Matthew 22:1-14

Chapter 80

Prayer

Almighty God, thou hast today spread a great feast for men: may we all come to it and sit down in the places thou hast set apart for us, and eat and drink abundantly, according to thine invitation. We have spent our strength for naught and our money for that which satisfieth not, and our hunger is fierce within us, and our desire is still crying for satisfaction. Thou hast now called us to thine own table, spread with thine own hands, made rich with all the needful things which thou hast found in the universe: may we sit down and be glad in the Lord, and drink the wine of his grace abundantly, and enjoy the security and the light of his dwelling-place. Thou hast opened the door, which is Jesus Christ the Son of God, God the Son: thou hast given unto us of the rich things of creation, of which he, the Saviour, is the one Head: in him we have all things, through him and by him, and alone through him and by him do we enjoy this table of thine, spread with all that can satisfy our hunger and delight our soul. We said in the far-away land, "How many hired servants of my Father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger: I will arise and go to my Father." Lord, see us at thy door, hear our voices, broken by the sobs of oar penitence, and give us welcome into thy sanctuary and into thy banqueting house. We have been out in the cold wind, and in the desolate world, and behold the wilderness is full of graves, and in the rocks there is no resting-place. We have not found bread in stony places, nor water on the hill-tops, so bleak and cold, but now we are at thy door thou wilt give us large and instant admission: thou wilt not withhold any good thing from us whilst we cry for thy pity in the name of Jesus.

We are glad that the tabernacle of God is with men upon the earth, that the walls of thine house are a support of the walls of our dwelling-place that we cannot move about without seeing the church of the living God set in divers places. We open the door of righteousness and the gate of salvation, and we enter in and we find in thine house sweetness, repose, light, and inspiration.

We have come to tell thee of our sin and our sorrow, to repent of our iniquities and to ask for thy forgiveness, and to pour out all the tale of our sorrow at the feet of the all-healing Christ. Thou canst read in our heart what we cannot speak with our lips, thou understandest our necessity and there is nothing in all the agony of our pain which thou hast not felt. We have a High Priest that can be touched with the feeling of our infirmity: he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust, he accounteth our life as a wind that cometh for a little time and then passeth away, or as a vapour which dies as it ascends. He will not remember wrath in the time that he remembers mercy, but in all pitifulness, compassion, tender patience, and long-suffering hopefulness, he will mightily redeem our soul from despair, and bring light instead of darkness.

We remember the years of the right hand of the Most High. We hide our little transient duration in the sanctuary of thine eternity. Behold we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. We are likened unto the grass which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, unto a flower which flourisheth for a little time and then dies away. Behold thou hast not mocked us, but thou hast told us of the littleness of our time upon the earth, thou hast pointed out to us our already opened grave, thou hast called upon us to buy up the opportunity, and eagerly to avail ourselves of the occasion whilst it endures. Thy way is simple, and thy testimony is true and easy to be understood. If we are mocked, we have mocked ourselves, we have not been mocked from on high. What misreckoning there is in our calculation is due to our own ignorance and unskilfulness, for thou hast set down our time of threescore years and ten, and thou hast called upon us to redeem the time and to consider the days how few they are and short. We bless thee that though the shortness of the time is present to us, we see death swallowed, up in victory, and the great eternity of heaven opening itself before our desire and our hope, and there we hear the voices of welcome and the call to a feast which never ends. May none of us fall short of thy purpose herein may none of us by unbelief be disappointed at the last, but may every one of us and all near and dear unto us, sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of light and the house of eternity, to go out no more for ever. To this end may we read thy word diligently, consider it deeply, and carry it out continually, and to this end do thou grant unto us the daily ministry of the Holy Ghost may he dwell in us, enlighten us, rule and guide us in everything, and undertake the administration of our whole life in its innermost thought and purpose and motive.

We give thee thanks for every hope that lights our life, we bless thee for everything that floats down the air from Heaven upon our silent souls, to charm them into grateful repose. For all the sainted dead we bless thee, for our fathers in the church who have gone to the upper assembly, for our loved ones who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb may we be followers of their faith, and be ultimate sharers of their joy. Comfort those who now mourn their dead and look round to see faces that can be seen on earth no more. Grant unto such the tender solaces of thy gospels, the sweet and lasting inspiration and comfort of thy grace.

