus was there teaching, and he gathered a crowd. And so they didn't like that he gathered a crowd there. They didn't like that the people were paying attention to Jesus and listening to him. So they challenged him, came to him and directly said, On what basis, on what authority are you doing these things?

What gives you the right to teach the people like this? So he in turn begins to teach them, and he teaches them in a way that's challenging them back using parables. So now this is the third story that we've read spanning from Matthew 21 to 22, the third parable that he tells that results in the rebuke of the religious leaders.

Jesus begins by telling them here in our text that the kingdom of heaven is like a king throwing a wedding feast for his son. Can you picture it? Can you think of it in your mind? This is a royal wedding.

The bride will become a princess. Think like Disney, right? Like this is the prince, this is the son of the king is getting married. And so this is a royal wedding. And your assumptions would be accurate if you imagined in your mind an immaculate feast at a wedding like this.

The king would spare no expense in a feast to celebrate the wedding of his son. What would be commonplace during this time would be the giving of gifts to the attendees. There would be all kinds of lavish stuff going on, and the feast would usually during this time and era of history, a wedding feast could last days.

You would go home at the end of the day, and then you would be invited back again the next day. And it would go on for several days of feasting and celebration. And that was common. So how much more for a royal wedding?

And imagine, and the image that would be in the mind of these religious leaders, would be probably very little difference between your expectations of a royal wedding and theirs, except for the duration.

You probably would expect it to be a one day event, and they would expect it to last and last and last. And just the choosing of the metaphor. Think about this. Jesus can use all kinds of things. He's telling stories.

This is not a true to life story. It's an account of Jesus telling a story. But he could have used any metaphor that he wanted for the kingdom. But what he chooses to use is a wedding feast. And that shows that Jesus sees the call to the kingdom of God is a good thing.

It's a good thing. It's worthy of celebration. It's not just a call, like I would think of in my youth, not just a call to work for the father in his field as we saw in the first parable that he told, that we looked at a few weeks ago.

Nor is it merely a call to yield the fruit of the harvest to him when he shows up and asks for it, like we saw in the parable that we looked at in last week's text, or the last text when we were together.

But here, it's further revealed as a celebration of his son. And again, I think that the wedding metaphor is strictly a metaphor. I think some people get a little hung up on, especially dudes sometimes, like are you marrying Jesus or something like that.

That's a little creepy. Anybody ever been creeped out by that? Any guys? Like that metaphor never quite resonated with you? Like that's not the purpose. That's not the point. It's getting down to the celebratory nature of this kingdom thing that's going on here.

It's a celebration of the son. The people of the world, through this parable, through the mouth of Jesus, are being called into a banquet in honor of the son of God. That is the call that is going out in this parable.

That is the call that Jesus wants to be on the lips of his disciples and his followers.

Come to the feast.

Come to the celebration. Now, tradition would have it that an initial invitation would go out to prepare to attend the wedding. Now, in that culture and also in many Middle Eastern cultures, there is a tendency for things to not be very timely.

Have any of you ever been in South America or in another country where things don't happen on time? When we were in Uganda, we were leading a pastor's conference that started at 10 o 'clock in the morning, and we would usually not even get up to talk until probably around noon.

It was a couple of hours, wasn't it, Rob, before the people showed up for this thing, and then they would expect it to go longer. I mean, you would show up late for church, and then the church would go until 3 or 4 o 'clock in the afternoon.

I don't think I could get away with that here. But in different cultures, the timing of things were not easy to determine. We expect things to be delivered Amazon prime time, right? We expect it the next day, and we're shocked if it doesn't happen.

So at the end of the day, this initial invitation was for the purpose of identifying there's going to be a wedding. You're not quite sure when, but you're now ready to hear the call to the wedding. You're invited, and you know you're invited.

So when you hear the call, you know that you're one that is legitimate to respond to the call. And so then that second invitation would be issued when all the preparations had been finalized and everything's ready.

So in verse 3, we see that those who were already invited are now called to come. Now this can be done through heralds, through people who would be standing on street corners shouting, come to the wedding feast of the son of the king.

And they would stand on street corners and all around calling out, and then those who had previously received an invitation, that's their call. It's time to come. Get dressed and get there. But according to Jesus, those invited in his story, he chooses to say something radical and strange.

