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1και
αποκριθεις ο
ιησους παλιν
ειπεν εν
And
answering - Jesus again spoke
in
παραβολαις
αυτοις λεγων
parables to them saying:
2ωμοιωθη
η βασιλεια των
ουρανων
ανθρωπω
it was likened the kingdom
of the heavens to a man
βασιλει
οστις εποιησεν
γαμους τω υιω
a king, who made a wedding[1] for the son
αυτου
3και
απεστειλεν
τους δουλους
αυτου
of him. And
he sent the slaves of him
καλεσαι
τους
κεκλημενους
εις τους
γαμους
to call the having been invited to the
wedding1,
και ουκ
ηθελον ελθειν 4παλιν
απεστειλεν
and
not they wished to come. Again
he sent
αλλους
δουλους λεγων
ειπατε τοις
other slaves saying: tell the
κεκλημενοις
ιδου το
αριστον μου
ητοιμακα
having been invited Look! the
supper of me I have prepared
οι ταυροι
μου και τα
σιτιστα τεθυμενα
και
The
bull of me and the
fatted beasts having been killed
and
παντα
ετοιμα δευτε
εις τους
γαμους 5οι
δε
all ready ; come
to the wedding1. They but
αμελησαντες
απηλθον ος μεν
εις τον ιδιον
not caring went off, < one
> to the
own
αγρον ος
δε επι την
εμποριαν αυτου
6οι δε
field , another
on the trading of him; the and
λοιποι
κρατησαντες
τους δουλους
αυτου
rest seizing the slaves of him
υβρισαν
και απεκτειναν
7και ο
δε βασιλευς
insulted and
killed. The and
king
ωργισθη
και πεμψας τα
στρατευματα
αυτου
became angry and sending
the armies of him
απωλεσεν
τους φονεις
εκεινους και
την πολιν
destroyed the murderers those
and the city
αυτων
ενεπρησεν
of them burned.
Matthew 22:1-7
The Parable of the Wedding
Banquet (Lk 14.15—24)
1 Jesus spoke
to them again in parables, saying: 2 "The
kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his
servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but
they refused to come.
4 "Then
he sent some more servants and said, 'Tell those who have been invited that I
have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and
everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.'
5 "But
they paid no attention and went off -- one to his field, another to his
business. 6 The rest
seized his servants, ill-treated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and
burned their city.
8τοτε
λεγει τοις δουλοις
αυτου ο μεν
γαμος
then he says
to the slaves of him: the indeed wedding 1
ετοιμος
εστιν οι δε
κεκλημενοι ουκ
ησαν
ready is, the
and having been invited not were
αξιοι 9πορευεσθε
ουν επι τας
διεξοδους των
worthy; you go therefore to the
partings of the
οδων και
οσους εαν
ευρητε
καλεσατε εις
τους
ways[2] and <as many as> you find call to the
γαμους 10και
εξελθοντες οι
δουλοι εκεινοι
wedding .
And going forth the slaves those
εις τας
οδους
συνηγαγον
παντας ους
ευρον
into the
ways assembled all whom they found,
πονηρους
τε και αγαθους
και επλησθη ο
bad both and
good; and was filled the
γαμος
ανακειμενων 11εισελθων
δε ο βασιλευς
wedding[3] of reclining. Entering but
the King
θεασασθαι
τους
ανακειμενους
ειδεν εκει
to see the reclining he saw there
ανθρωπον
ουκ ενδεδυμενον
ενδυμα γαμου
a man not having been dressed in a dress of wedding,
12και
λεγει αυτω
εταιρε πως
εισηλθες ωδε
and he says to him: friend,
how did you enter here
μη εχων
ενδυμα γαμου ο
δε εφιμωθη 13τοτε
not
having a dress of wedding? The and was silenced. Then
ο
βασιλευς ειπεν
τοις διακονοις
δησαντες
the King said to the
servants; Binding
αυτου
ποδας και
χειρας
εκβαλετε αυτον
εις
of him feet and
hands throw out him into
το σκοτος
το εξωτερον
εκει εσται ο
the
darkness the outer; there will be
the
κλαυθμος
και ο βρυγμος
των οδοντων
wailing and
the gnashing of the teeth.[4]
14πολλοι
γαρ εισιν
κλητοι ολιγοι
δε εκλεκτοι
Many for are
called, few [5] but chosen.