Let thy word be amongst us this morning as a summer light, touching every point of our life, and lighting it all up with a tender and celestial illumination. May there be great joy in the church, the sound of song and high delight within the sanctuary of the Lord, and when men ask us the reason of this rapture, may we find it in the closeness of our fellowship with the very heart of the Son of God. Deliver every man from bondage, and every soul from mean and unworthy fear. Dispel all dejection and gloom and hopelessness, and in our hearts do thou cause us to hear a new and gladsome song.

Give laughter to the young, high delight and brilliant hopefulness to those who are in the morning of life, and give chastening and mellowness to those who are farther on, so that without moroseness or sourness of disposition or of heart, they may speak with all sobriety of the mysteriousness and grandeur of life. And to the aged and the dying, who have gone upstairs to come down of themselves no more, speak gentle words, breathe benedictions, send messages from Heaven, make the heart young whilst the body dies, and give hope that the soul shall, through Jesus Christ, Saviour and Mediator, enjoy the summer of Heaven, the rest, the peace of the upper places of thy kingdom. Amen.

Mat 22:1-14

1. And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said,

2. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son.

3. And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.

4. Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed ( Isa 25:6 ), and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.

5. But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise:

6. And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.

7. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.

8. Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.

9. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.

10. So these servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.

11. And when the king came in to see (not merely to look at, but to inspect) the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment.

12. And he saith unto him, Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless (gagged).

13. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

14. For many are called, but few are chosen.

God's Welcomes and Man's Refusals

Notice the change in the tone of the parables. The parables are not all of one class, though they all seem to be of one meaning and intent. Compare the parables in the thirteenth chapter of this gospel with the parables that are now before us, and see what a wonderful change has taken place in the tone of the Speaker. Whilst he was uttering his doctrine, delineating and exemplifying his gospel and offering it to all mankind, it was like a grain of mustard-seed, it was like a sower going forth to sow seed in various places, or like a leaven hidden in three measures of meal, or like a net cast into the sea which gathered of every kind. Now the parables are judgments: something has taken place between the thirteenth chapter of Matthew and the later chapters. The kingdom of heaven assumes another colour, speaks in another accent, exhibits itself in another phase. So wonderful is this kingdom it is to you what you are to it: you determine the attitude of the kingdom of heaven towards yourselves. Be needy, be docile, be expectant of heavenly blessings, and the kingdom of heaven is like a great warm heaven shining upon all your life and offering you all its contents. Be rebellious, frivolous, contemptuous, self-sufficient, and the kingdom of heaven is dark with unspeakable tempests, ready to burst upon your life with overpowering destructiveness.

How if Jesus Christ saw the kingdom of heaven vary to his imagination and high fancy as the time bore him onward to the cross? How if he closed his eyes and compared the outward with the inward, as if he should say, "Now I see the kingdom of heaven like a man going forth to sow seed, and now I see it like a great judgment. Now it is like leaven hid in three measures of meal, and now it is like a king taking account of his servants"? He would be the great reader, the very seer which the times need; the eloquent soul clothed with prophetic mantle and speaking in the thousand tones of apocalyptic language, who could see what the kingdom of heaven is like by correctly penetrating the spirit of his age and rightly reading all the meaning of the times passing over him. It is open to us to make parables according to the suggestion of events. Jesus Christ only begins the parables. He ended the miracles, he only began the parables, and it is for us to carry out those parables and multiply them according to the ever-varying colour and tone of the times in which we live. If so, the kingdom of heaven will be like a summer day, like a winter night, like an angel of hopefulness, blowing a silver trumpet and calling to a high banquet, or like a spirit, black, grim, fierce, vengeful, going forth to execute divine judgment upon stony hearts and rebellious lives.

Think not that the parables are ended. Truth has no conclusions, truth stops only to begin again: the miracle rounds itself up, or floats away like a gilded bubble and dies, but truth is a planet that belongs to the very centre of the system of things: it shines in the almightiness of God, and is re-fed, re-invigorated, from age to age, and grows younger with the time, and is more blooming after millenniums than when it first began to discover itself to the expectant mind. Make your awn parables: do not read the weather only, read the signs of the times. Be not learned in the clouds, but learned in bodies celestial and in signs terrestrial, and in all your reading see some hint and outline of the divine kingdom.