They refused to come. They received the invitation. They received the call. But they refused to come to a wedding feast. This is a serious, serious and significant affront to this king. I mean, who wouldn't want to come to celebrate?

Who would not be willing to accept his generous and gracious table? Think about this.

Can you imagine?

Inviting a bunch of people to a wedding, and they say no. No, I don't think so. Too busy or whatever. And so in verse 4, he sends a third group. We again see a theme of the persistence of our God in calling people.

His patience in calling people. As we saw in previous parables, the sending of servant after servant after servant. To call the people to do what is right. And here, the call to invite, to invite, to invite.

And in verse 4, he tries to entice them. The table is laid. Guys, the food is great, but it's getting cold. And he goes into detail to try to entice them. This is an invitation to party. The choice's prime rib is tender and warm and ready to cut.

And the king issues a command. Come to the wedding feast. Do you see the command there? Come to the wedding feast. It's time. Now, it should stretch our understanding that he would have to ask three times.

It should stretch our credulity. Like, we should be kind of like, Jesus, you're telling a story that's a little bit outlandish here. It's a little far-fetched that a king would invite that many people to come and eat at his table.

And people would reject him three times. Come on. It seems like an unreasonable story that the lavish feast of a king would be rejected. But just like our text, where Jesus stretched us to consider the love of God a few weeks ago, the love of God who would keep sending servant after servant, and the tenants kept abusing them and even killing them, and he still sends servant after servant, all the way to the point culminating to demonstrate the love of God in the sending of his own son who was killed.

But here he's highlighting something darker. Here by the stretch in our credulity, the stretch of our imagination, of a king being scorned by his people who say, no, we won't come and celebrate with you.

We won't come and eat your choice food. We won't come and delight in your son. We won't come celebrate and dance for days with you. Do you hear the rejection in this? Are you getting it? What it's coming down to is Jesus knowing our hearts.

Knowing the way that humans work and saying, our disobedience knows no limits. That's what this is illustrating. Our disobedience and our desire to rebel against even the good things that God would have for us.

We are a people who will skip a feast if commanded. If we're commanded to delight, we're commanded to rejoice, we're commanded to celebrate, then no, suddenly I don't feel like rejoicing.

You get it?

Is this kind of dark? Or is everybody just asleep? I'm getting some blank stares. Either it's heavy or it's like going over your heads. I don't know which. We will indulge in all kinds of things that we know full well are terrible for us.

Drugs that would consume our very lives.

God says, hey, avoid that.

That's not going to go good for you. And we indulge in that kind of stuff. We find it in our hearts to rebel against the king. Here's what I'm getting at. Maybe this will illustrate it. Tell me if you get this.

If God says, eat this piece of chocolate cake, suddenly I don't feel like chocolate cake. If it's commanded, all of a sudden it doesn't sound so good. Do you guys get what I'm saying in this?

You feeling it?

Even the good that he calls us to sometimes becomes something unappealing to us as sin-cursed people. So he commands in this text, he commands, come and celebrate. Come to my feast. And in verse 5, what do we see?

What do you see right there at the beginning? They paid no attention to the heralds. They had more pressing issues. Jesus in his story says that some went back to their farming. In other words, taking care of, number one, doing the things that would fulfill them.

Some went off to their businesses. Not a far stretch and not significantly different from farming. Just some were farmers and some were business owners. But some went off to their businesses. Greed and the need for what they could control would drive these.

Some people flat out just have no time for celebration. They're busy making a life for themselves. Too serious to celebrate the king. And for so many years, I personally, and I don't know what kind of background you come from.

Some of you come from a little bit more of a legalistic background like me. And so for many years, I could never imagine God's call as a call to celebrate. I didn't see it that way. I only ever thought of it as a call to his field.

A call to work. A call to put in the effort. A call to put in the time. A call to significant effort and striving. And that's part of it, but that's not the whole picture. By a long shot, that's not the whole picture.

I saw it as simply and only a call to get to the business of dying to myself. If I enjoy it, then it must not be good. Anybody relate to that feeling? Anybody have that feeling in your youth or in your upbringing?

So really all along, what God is calling us to is a celebration of his son. Do you see the stubbornness of the human heart? Do you see the glorious message that we're given to share with others? Come to the feast.

