Sunday, June 12, 2022 PM

In Matthew chapter 22 and verses 1 -14 as we continue

of the kingdom parables in the gospel of Matthew.

We have the expression at the beginning of Matthew 25, the kingdom of heaven

is now, the kingdom of heaven is like, and having studied Matthew 24, we moved into Matthew

25 and we have a change in focus about what it is like to live in

Christ's kingdom.

What is that like?

What is it like?

Well, we have many different parables in the gospel of

Matthew that give us a context for understanding that.

It is a major theme in the teaching of Christ and this is an especially

instructive parable here in Matthew 22.

We just looked at the parables about vineyards, the parables of the two sons,

the one who said he would work in the vineyard and then he didn't, and the one who at

first refused but then later on actually did.

Followed up by the parable of the wicked vine dressers who were treasonous

stewards of the vineyard and they were destroyed and

the kingdom given to others.

So that is the background.

Let's start with a word of prayer and then we will read our text together.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this night.

We pray that you would bless our reading of your word and our study of it and I pray that you would encourage us as we consider

the good news of Jesus Christ our Savior.

It is in his name that we pray.

Amen.

Matthew 22, beginning in verse 1.

And 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.

Indeed, again he sent out other servants saying, tell those who are invited,

see, I have prepared my dinner.

My oxen and fatted cattle are killed and 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, treated them spitefully and killed

them.

But when the king heard about it, he was furious.

And he sent out his armies, 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.

But 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?

And he was speechless.

Then the king said to the servants, bind him hand and foot, take him away and cast him

into outer darkness.

There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth for many are called, but few

are chosen.

So we have two groups that were invited to the wedding feast.

King, Jesus says there is this king and there is a wedding feast

for his son and he has made everything ready.

And he invites, what kind of people does he invite

to the wedding?

Well, that's the second group.

What about the first group?

Notice verse three says, he sent out his servants to call those who

were invited to the wedding.

There was a group that were on the list.

This is the group.

These are the invited ones.

These are, these were the ones who were supposed to show up

and they said no.

What ways did they say no?

They made fun of it, didn't they?

First of all, they were not willing to come.

And then they made light of it.

They scorned it.

They mocked it.

They, they, they made it, they made it out to be of no

account, no weight, no significance.

And they chose other things to occupy their attention.

A farm, a business, and so on.

And then we have this verse six, the rest seized his

servants, treated them spitefully and killed them.

Now, that would be the responses of the first group.

We don't want to come.

They mock it.

They scorn it.

They even fall upon the king's servants and mistreat them, abuse them, harm

them, kill them.

And so, those are the responses.

What's, what's their outcome?

How do things go for them?

Yeah?

Now the king, you see that he is furious.

He sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and then he did what?

Burned up their city.

Apparently they had a city that they all were associated with.

And they have, in the rejection of this

wedding invitation, these were the folks on the list.

He's

not fighting somebody outside of his realm, is he?

Right?

These are his, these are his subjects who are rebelling against him.

Okay?

Now, this, everything in this story, everything in this story is set up

to, you know, expectation that these are the people who would, should have wanted to come.

Right?

They're on the list.

They get invited.

But look how they treat the, treat the invitation.

Look how they treat the servants that were sent out with the word about the wedding feast, about coming

to the wedding feast.

How did they respond to that?

Now, this is interesting because how it sits

with the previous parable.

And this is kind of regarding our third question on our handout.

But the previous parable about the wicked vine dressers, do we remember what occurred there?

In this story, we don't have a constant invitation to come to the wedding feast.

But what we have is the, the owner,

the landowner sends his servants, not with a wedding feast invitation, but they come

to the vineyard, to the tenants who are there.

And they're saying, you need to turn over the proceeds of the labor that you have been

accomplishing in your master's vineyard.

Where's the produce of your labor?

This is, this is, this was to be given over to,

in this case also, how do the tenants of the vineyard

treat the servants?

It's very similar.

Verse 35, and the vine dressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, stoned another.

You see it?

In both stories, in both parables, we have the one in authority sending

out servants to a group of people who is expected that they are to respond favorably.

They respond antagonistically and kill and mistreat the servants that were

sent out by the one in authority, either the landowner or the king.

Now we see at the end of the last parable that the chief priests and Pharisees

perceived he was talking about them.

They took it personal and well, they might, because he was talking about them.

Right?

And in this case, he is telling another parable that is in some ways very similar.

