Matthew
22:1-14
Jesus
responded by telling still more stories. 2 "God's kingdom," he said,
"is like a king who threw a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent out
servants to call in all the invited guests. And they wouldn't come! 4" He
sent out another round of servants, instructing them to tell the guests, 'Look,
everything is on the table, the prime rib is ready for carving. Come to the
feast!' 5 "They only shrugged their shoulders and went off, one to weed
his garden, another to work in his shop. 6 The rest, with nothing better to do,
beat up on the messengers and then killed them. 7 The king was outraged and sent
his soldiers to destroy those thugs and level their city. 8" Then he told
his servants, 'We have a wedding banquet all prepared but no guests. The ones I
invited weren't up to it. 9 Go out into the busiest intersections in town and
invite anyone you find to the banquet.' 10 The servants went out on the streets
and rounded up everyone they laid eyes on, good and bad, regardless. And so the
banquet was on-- every place filled. 11 "When the king entered and looked
over the scene, he spotted a man who wasn't properly dressed. 12 He said to
him, 'Friend, how dare you come in here looking like that!' The man was
speechless. 13 Then the king told his servants, 'Get him out of here-- fast.
Tie him up and ship him to hell. And make sure he doesn't get back in.' 14"
That's what I mean when I say, 'Many get invited; only a few make it.' "
Food
for thought!
This
parable has much to tell us.
(a)
It reminds us that the invitation of God is to a feast as joyous as a wedding
feast. His invitation is to joy. To think of Christianity as a gloomy giving up
of everything which brings laughter and joy and happiness is un Christian. It
is to joy that the Christian is invited; and it is joy he misses, if he refuses
the invitation.
(b)
It reminds us that the things which make us deaf to the invitation of Christ
are not necessarily bad in themselves. One man went to his estate; the other to
his business. They did not go off to an immoral adventure. They went off to
what is in itself excellent task of efficiently administering their business
life. It is very easy for us to be so busy with our daily business that we
forget the things of eternity.
The
tragedy of life is that it is so often the second bests which shut out the
first bests, that it is things which are good in themselves which shut out the
things that are supreme. We can be so busy making a living that we fail to make
a life; we can be so busy with the administration and the organization of life
that we forget life itself.
(c)
It reminds us that the appeal of Christ is not so much to consider how we will
be punished as it is to see what we will miss, if we do not take his way of
things. Those who would not come were punished, but their real tragedy was that
they lost the joy of the wedding feast. If we refuse the invitation of Christ,
someday our greatest pain will lie, not in the things we suffer, but in the
realization of the precious things we have missed.
(d)
It reminds us that in the last analysis God's invitation is the invitation of
grace. Those who were gathered in from the highways and the byways had no claim
on the king at all; they could never by any stretch of imagination have
expected an invitation to the wedding feast, still less could they ever have
deserved it. It came to them from nothing other than the wide-armed,
open-hearted, generous hospitality of the king. It is by grace that we are
saved.
Ephesians
2:8-9
For
it is by God's grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the
result of your own efforts, but God's gift, so that no one can boast about it.
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