Matthew 22:8-14
8 "Then
he said to his servants, 'The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did
not deserve to come. 9 Go to the
street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.' 10So the
servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find,
both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11 "But
when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not
wearing wedding clothes. 12 'Friend,' he
asked, 'how did you get in here without wedding clothes?' The man was
speechless.
13 "Then
the king told the attendants, 'Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside,
into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'
14 "For
many are invited, but few are chosen."
The Parable of the Great
Banquet
15When one of those
at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, "Blessed is the man
who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God."
16Jesus replied:
"A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. 17At
the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited,
'Come, for everything is now ready.'
18"But they
all alike began to make excuses. The first said, 'I have just bought a field,
and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.'
19"Another
said, 'I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm on my way to try them out.
Please excuse me.'
20"Still
another said, 'I just got married, so I can't come.'
21"The servant
came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became
angry and ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of
the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.'
22" 'Sir,' the
servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.'
23"Then the
master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them
come in, so that my house will be full. 24I tell you, not one of
those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.' "
So you invited me to speak about
a wedding feast. But
unlike my last visit, regrettably, I
have not produced a sample. So if you were hoping for a wedding feast tonight,
you will be disappointed!
Going
back to the Bean Seeds. If you planted
the bean seeds, you should now be harvesting. I am and God has provided in
spite of me being in China for three weeks, on a youth residential for a week
and a Holiday club. That is the lesson of seed. You plant it. But God makes it
grow, sometimes regardless of our lack of attention to it. And that rather
neatly steps us to today’s parable.
The parable of the Wedding Feast is all about God providing and us responding to his grace.
There are
two versions of the parable and they are quite different. In Luke 14:15-20 Jesus is
sitting a a meal table. So the story is informal with jokes about the excuses
people make and none of the punishment we read in Matthew.
Context
of Matthew’s version:
Jesus is in
Jerusalem. He has arrived as the King on
a donkey. He has attacked the status quo of the temple management who have
little interest in what God wanted and much interest in preserving their way of
life.
Jesus tells
a series of parables about the Kingdom of Heaven where the central theme is the rejection of the invitation. The parable of the two sons
is about doing not just saying. The parable of the tenants is about the Jews
ability to persecute the very people God sent to tell them his way.
This parable gives a more complete
picture. It tells us
that the wedding banquet is ready. It tells us the guests have not only been
invited but twice sent reminders. Their reaction is ill-treat and kill the
messengers. That results in the King annihilating those who reject his
invitation. Then we move on. The rejection by the invited guests is replaced by
a different invitation. Good and bad are invited from the streets. One guest
sticks out because he is not wearing the wedding clothes and he is booted out.
Jesus ends the parable with a proverb “For many are invited, but few are
chosen.
1.
The wedding banquet is ready. The
kingdom of heaven is a party. This is not the first time Jesus has said
so. In fact John records the first miraculous sign as Jesus turning water into
wine at a wedding feast. In the story of the Prodigal Son it all ends in a
celebratory party as does the preceding parables of the lost coin and lost
sheep. The 10 virgins are waiting for a party to begin. 5 enjoy what is clearly
an all-night event. Too
often we turn our religion into a sober and serious business. But
Passover and the other feasts of the Jewish calendar were feasts. Sacrifice at
the temple involved celebration meals as in 1Samuel. Heaven itself is described
as the wedding supper of the Lamb. So loosen up, Jesus has died and is risen. Your sins are
forgiven, you have the guarantee of the presence of the Holy Spirit and the
certainty of a home in heaven for eternity. If that doesn’t excite you, well,
maybe you are missing the point of being a Christian.
