Putting On Christ - Matthew 22:1-14
Many of you can remember what it was like to be a middle school or high school student. Some of you experiencing what it’s like right now; some of you will soon enough. When I served in youth ministry, I heard a saying that describes the perspective of a middle school student coming into the youth group versus a high school student already in the group. It goes like this: “Middle school students come in thinking, ‘Will you accept me?’ High school students see these new kids and think, ‘Will I accept you?’”
Click here to download a print version of this week’s Worship Guide
There is a question of belonging. And everywhere we go in life, we face this question. Do I belong here? Does he or she belong here? We all want and need to belong somewhere. And so our desire to belong influences many of our decisions.
This parable at the beginning of Matthew 22 is very much about belonging. Who belongs in the kingdom of heaven? Do you think you belong? What makes you belong? What gets a person in, or keeps a person out? Well, Jesus addresses this, and you’ll notice a few of my observations listed for you to consider on pages 6-7 in your worship guide. Jesus communicates that: Your birth does not guarantee belonging in the kingdom (v.1-7), your past does not prohibit belonging in the kingdom (v.8-10), and your effort does not earn belonging in the kingdom. (v.11-14).
This illustration of the wedding feast follows Jesus’ confrontation with the religious leaders. The chief priests and elders of the Jews did not demonstrate that they actually knew God’s Word or desired to obey Him. What they showed was that they were self-righteous, they were not truly loving and humble, and their hearts were so hard that they would not and could not recognize and accept Jesus as the Messiah.
And yet, in spite of those things, they were convinced that they belonged in the kingdom of God. So Jesus tells them another story. He compares the kingdom of heaven to a banquet hosted by a king whose son is getting married. The king sends out his first round of invitations, but no one replies. So the king sends out the invitation again, and some don’t attend because are busy with their jobs while others are belligerent toward the king’s servants, mistreating and even killing them.
Bizarre, right? And so the king executes those who killed his servants, and destroys their city. Jesus is obviously alluding to the OT nation of Israel. God the Father is the King, Jesus is the Son, the servants are His prophets, and those invited to the wedding feast are those descended from Abraham. They descended - by birth - from Abraham, his son Isaac, and Isaac’s son Jacob, who God renamed “Israel.” These Jews were the modern-day Israelites.
God did exact justice for His servants against those who mistreated them,exiling Israel for their sin and rejection of His prophets who warned them to repent and return to the LORD. But their assumption was that by birth it was their God-given right to be included in God’s eternal kingdom, with a descendant of the great king David ruling and defending them. And yet, the OT shows that salvation was always by faith. There had to be true faith. Like John the Baptist before him, Jesus taught that God’s people are those who display true repentance and the fruit of repentance. There must display true faith in the Savior and a continually-changing life. There must be evidence of God’s work in a person.
Your birth does not guarantee your belonging in the kingdom. The apostle Paul would later reiterate this in Romans 9. He wrote, “Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.” And then in Galatians 3, Paul says, “It is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.”
Your birth may entitle you to some things related to your family or country. But contrary to what you might think, you were not born a Christian. You may have been born into a Christian family, and certainly the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, but all people are born dead in sins, and so you must be born again to be saved. Jesus said this in no uncertain terms to one of the astute religious leaders of Israel, a man named Nicodemus. In John 3, Jesus tells him, “unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” When Nicodemus is puzzled, Jesus says, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” These things are clear from the OT, especially the book of the prophet Ezekiel. The Israellites had confidence in their birth. But they needed rebirth.
This time of year we talk more about Jesus’ birth. But what about your rebirth? Have you been born again by the work of the Holy Spirit within you. We also refer to it as “regeneration.” Paul says in Titus 3 that when God saves a person, it is “not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, [6] whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, [7] so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Our rebirth entitles us to belonging in the kingdom. If you recognize that you are a sinner, that you are without hope apart from Jesus, and if you want to surrender your whole life to God, you must cry out to Jesus, turn from your sin, and receive him by faith. Your natural birth does not guarantee your belonging in the kingdom. Your need the supernatural rebirth that comes from God. Then you can know that you belong.
Along those same lines, your past does not prohibit belonging in the kingdom. When we consider whether or not we belong, we begin to think about the things we’ve done. Look back at the parable. In verse 8, the king sends out more servants to invite more people to the feast. He opens up the invitation to everyone, “all whom they found, both bad and good.” They filled up the king’s wedding hall.
You know, one mark of Jesus’ earthly ministry is that he spent time with the unacceptable people in Jewish society, those who were seen as dirty and hopeless. For instance, Matthew himself, who wrote this gospel account, was previously a tax-collector, a servant of Rome seen as something of a traitor by his fellow Israelites. Jesus preached the good news of salvation to everyone, even the immoral, the disgusting, the addicted, and the unimportant. All were invited to come to Jesus.
