Daily Reading: Matthew 22:1-4:
“Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.“ 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 butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’”
The wedding of the King’s son is the place you want to be (Matthew 22:2).
"The gospel to me is simply irresistible."- Blaise Pascal
The invitation to the wedding is irresistible.
Paul would write 1 Corinthians 1:18: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Why might Jesus refer to the kingdom like a king’s son’s wedding. Because that is exactly what it will be. Matthew 9:15: And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. Or Ephesians 5:31-32: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”
Heaven is like a wedding party, the bride (the church) married to the bridegroom (Jesus).
John 3:16 says: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. We will see the invitation first goes out to the Jews in Matthew 22:3 but then is extended to the Gentiles in Matthew 22:9. So, the invitation to the wedding is for any who will accept the offer of grace. However, some refused to come.
All you have to do is respond to the invitation to come to the bridegroom Jesus and the Kingdom of God/wedding feast will be your reality.
“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes…”
The man without a wedding garment represents all who try to get into the wedding/heaven based on their own merits. Isaiah 64:6 tells us “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” Our good works are like Costco stretch pants- filthy rags, they will never be good enough to get us in. There is one attire that is required- the robe of righteousness. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21) Galatians 3:27: “for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”
Isaiah 61:10 also says: “I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”
We see it again in the story of the prodigal son -which were all of us separated from our heavenly Father by our sin before Christ redeemed us. Luke 11: 22: “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him.