The parable of the King's Feast is in two parts: "Holding Yourself Exempt" and "Holding the King in Contempt."
The situation in which Jesus told it is unchanged from ch. 21: He is in the Temple where He had created such a stir the day before, and the authorities have challenged His right to interfere there. He has replied by demonstrating that it is they in fact who have forfeited the right to challenge Him. He is still trying to awaken them to how wrong their attitude is, and the spiritual danger they are in by reason of it. He has tried to do this with two parables, about Obedient and Disobedient Sons, and about Labourers in a Vineyard. He continues with a third.
i. Notice first that the emphasis changes with this parable, and the changed emphasis is reflected in the change of setting. The two previous parables have been set in vineyards; this one is set in a banqueting chamber. They were about toil, this is about merriment; they were about responsibility, this is about privilege.
Our Lord's appeal to them is a blend of warning and invitation. He did not just 'bear down heavily' on folk. He does not hesitate to alert us to the threat of judgment, but He never relies on that alone to motivate us; He balances warning with appeal. It was His way. Call it the Push-Pull technique! He would both drive and draw us.
He will refer to the Kingdom as a Marriage Feast again in 25:10 (The Parable of the Ten Virgins). God's invitation is to joy and merry-making.
ii. Notice, second, that in this parable there are features in common with the last one:
In both parables two groups of servants are
sent.
In both they are rejected, mistreated and killed.
In both those who rebel are destroyed.
In both they are replaced by others who make good what they failed to
do.
In I the owner's son is the heir; in II the feast is for the King's
son.
iii. There is also a difference: In I the vineyard was let out to others; in II the city was burned (as Jerusalem was in AD 70).
It is obvious that Jesus is addressing the same situation in both, and to understand the parable rightly it should be kept in mind. It is the response of the Jewish people which is in view: first the response of the religious authorities, and second the response of ordinary people.
iv. We must also appreciate the marriage customs in those days (as we shall do more fully when we consider the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins in Matt. 25).
A village wedding was a great occasion. Everyone was required by social custom and tradition to treat the bride and groom as King and Queen of the village for the week-long festivity, conspiring to make it a time they would always remember. Invitations never specified exactly when the wedding would be; you just had to be ready! The bridegroom could even send out false alarms to try and catch you napping, but if you were caught out, it was a disgrace. It was all part of the game. Invitations were sent out well in advance; later, when everything was ready, servants were sent out with the final summons "The bridegroom is coming."
These customs are reflected in the story.
The Jews had long ago been invited to be God's People, but when the Bridegroom's call at last was issued they were not ready, and made excuses. (Jesus has already referred to Himself as the Bridegroom, Matt. 9:15.)
In the parable, those in the highways and byways suggest the Gentiles, to whom the Gospel invitation will go. The Gospel invitation is one of Grace; it is for "all sorts and conditions of men."
This parable then is about God's dealings with the Jews, their disobedience, and the New Covenant which will include the Gentiles.
v. Against that background, we should see that there are bizarre elements in this story:
i. Those who bring the invitations are not merely ignored; they are killed!
ii. A city is burned while a meal is waiting to be served!
iii. In the end it is anybody and everybody who is invited!
Now Jesus was altogether too good a story-teller not to be aware how bizarre those elements would be in real life. If Jesus is telling an unlikely tale, He knows it, and has done so deliberately. Anyone hearing this story would react by saying, "But that's absurd. It doesn't make sense that anybody should react that way." Jesus knows His hearers will say that; He means them to, so it may then dawn on them that they are reacting that way in fact to Him, and that it is monstrous. He was holding a mirror to the authorities' faces so they could see in it how outrageous was their response to Him. And how literally they did match the unbelievable behaviour of the characters in this story.
i. Those who brought the invitations were not merely ignored, but killed.
Who would ever think of killing the King's servants because they brought His invitation to a wedding? But that is what the authorities listening there and then to Jesus will do in less than a week's time! Who would have believed it possible?
The language of v. 8, "Those invited were not worthy," echoes a thing Jesus had said to the disciples once before when he sent them out on their first mission, 10:13ƒƒ: "If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. I tell you truly, it will more tolerable on the Day of Judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah than for that city."
We should observe that the things that made men deaf to the invitation were not bad things in themselves: they were farming and daily work, v. 5. One of life's tragedies is that good things may so preoccupy us we neglect the supreme thing.
There were in fact two classes of response, the indifferent and the rebellious: those who 'couldn't care less', and those who savaged the messengers (those who do not give a fig for what the preacher says to them in Christ's Name, who sit in church so preoccupied with their own concerns they do not even bother to listen; and those who get mad at him).
ii. A city is burned while a meal waits to be served.
v. 7: "The king was angry. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city."
If Matthew was writing around AD 80-90, this detail in the story had had an appallingly literal fulfilment. Jerusalem had been totally and brutally destroyed by the Roman Legions in AD 70, only ten or fifteen years before. We must not treat this as of academic interest only. That was what happened then to those who rejected the Son of God; what will happen to those who reject Him today?