And we're not, we're not all that too far from chapter 23.

And

what does he say?

In Matthew 23 verse 29, woe

to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets

and adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been

partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.

Therefore you are witnesses against yourself that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

Fill up them the measure of your father's guilt, serpents, brood of vipers.

How can you escape the condemnation of hell?

And so far he's being very consistent with what he says in chapter 21 and 22, in which he is saying

the tenants of the vineyard, how'd they treat the servants of God, the prophets?

What did they do to them?

Chapter 22, how, how did the, how did the

invitees, how did they treat the servants sent out by the

King?

Did they not stone them, kill them, mistreat them, reject them, mock them?

Right?

So Jesus tells a parable in chapter 21, similar theme in chapter 22.

Here in chapter 23, he comes back to the same theme.

Verse 34, therefore, indeed, I send you, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes.

Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city.

That on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah,

son of Barakai, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

And then he starts talking about a city that's about to be destroyed.

What is the trajectory of the parables of the kingdom moving into the woes against the

scribes and the Pharisees?

They know they're the ones he's talking about in chapter 21.

In chapter 22, he talks about those who were invited, who should have come to the wedding, but then said they reject and they

kill and they destroy.

And, and the king responds by destroying their city.

And in chapter 23, he uses the same themes, the same information.

And even as we have a warning about hell here in chapter 22, there's a declaration about hell in chapter

23, and the destruction of a city is in view, and the destruction of the city is in view in chapter 23.

So, the outcome for the first invitees, when they

rejected, was destruction, judgment, disaster.

Now, that's not the end of the story, right?

It's not a, oh, well, move along.

Oh, the, no, there's a wedding feast here.

There's a wedding feast.

And so he looks for new guests.

Now, verse 8, then he said to his servants, the wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy.

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.

But 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?

And he was speechless.

And the king said to the servants, bind him hand and foot and take him away and cast him into outer darkness, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

So, based upon those verses, what measures were provided to the

second group of the invited?

What was provided for them?

What was done in order to bring them into the wedding feast?

Yeah, there has to be some wedding clothes, right?

Where were they at when they were invited?

They were on the highways.

On the highways.

Who knows who you're going to find on the highways?

I mean, who knows?

On the highways, you might find locals who were heading home, right?

You might find people who are locals, and you might find people who are from far away.

Who knows who you're going to find on the highways?

It's a pretty mixed group.

And whether it's the way of the sea, or the king's way, or the path running up

the spine of Palestine on the mountains, whatever it is, whatever highway it is, who

knows who you're going to find there?

But bring them in, bring them all into the feast, whether they're good or bad, whether they're, shall we

say, pre -approved or not pre -approved, whether they're Jew or

Gentile, doesn't matter.

Go grab them, bring them in.

And of course, since they were traveling, they weren't ready for, they weren't really, you

know, saying, ah, I have a schedule to keep, I'm going to be heading to the king's house today for a wedding.

No, no, that was not on their schedule.

They got intercepted, diverted from whatever they were, were they on

the highway heading to their business?

Were they on the highway heading home to their, to their farmland?

Who knows where they were heading, but they were diverted away from whatever those priorities were, and they were brought into the wedding

feast.

Like, well, I'm not dressed for a wedding.

Oh, that's taken care of, right?

You can kind of see that in the text.

The king is not being unreasonable when he confronts the man without a wedding garment.

He's not being unreasonable.

He's the one who gave the instructions to go grab the people off the highways who weren't ready for a wedding

feast that day.

So obviously, inferred in the text and consistent with the custom, wedding garments were provided.

But here is a man who does not have a wedding garment on.

Apparently he couldn't be bothered to put one on.

And he has no excuse because he, because he was speechless.

You see this?

He was speechless in verse 12.

He had nothing to say.

And so what is the result of not rightly partaking in this wedding feast

that was offered so freely to the passers -by, the unworthy, the

masses at large?

What's the result of not rightly partaking?

Cast out into outer darkness where there'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Which is Jesus's typical way of expressing the punishment of everlasting

torment in hell.

Now, as we try to put ourselves into the context

and we see how Jesus is telling his story, remember that we've had the triumphal entry.

He has come into Jerusalem.

All sorts of conflict is breaking out between him and the religious leaders.

It's a, this is the days of conflict, direct opposition.

And he's told one parable already about the two sons.

