Divine Stories - The Wedding Banquet | Sunday Message

After six weeks of exploring Jesus’ parables in our Divine Stories series, we come to one of His most challenging stories: the Parable of the Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22. It’s a powerful picture of God’s grace: we don’t earn our way into the Kingdom. The invitation is better than we deserve, and God simply says, “Come.”

But the story also reminds us that we can’t enter on our own terms or wearing our own righteousness. The question isn’t, “Am I good enough for heaven?” The question is, “Am I clothed in Christ?” You don’t get into the banquet because you’re good enough. You get in because Jesus is.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Do Life Different Podcast by 1128 Community. Today you're listening to our most recent message. We are a church community in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, led by co-pastors Mike and Colleen Francisco. 1128 is about helping people do life different by setting rhythms and values with Jesus at the center. If you want to connect with us, text the word podcast to 414-441-1128. We hope today's message helps you in your faith journey.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

As we get into this morning's message, this is week number six of our series called Divine Stories. And it's really looking at the parables that Jesus taught all throughout Scripture. And a parable is really nothing more than a truth, a principle of truth that Jesus wanted us to understand. And so he would use these stories to help communicate these principles of truths about the kingdom of heaven, about people, about how to treat one another, all kinds of things. He would speak in these parables and these stories to help us understand the truth. These stories that Jesus spoke in throughout the scripture, they attracted all kinds of people. They attracted Jesus' closest friends, the disciples, those that traveled with them, and they also attracted his strongest opposers, those that hated him and wanted him dead. They attracted the outcast and the lonely, the elite and the well-to-do, the political powers and the religious scholars. They attracted all kinds of people. And so when Jesus would speak in these parables, in these divine stories, he had a wide range of perspectives and culture and understanding that were there listening. And so today, as we get into this parable of the wedding banquets, I'm thinking about my week coming up. I'm going to be attending my brother-in-law's wedding next weekend, and Colleen's in the wedding. So she has something that she's got to wear to be in the wedding. Anybody ever been in a wedding and you've got like something you're supposed to wear? Maybe you've been the groom and it was like, yeah, I guess I'll wear that. Anyways, I'm going to the wedding. And uh, and I'll be honest, the thing that I'm most concerned with about going to this wedding is uh what should I wear? Anyone ever go to a wedding and and you haven't been told what to wear? And so then it's like, I don't know, like how fancy of a wedding is this? Can I go wearing the all black jeans and and like somewhat nice shirt? Can I go in like a suit or should I go in a suit? Like, what type of shoe are we talking about? Is this a bow tie event, a black tie event, a no-tie event? Like, anybody ever like struggled with this question of like what should I wear to the wedding? I'm especially concerned about it because it seems like it's a fancy wedding. There's there's no kids invited, which automatically like brings it up a fancy notch in my mind. And so I'm just I'm a little bit concerned about what I'm going to wear to the wedding. And I know whether it's a wedding or a dinner out, uh a daddy-daughter dance, maybe it's the birthday party, a Halloween party. That's a lot, that's a hard one. What should I wear for my Halloween costume? What's appropriate or not appropriate for this particular party? This is the question that we end up asking ourselves with all kinds of events. What should I wear? What's acceptable, what's not? And as we jump into this passage, this divine story, this parable about the wedding banquet, Matthew records Jesus' story in chapter 22, when he says, 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. Verse 5. But they paid no attention, and they went off, one to his field, another to his business, the rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged, and rightly so I would say. He was enraged, and he sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Verse 8. Then he said to his servants, The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet any one you find. So the servants they went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. Verse eleven But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend? The man was speechless. Then the king told the attendants, Tie him hand and foot and throw him outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are invited, but few are chosen. Everybody's sitting here thinking, like, what the heck? This doesn't make sense. Okay, King is upset that those he invited don't show up. Some of them actually ignored the invitation altogether. Some of them, they were so angry to receive this invitation to the celebration, they actually took the servants that showed up to remind them of the invitation and killed them, which that doesn't make sense. There's just so many things. And so then in response to that, he's like, okay, forget them. Let's invite everybody else. We had good and bad, we had those living on the street corners and those who were living in little houses on the street. Like he had all kinds of people that ended up showing up. And you just think, like, okay, this is great. He's invited everybody in. But then this one dude came in wearing something that wasn't