Come to the celebration of the son of our king.

That's the call.

But in the story, things get worse. Some are too busy doing their own thing to even go and celebrate and respond to that call. But others in verse 6 have even more wicked and evil intentions. They seized the king's servant, treating them shamefully and killed them.

These are not passive servants. They are wicked and murderous and evil people. And then the award for understatement of the text goes to the opening line of verse 7. Do you see it? Do you see the understatement?

The king was angry. Does that seem like an understatement to you? He goes through great trouble and through great effort to lay out this feast and this celebration. The people reject him. And even slaughter his heralds.

Slaughtering his servants. Killing them and putting them to death. For what? Because they called them to celebrate.

Wow.

The king was angry. Yes, he was angry. Remember, the food was ready. The prime rib is getting cold. And in the midst of this, again, the story is kind of almost mildly humorous at this point because you have to have in your mind the wedding feast is ready and he dispatches soldiers to go destroy this city while the food is getting cold.

Okay, are you getting? There's just kind of a strange picture there. The king dispatches a legion of troops to go ransack and destroy the city where his servants were killed, where his heralds were killed.

And this part of the text shows us that the king calls everyone to celebrate. But those who reject his invitation do so out of rebellious hearts. And there is indeed punishment in view for those who rebel against this king.

Jesus isn't pulling any punches here as he's talking to these religious leaders in the outer court of the temple. The verdict here is swift and severe against those who refuse to celebrate the son. And now back to the party.

Now back to the party.

The king has a feast ready, but nobody to eat it. And so he sends out all of his heralds, the ones that obviously survived, and he sent them out to Main Street to invite as many people as they can find.

And verse 9 blows open wide the invitations. It's not just to the religious elites or to the insiders, but due to the rejection and the unworthiness of those insiders, now the invites go out to everyone.

Not just to Israel, but to the whole world. And how many of you are glad that the invitation did not just go out to Israel? It went out all the way to the extent that it reached us here as Gentiles in Matawan, Michigan.

Praise God, I am a beneficiary of the teaching that Jesus is expressing here. That his word would go out globally and indiscriminately to people, both good and bad alike, the text says, are invited according to verse 10.

And this is the way the celebration of the sun will come to pass. People, common people, not so special people, will fill the wedding hall of the king. But just in case there's confusion about this wedding hall and what it symbolizes, the wedding hall is not heaven, it is not the eternal kingdom, it is not salvation.

That's not what Jesus is talking about, and that's obvious by what happens with the wedding garment here. He is talking about the kingdom of God as in the formation of a people who claim to respond to the call to honor the sun.

Now there is sometimes a subtle theme in the teachings of Jesus, and sometimes it's overt and sometimes it's subtle, that tells us that there will not be a final reckoning until the end of time. One of the more overt teachings, that there will not be a final reckoning and that the kingdom will be mixed, it will be confused.

In other words, there are some here who have faith and there are some here who do not. And at any given time in any given church, there are those who are pretending to be in and there are those who are in.

And yes, he talks about that. And I believe that he's alluding to that here in this text. There's a man that is there that is pretending, but is not really there on the basis of celebrating the king. See, Jesus told in another parable very explicitly, he likened the kingdom of heaven to a field that was sown with wheat.

But in the night, an evil person, an enemy of the farmer, came in and sowed weeds in the middle of the planting season. And when the wheat grew up, the weeds grew up with it, to the degree that their roots were entangled.

And so he said, no, no, no, his servant came to him and said, should I come and pull up all the weeds? And he said, no, if you pull up the weeds, you're going to damage the wheat. So what we're going to do is we're going to wait until the final harvest.

We're going to cut it all down and then we're going to sort it in the end. The kingdom of heaven is like that, where the good and the bad are sown together. And that's, how many of you experience that in life?

You see the good and the bad sown together in your life? It is, it's all around us. It can't be sometimes very easily extricated, can it? It can't be pulled apart. Sometimes the roots of our lives are so tangled in a variety of things.

That it's hard to pull apart.

Here he illustrates that same idea, showing that there are some who claim to come in to celebrate the sun who actually are still in rebellion against him. The king comes in, here's where it is at the end.

The king comes in to give a final look at the guests. All this ragtag, scrambled people that he went to the pubs to pick up, he went to the bowling alleys to pick them up, he went to sporting events to pick them up.