A feature of our Lord's teaching about the Kingdom here is widely overlooked: that until the Harvest at the end of the age, the Kingdom of God contains both responsive and rebellious elements in it. Jesus introduces this parable with the phrase, "The Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to ..." the situation then described, and the situation then described includes a violently rebellious element. In the Gospels, the Kingdom of Heaven is not consistently presented as 'all sweetness and light'; human rebellion is a component in it. So the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, Matt. 13:24-30; both grow together in the Kingdom. What this means is that the Kingly Rule of God, which He has placed in Christ's hands, is His rule over the whole world of our time, over unbelievers and believers alike. Not all men acknowledge or receive Christ's rule, but He rules.
iii. In the end it is just anybody who is invited.
What the King says to his servants in v. 9, "Go therefore ..." anticipates what the King will say to His servants the disciples after His resurrection, Matt. 28:19, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" ... the good, the bad and the ugly!
The bizarre elements continue in Part II of the parable:
i. A man turns up at a Wedding Feast not dressed for the occasion.
ii. Outside the marriage chamber is 'outer darkness.'
i. The man not dressed for the occasion
We are apt in our society to sit uncomfortably with this detail in the story. The poor fellow might not have been able to afford one. After all, tramps and beggars had been dragged in off the street; maybe this fellow was one of them. It seems harsh to punish him so severely.
Here the background of marriage custom must again be noted. To honour the bride and groom was such a high social priority that even the poorest would contrive to obtain suitable wedding garb somehow. All a man had to do, even the poorest, was to show any decent citizen the invitation he had had - from the King, no less - and that citizen would be under a felt obligation to fix him up with decent clothes. A wedding garment did not have to be one of a special fashion, like a bridesmaid's dress today; all that was required was a clean and decent outfit. To turn up the way this fellow did was a disgrace; it displayed a total lack of respect for the couple. Not his circumstances were to blame, but his attitude.
This comes out in the language Matthew used. The two words for 'not' in v. 11 and v. 12 are different in the Greek, and there is no way the difference can be rendered in English. The first 'not' refers to fact, the second 'not' to thought and intention. The King observed that he did 'not' (in fact) have a wedding garment; He then asked, "How did you come to turn up 'not having' (not even intending to have) a wedding garment?"
So even though the invitation is to all and sundry, it matters how they respond.
Jesus is at this point addressing, not the priests who reject Him, but the tax collectors and sinners who receive Him - they must wear the garment that goes with the invitation.
What is meant by that garment?
In real life, as we have noted, a wedding garment was a mark of your attitude to the bride and groom, your readiness to honour them. In the story's application to life then, it concerns our attitude to the Son of God when His invitation is given.
What should that attitude be? Jesus has made it abundantly clear time and time again that it is the attitude of repentance. It was His message from the beginning: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." (4:17) As John the Baptist put it, "Bear fruit that befits repentance." (3:8) The clean garment is the new life of good works that we should 'wear' as a result of receiving the Gospel in repentance and faith; it suggests the "fruits that befit repentance."
To hear the Gospel - even to hear it with approval (you 'go' to the Feast as this fellow did) - is not enough. "Many are called" i.e., by the preaching of the Gospel (the word is kljtoi from the same root as 'invited'), "but few are chosen" (v. 14), i.e., few respond with repentance and faith-obedience. 'Chosen' means chosen by God for the life of the Kingdom.
The choice of clothes as a symbol of attitude is entirely appropriate.
That the nature of our response is reflected in the clothes we wear is true at the most everyday level. When we go to someone's home for tea by invitation, we show the regard we have for them by the clothes we wear. Invited to an official Government function, would we go in the tatty old jeans and tee-shirt we had worn crawling about under the car?
What shows in the dress in which we come to the King's House (i.e., to church)? Church should never be a fashion parade, of course; but it should be a 'passion parade' in the sense that what is in our heart toward God shows in the way we front up.
ii. Outside the marriage chamber is "outer darkness".
v. 11 "When the King came in to look at the guests ..."
That suggests the last judgment, as the parables in chs. 13 and 25 show.
v. 12 "Friend ..." is a word only Matthew uses, and always of people who are in the wrong! It was last used in Matt. 20:13, where the householder remonstrated with the workers who grumbled because they only got paid the same as those who had worked far less hours than they.
v. 12 "He was speechless ..."
Compare Rom. 3:19, "that every mouth should be stopped." Unless we have already arranged for the Lord Jesus to do so, there will be noone to speak for us at the Last Judgment.
v. 13 "The attendants." Are they the angels? (13:39ƒƒ, "the reapers are the angels.")
v. 13 "Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth."
By using language like this at the end of His parable, Jesus leaves us in no doubt what He meant us to understand by it: our final, eternal, unalterable destiny is settled and fixed by our response to the King's invitation in the preached Gospel. In the vision of the Last Judgment Jesus will present later in the day, recorded in Matt. 25, it is not only the Jews (of his own day) who are warned of that final possibility; the same standard of judgment will apply to the Gentiles also.
It is the truth all must face.
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