Come to the wedding of the King’s Son
Matthew 22.1_14 20260906 Come to the wedding of the King’s Son
Come to the wedding of the King’s Son
Passage: Matthew 22:1-14
Big Idea: Don’t insult the Heavenly Father’s invitation with excuses or defiance — come when he summons, clothed in what he provides.
1. The King summons: Everything is ready for the Son’s wedding (vv.1-4)
2. The invitees’ snub: The invitee’s insulting excuses and the King’s new summons (vv.5-10)
3. The banquet’s searched: Suit up, for the King comes in to see his guests (vv.11-14)
Around ten years ago, I officiated the wedding of a lovely couple, Mei and Vincent, at St John’s Cathedral, Parramatta.
It was Australia Day and the Church was packed.
As I was about to ask Vincent and Mei to say their vows to one another, I heard a commotion at the back.
There was a stranger, a person who was not invited to the wedding, who was making his way to the front of the Church.
I didn’t see much of it and so I just kept going.
However, all of a sudden, that stranger made it to the very front of the Church and was about to punch Vincent in the face.
Vincent didn’t know him at all; it was completely unprovoked.
However, Lance, the bride’s father, was very much provoked.
Before that man could do anything, Lance pulled the man down and ‘stopped’ him, forcefully.
I didn’t see it, but I might have heard something that sounded like thumping.
The stranger was just confused and apologised afterwards.
After he was taken away, I said to the couple, “Now, where were we?”
Today, we’re going to see a story about some people who have shown contempt for the wedding of the King’s son.
We’re going to see his reaction when they tried to ruin his son’s wedding.
Fathers, what would you do if you were Lance?
I think most red-blooded men with a backbone would do everything we have in our power to protect our children’s honour.
Mothers, what would you want your husbands to do?
Before we look into it, let’s ask God to help us, “Our heavenly Father, thank you for bringing us here on this Father’s Day. Please give us wisdom and insight as we look into your word. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.”
1. The King summons: Everything is ready for the Son’s wedding (vv.1-4)
Jesus spoke to them in a parable.
A parable is a story that Jesus used to teach a very important truth about God.
One of the truths that Jesus kept teaching was the idea of the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God can be described like this: God, who is the King, rules over his people in his realm.
Since Jesus, along with all Jewish believers at that time, believed that God made everything and everyone, God’s subjects include everyone in the world and his realm is the universe.
At the same time, God chose a nation to be his very own around four thousand years ago, the ancient Israelites, and brought them to the land of Canaan, the Promised Land.
And so, for many years, the idea of God’s rule was focused on God being the God of the Israelites and God ruling them in the land of Israel.
However, the Israelites rebelled against God and God punished them.
When Jesus arrived on the scene, many of them, now identified as Jews, were living under the rule of a foreign power.
Is this all there is to the grand idea of the Kingdom of God?
Absolutely not!
Jesus then began teaching about what the Kingdom of God is all about.
The Jews didn’t believe Jesus but instead challenged Jesus and conspired against Jesus.
And so, Jesus told them this parable about what the Kingdom of God is really like.
Look with me at 22:1-2, “Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.”
The Kingdom of God is like a King sending invites to his Son’s wedding banquet.
This is no ordinary wedding.
It’s the wedding of the year; it’s the wedding of the century.
A royal wedding invitation is not a nice social event to attend but a summons: the King is inviting his subjects to the wedding of his own Son.
When the King tells you to go somewhere, anywhere, you go, no questions asked.
What’s more, the subjects had already been invited; they knew that the wedding banquet was coming.
The King just sent a confirmation to let them know that it was now ready.
It’s like this.
Imagine getting a wedding invitation to the wedding of Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, months before the wedding.
Or, getting the wedding invitation to Son Ye-Jin and Hyun Bin’s wedding.
Not everyone is invited, but you’re on their guest list as one of their friends.
Imagine they wrote an invitation to you by hand, because you’re that special to them.
Now imagine their puzzlement when they haven’t heard from you.
They thought you would’ve responded straight away, but you’ve let the wedding invitation sit under a magnet on the fridge for six months.
And so, they called for an Uber to get one of their staff to knock on your door to make sure you’re coming.
That’s what happened in Jesus’ parable.
The wedding banquet was ready and a servant was sent to tell the invitees that the wedding is ready, but they didn’t want to come.
What an odd thing for the invitees to do, or rather, not do.
They didn’t want to go to the wedding banquet of the King’s Son.
