THE BOOK OF MATTHEW
Lesson 72, Chapter 22
Today we open Matthew chapter 22. It begins with quite a long Parable. Unlike
some of the other metaphorical and symbolic illustrations that Jesus has been
using to instruct and to reply, this is a true Parable in the Hebrew literary sense
and thus we have to recognize it as such. This means that we have to set aside
our contemporary Western mindsets, and put on a 1
st
century Jewish mindset to
get the most out of it.
I'll remind you that a true Parable is a fictional story. It has only one moral to it. It
always employs people, things, and circumstances that are familiar to Yeshua's
Jewish listeners. It is not an allegory, the details are relatively unimportant and
often hyperbole is used to heighten the tension in order to draw in the listener. In
fact, to pay too much attention to the details will lead us away from the single
important point that the Parable is attempting to make. Perhaps one of the more
complex challenges of every Parable of Christ is that it is told 100% within the
Jewish cultural mindset and experience of the 1
st
century. This is one of the
several reasons that we spend as much time as we do with the historical
background of the Bible characters and setting since it is not general knowledge
that Bible students and God worshippers in general possess or (sadly) are
taught.
So if a Parable has but one single point (that is, like the one we're about to study
the point is stated at the end of it), then why are some so long winded and
elaborate? It is because they were meant to be heard, remembered, and then
passed along to others by the spoken word. Therefore the detail was added in
order to embellish, make it interesting, and more easily memorable. Let me give
you a very simple example.
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A very wealthy older man lives in a 100 room mansion on a 1000 acres of
beautiful and well maintained grounds. His curious granddaughter comes to him
one day and asks if he would tell her how it happened that he became so wealthy
(since she knew that he came to America as a poor immigrant), and she also
asks how this beautiful house came to be. He replies: I was poor. Then I got rich.
I bought land. Then I built this house. End of story. Not very satisfying and not
very memorable. And while what he said was true and factual, a little more
information and color would have made for a beautiful story this young girl might
have cherished and then handed down to her own children. So a Parable is
constructed in a way that adds details for the sake of color and depth and to
make it feel more relevant to us and to our daily lives. It takes us to the same
truth as if it was told coldly and abruptly, but instead it makes the story into
something enjoyable, informative, unforgettable, and more likely to be
communicated to others.
When I said that the details of a Parable are not important, I meant it in the sense
that they can be a distraction if we're not careful. For a 1
st
century Jewish listener
the details woven into the Parable were of familiar concepts and common
knowledge, and so the scene Jesus was setting and its several cultural nuances
were easily grasped. In fact, as more and more ancient Jewish literature is
discovered and translated, and then carefully studied, it seems that nearly all of
the illustrations and Parables Yeshua spoke had already existed and were in use
in some form. In the times immediately following Christ, we find some these
sayings and Parables written down by the Rabbis in the Mishna and Talmud. Yet
for us of the 21
st
century, we can easily misconstrue the meaning of Yeshua's
Parables and illustrations because we are so far removed from the biblical era
and culture. So I will explain some of the details so that we can appreciate how
those ancient listeners would have understood it, and therefore how we must
understand it. The meaning of Christ's Parables does not evolve over time; they
remain the same. It's only how to apply the moral of the story in this modern, fast
moving technological world we live in today.
Open your Bibles to Matthew 22.
READ MATTHEW CHAPTER 22 all
This is one of those situations that would it have served us better if the chapter
change and verse markings that were added to our Bibles 1000 years ago
weren't there at all, because what was going on in chapter 21 simply flows
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uninterrupted into chapter 22. The chapter and verse format as it appears to us in
our Bibles makes it seem as though what was happening in chapter 21 has come
to an end and chapter 22 begins a new scene with Jesus speaking to other or
different people. That's not the case. The final words of chapter 21 were:
CJB
Matthew 21:45-46
45
As the head cohanim and the P'rushim listened to
his stories, they saw that he was speaking about them.
46
But when they set
about to arrest him, they were afraid of the crowds; because the crowds
considered him a prophet.