It's not those who sound like they have it together, it's those who actually repent that

are in the kingdom.

And he references John the Baptist.

Then he tells the parable about the wicked tenants, how they are destroyed, moved out of the way, and the kingdom given to another group.

Same thing, same pattern in the parable of the wedding feast.

There was this group who were invited, but they were not worthy, so they're destroyed.

And here's a new group.

All right, so it's the same, it's the same thing three times in a row.

The first son, no.

Second son, yes.

First group of tenants, no.

Second group, yes.

First group of invitees, no.

Second group, yes.

All right, do you see the pattern?

It's, it's, Jesus is hammering home his point, you know, three times.

Now, the moral of the story.

This is where we have to, verse 14.

This is how Jesus sums it all up.

This explains the whole thing.

For many are called, but few are chosen.

For many are called, but few are chosen.

Well, who were the called?

Who were the many that were called?

Yeah, those who were invited, those who were invited.

Verse 3 says, he sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding.

And they were many, they were many.

There was a plenitude of them.

How many generations, how many generations were called

to believe, by faith, to lay hold of these very promises

of the arrival of Messiah?

The gospel went to the Jew first, and then to the nations, then to the

ethnoi.

Just as Jew first, okay.

Now, how did that happen?

Like, you know, when did the gospel go to the Jew first?

What was the timing on that?

Genesis.

Wow, the long -suffering of God, huh?

You see the long -suffering of God?

In Galatians chapter 3, Paul was

trying to, you know, make the point about the good news of Jesus Christ, the

gospel being that the promise of God's salvation,

all his covenant blessing is coming through the seed of Abraham, and that

one is brought into the sharing of this inheritance, and these rewards, and these

blessings by faith alone, that this was set forth many

generations prior to the implementation of circumcision, right?

He's working against the Judaizers who are trying to add circumcision to the

gospel message.

And so, in Galatians chapter 3,

verse 5, therefore he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does he do it by the work

of the law or by the hearing of faith?

Just as Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

Now, you go back, and that's Genesis 15, correct?

Somebody said Genesis 15 a little bit earlier, so we go back to Genesis 15 and take a look for ourselves.

And the Lord comes to

Abraham and says, do not be afraid.

Why did he say that?

Because he was afraid.

Abraham's got issues with the way this is all folding out, because he's left his homeland.

He's abandoned his clan back in the land of Ur.

He's left his idols behind.

Now he is traveling to, he's coming into this promised land, but he has

no heir.

He has no child.

He complains about this to the Lord.

And verse 4, behold, the word of the Lord came to him.

In other words, the word of the Lord showed up and was there with

Abraham.

And he says, this one shall not be your heir, not your servant Eleazar, but one who will come forth from your bone

body shall be your heir.

He's speaking of Isaac, right?

Then he brought him outside and said, now look toward heaven and count the stars if you were able to number them.

And he said, so shall your descendants be.

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

And Abraham had a much better view of the stars than we do today.

And then he believed in the Lord and he accounted it to him for

righteousness.

So when we read Galatians, it

says that the scripture foreseeing that God would

justify the Gentiles, this is chapter 3, verse 8.

And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles, the nations by faith,

preach the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying in you all the nations

shall be blessed.

So we're even back even further, Genesis 12.

Now how does this parse out?

Verse 7 says, therefore know that only those who are of faith are the sons of Abraham.

Verse 9 says, so then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.

And we're told in just a few more verses that when it says that the blessing was to Abraham's seed, it was

singular, and that means Christ.

When the Word of God shows up to with Abram and says, don't be

afraid, you're going to have an heir.

Notice that the word of the Lord who showed up, verse 5, then brought him outside.

Meaning the Word of God showed up and came inside Abram's tent and said, here's how it's going to be.

Why don't you come out with me now?

We're gonna go take a look at the stars.

So later on we read, the scripture preached the gospel to Abraham.

Well, who is the word of the Lord who shows up in this way?

Right?

Is it not Christ who is the one mediator between God and man?

Coming to Abram, preaching the gospel to him, pointing his attention to the promise of the

seed that in the seed of Abraham, all the nations will be blessed.

And Paul says, well, who is that seed?

And he answers his own question.

The seed is Christ.

So the gospel was preached to the Jew first.

To the Jew first.

And they were told the gospel time and time and time again in shadow and in

promise.

The gospel was there robustly for generation upon generation.

