Episode Transcript
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Hello. I'm Josh.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: And I'm Gabriel.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: And today on reading the gospel, we are studying the event, the wedding garment. This is found in the book of Matthew, chapter 22. And we will be reading verses one through 14. Follow along with us.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: And again, Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast to his son and sent his servants to call those who are invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come.
Again, he sent other servants saying, 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.
But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully and killed them.
And the king was angry. And he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Then he said to his servants, the wedding feast is ready. But those invited were not worthy. Go, therefore, to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find. And those servants went out to the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garments. And he said to him, friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness, that the place there will be weeping of gnashing and teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.
You know, this is a wedding. Weddings are supposed to be happy events.
But overall, this seems pretty dark. People rejecting, people being cast out of.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: There's a lot going on here outside the banquet room.
We have this many problems, but hopefully inside was happy. It was a good wedding.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And again, this is a parable.
But this wedding feast was prepared for the guests.
The master sends out the guests servants to invite those guests, but they don't come. Who are those guests? Who are those who are invited to this wedding feast?
[00:03:16] Speaker B: This parable was spoken by Jesus Christ to the jewish leaders.
So those invited are the jewish people, the people of the covenant.
They were invited because they established a missional covenant with God at Mount Sinai when a bunch of slaves became a people, a nation with laws, with leaders, and they established a covenant with God. And that covenant was beyond salvation is for their mission being placed by God at the intersection of main roads of antiquity to be a light about who God is. And what is God doing for us through the plan of redemption, as illustrated in the sanctuary service?
[00:04:08] Speaker A: And so we find, as we look through, you know, we've done prophecy where we looked at the Daniel, chapter nine prophecy, 70 weeks and things we've talked about this here as we've studied, God had a special relationship with the jewish nation.
They were supposed to be the symbol, a place where God could send other people to find Jesus, to find out, or to find out about God and creation and everything.
But as you said, they failed to meet that covenant. They failed to meet the agreement that they set. And so God has numbered their time.
When in this parable, these people do not come to the wedding feast, the servants are sent out to get others who were not worthy, and they're going to the highways and byways. They're going to get the good and the bad.
Who are these people?
[00:05:12] Speaker B: The kingdom of God has two stages.
There is a kingdom of glory, and into that kingdom, only good people will make it.
But there is a previous stage, is the kingdom of grace, as represented by his church. And everyone, both good and bad, are invited into the church, into this earthly stage of the kingdom of God. And in this situation, because those initially invited did not come, and that is the jewish nation.
Now, the invitation goes to the Gentiles. That is a generic name for all non jewish people outside the jewish nation.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And so they come in, and I like how you said it, you know, this is the church is for good, bad, sinners, saints, everyone in between that. This is the place we come to Jesus.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: It's like a hospital. Like a hospital, exactly.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: We come to get help.
But then we have this one guest who apparently didn't have a wedding garment.
And my first thought is, well, he was out on the street. Maybe he's one of the bad people. And a servant comes by and says, hey, come to the wedding feast. So he's like, sure, free food walks in the door, and you wouldn't expect him to have a wedding garment, would you?
What's going on here? Why is he called out?
[00:06:48] Speaker B: I see two small details that brings more light. The first one is, as you said, they are found on the street, main streets, and they were invited. Maybe they came straight to the wedding feast.
And second, the fact that he did not complain, didn't excuse himself, saying, hey, I didn't have time to go home, or I didn't have money to go and buy a special wedding garment.
That means linking all this together, that the wedding garments were offered as a gift by the king when the king designed the wedding for his son, his only son.
He put a lot of thinking in all those details. And I imagine someone receiving the wedding garment, putting on, looking in the mirror and saying, mine is better, mine looks good, looks better. And they decided to come with their own garments instead of that specially offered wedding garment. And that wedding garment, in this context, has a very important meaning for us christians.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's the robe of Christ's righteousness that, you know, we could think of it like that, that we put it on, we are protected and we're changed. It's the change that happens to the Christian. And so when we come to God, we might be bad, we might be sinful, we might be filled with all these really shameful things.
