WE are not positively informed that the parable of the marriage feast was uttered at this time. It is introduced in so general a manner that one could well conceive it the same as that which Luke, with more definite marks of time, presents in the fourteenth chapter of his Gospel. However this may have been, nothing can exceed the beautiful propriety of its occurrence here, as the sequel to the latter part of Matt. 21. For, as the vineyard sets forth the Lord’s righteous claim from Israel on the ground of what He had entrusted to them, so the wedding sets forth the new thing, and hence is a comparison of “the kingdom of heaven” — not now fruit sought as a debt due to God from man, but God displaying the resources of His own glory and love in honor of His Son, and man invited to share. We have nothing properly here of the Church or assembly, but of the kingdom. Consequently, though the parable goes beyond the Jewish economy, so elaborately treated in the preceding portion, and Christ’s own personal presence on earth, it does not take in corporate privilege, but individual conduct, as variously affected by God’s astonishing mercy, and this in view of, and flowing from, the place of Christ as glorified on high. The characteristic point is that it is an exposition, not of Israel’s ways toward the Lord, but of the King’s ways who would magnify His Son; though here, as before, unbelief and rebellion never fail to meet their just recompense. It had been proved that God could not trust man: would man now trust God, come at His word, and be a partaker of His delight in His Son?
It is manifest that here we are no longer on Old Testament ground, with its solemn prophetic warnings. “The kingdom of the heavens is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.” (vss. 2, 3.) Our Evangelist, true to his plan and the design of the Holy Ghost, presents this striking picture after that of the Messiah’s rejection. What would be the fresh intervention of God? and how received of man, especially Israel? In Luke, I may mention by the way, the dispensational connection does not appear; but the Spirit gives rather a view of what God is to mankind generally, and even puts it as “a certain man” making a supper with unexampled generosity, not the “King” acting for the glory of “His Son.” In both Gospels the parable represents, not righteous requirement as under the law, but the way in which grace goes out to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile. He “sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden [Israel], but they would not come.” The kingdom was not come, but announced, while the Lord was here below. “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, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.” (vs. 4.)
Mark the difference. On the first mission of the servants He did not say “All things are ready”; but only on the second, when Christ meanwhile was dead and risen, and the kingdom was actually established on His ascension. It is the gospel of the kingdom after His work, as compared with this gospel before it. Thus the two messages are distinguished, the rejection of Christ, and His death, by the grace of God, being the turning-point. Matthew alone gives us this striking difference; Luke at once begins, with equal propriety for his task, with, “Come; for all things are now ready,” dwelling, with a detail unknown to Matthew, on the excuses made by the heart for despising the gospel.
The King, then, was active and His honor at stake in having a feast worthy of His Son. Not even the cross of His Son turned Him aside from His great purpose of making His people happy near Himself. On the contrary, if grace works, as it does, the interrupted message is renewed with new and infinitely more urgent appeals to the invited; and now by other servants beyond the twelve and the seventy. So we have in the beginning of Acts (2-6) the special announcement to Israel as the children of the covenant — “them that were bidden.” The first sending out, then, was during the life of the Messiah to call the privileged people; afterward, there was the second and specific testimony of grace to the same people when the work of redemption was done.
What was the effect? “They made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise.” (vs. 5.) God was not in their thoughts, but a man’s own field or his trade; and, alas as God increases the testimony of His grace, man grows bolder in his slight and opposition. “And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.” (vs. 6.) This is what you find in measure in the Acts of the Apostles. The message is disregarded in the earlier chapters; in chapters 7, and 12, the servants are outraged and slain. The issue is then foreshown — judgment on the Jews and on Jerusalem. “When the king heard thereof, he was wroth; and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.” (vs. 7.) Who does not see there the fate of the Jewish nation, and the destruction of their city? In Luke this is not found in the parable: how suitable it is to Matthew, I need not point out.
But God will have His house filled with guests, and if those peculiarly favored would not come, and even incurred wrath to the uttermost, divine grace will not be outdone by human willfulness, but evil must be overcome of good. “Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.” (vss. 8, 9.) There is the indiscriminate dealing with any, and every, soul under the gospel. “So those 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.” (vs. 10.) The gospel goes out to men as they are, and, wherever received, produces by grace that which is according to God, instead of demanding it. Hence all are welcome, bad and good, a dying thief or a woman that was a sinner, a Lydia or a Cornelius. The question was not their character, but the feast for the King’s Son; and to this they were freely called. Grace, far from asking or finding, gives fitness to stand before Him in peace.