acceptable, apparently. Maybe he showed up like this. And instead of being like, hey, it's cool, bro, he ties him up and throws him outside into the darkness where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth, whatever the heck that means. It sounds painful. I've been to the dentist before, and this sounds like something you're gonna go to the dentist for. And he says, For many are invited, but few are chosen. It's so confusing. It doesn't make sense. Like, why invite this guy in and then immediately kick him out? The surprising part though, maybe in all of this, is that the invitation isn't based on who deserves to be there. The original guests that were originally invited, obviously, they don't deserve to be there. The people on the streets, they don't deserve to be there either. And ultimately what we're getting here is a picture of God's grace. That there is a picture and a place and a heaven that is available to anyone that hears the invitation and receives it. It's a picture of the gospel, it's a picture of the good news. It's a picture of an invitation that we could never earn. God's not saying make yourself worthy of this invitation and then show up. He's just saying, come. Come to the party. The first thing from this weird parable that I hope we understand this morning is that the invitation is better than we deserve. The invitation is better than we deserve. Everyone who was invited either the first time or the second time, that invitation to celebrate, the invitation in to the party was better than they deserved. And it's a picture of God's grace. But this story doesn't end in like a happy way. It ends with a problem. The king enters, he sees someone without the wedding clothes, and he asks, How did you get in here? And this man, he's speechless, he doesn't have anything to say, is just like fumbling over his words, maybe trying to explain. And instead of like hearing him out and being like, hey, he's thrown out, and we're left asking still, well, what the heck? What's the issue here? That's not very loving, that's not very accepting, that's not inclusive, that's not the Jesus that I've been told about. The problem here isn't that the man wasn't invited because he was, right? The king had sent the servants and told him, invite everyone on the streets, those who were good and those who were bad, invite them all in. And so he was invited. The problem's not that he showed up uninvited, the problem is that he came on his own terms. He showed up how he wanted to show up. He came into the wedding, into the party for the wedding, the celebration, wearing his own clothes rather than the wedding clothes. These wedding clothes, they represented the righteousness necessary to stand before God. The wedding clothes represents like I belong here. This guy stood out like a sore thumb. In a room where everyone else is wearing wedding clothes, he shows up in his own clothes, doing it his own way, on his own terms. Ultimately, if we're reading into this parable and understanding what Jesus is really saying, we understand the real problem that this guy has is a righteousness problem. He wasn't good enough. He was not good enough. And it's the same problem that I have, it's the same problem that you have, it's the same problem that each of us has. We aren't good enough. We have a righteousness, righteousness issue. Matthew 5.20 says, uh, to sum it up, our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees. Matthew 5.48 says, be perfect, therefore, as the Father is perfect. Matthew, or Romans 3.10. Therefore, no one is righteous, not even one. This guy had a righteousness problem. He wasn't wearing the wedding clothes. He showed up on his own terms in his own way, and he stood out like a sore thumb. And it's the same problem that you and I have. We're invited. We're invited to the party. We're invited to the celebration. We're invited into God's presence, but the problem is we want to show up in our own way, on our own terms, wearing what we want to wear. We're invited. But we're not qualified. And that's what makes the gospel, that's what makes the good news so exciting, so amazing, so incredible. Because if we read into Romans chapter 3, where Paul writes, righteousness comes from God through faith in Jesus, God doesn't lower the standard, God doesn't change things, God doesn't say, like, okay, whatever, like you can get in on your own, you can do it your way, you could do it how you want. No, he doesn't do any of that. We understand that Jesus takes our place, becomes the replacement, and that he is righteous, he is good, and because of him, we can be clothed in the righteousness of Jesus. Jesus provides the righteousness that we need. He provides the robe, the covering that we need. And the righteousness of Jesus, the goodness of Jesus, gets put on to us, us and clothes us. In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. There's a word that we use in Christianity called imputation. Anybody heard this word before? Imputation? I thought Joel was about to raise his hand over there. He's just scratching his eye. Imputation. It means to replace what's missing. And so if you and I are missing righteousness, if we don't have righteousness, if we don't have what it takes to be accepted into this kingdom, into this celebration, into this party that's going on, Jesus imputes unto us righteousness. He makes us good enough. He clothes us in the right things so that we are accepted and welcomed into the kingdom. Because Jesus lived the life that we could never live, a life of perfection. Jesus died a death that we deserve. And through faith, through believing, his righteousness becomes our covering. So if the first thing is that the invitation is better than any of us could deserve, the second thing I hope we hear and learn from this parable this morning is that you can't enter