But Christ puts his robe of righteousness on us.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: That old behavior is represented by fields, the rags in the book of Isaiah, which we are called to take off and to put on the new garment that was, you know, the perfect life of Jesus Christ, having this new garment put on. God looks at us, or God sees us as having that perfect behavior of his son, Jesus Christ, which initially is just attributed to us, but later is being shared by us step by step.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: And so the ones who come into the church who don't have the robe of righteousness, I think of Paul when he says, these are wolves and sheep's clothing. People who are in the church who don't really have a desiree to be with God, don't. God is not their number one interest. For whatever. Whatever reason they have, they're there maybe because it's popular, maybe because of power, maybe because of an advantage they can get. They're in the group, but they have no desire to have a relationship with God.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: I've met some christians who really are attracted to God in a way or another.
They see a beautiful side of God's character, and maybe they'll come to church or to a Bible study group or even an event where the gospel is being preached with some kind of desire for good, but they don't really intend to change their hearts.
And that is when the robber hits the road.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's the bottom line, is when we come to God, are we ready to be changed? Are we willing to change?
[00:10:35] Speaker B: And this is what I like to always introduce our worship service or worship experience when it comes to church. We come as we are, but we have to live as he is.
In other words, that worship experience has to have a significant impact, and I have to have that attitude, that desire to be changed, that willingness to submit my will to the will of God, to put my will in neutral, so God will fulfill his will in my life. If I do not leave home with that attitude, I might develop a resistance. It's easy to find faults in the preacher, in the words that he picked, and whoever was in church. And the way they sing and the quality of the food and the prayers are too long. It's easy to find reasons not to submit to the will of God. So that attitude has to happen prior to walking into the church. It has to be a prayerful desire to be exposed to the word of God and readiness to be changed by its power.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: So what does this parable teach us about God?
[00:11:56] Speaker B: I was very impressed by how much planning and how many details are involved. There are three callings in this parable.
It's the first one that is just a reminder. The second one gives a reason. It's a vivid description. They make them imagine the kind of food, the work was put to prepare that food. And the reaction was, at least for some of them, violent, for others were kind of dismissive. And there is the third invitation that goes to everyone beyond normal. And this is what the gospel does. The gospel of God reaches everyone, everywhere, anytime, all the way to the end of the earth and the end of time.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: And I don't know, maybe I'd throw a fourth one in here, because when the king comes and talks to this guest, he starts with, friend.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: Mmm.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: How did you get in here without a wedding garment? And I wonder if the man had said, I. I'm so sorry.
I tried it on. It fit too tight, or. I thought these clothes looked better.
Would you please give me the garment?
I don't know. I kind of imagine maybe God would have given him the garment, but it seems like maybe in this time there was still time for interaction.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Yeah. But he remains speechless.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: He does.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: That means he was not contemplating any change, any transformation.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: I think even that time would have been, you know, an opportunity to say, I'm sorry. How about if I go to a back room and I do it now? I'm sorry. I should have done it before.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Exactly. So if we find ourselves in that situation where we realize we're not in it for the right reason, we can say sorry.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
As long as the door is open, we can say sorry.
Somehow this parable points toward the end of time.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: When God, before executing his final judgment, that is, the judgment will start with the house of God, says the apostle Peter, would be a time of research, of investigation, of looking at everyone who is inside the church. And some of them will be kicked out outside in the darkness when there is a, you know, just that darkness of the remorse that I could have done better.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Let's pray.
Father God, we want to surrender our lives to you. And we want the wedding garments.
We want to have them on. We want to, when called to the wedding feast, come.
And, Father, we know that if we're not connected to you when that time comes, we won't have that desire.
We know that if we're not prepared now, there's no guarantee that on that day we will be ready.
And so I ask that right now, you start changing our lives, that Christ's robe of righteousness is put on us, that we start throwing off our filthy rags and stop getting away from sin, stop doing the things we shouldn't do and start being more like Christ.
I pray that you will change us each and every day in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Amen.