He's gone all over to get this group of people. And he's pulled them all together. And so he goes to make a last assessment of the crowd before the sun makes his grand entrance. Anybody looking forward to the sun's grand entrance, by the way?

I am so looking forward to that day. That will be a day of celebration for sure. But in his assessment before the sun, before the sun and the bride make their final entrance, he's shocked to find a guy standing there in his common day work clothes.

He has no wedding garment on. Now when a Jew thought of wedding clothes, he thought of something very different than you think. We think you've got to spend a lot of money. You think expensive. You think tuxedo or really great, I guess people don't really wear tuxedos as much anymore, but really nice suit.

The most expensive seems to be the best clothes, right? Anybody know what I'm talking about? And a bazillion dollar dress is the way you've got to go and all this stuff. They thought when you said wedding dress or wedding clothes, they thought well laundered white cloak.

Well laundered white cloak. That's all you need. By the way, interestingly, that's the cheapest thing to obtain in this ancient culture. The very cheapest thing. It costs money to dye clothes. It was more costly to dye something purple.

That's why purple was the color of royalty. Only wealthy people could afford a purple robe. Everybody had something white. The goal, launder it as good as you can, throw it on, go to the wedding. So that's what they think of when they think wedding clothes.

Cheap white, I mean think about their culture. Agricultural, pastoral, culture, sheep, wool, lots of white. Lots of white clothes available. Accessible to the rich and the poor alike. All would have simple white clothes.

Further, it's possible, and I think it's likely, that there's a tradition here shared between the religious leaders and Jesus that's missed on us because it would have been so given in their culture. Such a commonplace understanding that when they hear this is a royal wedding, their minds all jump there.

Jesus never mentions it because it was just such a common tradition. In verses 11 through 13, I think Jesus is presupposing this tradition. It was common for wealthy weddings to include the giving of a wedding garment to guests.

That was routine. If a person was wealthy enough, you would assume a king would be, right? If a person was wealthy enough, they would give uniform white garments to everyone at their arrival. They would provide that outer cloak of bright white upon arrival so that everyone looked the same.

This being a king, it's quite likely that Jesus is implying that custom here. This would make sense of the reaction of the king to this one who would refuse his, at the end of the day, what it is, is a rejection of generosity.

He asks the man, approaches him kindly, says, Friend, but he asks him a genuine question. How did you get in here without accepting one of my robes? And the man who remains speechless has no excuse. He has come in without receiving from the king that which was required for entry.

I hope that metaphor isn't lost on us because it's very important in this text. The king provides the white robes necessary for entry. Some will reject it while pretending to be there on behalf of the king.

So even if I'm off base on my interpretation of this specific passage, it is very worth noting that a robe of pure white is used in various passages throughout the New Testament as an image of the righteousness of God granted to those who have faith and trust in his son.

It's mentioned in Philippians 3, 9. It's mentioned in Revelation 19, 8 about a white pure robe of righteousness, metaphorically speaking. So I'm suggesting to you all, recasts, that we know the robe that this man lacked, what Jesus is getting at in this story.

What does this man lack in this wedding celebration? What did he need to be acceptable at the celebration of the son of the king? He needed a pure white robe which symbolizes a righteousness that comes by faith in the son.

What do we need to be acceptable at the ultimate celebration of the son of God? We need a righteousness that is given to us by God. Not a robe we make for ourselves from our own good works. Not our work clothes by which we farm and we do our business.

But the clean, pure, white robe of the righteousness of the son of God. This man indicts himself by his speechlessness. And the king has him kicked out of the celebration as a pretender. He didn't really come to celebrate.

He has come in his own way for his own purposes. This warning is not, by the way, to make those of you with a super sensitive conscience, jump to the conclusion that you could lose your salvation. Oh no, I'm in right now, but I could get kicked out.

No, this passage is rather saying, you need to be given something before you can even come in. Just as so many other passages in the New Testament make it clear, that judgment between heaven and hell, judgment between salvation and condemnation, rests on a righteousness given to us by God, not earned.

This passage must come in line with all of that weight of Scripture. A weight of Scripture that we covered thoroughly in 2019. Going through the book of Romans, you can go back and listen to that sermon series.