And to the degree that Israel, as the old covenant people of God,

to the degree that they diverted away from the shadows of the, of the, of the

tabernacle and the sacrifices and the ceremonial laws and so on and so forth, is the degree to

which they diverted their attention away from the pictures of Christ, from the shadows of Christ

and turn their attention to idolatry and so on and so forth.

And then when they did that and disaster was breaking out in their midst because of God's covenant curses upon them,

he sent to them mercifully.

He sent to them his servants who came and said, you're the tenants of the vineyard.

Aren't you supposed to be producing the fruit of it?

And they would come again and again.

And how did they treat the prophets?

How did they treat Jeremiah?

And time and again, God would send his, uh, his, his servants to preach to them, not only,

hey, you're supposed to be producing the fruit of the vineyard, but they would also say, hey, there's a wedding coming.

Don't you want to, don't you want to rejoice in the, in the promises of the, of the good that lies ahead?

And how did they treat the prophets?

They mocked them.

They scorned them.

They persecuted them.

They killed them.

Many, many, many, many, many, many, many were called.

Jesus says, this is the point he's making with his parable.

Many were called, he says, and few, but few are

chosen.

And so we see that the rejection of the gospel was according to their own

desires.

Oh, my business is more important.

My land is more important.

My material gain is more important.

Uh, the man who didn't put on the wedding garment, he was speechless.

He didn't have an excuse, right?

He wasn't, uh, he wasn't forced into that.

But nonetheless, we also have this emphasis upon the grace of God.

They're called, look at how wide and how extended the invitation is.

The few are chosen.

And so in the final regard, what does it, what does it depend upon?

It depends upon the grace of God.

In the final assessment, it depends upon the grace of God.

Uh, for the invitation itself, and the celebration itself, and the raiment itself, and

everything depends upon the grace of God.

This is, uh, helpful, uh, in explaining what is about to go

down, wherein the majority of the Jews

are going to run the party line, that the followers of the way are a cult, a

dangerous one, that needs to be exterminated.

And they'll unleash the likes of Saul of Tarsus and other persecutors, and they're going to drink the

blood of the saints.

Um, and so there are going to be other Jews,

and just how few are there that turn to the Lord?

So few that you can't count them.

It's one of the paradoxes.

They stopped counting at some point in the book of Acts, by the way.

We're gonna go along, they counted, oh there's 5 ,000, oh there's 3 ,000 more, and oh, we're gonna stop counting.

Because so many Jews turn to the Lord.

And yet Romans talks about it in terms of, uh, two -thirds being a broken way,

right?

Um, but there is a, in the disaster, in the judgment, look at the judgment, the, their

city was destroyed, the tenants were destroyed, they were taken out of the way, but in their taking out of the way, what, what,

what comes next is the influx of the Gentiles.

The, the bringing in of the people on the highways, and this is a reference to Isaiah

49.

In Isaiah chapter 49, it just declared

that there was one who was born in a special way, set apart unto God, to minister

before the Lord, and that he, he comes with the salvation of God.

And this one, his name is Israel, and he comes and he saves Jacob,

which is awful little confusing, as you know, hang on a second.

But there is, there was someone who was called Israel, who comes and saves Jacob.

He's the Savior of Jacob, calling him back to the Lord.

And then a little bit later on, it says, you know, it's too small a thing that you, my servant, capital S servant, who I've called Israel, to save

just Jacob.

No, you're gonna, you're the Savior for the, you're the Savior for the nations, through the coastlands, and the

islands, and in fact, in fact, I'm gonna bring them by highways, highways,

Isaiah 49, bring them by highways into, into salvation.

It's not without, it's not by accident that Jesus uses this expression, go out to the highways.

He could use a different metaphor, different image, but obviously in the, in the aspect of

who's going to be saved, it's a very, very broad look.

So when we say many are called, but few are chosen, we have no,

we have no reason to interpret this in terms of the us four no more, the frozen chosen, and so on and so

forth.

I get a little weirded out by my Calvinist brothers, and I'm a Calvinist as well,

who rejoice and like, yeah, hardly anybody owes a heaven.

You haven't actually read the text.

The numbers are more than the star, the stars, the dust of the, dust of the earth.

When you get to Revelation, there is, there's a multitude that no man can count.

Okay, so that's not the point.

The point of these, this formulaic statement, where we keep on seeing Jesus talking about many are called,

few are chosen, broad is the way, narrow is the way, few are those who find it.