It is about what Jesus
has done not what we do. Our salvation is about receiving not seeking to earn
it. We believe there is
nothing you can do to earn your salvation. Without Christ there is no hope, no
way to God, no eternal life. Forgiveness comes at a price, but Jesus has paid
the price. So don’t sit in the corner and be miserable. If you have put your
faith in Jesus, get up and dance, you have forgiveness of your sins, unlimited
life and all the riches of the Kingdom to enjoy.
2.
The guests are invited. It is important to understand that the Jews are invited to
the Kingdom of heaven. The
implication of the story is that the Pharisees and teachers of the Law were invited. They simply
wouldn’t enter. They had, in their view, too much to lose. All their
culture and upbringing led them to believe they were the upholders of all that
is right and proper. The idea that God was about to change the rules so that
they along with everyone else could enter the Kingdom of Heaven by grace was
too much.
3.
The guests reject the invitation But most refused to
enter because they wanted salvation on their terms not God’s terms. This is a solemn challenge to us. It
is all too easy to turn our relationship with Jesus on its head. Instead of
your kingdom come, your will be done we allow ourselves to be seeking our
solutions, our wants our ambitions and getting cross with God because he does not
respond like a cash machine to our prayers. Punch in the right numbers and out
pops what we want. The rejection here is two-fold, some go off to work and
business, burying
themselves in making their own way. The others get angry with the messengers, and silence
them one way or another. Persecution is always irrational. It is a rejection of Jesus,
often for totally crazy reasons. I had two Muslims visit me one day and all
they could say was that I did not believe in one God but three, even though I
protested that I was monotheistic and that God the Father, God the Son and God
the Holy Spirit were one God. I was rejected because I could not explain in
human terms what God is like. As if God was explainable in scientific terms. They
could not explain how there was one creator God any more than I could. Persecution is random and
vicious. People who have rejected God’s ways are no longer guided by the
principles of tolerance and respect, so persecution takes all forms from
cold-shouldering to angry comments, from refusing to give employment to
imprisonment. From beatings to violent executions and endless depravity.
4.
Judgment falls on those who reject the invitation. It is somewhat unsettling in this day
and age to read that The king was
enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
Oddly the idea that God should have any opinion about bad behaviour seems to
upset people. When I tweeted the verse “Woe to you who are well-fed, for you
will go hungry” I got an angry response for suggesting God would starve the
rich! Yep, let’s not have justice where
the punishment fits the crime, how dare I suggest the rich might face the
consequences of their behaviour! But
like it or not, Jesus speaks twice here of judgement for rejecting first his
invitation and second his way of salvation. In simple terms if you wouldn’t get
in the lifeboat there can be no salvation!
5.
The invitation is
widened to include all, good and bad. Then the king opens the invitation to those on the
streets. Specifically he says good or bad. This flies in the face of not only
the Pharisees and teachers of the Law to whom the kingdom was for the moral,
upright citizen with a good, provable, track record, but it also challenges the middle class
aspirations of many church go-ers, to whom salvation might be by grace
alone and through faith alone but please don’t bring the messed up lives around
us into our church. Never
before in recent history has the church faced so many challenges. People
who are coming to Christ are drug addicts, complicated marriage/divorce or
living with partner with children and grandchildren, often from multiple
partners. They come with oversized debt problems, health issues and health
consequences of their lifestyle choices. But the King invited them and if you are not happy with
his choices, you have forgotten that you are not chosen because of your
life-style, or choices or status in this life. God chooses to love you because he is love. Grace is
grace. You do not merit salvation either but you received it as a gift.
