[Machine transcription]
But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment, and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?” And he was speechless.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear saints, the wedding garment seems to be the main focus of this parable of our Lord Jesus, that we would be in the wedding feast of the Son clothed in this garment. And there’s a warning that we might be in the feast without the garment and be thrown out. So that has to be our attention this morning. How are we clothed in this wedding garment? How are we sure that we are safe?
But Jesus takes a little while to get there. In fact, this parable is quite a roller coaster. In some ways, this parable is picking up on the parable from last week. Remember the parable of the tenants where the wicked tenants killed the servants and killed the Son, and so the field was taken from them and given to someone else? This is kind of the next thing. What happens to the people whom the vineyard is given to? What happens then?
But Jesus switches from the picture of a vineyard to the picture of a wedding, and this is really one of those themes that runs throughout the entirety of the Scriptures. In fact, from beginning to end, the Bible is about weddings. We should rejoice in that. In fact, when the Lord wants to talk about something joyful, this is what He goes to: the wedding.
The end of the world is the wedding feast of the Lamb. The beginning of the world was the marriage of Adam and Eve. And all the way through, the Lord describes His church as the bride, and He is the bridegroom. And so when we hear this parable beginning like this, a king had a wedding feast for his son, we think this is going to be a great story. In fact, it seems like to me, it’s almost the beginning of a fairy tale.
The king with his son, the prince who has a fiancée, and they’ll be married and she’ll become the princess, and the king has set up this lavish feast. He’s killed oxen. He’s killed fatted calves. Because remember the man who killed the one fatted calf for the return of the Son? That was extravagant. But this king has killed the fatted calves, and he’s set this beautiful banquet table, and all the best have been invited—all the noble people, all the landowners, all the people who are worthy of the king’s feast have been invited, and we’re ready for this.
What’s going to happen next? But it takes a pretty drastic turn, because all the people invited don’t come. And the king, it seems like he’s, you know, some really fancy weddings I think have valet parking, but this is even fancier than that. The king sends the people, they come to get you and bring you to the wedding, so he sends out the servants and they come back with no people?
And the king says, “Wait, how come there’s no people here? Go tell them again. Tell them about the ox. Tell him about the fatted calf, tell him about the feast, tell him how the banquet’s ready, everything’s ready, come to the feast.” And so he sends the servants out again, but now they don’t come back, because the people who received the invitation to the wedding, instead of coming with them to the feast, they take the servants, they abuse the servants, they beat the servants, and they kill the servants.
Where are my—here’s the king, and here’s the king’s son, and here’s the prince and the about-to-be princess, and they’re waiting for everyone to come to the wedding, and they say, “Where are the people? Where are the servants? How come nobody’s here?” And he goes and he finds out that his servants were murdered by the people invited to the feast. This, of course, is the insanity of sin, and the king is angry.
So instead of sending the servants, he sends his soldiers, and they go and they just wipe the place out. But now there’s a problem. There’s still the king and his son who need to have a wedding feast. The feast is still ready, so what to do next? So after the dust settles, the king says to the servants who were left, “All right, look, we still have the feast. We still need this party. Go out to the streets, invite everybody. They don’t have to be worthy. In fact, it says in the text, invite the good and the bad. Invite everybody and bring him in here so that we can have this feast for my son.” And so he does.
And now we think, okay, it started out good. It got kind of messy in the middle. Now it’s better. Now the feast is filled. Now the banquet hall is full. Now the music has started, and the feasting has started, and the king, you can imagine him with a goblet going around to the tables, greeting all the people who were there for the wedding of the son, and he comes upon this one there, and he’s not clothed in the wedding garment.
And just when we thought things were full of joy, the king finds this one and says, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?” And so he calls the servants and says, “Tie him up, throw him out into the outer darkness, because many are called but few are chosen.” And so the parable ends. Now this is a real roller coaster of a parable. I mean, it’s up and down and then way down and then way up and then way down again. But it is for us a warning.
And here’s the point. The people who were invited, who rejected the invitation, were the Old Testament people of Israel, and the people sent to them were the prophets, and they killed the prophets, and they refused to come to the banquet. And so at last they were wiped out. That’s probably a prophecy of what happened to Jerusalem in the year 70 AD when the armies of Rome came and flattened the place, and there was nothing left. But all the people on the streets who were invited into the wedding hall, this is the church of the New Testament.
And it doesn’t matter— all the good and the evil, the good and the bad, everyone on the streets, they’ve got to come into the wedding, and this is the picture of the New Testament church. In fact, it’s a picture of what’s happening right now. Now it’s a picture of you, that you’ve been brought into the wedding feast to celebrate the joy of the king and his son, and the question is, are you worthy to be in this place?
Now you have to think that those who are walking down the street, and who knows what they were doing, just walking around, and the servants of the king come up to them and say, “Hey, I want you to come to the king’s son’s wedding feast,” that they probably said, “Wearing this? I haven’t trimmed my beard in two weeks.” I don’t know if you know this, we’re all about weddings at our house now. And what you wear to the wedding is apparently a big deal. You don’t just show up to a wedding; you’ve got to shop. You’ve got to get ready. It takes time to get ready for that.
Now, imagine you’re just walking on the street and you’re invited to a wedding, and it’s not just any wedding; it’s the king’s wedding. “I can’t go before the king on the most festive of occasions and the most formal of occasions. I can’t just go before the king like this.” But the servants say to you, “Don’t worry, the king has plenty of robes, enough for everyone invited.”