wearing your own righteousness. You can't enter the party doing it your way. You can't just show up and be like, hey, I'm good enough. There is a standard, there is a bar, and that bar is Jesus. I wish there was a way for me to like communicate this a little differently. All right. If the standard is righteousness, and I show up in my all black attire, and that's clearly not good enough, that's not acceptable, Jesus gives me the coat or the robe, a little short to be a robe, I suppose, of righteousness. Jesus imputes that unto us. And when we put on the robe of righteousness, then we can enter into the party. You can't enter wearing your own righteousness. You enter wearing the righteousness that Christ covers you with. Now here's the thing. Some of us are still sitting here thinking, like, okay, but but how come everybody else who was invited had a robe that they could put on? And this one guy didn't. Oh, this is interesting. It comes from William Hendrickson, who's a theologian. He does a lot of uh commentary writing. He's a reformed theologian, if that means anything to you. Uh we're not necessarily reformed here at 1128, but uh there's a lot of good things from a lot of good people, and so it's it's finding the things that fit. And he wrote, there can be only one explanation for why this guy shows up not like everybody else. It is by the command of the king and from his bountiful supplies, at the very entrance of the wedding hall, a wedding robe had been offered to each guest. So when they show up to the wedding, there's somebody there being like, hey, you've got to put this robe on to be able to enter into the party, and everybody's receiving this robe that they could put on to cover whatever it is that they're showing up in. And this guy, except for him, they had accepted, everybody else had accepted the free robe. And this man, however, he looked at his own robe, perhaps slightly brushed it off with his hand, and then he told the attendants, My own robe is good enough. I don't need the one you're offering me. And then, he's maybe reading into this, in an attitude of self-satisfaction and defiance, he had marched on into the wedding hall, proud to be different, proud to do it his way, proud to show up on his own terms. You don't show up at a wedding trying to convince the king that your clothes are good enough. You don't. You receive the clothes that are provided. You receive what he gives you, and you show up and you celebrate, and you're a part of the community. The question isn't, am I good enough for heaven? The question is, am I clothed in Christ? You see, so many of us live a life trying to be good people, do good things, earn our way, and it's not about any of that. It's not about how good you are and the long list of things that you've done. Those things are nice and they're good and they're great things, but that ultimately does not matter. Because the question is not, are you good enough for heaven? The question is, am I clothed in Christ? Am I clothed in Christ? And for those of us that are clothed in Christ, we're welcomed in. There's the party going on, a celebration, there's a community of people, there's joy, there's excitement, there's energy in the room, then there's the presence of God in that space and a wedding feast that he outlined at the beginning of this passage. But for those who turn down the robe, who say, No, I'm gonna do it my way. I'm gonna show up how I want to show up. And Jesus says, throw him outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Jesus doesn't soften the judgment. He doesn't say, hey, you're you you could be close. No, he says, you're outside looking in, you're stuck in the darkness, you're stuck in a sad place, a hard place. There's weeping and gnashing. You cannot escape, you cannot work your way in here. That's where you're stuck. And so the third thing for us to hear this morning through this divine story, this parable that Jesus is teaching and speaking and sharing truth about is that there is a real banquet and there's a real outside. There's a very real banquet, and there's a very real outside. And we don't want to be outside. So what do we do with this? That's kind of the question we always get to here at some point. Like, what do we honestly do with this? Do we all go to Goodwill and look for a sweet gold jacket? Do I just go on my own way and pretend that like everything's good? Do I leave here and that and I and I just sit and think about this a little bit more? Do I take an action step? Like, what do I actually do with this parable? What do I do with the truth that's being spoken here? I think there's two responses that make sense for us today. The first is to come. There's been an invitation extended to every single person. There has been an invitation to come into the banquet, to celebrate, to be with Jesus. And so The first thing that we should do is come. We should accept the invitation that's been offered us. We should accept the wedding robe that's been handed to us at the door. And we should stop relying on ourselves, on our own good deeds, on our own righteousness. And choose to put on the righteousness of God. And if you're sitting here, you're thinking, like, okay, how do I put on the righteousness of God? How do I actually stop relying on myself? How do I stop trying to earn something that I could never earn? Because that's all I know. That's what life seems to be is this earn, earn, earn cycle. What do I do? How do I do that differently? Well, the first thing is to repent and to say, God, I have been trying to earn something and I realize right now, like, I cannot earn that. I've been trying to do it my way. And I realize that that's the wrong way. To repent means if you're going this way, 180 degrees, you turn and go the other way. And so if you've been going the way of Mike or the way of Josiah, or