MATTHEW 22
The parable of the marriage feast is symbolic of the blessings God has for those who respond to His offer of grace and salvation both now for us all, but also for Israel in a specific way. God sends invitations again and again because He is not willing that any should perish. Sadly, people reject and ignore His offers and because of that choice, they will be lost forever.
Questions by various groups when the Lord Jesus Christ came to Jerusalem as the Messiah who offered Himself to the nation of Israel; revealed their rejection of Him. His identity had been made openly plain for three and a half years of public ministry, but they would not acknowledge Him as the Christ. Even though the questions they asked were obviously to trap Him in some inconsistency, each of the answers He gave, offered an opportunity for them to recognize that His wisdom and understanding were beyond that which would be given by a normal man.
Like them, we are to give God what belongs to Him. He is the living God who is active in the lives of people. God’s law and God’s word are relevant to us today. The answers He gave to those people then, were clearly that of the One who is the Messiah. The Lord then asked them a question that was personal, insightful, and vital. “What think ye of Christ is the test, that tries both the state and the scheme. You cannot be right in the rest until you think rightly of Him!”
The marriage feast, v.1-14 There are some differences in the details of some of the parable illustrations the Lord gave more than one time. Similarities are used by any teacher, as well as differences, to emphasize the points to be made in a new situation. The kingdom of heaven is the period of time from the times of Jesus’ first coming until the time He reigns as the Messiah over all the earth. It is in this time in which we live that He is the Mediator between God and men, “the man Christ Jesus.”
The marriage feast parable describes that time and the persons in the parable are representative of the Father who prepared the feast for His Son, Jesus Christ, and the Messianic kingdom to which the people of Israel were special guests as a chosen nation. To refuse to attend the marriage of a king’s son who is the heir of a kingdom, is not merely discourteous, but indicates disloyalty to the king and the kingdom in which they live.
That is why the king in the parable dealt so harshly with those who refused his invitation. He destroyed them and their cities. It was not just a discourtesy, but it was a rebellious response. Two invitations were given. One was an announcement of the wedding and the second was the call to come now because everything is ready. The Lord Jesus plainly indicated Israel was invited in the initial invitation, but when the call came to come at that specific time, Israel refused. They refused to accept Jesus as their Messiah. “He came unto His own and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the sons of God; even to them that believe on His name.”
Further entreaties were made and were brazenly refused and rejected outright. Those invited even went so far as to murder those servants who gave the message; like John the Baptist, James, the first to be killed in the Christian era, and then Stephen who was martyred. Many other servants since then have been treated in the same way. Just like the parable indicated would happen; Jerusalem was totally destroyed by the army of Titus about forty years after the Lord told this parable. The “highways and streets” where “as many as ye shall find” people were located, is an illustration of Gentile people. The relationship of Gentile believers in this church age to the Lord Jesus Christ is the same as believing Jews. They are neither Jew nor Gentile but church of God. The Bride of Christ is the church composed of believers from all parts of the world who respond to the invitation to come and partake of the blessings of God’s salvation.
In grace, both bad and good, open sinners and morally upright sinners, are invited to come to the wedding feast God has prepared for those who love the Lord. From all parts of the world, the wedding will be furnished with guests. The rejection of Jesus by Israel as a nation has brought judgment on them for generations. Now the outcasts of Israel and the Gentiles are included in the blessings of being in the kingdom of God.
The righteousness of Christ imputed to sinners is typified by all of them being provided with a suitable wedding garment. All of the guests were given a similar garment making the focus of the wedding and all who attend, on the Heir, the Son of God. Each person was able to avail themselves of the wedding garment, and then they could go into the wedding feast. Any person who thinks they can enter the kingdom of God the way they are, without having trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as their own Savior, is not fit for the kingdom. Acceptance into the kingdom is because of the righteousness God provides for us through Christ, and every person who enters chooses to accept that personally. Salvation is “not of works lest any many should boast.”
Entrance into the kingdom of God is open to all who will come, but it is only “upon all that believe.” Without the salvation God provides, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth in outer darkness. Being shut out of heaven for not accepting what God has freely provided, will leave a soul on “the shores of the castaway.” God’s call goes out to sinners to come and be saved. When a person comes by faith and accepts the wonderous blessings of God’s salvation, they find themselves safe and secure for all eternity. To resist and reject the invitation makes a person responsible for rejecting Christ, rebellion against God, and their own eternal loss because of their perceived self-righteousness. “Few there be that find it.”
Question about tribute to Caesar, v.15-22 Pharisees had students whom they were training and teaching the rabbinical practices of their sect. Likely the Sadducees had theirs as well. Who the Herodians were, is not entirely clear to me. They seem to have political ties, instead of religious convictions, although in Israel; social, political, and religious life were all closely linked. They must have been those who wanted the family of Herod to take back the rule in Judea and Samaria that had been taken from them by the Romans because of the excessive cruelty of Archelaus who followed the rule of Herod when Christ was born. The Romans put those two provinces under the authority of procurators like Pontius Pilate.
Opposition against Christ makes strange “bedfellows” of very divergent groups. The ecumenical movement of our times is an example of opposition against the supreme authority of the Bible over church doctrine and practice, which reflects the opinions of religious men. The verbal flattery and hypocritical words of those who came to Jesus opened a series of loaded questions that had been deliberately prepared to try to trip up the Lord Jesus. The first one was to make Jesus acknowledge servitude to Rome and thus compromise His claim as the Messiah. If He would not do that, He would be charged with rebellion and disloyalty to Rome’s authority. The Herodians would turn Him over to the Roman authorities for Roman justice against rebellion.