Mark through the changes that the parables pass, the king is never less than king, and the heaven never other than a kingdom. He will take the kingdom of heaven, will this Jesus Christ, our Teacher, through all similitudes, but the king is never less than royal, and the thing spoken of is never less than kingly. Is it a sower going forth to sow? He represents the kingdom of heaven. Is it a net cast into the midst of the sea, so humble and poor a thing as that? Yes, but it bears upon it the similitude of a divine kingdom. The subject never lowers its dignity, the thing spoken of never falls below the royal mark. Observe that, for it is full of suggestion. Whether the king is coming to reign or coming to judge, whether he be mocked by his servants or kept standing outside the door knocking till his hair be wet with the dews of the night, he is still the King, and the thing he brings is still the heavenly kingdom. Where there is humiliation there is no disgrace: the stoop is a royal one, and however humble and simple the similitude, it is like a dewdrop that throws back the image of the whole sun.

So in our simplicity we may have dignity, in the very humblest form through which we may pass our religious conceptions, they need never lose the grandeur of kingship or the splendour of royalty. In the simplest hymn sung to the simplest tune there may be the beginning of all heaven's harmony. In the quiet, silent stoop of the head, bending down in the attitude of prayer, without pomp or ceremony, there may be the beginning of the homage that makes heaven sacred. See that you do not find in simplicity any degradation of the thing signified sowing seed, casting a net into the sea, permeating meal with leaven, finding pearls or treasures, whatever you are doing, remember that the thing signified gives to the thing spoken and the thing done their natural measure of grandeur and sublimity. See in the church more than the stones and iron, the wood and glass. These things do not make the church; the kingdom of heaven is like unto them, but if you seize the right idea of the edifice it will burn and glow and shine with infinite suggestion of comfort and meaning and hope. Let us not be wooden in God's house, literal and finite, mechanical and measurable, but pray for that inward vision that sees in every stone a son of Abraham, and hears in all the building of the church the resonance of infinite music. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

What have we then in this parable? The strangest, sharpest contrasts. But first of all we have God's conception and God's purpose of grace and love towards the children of men. How does he put the case? He will have a wedding, a feast, a great banquet: a thousand messengers going forth to call those that were bidden to the wedding. He will have trumpets and cymbals, and dances and high delight. Such is the conception of God always: he never makes less than a feast, no poor mean crust is it ever his to offer. If there be nothing else in the wilderness, he will make even that into a feast of fat things, and there shall be more at the end than there was at the beginning; but in his original purpose, when his heart speaks out of heaven, before the worlds are made, he says, "I will prepare for all coming ages and coming men an eternal wedding feast, banners, trumpetings, delights, raptures, satisfactions infinite." So he speaks in the background of his own eternity.

When did he ever do less? We can hardly turn over two pages of the inspired Bible story without finding offers of milk and wine and honey and banquets and great feasts and sacred pleasures and unutterable delights. God's heart will heave right up through all the detail of our sin, torment, and pain, and will still speak hospitable things to the hungry life of human creatures. God wants us to eat and drink abundantly, God calls us to a feast Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. That is the great cry, crashing, breathing, through the ages, with infinite energy of love: that is God's meaning about us all, to give us satisfaction, to take away the pain of hunger, the fire of thirst, and all that makes life a burden and a trouble. Give him credit for his purpose. God has to be forced into judgment: he comes of himself into love. You have to scourge him into a judicial attitude, mock him, taunt him, break every law he ever made, and spit in the face of his heavens, before he will put out his hand for the sword or the rod. But in himself, in all his heart, there is the one purpose of love, feasting, banqueting, enjoyment, eternal nourishment, and inward and spiritual delight and growth. Never miss this thought from your thinking, namely, God's original purpose, God's desire towards the children of men is one of mercy, pity, love, care, supply, answering prayer before the prayer is half spoken, and with a grand Amen realizing every petition uttered by the suppliant's pleading lips.