This is the point, and this is maybe a tradition that we’re not familiar with, but in the ancient world, especially when you went into the palace and especially when you went into something formal, the king himself would provide you the appropriate clothes. So the king’s servants are there, and as you come into this place, they’re putting the king’s robes on you. I was reading about it this week, about how like the Persian kings, for example, were known for this especially, that they would have warehouses full of robes and dresses and formal cloaks so that they could give them away to the people that they love, and so they would deck them in clothes for a couple of reasons.
But because, one look, you could never on your own afford a dress that had enough splendor and enough marvel and glory to be able to go into the King’s Hall. If you were going to be ready to see the King, the King had to make you ready. And so it is for us, for you and for me. If we are going to appear before God in His holiness, He has to make us ready. He has to provide the robe. He has to give us the dress that’s needed.
And this He does in baptism. We want to think about this. So we had the young adult conference yesterday here. It was great. Young adults from all over the world, sorry, not kids, young adults from all over the world, joined us to think about the conscience, and one of the things that we were thinking about is what the Lord does with our sin. And this way, we know what to do when we’ve sinned, when we’ve broken the commandments, when we’ve hurt someone, that we apologize to God and we apologize to the person that we’ve hurt, and we come here and we hear what the Lord has to say about it: “I forgive you all of your sins.”
The Lord takes away our sinfulness. He cleanses our sins. He washes them off. But what do we do—and this is a little bit trickier—what do we do about the sins committed against us? It’s hard to confess those. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were wronged. Someone lied about you. Someone mocked you. Someone hurt you. Someone abused you. Someone neglected you. Someone sinned against you in one way or another.
And the result is that we are now carrying not only the guilt of the sins that we’ve committed, but we are now carrying the shame of the sins committed against us. How do we confess those? How do we confess that we’ve been abused? Or how do we confess that we’ve been neglected or forgotten about or lied about or despised or cast off, hurt? How do we confess the sins committed against us? How do we come before the Lord in this shame and uncleanness and the corruption of this world?
And the result is, I think, the result is that what happens is we begin to feel unworthy, and maybe rightly so, unworthy to appear before the Lord, unworthy to stand in His presence. We become timid and afraid to approach the throne of God, because who am I? I’m broken goods. I should just be cast off. The Lord probably doesn’t even want me in church, and if He brings me to church, it’s probably just so He can toss me out.
But here comes the promise of the gospel for you and me, who’ve been hurt and forgotten: the Lord God doesn’t just take away the sins that you’ve committed. He covers you. That’s the biblical picture. Remember Noah when he got off the ark and he built an altar and offered a sacrifice, and he built a vineyard and got drunk? And there he was in his nakedness, and his two boys walked back to cover his shame. That’s the picture.
Remember Adam and Eve in the garden who know that they’re naked, and they’re ashamed, and they run, and the Lord wraps the skin of the sacrifice around them. Remember the church in Laodicea who says, “I’m rich, I need nothing,” and the Lord says, “Don’t you remember that you’re wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked? Come to me and I will give you garments to cover the shame of your nakedness.”
This is the picture that when we come into the Lord’s church, He takes the perfection of Christ and He wraps it around you so that you are covered in His righteousness, His beauty, His glory, so that you belong here, you fit into the Lord’s family at the wedding feast, and He does this for you in baptism. When we, as St. Paul says to the church in Galatia, “put on Christ,” so that you are covered. Your nakedness, your shame, your uncleanness is covered by the righteousness of Christ.
And in this righteousness now, you are beautiful. You are perfectly adorned for His kingdom, for the wedding feast of the Son. There’s nothing lacking. You are where you belong.
Now the danger is this: for one reason or another, you would take off this robe. Now, I don’t know exactly what was in this guy’s mind who was in the King’s wedding feast. You can’t get in without the robe, so he would have received the robe at one point and he had gone and sat down there. But at some point, he decided, “I don’t need this robe anymore.” My guess is there’s one of two reasons. It’s not that it was super hot. It was this: either he thought that he was not worthy to wear that robe, that he sat there in the feast and said, “Who am I to be dressed in the clothes of a king? Who am I to receive such a lavish gift? I was just walking to the store and here I am in the king’s banqueting hall wearing the robes of his jewels. Who am I to wear this robe? I’m not worthy.”
And he takes it off. Now look, it’s true that he’s not worthy. It’s true that you’re not worthy. It’s true that I’m not worthy, but that doesn’t matter because the king has given you the robe. He wants you to wear it. So hold on to it. Treasure it. It’s by grace, not by faith. You can never earn it.
I mean, can you think of him saying, “How much is this worth? I couldn’t work for 50 years, 100 years to ever earn a garment like this. Even one diamond on this thing is not worth it. I can never earn it. I can never deserve it. I better take it off.” Keep it on. He wants you to have it. That’s why he’s given it to you. That’s why he’s called you. It’s why he’s baptized you. It’s why he’s put you here.
Well, the other reason something like this is that he says, “No, you know, I don’t really think this robe is that impressive. I’ve got better robes underneath. I’m just gonna wear my own.” Oh, this is the danger of trying to appear before the Lord with our own goodness, our own works, our own efforts. No, repent.
Look, it is of necessity that your sins are covered with the righteousness of Christ. But dear friends, look, you’re in the wedding feast now. The feast is the Son’s body and blood itself. The lavishness of God is made manifest to you, and listen, clothed in the righteousness of Christ by the gift of your baptism, you are exactly where you are supposed to be. The Lord Jesus has you here because He wants you to be here.
And I know you don’t think that this is the you, that you don’t think that you are worthy to stand before Him. He doesn’t care. He loves you. In spite of your sin, in spite of your shame and all of it, He loves you and has you where He wants you, in His wedding feast, the foretaste of the feast that will never end. So rejoice in this. The King had a feast, a wedding feast, for His Son, and you are invited, and you have arrived, and the joy of the King is yours, in the name of Jesus. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.