Every single one of those contexts, he's dealing with the Jews, who he came, the

gospel's been preached to them, and preached to them, and preached to them, and they keep on choosing different ways, and they keep on rejecting the call, and rejecting the

invitation, and he's not saying that none of y 'all gonna be saved, but he says that, look at the wideness and the

long -suffering, all day long, God says, I have had my hand stretched out to a stubborn and stiff -necked people.

And it's not that none of them were saved, but when you, when you look at the objective sense of how many were

called, and how many were saved, we get this formulaic statement.

And this is about the patience of God, long -suffering God, of God, and the, and the grace of God.

That's what this expression is about, set into its context.

And remember, just to come out as broad as we can, he's saying, the kingdom of heaven is

like.

He's talking about what it's going to be like, living with him.

It's the fulfillment of the sacrifices, the fulfillment of the feast days, the fulfillment of all of these shadows and

pipes of the Old Covenant.

What is it like to live in the kingdom of heaven?

What is it like?

What is it like to not go to the temple anymore, or to go do the ceremonial washings anymore?

What is that like?

You know, he's preparing them for the great shift in the great

chain.

The man who didn't have the wedding garment was speechless.

We recall that, that, that the law

speaks that the, that those who are under the law are without excuse.

Romans chapter 3.

That every mouth is stopped before the righteousness of God.

We have nothing to say.

We stand completely, justly, righteously condemned in light of the righteousness of God

expressed by his law.

And we all are accountable to God because he's our creator.

So we have, we have no excuse.

But, Romans 321 says, but now the righteousness of God apart from the law has been manifested.

Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Well, isn't that the garment?

Isn't that the wedding garment?

That, that we're there in rejoicing and celebrating the Son, and so we're dressed in his righteousness

and made acceptable to God, welcomed only according to

the righteousness of Christ.

So, I will close with that.

Any questions or thoughts before we sing the doxology?

Yes, Chris?

Yes.

Well, when you read the parable and you see that the, it's the, so again, remember that the

previous parable about the vineyard is based off of Isaiah 5.

It starts off the exact same way as Isaiah 5, and Isaiah 5 is about Israel being God's vineyard, and

why did they give me bad fruit when I did everything for them?

Okay, the very same thing here at the end of chapter 21, that's why they know he's talking about them.

Okay, so then chapter 22, he still talks, same pattern, same pattern, and he talks about a

city being destroyed.

Is he talking about Jerusalem?

Well, in just a little bit, after, after wrapping up the

Q &A of them questioning his authority, him establishing his authority, even going so far as to interpret Psalm 110

in light of himself, my Lord, the Lord said to my Lord, said to my right hand, so I'll make your

enemies a footstool for my feet, and they want to know that as authority.

Well, he establishes it with that, and then he gets into a pattern of woe, woe,

woe upon the Pharisees and the scribes and wraps it up with a genuine tear -filled lament about

Jerusalem.

Any of the prophets of old who said woe, woe, woe, woe, well, this was their announcement of

wrath to come.

Okay, Jesus does that, and then here's wrath to come.

Destruction of Jerusalem is in view, verses 37 through the following,

and he says, all this is going to happen upon this generation.

Take him at his word, here's, here's judgment.

Now this, again, is exactly what was said in Leviticus and Deuteronomy

about those, about Israel if they broke covenant with God.

So, if they continue to reject every single opportunity he gave them in his

patience and long -suffering to, to turn back into and to be that light that they were to be

for the nations, if they failed to do that, then he promised all manner of things which

involved the destruction of their worship, the destruction of

their city, and them being put on ships and taken back down to Egypt and sold as slaves.

And all of that happened down to the exact detail in AD 70.

So, I think that in the context of the parable where he's talking about, here is the

unfaithful being moved out of the way to make room for a new group that are faithful in Christ, and he does that again and again.

He's describing the transition between old covenant and new covenant, and he's

using the expression, the kingdom of God, to explain what that's going to look like.

Yes, thank you.

I was, I had that thought earlier.

I forgot to bring it up.

But yeah, so he, he connects the lament of Jerusalem with his previous parables.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to her.

That's straight out of the parables that he just told.

Okay, well, I hope that was a clarifying and helpful parable of the wedding feast.

Let's close together by singing the doxology.

One quick note, the men of the church for Father's Day, this coming Sunday,

you've been invited to gather at the front of the church.