So we are sent forth this day with the call to a great banquet. In so far as a man is a true preacher of Christ he will call his people away from the land of hunger and thirst and want into a land of plenty flowing with milk and honey, and every field a vineyard and every rock a house of security. Shall I fall short of my mission? I pray God I may answer its call, for he who is the King bids me tell every one who hears me and to speak the same message deeply to my own soul and with infinite unction to all, that God's purpose today and every day is that we should know no more the barrenness of desolation, the pain of hunger, the deprivations of thirst and the agony of weakness, but that we should all come unto his house and have the abundance of his grace and the infinite satisfaction of his truth.

My hospitable message is to every one that thirsteth, to every soul that feels pain, to every aching heart, to every life that says, "I have an aching void which only God can fill." The gospel therefore is an answer to our hunger: the gospel is not a merely high intellectual delight, a system of spiritual metaphysics, having more or less ulterior moral aims and purposes: the gospel is an appeal to our sin, want, hunger, pain, helplessness therefore do I always insist that credit should be given to the original purpose and design of the gospel, however much the gospel may have failed through false misrepresentation or through an unequal utterance of its hospitable purposes and welcomes.

We have also in this parable an instance of human frivolousness. The guests who were first invited, having heard the invitation, made light of it and went their ways, one to his farm and another to his merchandise. So may great invitations become mere commonplaces, so may the great gospel become but as the sound of a noise in the air. Familiarity deprives us of much of the sublimity of the thing we look at. Could we think ourselves back, so as to feel in all its reality and intensity the fact that God was now inviting our souls to a great feast, surely there would be nothing light or frivolous in our whole temper. But the air is full of these invitations, and therefore our familiarity receives them without any sensation of surprise, much more, without any inspiration of gratitude. We know the word of the gospel so well that in hearing it we miss its spirit. Are we not ruined by our very familiarity with the letter? I ask the question with timidity, because of self-contempt herein, knowing how easy it is to speak syllables which enshrine the Deity without feeling their music in the very heart.

Frivolousness will ruin any life. No frivolousness succeeds in any great enterprise. No frivolous man succeeds in business of a commercial kind. Business is not a trick or an amusement, it is hard work, hard study, daily consideration, incessant planning, wakefulness that ought never to sleep. If so for a corruptible crown, what for an incorruptible? The danger is that we make light of the gospel because of our disregard for the manner in which it is spoken. Were we anxious about the vital matter we should not care how it was uttered. All mere study of manner, and way of putting familiar truth, is an accommodation to the frivolity of the age. When we are told to make our services more interesting, our music more lively, our preaching more animated, we are but told to stoop to the frivolity of the time, that we may entrap a truant attention and arrest a wandering mind. Given, an anxious people, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, knocking at the church door, saying, "Open to me the gates of righteousness, I will enter in and be glad: this is the day the Lord hath made," we need not study any mechanical arrangements, or urge ourselves to any unusual animation of manner: the urgency of our desire, the purity and nobleness of our sympathy would supply all the conditions required by the God of the feast, for the pouring out of heaven's best wine and the preparation of all the fatlings of the heavens for the satisfaction of our hunger. God makes all the universe contribute to the soul's growth. "My oxen and my fatlings are killed and ready, therefore come to the marriage." He keeps back nothing from the soul, he plucks the highest grapes in the vineyards of heaven for the soul, he seeks out the goodliest and choicest of his possessions and treasures that the soul may be satisfied: he has kept back nothing: last of all he sent his Son, saying, "They will reverence my Son." In that fact see the symbol of all that can be crowded into the suggestion that God withholds no good thing that can minister to the soul's development, and the soul's growth in truth and love and grace.

