An Offer You Should Not Refuse

And [the king] sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come.
—Matthew 22:3

Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22 is told in three acts. Act One of the play begins in verse 2: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.” A king’s son was about to get married, so the king wanted to throw a gala celebration. Now, it was customary in the Middle East for such a celebration to go on not just for a couple of hours but for several days. After all, it was a wedding banquet to honor the king’s son.

I believe Jesus was alluding to a future wedding banquet. In the Bible, we call it the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. The Bible says in Revelation 19 that Jesus Christ will return to set up His millennial kingdom—and you and I will return with Him since we will already be in heaven. When He gets to earth, God is going to throw a wedding party for His Son. Jesus Christ is the groom. He has married his bride, the church, and there is going to be a banquet called the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. I think that’s the celebration Jesus is referring to in this parable. Well, such a celebration was an honor to be invited to. Not just anybody got invited to the palace. Imagine you go to your mailbox one day and see an engraved invitation from the White House. The President has invited you to come to a state dinner. Can you imagine your response? Well, that’s what it was like to be invited to the wedding feast for the king’s son.

In the Middle East, it was customary to send out two invitations to such an occasion. That’s why verse 3 says, “He sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast.” The first invitation would have gone out several months earlier to make sure guests cleared their calendars. Now the king sent his slaves to call those who had already been invited to the wedding feast. This second invitation would come a couple of hours ahead of the party, to remind the guests that the wedding feast was about to start. However, they were unwilling to come. The king could have canceled the celebration, but he didn’t. He wanted to honor his son, so he took an unprecedented step of sending a third invitation. Look at verse 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.” And what was their response? “They paid no attention and went their way” (v. 5).

How did the people respond to this third invitation? Jesus says there were two responses. Some declined the invitation because they were indifferent. Matthew 22:5 says they just walked away, “one to his own farm, another to his business.” In Luke’s account of this story, “they all alike began to make excuses” (14:18). By the way, I’ve heard a lot of excuses about why people don’t come to church: “I’m too busy. I don’t have time. It’s too hot; it’s too cold. The music’s too contemporary; the music is too traditional.” Well, that’s what these people did. They made up reasons not to come to the wedding feast.

The second group responds differently. They responded to the third invitation with anger. Verse 6 says, “The rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them.” Now, I’ve received a lot of invitations to things I wasn’t that excited about going to. I don’t recall ever killing a postman, though, for delivering the invitation. Why would people get so angry about being invited to a party? It doesn’t make sense. Just like it doesn’t make sense for people to become angry when you invite them to become a part of the kingdom of God. It seems illogical that when you share the gospel of Jesus Christ with some people and say, “Would you like to join me and escape hell and experience heaven forever and ever? Would you like to join me in experiencing every wonderful thing God has planned for you?” They get angry and are insulted that you would invite them to be part of the kingdom of God. The fact that some people do get angry shows how separated from God they really are.

What was the king’s response? Look at verse 7: “The king was enraged, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire.” Some believe that Jesus was alluding to God’s soon-coming judgment on Israel, when just a few years after this parable, General Titus marched into Jerusalem with his Roman troops and burned the city to the ground, killing more than a million Jews. Perhaps that was the judgment Jesus was alluding to. And of course, it points to that ultimate judgment, when those who have rejected the King’s invitation to come to the wedding banquet, those who have rejected Jesus Christ as their Savior, will spend an eternity in hell, separated from God.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “The Kingdom of God Is a Party” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2008.
Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.