Yes, there is produced a necessary, indispensable fitness. A wedding garment is due to the wedding feast. This the King, of His own magnificent bounty, provided, and it was for each guest to wear it: who that honored the King and the occasion would not? The servants did not look for such garments outside: they were not worn on the highways, but within et the wedding. Nor was it the point for the guests to appear in their best. It was the King’s affair to give. Come who might, there was enough and to spare: all things were ready.
This is the great, essential truth of the gospel. So far from looking for anything in man agreeable to God, the glad tidings come on His part on the express ground that all is ruined, wretched, guilty, on the sinner’s part. Let him that is athirst come; let him that will, take life’s water freely.
But where the heart is not right with God, it never submits to His righteousness; man, in this case, prefers to stand on his own foundation. Either he thinks he can raise a claim on God by being, or doing, something, or he ventures within, careless both of himself and God. Such was the man who was found of the King without the wedding garment. It was to despise the holiness, as well as the grace, of God, and proved that he was utterly a stranger to the feast. What did he think of, or care for, the feelings of the King bent upon the glorifying of His Son? For this is the true and real secret: God lavishes mercy on sinners for the sake of His Son.
Opportunity is thus given to put honor on Christ’s name. Does my soul bow to it, and to Him? It is salvation. The heart may go through much exercise, but the only key to His astonishing goodness to us is God’s feeling toward His Son. If I may venture so to speak, the Lord Jesus has put God the Father under obligation to Himself. He has so lived and died to glorify God at all cost, that God (I say it reverently) is bound to manifest what He is by reason of His Son. Hence that remarkable expression of Paul’s epistles, “the righteousness of God.” It is no longer man’s righteousness sought by the law, but God being righteous in Christ, when man has been proved to have utterly, and in every way, failed. Because of the infinite value of the cross, God loves to put honor on Christ; and if a soul does but plead His name, it becomes a question of God’s righteousness, justifying him freely by His grace through the redemption which is in. Christ Jesus.
How strikingly was the truth demonstrated by the King’s dealing with the Christ-despising intruder! “And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding-garment.” (vs. 11.) At once this was the ground of action. No question was started of what the man had been, or done. The servants were warranted to bring in bad as well as good. “Such were some of you,” says the apostle. Indeed, this man may have been the most correct, moral, and religious of the company, like the young ruler who left the Lord in sorrow. But, whether he were a hardened sinner or a self-righteous soul, one thing we know for certain — he had not on a wedding garment. This at once arrested the King’s eye. He looked at the simple fact: had the guests on a wedding garment? This man had not. What was the meaning? It told a tale the most damning possible; it was setting at naught the King’s grace — it was openly dishonoring His Son.
The wedding garment is Christ. This guest therefore came before the King without Christ. He did not put on Christ. There might be ever so sincere efforts to be holy and righteous, but it was all, and only, himself, not Christ, and that is everlasting ruin and condemnation to a sinner. Whereas, if we suppose the very chief of sinners justifying God by accepting Christ as the sole means for a lost soul to stand before Him, this is what exalts God and His grace. It is as if a man were broken down enough in his thoughts of himself, by God’s revelation of what He is in Christ, to look up and say, ‘I cannot trust myself, I cannot trust what I have been, nor even what I desire to be to Thee, but I can trust fully what Thou art to me in the gift of Thy Son.’ Such confidence in God produces deep loathing of self, real uprightness of soul, as well as diligence of heart, and desire to do the will of God. There is nothing so humbling, and strengthening withal, as the heart’s rest in God’s grace toward us in Christ.
The man was not blamed for not bringing a new robe, no matter how splendid, of his own. On the contrary, what made his case so hopelessly evil was his indifference to the munificent provision of the King. Why should not his own robe do as well as the King’s? He knew not, believed not, that nothing from earth suits His divine presence — only what is purchased by the precious blood of Jesus. He had no sense of the grace which invited him, nor of the holiness that befits the presence of God. The King accordingly says to him, “Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding-garment? And he was speechless.” (vs. 12.) He may have been ever so well attired, he may have liked the feast and the guests; but he thought nothing of the King, nor of his Son, and had not a word to say when the solemn challenge came. He was in spirit, and before God, entirely outside the feast; else he would have felt the absolute need of an array in keeping with the King’s joy and the Son’s bridals.
Judgment cast the despiser of Him out of that scene for which he had no heart, to that where the unbelieving, if it be in the hopeless wretchedness of remorse and self-reproach, must honor the Son. It is not merely governmental vengeance, such as that which providentially slew the murderers and fired their city, but full, final judgment on one who abused grace by presuming to draw near to God without putting on Christ — who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. This man showed manifestly that he had no part nor lot in the matter; and by-and-by judgment will simply execute by power what is according to the truth now, “Then said the king to the servants [or attendants, not the bondmen of verses 3, 4, 6, 8, 10], Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Was this most solemn sentence rare because one man only is here instanced? Nay, verily; “for many are called, but few are chosen.” (vss. 13, 14.)