Nor does the human condition in relation to the divine offer conclude itself under the limitation of mere frivolities. You cannot stop at frivolity. Light-mindedness in this matter does not complete itself. "The remnant took his servants and entreated them spitefully and slew them." This is true frivolity. Frivolity is followed by rebellion, blasphemy, high crime and misdemeanour before the eye of heaven. You who laugh today may slay tomorrow, we who do make but gibes and sneers in relation to the gospel offers now, will by-and-by sit with the scornful and in deliberate blasphemy mock the King of the feast. Easy is the descent towards this deep pit of rebellion, hard-heartedness, and utter defiance of divine goodness. To defy the good there might be some courage of a wild kind in defying power, in setting oneself in defiant attitude against thunderbolts, but to defy goodness, to mock an offer of hospitality, to scorn the call to a divine delight let a man once become frivolous in that direction, and the whole substance of his character will be depleted of everything that can be ennobled, and it will speedily sink in irremediable viciousness and baseness. Call it not a light thing to laugh at sacred words and religious opportunities and engagements: it may seem at the time to be of small account, but it is an indication of character, it is the beginning of a descent which multiplies its own momentum, and he who but laughs fluently and lightly today at the preacher's earnestness may in an immeasurably short space of time be reckoned with the scorners, and be the chief companion of fools.

And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment, and he asked him how this came to be, and the man was speechless, and the king ordered him out into punishment. We must not go into the feast according to our own way: there is an appointed road and an appointed method and scheme, and we must not attempt rudeness as an originality, we must not offend the fitness of things. We ourselves know the meaning of this in the lower ranges of architecture, painting, and music. A crooked pillar would instantly attract every eye and awaken every attention, and might probably arouse a suspicion of danger in many minds. Who could bear to look upon a crooked pillar supporting a roof? Who would not run away from it? A pillar has no right to be crooked, so to say: its usefulness is in its uprightness: in any other form it might suggest weakness and danger. So there are eyes that are trained to the instantaneous criticism of colour, that would be pained if they saw aught of discord or disharmony in the relation of hues, others could look on without surprise or trouble or conscious discord. If it be so in such little affairs as these, why not in the higher relations and the broader kingdoms? When the king's eye rests upon the whole feast, he instantly detects aught of disharmony, want of obedience to the fitness of things and the genius of the place. The Oriental prince was accounted rich and noble in proportion as he piled up in his wardrobes it may be thousands of robes for wedding feasts and gala occasions. It was his business to supply the guests with garments. So with regard to this great feast in his kingdom; he who finds the feast, finds the robe, and if we go in to his banquet we must go in clothed with his garments; there must be nothing of our own in that gorgeous and grand delight. Herein we are all to blame; man must have part of himself in it: he will do something towards contributing to the completion of God's purpose. Know ye, sons of men, that the feast is ready and the robe is ready, and neither is yours, both are the gifts of God, and we are asked to accept them now.

Many are called, but few are chosen. Many are named, but few are real. Of what avail, asks a Puritan writer, that you call your ship Invincible if the tiniest gun that ever was levelled against it smote its sides and crumbled it into small dust? It is called but not chosen, named but not real, called a guest, but not a guest in heart. Your names are nothing, though given by your ancestors, though named at the baptismal font or in the river of baptismal water, though changed to indicate promotion and ascent in the social scale. Of what avail is it to call a man rich if he be poor in heart magnificent in station if he be base in purpose and disposition? Do not be frightened by this text as if God called a thousand men to him, then took out a certain number of the thousand and sent all the rest away. This is not the teaching of the divine gospel: read it thus: Many are called, but few choose; many are invited, but few come; many are named, but few are real. Of what account is it to call a base metal silver? Any acid dropped upon it will at once reveal the baseness of the compound. The face is silver, the coating is real, but skin deep lies the pewter, the mean lead, the comparatively worthless iron. Many are called, but few are real; many are in the building, few in the church; many read the Book, few peruse the revelation.

Selected Notes

Adam Clarke says: "Among the Mohammedans, refusal to come to a marriage feast, when invited, is considered a breach of the law of God. Any one that shall be invited to a dinner, and does not accept the invitation, disobeys God and his messenger: and any one who comes uninvited, you may say is a thief and returns a plunderer."

"By the oxen understand the fathers of the Old Testament, by the fatlings understand the fathers of the New Testament; for they did smite with the horn their enemies, and these mounted up aloft by the wings of heavenly contemplation." ( Gregory.) "Oxen are strong, and fatlings are sweet and pleasant; hereby are set forth the oracles of God, which do both strengthen and delight those that feed upon them." ( Origen. ) "They that excuse themselves by the occupying of a farm are the common people of the Jews, the other the priests and ministers about the temple." ( Chrysostom .)