And then the scene continues with verse 1 of chapter 22 saying: "Yeshua again
used Parables in speaking to them". So the scene of chapter 21 continues with
more conversation. The "them" are the same fellows we were reading about in
chapter 21. So Jesus was in Jerusalem, at the Temple, and still jousting with the
same chief priests and Pharisees. In other words, Yeshua was doing battle with
both sides of the Jewish religious system that were engaging Him; the Temple
side and the Synagogue side. And these 2 sides that under normal
circumstances were quite separate and had little use for one another found a
common enemy in Yeshua of Nazareth. The all important context that we must
hold onto throughout this Parable (and really all of chapter 22) is Jesus criticizing
and warning these representatives of the Jewish religious leadership. Not
necessarily ALL of the Jewish religious leadership, but only those who thought
and behaved as those standing before Him. This was NOT a diatribe against the
entire religious leadership nor the Jewish people in general, but it was part of a
Christ-led reformation of their biblical Hebrew faith that had become so muddled
and polluted with manmade Traditions that it obscured the holy and true Word of
God. Yeshua's words were directed and nuanced towards the misguided leaders
who held such great authority and sway over the common people in Jewish
society. Whatever these men said, right or wrong, the people believed. After all,
these leaders were considered to be (and held themselves up to be) the experts
of all matters concerning the Jewish faith. A good and proper analogy of the
Jewish religious leadership of that era would be the Rabbis, Pastors,
Ministers, Bible teachers and commentators of our time.
Notice how the opening words of the Parable are spoken in classic Parable
style: "The Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to..." So the instruction Jesus
is about to give is to explain something important about the Kingdom of Heaven;
and to do so He is going to use a familiar illustration within Jewish society to lead
His listeners to His point. So the fictional story is about a king that is throwing a
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banquet. Kings, farmers, and women were often used as the fictional foils in
Jewish Parables. Immediately there is a detail provided that would have been
common knowledge to the 1st century Jews but can escape us. It is that this is
not just any lavish banquet, it is a wedding banquet. That the groom of the
wedding is the king's son simply adds to the gravity of the situation.
In that era there was little more socially important than a wedding. So what we
need to pay most attention to is the actions than to the specific people involved. If
one was invited to a wedding, it was far more of a social obligation to attend
than it was to any other kind of event invitation with an accompanying banquet.
To choose not to go was to bring shame to the one holding the event, and the
one who skipped it would normally have been looked at as being a rather bad
person. That a king is holding the event really makes the invitation more of a
summons with terrible authority behind it.
Since this Parable is constructed within a Jewish cultural context, then we need
to look for a connection to something else in a Jew's common reality that they
would have easily recognized. I suspect that that something was Proverbs 9.
We'll read the opening verses... but before we do I want to remind you that
Yeshua was seen by His followers as well as His mere admirers as possessing
the spirit of Solomon (the spirit of the Son of the David). Part of the Tradition
about Solomon is one we're most familiar with: His God-given Wisdom. So
Wisdom was seen by many who looked up to Jesus as one of His extraordinary
attributes.
CJB
Proverbs 9:1 Wisdom has built herself a house; she has carved her
seven pillars.
2
She has prepared her food, spiced her wine, and she has set
her table.
3
She has sent out her young girls [with invitations]; she calls
from the heights of the city,
4
"Whoever is unsure of himself, turn in here!"
To someone weak-willed she says,
5
"Come and eat my food! Drink the wine
I have mixed!
6
Don't stay unsure of yourself, but live! Walk in the way of
understanding!"
Wisdom in the Oriental cultures of that era was thought of as a person, in a
similar way to how many Christian denominations view the concept of the Trinity
as consisting of 3 persons. Wisdom was seen as a divine entity; much more than
a virtuous attribute. So in this Proverb we have a feast prepared and we have
Wisdom as the one who is hosting the feast. All are invited, even the weak-willed.