Paul elaborates on this before the verses from Titus that I just read to you. He says, “We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.” See, that describes all people. But God showed His love and mercy through Jesus.
Do you think that your past is too much for Jesus to overcome? Do you feel that you’ve done too much wrong and God could never accept you? I understand you feeling that way, but it’s not true. Do you think you know someone whose past is too much for Jesus to overcome? You’re wrong. This is why we should forgive each other, because any conflict between any two of you is simply a conflict between two sinners without hope apart from the saving work of Jesus.
Becoming a Christian does not involve cleaning yourself up and then coming to God. Now, following Jesus does involve the pursuit of continual change in your behavior, thoughts, and words, but that’s a work that Jesus begins after you receive him by faith - faith not in your righteousness but in His righteousness. Your confidence must be in Jesus’ past, not in your own. Your past does not prohibit belonging in the kingdom.
But even though everyone is invited to come it, and many will respond to the invitation, not everyone will remain. In this last part of the story, the king sees a man among the guests who does not have on a wedding garment. The man is not clothed appropriately for the occasion. It was common in those days, as it is today, to dress up for a wedding. The man in the story has no excuse or case to make. And so the king has him cast out.
Jesus used this same language when he healed the servant of a Roman soldier in Matthew 8. This non-Jewish soldier came to Jesus asking for help, and Jesus marvels at his faith and tells his disciples, “with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
This is another reference to the place of eternal damnation - to hell. The man in the parable who is thrown out - in fact, he’s bound so that he can’t get back in - he’s thrown out because a visible responding to the invitation is not enough. To truly belong, we must be clothed in some special way. But clothed with what?
Well, the Scriptures teach us that we need the righteousness of Jesus, and also that we need genuine faith in Jesus, and also that we need a life of obedience to God after the pattern of Jesus. Basically, we need to be clothed in Jesus. The apostle Paul makes a statement in Galatians that helps us understand. He says in chapter 3 of his letter to the church in Galatia, “in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Let me read that to you again, because this is essential to understand. Galatians 3:26, “in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”
Is Paul saying that every single person who received baptism is definitely saved? Just because a person receives baptism does not mean they have put on Christ. Paul goes to great lengths to explain that we should not put our confidence in outward rituals. So what does Paul mean? William Hendriksen explains it like this: “It should not be any matter of controversy that being “baptized into Christ” means more than being baptized with water, for surely not all those who were the objects of the outward administration of this sacrament have actually “put on Christ.” The apostle is speaking, therefore, not about the merely outward administration of baptism, as if some magical healing power adhered to it, but about the sign and seal in conjunction with that which is signified and sealed.”
You are not saved just because a pastor put water on you. To be saved, God must put Jesus Christ on you. Your effort does not earn belonging in the kingdom, even your efforts to put on Christ. The effort to secure your belonging in the kingdom is God’s work. And that is why, in verse 14, Jesus concludes this story by saying that, “many are called but few are chosen.” Not all who hear the call or who even have some kind of response are effectively called. In other words, the call does not have an inward effect.
The inward effect is God’s work, and it is God’s decision. It’s on God’s level, and we don’t know who is or is not chosen by God. But we know that God is in total control, He’s entirely good and just, and He chooses who puts on Christ and receives salvation from sin through Christ. But it’s no effort of your own that earns your belonging at the wedding feast.
All glory is God’s, so that no one can brag or boast. This is why God tells his church to share the gospel with everyone. The people with a less-shameful past cannot boast in the presence of those with a more-shameful past. People born into one ethnicity cannot boast about their birth before those of another ethnicity. The moral cannot boast in the face of the immoral.
If any boasting is done, the true believer can only boast in God, that God put Christ on you as a wedding garment, and God made a seat for you at His table. You can boast that only by God’s own mercy could God call you “friend.” You can boast that only in God’s kindness would God enable you to be faithful to Him. Here shortly, when we sing “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” we should remember that the faithful are only faithful because God made it so. We are God’s workmanship, new creations because he remade us, our old selves gone because he disposed of them, our new selves here because he made us born again.
When a player wins the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, GA, he gets highly rewarded. The winner receives the famous green jacket, a gold medal, a large sum of money, an automatic place in the big golf tournaments for the next five-years, and even a lifetime spot each year in the Masters. So he no longer has to “make the cut” to compete in the Masters. But the winners also gets to be part of something very unique. Every year since 1952, the most-recent winner of the Masters gets to host a dinner for all the previous winners. The tradition was started in 1951 by golf legend Ben Hogan. When Hogan sent out the invitation for the first ever Masters champions dinners, he stated, “My only stipulation is that you wear your green coat.”
Of course, those men worked hard and they earned their green coats. When we put on Christ, we don’t earn Him. We receive Him by God’s grace. But like those Masters champions, we can come to the feast confident that we belong. O come, all you faithful! Come, having put on Christ!
Let’s pray together.