Matthew 22:1-10

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1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, 2 ``The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. 3 ``And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast and they were unwilling to come. 4 ``Again he sent out other slaves saying, `Tell those who have been invited, ``Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast.''' 5 ``But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, 6 and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them. 7 ``But the king was enraged and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire. 8 ``Then he said to his slaves, `The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. 9 `Go therefore to the main highways and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.' 10 ``Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests. 



There are two parables back to back here in verses 1-14. The events of the first of the two were completely in accordance with normal Jewish customs. When the invitations to a great feast, like a wedding feast, were sent out, the time was not stated and when everything was ready the servants were sent out with a final summons to tell the guests to come. So, then, the king in this parable had sent out his invitations long ago, but it was not till everything was prepared that the final summons was issued-and insultingly refused. This parable has two meanings.

1. It has a purely local meaning. Its local meaning was a driving home of what had already been said in the Parable of the Wicked Vine-Growers; once again it was an accusation of the Jewish leadership. The invited guests who when the time came refused to come, stand for the Jewish leadership. Ages ago they had been invited by God to be his chosen people; yet when God's son came into the world, and they were invited to follow Him they contemptuously refused. The result was that the invitation of God went out direct to the highways and the byways; and the people in the highways and the byways stand for the sinners and the Gentiles, who never expected an invitation into the Kingdom.

2. This parable also has much to say on a much wider scale.

a. God's invitation is an invitation to joy, not gloom!

b. It reminds us that the things which make men deaf to the invitation of Christ are not necessarily bad in themselves. One man went to his estate; the other to his business. These weren't bad things, but normal things, when the good gets in the way of the best!

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.

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 and they could never by any stretch of imagination have expected an invitation to the wedding feast, much 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 was grace which offered the invitation and grace which gathered men in.

The only way anyone will get into the Kingdom is by the grace of God-unmerited favor from God, Himself!