Thus terminated the double trial of the nation, first, on the ground of their responsibility as under the law, and next, as tested by the message of grace. The rest of the chapter judges in detail all the various classes in Israel who successively sought to judge and ensnare the Lord, bringing into relief their position, and winding up all with a question which they could not answer without understanding His position, and withal His glorious person.
“Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians.” What an alliance! The partisans of strict Judaism and the law and the political time-servers of that day, whom the former hated cordially, join in flattering Jesus to ensnare Him by the question of Jewish title against the Gentile. Would He, the Messiah, gainsay the hopes and privileges of Israel as a nation? If not, how could He escape the charge of treason against Cesar? Diabolical craft was there, but divine wisdom brings in the truth as to God and man, and the difficulty vanishes. It was the rebellion of the Jews against Jehovah which gave occasion to His subjecting them to their heathen lords: their wrong made nothing wholly right. Were they humbled because of it, and seeking the resources of God’s grace? Nay, they were proud and boastful, and at that moment, in deadly opposition, mingled with malignant craft, plotting against their own — His — Messiah. “Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto César, or not? But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Show me the tribute money.” They brought a denarius, owned Cesar’s image and superscription, and heard the unanswerable sentence, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are César’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” Had the Jews honored Him, they had never been in bondage to man; but now, being so through their own sin and folly, they were bound to accept their humiliation. Neither Pharisee nor Herodian felt the sin; and if one felt the shame which the other gloried in, the Lord, while forcing them to face the real position to which their iniquity had reduced them, pointed out that which, if made good in their souls, would be the speedy harbinger of a divine deliverance.
“The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him, saying, Master, Moses said,” &c. (vss. 23-33.) Thus unbelief is as false and dishonest as pretended human righteousness; and if one could be in league with Herodians and affect loyalty to Caesar, so could the other plead Moses, as if the inspired word had plenary authority over their conscience. But the Lord, as He laid bare the hypocrisy of those who stood high as religionists, equally detected what the skeptic never suspects, that their difficulties flow not merely from overlooking the power of God, but from downright ignorance, whatever may be their self-complacency and conceit. “Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.” Faith, on the contrary, sees clearly, just as it counts on God according to the revelation of Himself He has made in the word.
As to the particular point in question, our Lord, not content with tracing their sophism to the sheerest misapprehension of the resurrection-state, proves (and from Moses too, without going further) that the resurrection of the dead is an essential, radical part of God’s scheme and truth. Luke was inspired to convey an additional statement as to the intermediate living of the separate spirit. But in our Gospel the one point is that the dead rise, because God declared Himself the God of the fathers after their death; and confessedly He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. They must therefore rise to live again. If, He were their God in their state when He spoke to Moses, He must be the God of the dead, which the Sadducee had been the first to deny. It was the more important so to reveal Himself to Moses, who was in due time to bring in the conditional system of the law, with its visible rewards and punishments, and the sure ruin of all who through unbelief clung to it and present things, despising the promises which hang on “the Seed” and resurrection. Thus, infidelity is made unwittingly to bring out from Christ with divine clearness the power and purpose of God revealed in scripture, and this on the ground chosen to create difficulty. And God’s purpose to bless Israel fully in resurrection-power is asserted, after He had shown the necessary dealing with their sin in subjecting them meanwhile to the Gentile.
But if the Pharisees retired with wonder, they were far from subdued; and indeed they bestir themselves afresh when their skeptical rivals were put to silence. They assemble together, when a lawyer tempts Him, but in fact only elicits a perfect summary of practical righteousness. They talked and tempted: Jesus was the expression of all the perfectness of law and prophets, and far, far more — the image of God Himself in grace as well as righteousness here below: not as Adam, who rebelled against God — not as Cain, who loved not his neighbor, but slew his brother. (vss. 34-40.)
And now, finally, it was the Lord’s place to ask them the question of questions, not only for a Pharisee, but for any soul: “What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is he?” He was David’s Son, most true; but was this the truth, the whole truth? “How, then, doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, Jehovah said unto my Lord?” &c. How was He both — David’s Son and David’s Lord? It was the simple truth, the key to all scripture, the way, the truth, the life, the explanation of His position, the only hope for them. But they were dumb. They knew nothing, and could answer nothing. “Neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more question.”