The Gospel and the Wedding Banquet

In Matthew 22, the story begins with a certain king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son, and sent servants to those who had been invited to tell them that the feast was now ready and that they should come. But they refused to come. Their refusal was a great insult, of course. It was dishonoring to the son, the king, and even to the servants who carried the king’s message. But the king did not get angry. Instead, he sent other servants to repeat the invitation: “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’” (v. 4). Again they refused, but this time, those who had been invited did not merely reject the invitation. They also mistreated the messengers and killed some of them. The king sent an army to destroy the murderers and burn their city (vv. 1–7). After that he invited others.

The thing that makes the parable so easy to understand is that nearly every part is discussed in plain terms elsewhere. The king is God, sitting upon the throne of the universe. The son is His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The messengers are the prophets and early preachers of the gospel. The banquet is the marriage supper of the Lamb. Those to whom the gospel was first preached were Jews and those who actually came to the banquet were Gentiles, as is taught in John 1:11–12. “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

As with the preceding parable, this is one of a special class of parables that deals with the refusal of Israel to respond to the Lord Jesus Christ when He came first to His own people. That was a major issue during the lifetime of the Lord, as well as afterward, so it is not surprising to find a number of parables dealing with it either directly or alluding to it indirectly. The character of the older son in the par-able of the prodigal represents Israel (as well as those Gentiles who possess the same spirit of resentment). So do those workers in the vineyard who were hired early but were paid the same as those who came late. So does the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18). Those stories explore the thinking of people who supposed they had worked long and faithfully for God, unlike others, and who were envious and resentful when the grace of God was shown to those they considered unworthy.

The unique element in the parable before us is the willful refusal of those who were invited. It was not that they could not come. Rather, they would not. The reason for their refusal is not spelled out, but it is suggested in the way the servants were treated. They “seized” the servants, “treated them shamefully, and killed them” (v. 6). If the invited guests felt that way toward the servants, they obviously felt that way toward the king who had sent them and would have seized, mistreated, and killed him if they could have. In other words, they would not come because they actually despised the king and were hostile to him.

Some who are invited to the gospel banquet do not openly express their hatred of the one who gives it, but they make excuses.

Those of Christ’s day bitterly resented His portrait of them, but resent it or not, that is precisely the way those religious leaders thought and acted. In the chapter immediately preceding (Matt. 21:33, 46), Jesus told of tenant farmers who beat, killed, and stoned the owner’s servants. At last they murdered his son. In the chapter following (Matt. 23), Jesus pronounces “woes” upon those same people, saying,

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. . . I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. . . . O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matt. 23:29–32, 34–35, 37)

We know that at the last those rebellious subjects of the King of heaven killed Christ. As Stephen later put it, “Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it” (Acts 7:52–53).

Today we are not so inclined to kill prophets. But if we are honest, we will admit that the same spirit is present among many of our con-temporaries and that they and others sometimes dispose of God’s messengers by ridicule or neglect, if not by more violent hostility. Charles H. Spurgeon preached seven sermons on this parable during the course of his long ministry, and he was deeply touched by that fact. He said,

Today this same class will be found among the children of godly parents; dedicated from their birth, prayed for by loving piety, listening to the gospel from their childhood, and yet unsaved. We look for these to come to Jesus. We naturally hope that they will feast upon the provisions of grace, and like their parents will rejoice in Christ Jesus; but, alas! how often it is the case they will not come! . . . A preacher may be too rhetorical: let a plain-speaking person be tried. He may be too weighty: let another come with parable and anecdote. Alas! with some of you the thing wanted is not a new voice, but a new heart. You would listen no better to a new messenger than to the old one.

Some who are invited to the gospel banquet do not openly express their hatred of the one who gives it, but they make excuses. As the parable says, they go off “one to his farm, another to his business” (v. 5). Jesus elaborates that point in Luke’s version of the parable. There he says, “But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come’” (Luke 14:18–20). Each of those excuses is trifling. As Jesus tells it, it is not a case of a man’s being on his deathbed, unable to move, nor a woman’s being kept at home by a violent husband. Not one of their excuses has any weight at all. So what if a man had just bought a field? There is no reason why he would have had to see it on that particular day and so miss the banquet. The field would wait. There was no reason why the second person had to try out his oxen. They would keep. Even the excuse about marriage had no weight. Are we to think that a new bride would be unwelcome at a feast to which her husband had been invited?

Besides that, the invitation was not the first they had received. In both versions of the parable Jesus speaks of an invitation to those who had already been invited. That is, the invitations had already been sent out. There was no excuse for the guests to have failed in arranging their schedules accordingly. When the final summons came they should have been anticipating the festivities eagerly.

Many who reject the gospel invitation today have equally flimsy excuses and will rightly incur the King’s wrath. They say they are too busy for spiritual things. They say they have fields or patients or bonds or whatever it is that imprisons their souls and keeps them from faith in Him who brings salvation. Spurgeon, whom I quoted earlier, tells of a rich ship owner who was visited by a godly man. The Christian asked, “Well, sir, what is the state of your soul?” to which the merchant replied, “Soul? I have no time to take care of my soul. I have enough to do just taking care of my ships.” But he was not too busy to die, which he did about a week later.2

Do you fit that pattern? Are you more interested in your good credit than in Christ? Do you read the stock quotations more than you read your Bible? You do not have to murder a prophet to miss out. You have only to fritter away your time on things that will eventually pass away and thus let your opportunities for repentance pass by.