If He agreed to pay taxes, the Pharisees would say He was opposed to God, who was the only authority they said they recognized. The Lord knew the deception in them, so asked them for a coin that was used by them in doing business. Someone of them obviously had one, but the Lord did not produce one Himself. That was the first step in exposing their hypocrisy to open view. By asking about the image and the words on the coin, and them stating they knew who it was and what it said, they took the second step of revealing their deception. By using the coin for their own business and advantage, they were using and doing something they considered was wrong. It implied they didn’t agree with Rome but they were using it for their own ends, which was another evidence of their hypocrisy.
When a person subjects themselves to the national, state, or municipal government, and accepts the benefits and protection of that government, they are obligated to obey its laws. They are to support that government and pay the taxes that are levied in order to maintain what we take advantage of until it becomes sinful to do so. Giving to God what is His goes much further and deeper than what is owed to the government.
The only way to fulfill even a small part of our duty to God is to give ourselves to Him, with everything we are and have. Our citizenship in the kingdom of heaven requires far more than the tax money we give to the state. We owe God our obedience, our service, our unreserved commitment. We who are in the kingdom of heaven are subject to the will of God.
Question about the resurrection of the dead, v.23-33 The Pharisees and Herodians failed in the attempt to snare the Lord Jesus with their question, so the Sadducees stepped into the affair with their trick question. They came with an absolutely absurd illustration regarding a practice that was not often used at that time. Their question was merely a theological supposition based on a teaching in Deuteronomy 25:5. Their attempt to discredit Jesus and make their point, was contrary to their own belief that there is no resurrection of the dead. For their purposes, they simply presumed that if there was a resurrection, people would be just the same after they were raised from the dead as they were before they died. That was what those Jesus raised from the dead were like.
Sadducees only accepted the Pentateuch as the word of God. All the rest of the Old Testament to them was history, poetry, etc. Knowing that the Lord answered them from the book of Exodus, and made the point that by using the present tense, from God’s perspective, which is the only one that really counts; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were presently alive. He is not the God of the dead but of the living.
He did not say that in the resurrection humans become angels, but that they are like the angels of God who do not marry. The Sadducees did not know what the scriptures taught or what God was able to do. We can’t understand what heaven is like, or what relationships in heaven are like compared to the terms we use to understand them in the world today. There is nothing said about our earthly relationships being forgotten, or how glorified bodies will function. But we are told that the resurrected state of believers is blessedness, comfort, and perfect fellowship. That is enough to make us glad to be going there.
The concern we should have is that our relationship with God is what it should be now. That is much more important than what we will look like in heaven or what we will do there, or even what heaven looks like. Those things we don’t clearly know and that are beyond our expectations and limitations, we don’t need to be concerned about now. Dead things can have a creator and controller but only living beings have a God. He is the God of the living, and that is all we really know or need to know about what we will be like in heaven.
Question about the great commandment, v.34-40 The Pharisees were likely glad the Sadducees were silenced by the Lord’s answer. One would think they had enough sense to know enough to keep quiet themselves after they had been answered so succinctly by the Lord regarding taxes. But pride of position often overrides common sense because we can become too impressed with ourselves. The Pharisees were more concerned with bringing Jesus down in defeat than they were with learning what is right.
Pharisees had classified hundreds of laws in their additions to the word of God and consequently had to list some more important than others. Their expert lawyer stepped out to ask Jesus what He thought was the greatest commandment. The Lord Jesus cut through all their subterfuge and quoted the scripture precisely. Then He quickly summed up the whole law in three brief sentences. All of the commandments and all the moral laws are contained in those words. All the books the Pharisees studied were just words that could be summed up in three sentences.
The point of the law is not to tell us what we should not do, but to reveal to us what we should do and can do. Law-keeping is not so much an action but an attitude. It is the reflection of one’s heart and their personal disposition to do what is right. Loving God and doing His will to our neighbor, is simply the evidence and outworking of our love for God and what is in our heart. God cares for us simply because He is a gracious and loving God and it is His nature to care. He expects the same from us toward others. This is the summation of God’s will for all of humanity.
Jesus’ question to them about Christ, v.41-46 The Lord then challenged the Pharisees with one simple question that had national, political, religious, and personal significance. It was not complicated to answer but it penetrated right to the point of why they were questioning Him in the first place. When they said that Christ was the Son of David; they implied they thought the Messiah would be a mere man. They either did not know or would not accept that Messiah would be God. When Jesus quoted the first verse of Psalm 110, He affirmed that it was the Spirit of God who identified this Person as one of supernatural revelation.
All of those who heard that question and were left speechless knew that the Lord Jesus Christ was identifying Himself as the Messiah. The helpless and the blind had called Him the “Son of David,” and He healed them completely because of their faith in Him. People had praised Him when He entered Jerusalem as the “Son of David” and He had not stopped them. Now they had to make a decision. Would they believe in Him or not? Their decision was to no longer seek the truth or even ask a question of the Lord Jesus Christ. They had their minds made up and did not want to be faced with the truth.