So the themes of Proverbs 9 and of this Parable of Jesus are quite similar in their
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nature and likely Christ's listeners would have made the connection and felt that
His Parable was a sort of midrash... a commentary... on Proverbs 9.
Before we proceed, it is good to notice that Mark's Gospel doesn't contain this
particular Parable, but Luke's does have something similar. The majority of
commentators ancient and modern see Luke 14:15 - 24 as the parallel to what
we read in Matthew 22:1 - 14. So let's pause to read it in Luke. However I want to
start reading a bit earlier in the chapter so that the context for the Parable in Luke
is better displayed.
READ LUKE CHAPTER 14:1 - 24
Notice that in Luke Jesus told this Parable on Shabbat, in the personal home of a
leading Pharisee, and somewhere along the road to Jerusalem. Yeshua was
dining with this leader and with others. Verse 7 explains that Yeshua watched
how the guests were attempting to seat themselves according to their own
perceived social status and rank. Therefore in verse 12 He says to His Pharisee
host that he shouldn't invite only the aristocrats and his relatives to his home, but
also the poor and the lame. A person at the table with Yeshua was so overcome
by the truth and wisdom of Christ's words that he exclaimed how blessed people
will be who eat bread (who eat at a feast) in the Kingdom of God. And then
Yeshua responds with a Parable about a man giving a banquet, inviting the
wealthy and the land owners, but they shun the invite because they have other
things they feel are more important. So the man orders his servants to go out to
the highways and byways and invite strangers, common folk, to eat the food that
is otherwise going to go to waste. That's pretty much the end of the Parable.
My opinion is that this Parable in Luke while built upon a similar core truth and
having a few other similarities to the Parable we are studying about in Matthew
22, also has many differences. There seems to be a common mindset...a kind of
unconscious assumption, if you would... among Bible academics and teachers
that when we read about things Christ said in the different Gospels that He only
would have said them one time and in one way, and we'll never hear of them
again. Therefore a contest among intellectuals erupts to determine which of the
Gospels is telling us the most correct version of the story, or which is the actual
original story from which the other Gospel writers drew their information, but they
modified it. Again, this assumes that even though (as with our current Parable)
the setting of the Parable between the 2 Gospel accounts is different, some of
the most important elements of the story are different, and even the characters
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are different, nonetheless the Parable in Luke 14 is the same event, at the same
moment, telling the same Parable as in Matthew 22; and that this Parable was
spoken only this one time. Folks, that is simply not how people genuinely operate
and I don't for a second believe Christ operated that way. He would have told
similar stories in different settings at different times using somewhat different
words, each story tailored to the circumstance at hand, even though the moral or
the point of the story was similar to other stories we read of Him telling. That is,
He would have told the same story or Parable to make a point that would have
varied just a bit to fit the application and audience at hand. So, no, we should not
compare the Luke Parable to Matthew's and say they are the same, with one
account of it being more accurate than the other.
It is always better that we look at the same story as told in the various Gospel
accounts in order to gather the most information available in order to achieve the
most well-rounded understanding of it that we can. That said, we will look no
further at Luke 14 because it doesn't contain the same Parable we are reading
about in Matthew 22, nor do we find this Parable in the Book of Mark.
In verse 3 of Matthew 22 notice the careful wording: the king sent servants to
summon those he had invited. In other words, the invitations had been sent at an
earlier time as a notification of an upcoming event. Now that the banquet has
been prepared, the guests are summoned to come immediately. That is, the
assumption in the Parable is that the invitations to the wedding were accepted
and now it is time to act by coming to the feast. But what happens? The guests
refused to come! Yet the unusually patient and benevolent king then sends a
second group of servants to summon the guests in order to give them a second
chance that they might have a change of heart. The servants are to tell the
guests that all the preparations have been made. The bulls and cattle have been
slaughtered and cooked. Everything is completely ready. But the guests were
unmoved. Some said, no I can't come because I have to mow my lawn today.