of Ian, or Hannah, or Dave, you insert your name there. If you've been going your way, to repent is to say, you know what, I'm going to turn and I'm going to go God's way. I'm going to stop trying to earn whatever it is that I'm trying to earn, and instead I'm going to accept and receive what it is that God has offered me. And I believe that what God has offered is more than enough. It covers me, and I'm good. I'm going to receive that. So I repent, I believe, and I receive. I receive. That's the first thing. As we come and accept the invitation. The second potential thing that we might take from this is if we've already come to this place of saying, like, I'm not going to do it my way, I'm going to go back, I'm going to do it God's way. I'm going to repent. I'm going to believe, I'm going to receive, and then I'm going to trust and continue on this journey with God. I'm going to, I'm going to wear this cloth, this robe of righteousness. If you've already said, like, okay, I'm on the journey with God. I've got on the sweet gold jacket of righteousness. And now we're just, we're trucking along, we're going, we're journeying, we're figuring out how to do life one day at a time. And it's going to be different. It's going to be awkward at times. And it's like learning to walk. Or learning to ride a bike. Or learning to eat with a spoon for the first time. Anybody ever seen like a little kid learning to eat with a spoon for the first time? It goes everywhere but their mouth. It can be awkward learning to trust Jesus. But for those of us that have trusted Jesus and are still learning and journeying, there's something that we can do as well. We can go. They were actually sent out into the streets to invite all of those others who weren't yet invited and to say, hey, come, come to this party, come and join us. There's a party going on. You want to be in here. There's the best feast you're ever going to have in here. And so for those of us that are already inside, it's not a stay inside and just party all the time. It's a take the party out into the streets and be a part of the invitation that welcomes others in. We have a mission to carry the invitation to others. And here's a reminder. Sometimes we look at somebody and we think, like, I don't know about them. They're pretty rough around the edges. I don't know that they're gonna want to hear this invitation. You might be thinking, like, they're not worthy, or they're not good enough, or they're not gonna receive that, or or whatever it might be. But just remember this. You once were not worthy yourself. You once were rough around the edges. Maybe you still are rough around the edges. That's the beauty of journeying with Christ is we could be rough around the edges and figuring it out, but no, we're covered in his righteousness all at the same time. You were not worthy, and so anybody that we think is not worthy is actually worthy of us reaching out to and extending the invitation to. That you need to say, hey, you know what? I want to invite you to experience life differently. I want to invite you to join me at church. I want to invite you into a small group. I want to I want to share the good news of this message. Hey, here's an idea. Can I tell you about a parable of a wedding banquet and this awesome robe of righteousness? If you're gonna do it that way, I would highly recommend getting a gold jacket at Goodwill. It goes a lot further. We have a mission to go if we've already been clothed in the robe of righteousness. Close your eyes with me here. Imagine that we're all standing outside this wedding reception. We know we're not dressed for the occasion. We know we don't belong. We probably didn't even bring a gift, if we're being honest. We've done nothing to earn an invitation. There's nothing we can do to sneak our way in, earn our way in, break our way in. We can't even pay off the security team or the doormen to just let us get in. The bouncers are they're there and then they're not they're not gonna accept the bribe. But someone from inside that party comes out and offers you a garment. And they say, put this on. Put this on. You didn't earn it, you didn't make it. All you did was receive it. And when you walk into the banquet, when you when you walk into the party, the celebration, the king doesn't look at your old clothes. He sees the righteousness of Christ. He sees what you've put on. You don't get into the banquet because you're good enough. You get into the banquet because Jesus is we get into the banquet because Jesus is good enough. What are you wearing this morning? How are you showing up? Who's righteousness? Who's goodness? Are you relying on that's the question that we've all got to answer? Thank you for welcoming us and inviting us. God, would we surrender our lives? Would we surrender the things that we hold tight to? Would we surrender our thoughts, our actions, our hearts to your ways? And in that surrender, God, would we receive your covering, your robe of righteousness. And would that be good enough? God, today we we repent that we've tried to do life our own way for too long, and we we turn to you and confess, God, that we could never earn it or work our way there. But it's because of you, and we believe that because of your death and your resurrection, our sinful ways, the sin that keeps us from you, has been covered over with your righteousness and your goodness. God, would would you see us as your children here today? And would you journey with us and mold us and shape us into the people that you want us to become. We pray this in your saving name. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Thank you for listening to today's message. We hope you had a meaningful moment with Jesus. You can join us on Sundays at Oak Creek High School at 10 a.m. for our in person gatherings. Hope to see you soon.