So the church is and will remain a collection of messed-up people who have
found the Saviour and discipleship
involves working through the consequences of the mess we have made in the light
of this guidebook, the Bible, and the leading of the Holy Spirit. Gary
Northrop was minister to a church in USA which was doing just nicely when,
according to Gary, God messed it up and brought in prostitutes, bouncers, and
night-club clientele. That church now numbers thousands because they were not
turned away even though there were protests. God chooses the street people because they appreciate his
love, they find grace where they are used to judgement. The rich and the
middle class tend to have ‘better’ things to do and fail to enter the kingdom.
It is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom than a camel to go through the
eye of a needle, Jesus said.
6.
The matter of the wedding suit. Just when we thought
the story was over Jesus adds this extraordinary sub-plot. There is all sorts of speculation
that the guests were provided with a uniform or even a whole range of clothes
at the whim of the King. The point here is that the man did not have the
clothes he was offered. He got into the party under false pretences. He
accepted the grace invitation but it didn’t go as far as changing his clothes!
He was probably wearing a very nice fashionable and expensive outfit but is was
not what the King required. He required his guests to receive an
outfit of grace! This rings close to the song “I am covered over with a robe of righteousness that
Jesus gives to me.” We will not enjoy the kingdom if we are still
clinging on to ideas of our own righteousness, our own rating. Our righteousness is as filthy
rags, whoever the draper is. Be careful to rate yourself by grace. Come
on, you are a jewel in the
crown of the King of Kings because you demonstrate how his love has won,
how his death on the cross has made you whole. Your value is not in this world but in the world to come.
Enjoy the love and joy and
peace that come from the Father through the Son to you. These are the currency of
heaven. Hanging on to our own righteousness is doomed because it is not
the substance of heaven. It is in fact the substance of hell.
7.
“For many are invited, but few are chosen”
This is
always a bit uncomfortable at the end of a parable about the king sending out
to the streets to fill his banquet. We like to think vaguely that all should
respond to the invitation, but Jesus has pointed out the original invitees rejected the invitation and
were not chosen and the man with the wrong suit was rejected because of
his choices. This parable
divides. It says quite simply that the Kingdom is for those who receive
the invitation and put on the wedding clothes. It is not for those who reject
the invitation or hang on to their own righteousness. That leads me to prayer, prayer for those in my
family who have yet to receive the invitation into the kingdom, for my neighbours, the
majority of whom are very nice people but have either not heard the invitation
or not responded to it. It leads me to pray for a world where millions live
without Christ and without hope. But there are many faithful Christians
inviting people to the Kingdom of Heaven. I met one recently in Xining. He was
a missionary from Mongolia. There has been an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in
Mongolia and the church is sending out missionaries to Tibet. Isn’t that
exciting! This Good News is spreading across
the world and people are responding. Some are rejecting it as the Pharisees and
teachers of the Law did and the man without the wedding suit. But all over the
world people are receiving the Good News and entering the Kingdom. God has
chosen them on the same basis as he has chosen you. Because he loves you and
you willingly receive his grace. Enjoy the party. Revelation 19:6 describes heaven in these terms:
6 Then I heard what sounded like a
great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of
thunder, shouting:
“Hallelujah!
For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
7
Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.
8
Fine linen, bright and clean,
was given her to wear.”
(Fine linen stands for the righteous
acts of God’s holy people.)
9 Then the angel said to me, “Write
this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And
he added, “These are the true words of God.”
Jumping to 21:2
2 I saw the Holy City, the new
Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully
dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with
them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their
God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more
death’[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed
away.”
5 He who was seated on the throne
said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these
words are trustworthy and true.”
[1] γαμους See L& S 337 a wedding; here clearly referring to the banquet.
[2] τας διεξοδους των οδων probably does not means “street crossings” but “the places where a street cuts through the city boundary and goes out into the open country”
[3] γαμος Some MMS have νυμφών, in the sense of “wedding hall,” described as a correction to avoid the awkwardness of referring to a banquet as “filled.”
[4] See also 13:42, 50; 24:51
[5] ολιγοι “few,” is here very probably also to be understood as meaning “fewer than” in the sense of “not all.”
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