Others said, but I need a day to rest and put my feet up because we stayed out
late last night. Still others said, I'd normally come but there's a great football
game on today. Still others said... OK it doesn't say that. But that's essentially in
modern terms what the ungrateful guests responded with. In the Parable one
went off to his farm (to oversee it's operations no doubt), another to go look after
his business (that is, to continue to make profit). But worst of all, the remainder of
the guests grabbed hold of the king's servants, abused them and then murdered
them!
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I remind you, this is a fictional story... an exaggerated fiction... with a goal of
leading us to a moral. I'm going to pause here to preach something that I think is
from the Lord, and admittedly in doing so I'm going to use allegory. Yet this
Parable of the king's son's wedding feast uses some powerful elements that I
can't let pass by. Just as the wedding guests in the Parable were obligated to get
up from their comfortable homes, and to leave behind what seemed at the time to
be more important to them to come the wedding feast thus honoring the king, so
are followers of the God of Israel and His Son Yeshua obligated to obey Him, to
worship and glorify Him, and to gather together in holy assembly if at all possible.
What we are doing today and other days when we come together as a
community of Believers is to worship and glorify the Lord in music, praise, prayer,
and in learning His ways through learning His Word. It necessarily begins with
our presence. It begins even earlier with our determination that despite the
business of life, and the many opportunities and options that we have to do other
pressing or especially enjoyable things, we will make gathering together in order
to communally worship God as a top priority in our lives. Whether you are sitting
in this sanctuary before me today or watching this at home, setting aside the time
to worship and praise God... and especially in the company of fellow Believers...
is not merely a nice thing to do, it is our duty as far as it is up to us. It is one of
the several ways we are to acknowledge the importance of the Lord in our lives...
not acknowledge it to others, but to Him by our actions.
Over and over we are warned by Jesus that merely claiming belief is not enough.
Thousands... millions... at the moment Judgment Day arrives will jump up and
confidently shout "Lord, Lord". But Yeshua says He will respond to so many
startled people saying: "I never knew you". He didn't mean "you're a stranger to
Me". He meant that despite what you claim, you never acted out what you say
you believe. There's too little actual evidence of your stated devotion to Christ to
count you as one of His. Listen: I've sat where you are seated. A long time ago, I
went to Church services only if I had nothing else that needed to be done or that I
preferred to do. I saw it as purely up to me, an option, that in no way affected my
relationship with the Lord. He'll understand, I told myself. But then tragedies in
my life proved I was wrong. Not because I think the Lord cursed me with tragedy,
but because if I had worshipped Him and stayed closer to Him, I probably would
have made different and better life choices that likely would have averted some,
maybe most, of those tragedies.
I learned that we can't have it both ways. Trust in God can't be a slogan, or only
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skin deep. We must make every effort to come to the King when we're
summoned, to demonstrate to Him our loyalty and allegiance, and to sit at His
feet to learn His Wisdom, as we gather with like-minded Believers whom we can
befriend, encourage, love and help; and this comes only out of fellowshipping for
the purpose of worshipping the Creator. Or God allows us in our foolishness to
ignore the summons, have it our way, and eventually pay the inevitable price.
May those with ears, hear.
Going in another direction: by this early point in the Parable the questions as to
whom or what the King and his son, the wedding banquet and the invited guests
represent come front and center to the Christian Church. The King, it is usually
said, represents God. The son, of course, must be Christ. The wedding banquet
is the same as the Wedding Feast of the Lamb that we read about in Revelation
19; so this Parable is actually a prophecy of the far future. The invited guests that
won't come are assumed to be the Jewish people. And as the replacement
guests that the king ordered his servants to go out and gather are the gentile
Church. Folks, just as I used some elements of this story to allegorize and make
an application, my application was not at all the moral or point of this Parable.
And neither are any of these traditional identifications of the people in the story
correct. That is because the nature of the Parable is NOT to have each of these
characters as an allegorical or symbolic representation of someone or something.
They are just details added to embellish the story in order to get and hold our
attention and lead us to the point.
We, as gentile Christians and Messianic Believers, have had through the
centuries a troubling tendency to set aside the Jewish cultural context of the Bible
stories and their characters... and thus the points being made... and to replace
them with ideas that in no way existed at that time among those people, and
would not come into existence until centuries later and only among gentiles... not
among Jews. Yes, we can legitimately borrow from this Parable and fashion
some excellent and appropriate metaphors and illustrations to talk about the
Father and the Son, the End Times, and use them to explain some important
spiritual and practical things about our faith. Frankly, that's what most good
preachers and speakers strive to do. But that doesn't mean that our allegories
and applications are what Yeshua was actually teaching at the time or what the
people that heard Him thought a particular teaching meant. The idea we are to
obtain at this point of the Parable is of the shocking faux pax of social etiquette
by these invited guests who had the gall to refuse to attend their king's son's
wedding banquet. But even more shocking is that they didn't just leave it there;
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some of them murdered the messengers! In other words, they exposed their
absolute and resolute rejection of the king, of his authority, and his summons. So,
what's the king to do?
This time, instead of sending his servants as messengers, the king sends armed
soldiers. The gracious invite and summons that was rejected, was exchanged for
merciless retribution. On behalf of the king, his soldiers killed the murderers and
burned down their city. Let's pause again. In the gentile Christian world of
allegorical interpretation, the majority of Bible scholars see what is occurring in
the Parable as God's judgment upon the Jewish people. The burning down of the
city is most often interpreted as the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. (some of
this because so many scholars say that the Book of Matthew was written after
the destruction of Jerusalem). This burning down of the city is meant to show the
king's fury and the collateral damage that comes with it. Although because this
story is aimed at the Pharisees and the chief priests, it's hard not to think that
Jesus didn't intend these Jerusalem-based religious leaders to assume that He
meant the place of their government (Jerusalem) would be laid waste.
After the king's retribution has run its course, he decides that since the ones he
invited didn't come, he would extend the offer to other people. In the Jewish
understanding the invited ones are the wealthy and the aristocrats. I mentioned in
earlier lessons that the Jews believed that wealth and high societal position was
a blessing from God. Therefore, the wealthy and the aristocrats had to be closer
to God than the common folks could ever hope to be. So in this Parable, from the
Jewish perspective, the king rejected the aristocrats and wealthy who were closer
to God, and instead went seeking the poor, the common, and the under
privileged classes of people (who were not as close to God) to favor with his fine
banquet. Something that was near unimaginable. Again: this added more shock
value to the story.
We're told in the CJB that the servants went out into the streets to find more
people. The Greek word is hodos and it more means road. Other English Bible
versions say "highway". That's a bit better translation because the word street
seems to indicate something small and local. But that can't be the case because
the city with its streets has just been destroyed by the king! No; it means the
king's servants are looking for people who live outside the city; people coming on
a highway from other places. Let's pause again. The rather standard Christian
interpretation over the centuries is that the king is looking to replace Jewish
invitees with gentiles. In other words, the Jews rejected the offer from the king, so
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gentiles would be sought out and they would happily accept the offer. The
Church (gentile of course) replaces the Jews. But even the conservative Bible
scholars such as Davies and Allison, Ben Witherington, and Daniel J. Harrington
all scoff at such a notion because no such implication is warranted. There is no
change in ethnicity implied here; this is a Jewish context start to finish just as with
all of Christ's teachings and Parables. So the change of guests is not a switching-
out of ethnicities; it is a switching-out of those belonging to a certain level of
social status. The least social status replaces the greatest social status. The poor
who had been further from God, replaces the rich who had been nearer to God
(at least as it was seen in Jewish eyes). Ah, but there's more. There would be no
discriminating between the good and the bad among the new batch of people
invited. No judging (at least for the moment) between the evil and the righteous.
All people that came within the sight of the servants were to be invited to the
wedding banquet at the call of the king.
Yet it seems that all is still not well. Although the net is widely cast to gather in
guests of all kinds to come, there are entrance requirements. The replacement
guests arrive and the king comes in to look them over and welcome them to his
son's wedding banquet. But lo and behold there's a problem. There was one man
that wasn't properly dressed for the occasion. In other words, he didn't come
prepared as he no doubt knew that he should. So the king confronts the
unprepared guest and demands to know just how he got into the banquet without
being properly dressed. The man was speechless because he knew he was
wrong and apparently was hoping he wouldn't be noticed or that perhaps the
wedding garment requirement had been abolished. In that era it wasn't
uncommon that a host would provide proper garments for his guests to a
wedding banquet because there was a cost for such fine clothes. Therefore no
one had an excuse for not honoring the host by being properly attired for such an
important occasion as a wedding feast. This ungrateful, impertinent guest is
summarily thrown out of the king's palace; tied up and bound, he is put outside
into the dark where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. The Church
interprets this as speaking of the grave, or perhaps Hell; maybe the Lake of Fire,
or simply complete separation from God. However this interpretation is reading
some far later Christian doctrine back into this story.
Almost certainly when the words of the king kicking the man into "outer darkness"
are used, the idea being expressed is the Hebrew concept of choshek that
Christ is thinking and describing and was well understood in the Jewish
culture. Choshek means darkness, but not like the darkness of nighttime (which
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is layil in Hebrew). Choshek means an evil darkness... something depressing if
not terrifying... the total absence of Godly illumination. For this reason it is indeed
a place or a condition of wailing and despair that reminds a Jew of their exile in
Egypt and one of the plagues that consumed Egypt in darkness. But what it
would not have mentally pictured to the Jewish listeners was a spiritual place of
eternal pain and torment like Hell.
Then the Parable ends with the moral to the story so we don't have to piece it
together or wonder: "for many are invited, but few will be chosen". Because this
is such a long Parable, I'll repeat; this is Yeshua speaking directly to the
Pharisees and the chief (or senior) priests at the Temple in Jerusalem. He's
aiming this at them and they are well aware of it. And despite all the great
opportunities for meaningful illustrations by Bible teachers, Rabbis and Pastors
that is found in this meaty Parable, there is one and only one moral and point to
it: "for many are invited, but few will chosen". Who are the many? At this point in
the story we find out that the many could said to be "all"... everyone... rich or
poor, righteous or unrighteous, highly or lowly placed in the Jewish social
hierarchy. The aristocratic Jews didn't respond to the invitation and while many of
the common Jews did, some were good and some were bad. An example of the
bad was the man who wasn't wearing a wedding garment. He was thrown out
and so he clearly represents the class of common folk who are invited, but some
are not righteous, and so they won't be chosen. Let's not go outside Jewish
ethnicity in the meaning of this Parable because that's all that is being
contemplated at this time. It's only after Yeshua's death and resurrection that the
gate will be opened wider and gentiles will be pursued and welcomed to join with
believing Jewish brothers and sisters.
Let's address another matter of later Christian doctrine that also gets read back
into this story, with Calvin being one of the more notable contributors. Some of
you may already have guessed it: it is the issue of predestination or
predetermination. That is, that God has already chosen from eternity past those
from among the many who will be the few He accepts. And while I don't accept
such a doctrine, those Christian leaders who do would be better to abandon
pointing to this Parable as one of their proofs because any way one wants to look
at it, the reason for God NOT choosing anyone in the story has solely to do with
that person's own failures and not out of serendipity or some kind of
unchangeable destiny. The chosen are those who respond appropriately to the
king's invitation. In this case it is the failure of a man who indeed responded to
the invitation, but then behaves inappropriately, knowing better than to be found
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without his wedding garment at the wedding banquet of the most important
person he'll ever encounter; the king.
With the ending of the Parable the chief priests and the Pharisees, stinging from
Yeshua's hard hitting words, go off to plot a way to rid themselves of this Galilean
Holy Man that is stirring up such a pot of trouble for them. So later they send
some others to try to entrap Him with what they think is a question that no matter
how He answers it, He will condemn Himself. That's what we'll study the next
time we meet.
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