Maybe the invitees didn’t understand the message and so, the King sent out his slaves again and asked them to deliver the message, “See, I’ve prepared my dinner; my oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.”
The wedding banquet is good to go.
Just come!
That’s what the Kingdom of God is like.
God has prepared everything necessary for us to come back to him.
He prepared his servants to tell us about his promises, he moved nations, he sent missionaries, he built churches so that we can hear about the good news about Jesus.
God is so excited to let us know that Jesus, His Son, has paid the ultimate price, that is the price of his own life, to make us right with God.
Because of what Jesus, God’s Own Son, has done, we can now come before God and have a good relationship with God.
God is thrilled to tell us that Jesus will be the King of God’s Kingdom.
That He has crowned Jesus as the King of kings and Lord of lords.
God has prepared everything and he’s invited us to come and celebrate Jesus with Him.
Just as the king in Jesus’ parable didn’t ask his subjects to bring any gifts, God didn’t even ask us to bring anything to him at all as we come to Jesus.
He simply asks us to come.
That’s what the Kingdom of God is like.
It’s a summons: “Come to the wedding.”
“Come to Jesus.”
I remember meeting a lady outside of a Church I used to minister in.
She was sitting outside because she felt unworthy to go in.
But I told her, “Come in, the Church is open for everyone. We would love to have you join us.”
The Kingdom of God is a summons to come and enjoy all the blessings that God’s given us in Jesus.
God has prepared everything and he’s invited us to come.
And he’s sent his servants to invite us to come.
However, not everyone responds well to God’s summons.
Jesus then turns our attention to invitees who snub the King’s summons.
2. The invitees’ snub: The invitee’s insulting excuses and the King’s new summons (vv.5-10)
The king summoned his invitees not once but twice.
Look at how the invitees responded to the second summons, in verses 5-6, “But they paid no attention and went away, one to his own farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them.”
They knew it was a summons from the king, but they didn’t care.
They shrugged off the King’s summons.
They didn’t have a crisis that stopped them from coming.
It wasn’t as if they were dying or that they were facing some sort of crisis.
There was no emergency, no urgency.
They just had a farm they needed to look after and a business that they needed to attend to.
They were just lame excuses for not coming to the King’s wedding.
It wasn’t just rudeness; it was withdrawing loyalty from their King.
It would be like Taylor Swift’s staff coming to you, via Uber, and you tell him, “We’d love to come to the Tay Tay and Kelce’s wedding, but Saturday is the only day I get to do house chores”.
Or it would be like Hyun Bin (aka Captain Ri) sending his driver to you and you tell him, “Sorry, we can’t come because Saturday’s the only day I get to do grocery shopping.”
Farming and business, sleeping in and grocery shopping, could all easily have waited (v.5).
Using these as excuses is insulting and inexcusable.
Do they dare to defy the king’s summons with lame excuses like these?
The King has done all the preparation, spent months and considerable resources to make the wedding of his son happen.
And they dismissed his invitation, with these pathetic excuses.
It’s utterly insulting to the King.
But before we point the finger at them, we need to look at ourselves.
If the Kingdom of God is like a King’s summons, then how many times have we dismissed God’s summons with lame excuses?
God wants us to enjoy all the blessings and goodness he has for us in Jesus.
And now, he summons us to come.
Is there any excuse good enough for us to dismiss God’s summons?
Do we dare to dismiss God’s summons?
When we dare to not care, we’re just like those who dismissed the King’s invitation, insulting him by refusing to come when he summons us.
There are at least two ways we can rebel against God the King.
One, we can actively do things that God hates, like murder, dishonouring our parents, or worshipping idols.
The second is dismissive apathy; it’s not caring, not bothering to obey him when he summons.
Apathy in a comfortable congregation never feels like rebellion; it feels like a full diary.
It’s a diary full of farms and businesses, work and play, even family time and friends time, that stops us from obeying God’s summons to meet with him.
This apathy can harden into hostility.
In the parable, the servants were seized, mistreated and even killed (v.6).
When God’s servant summons people, even people who identify as God’s people, to obey God, there will be times when they get mistreated and insulted, simply for delivering the message.
Why?
It’s because they thought their excuses trumped God’s summons.
They assumed that the King would never call them to account.
They thought that the King wouldn’t do anything about their rebellion.
Make no mistake, to scorn his summons is rebellion.
It’s a display of disloyalty, and it is answered with severe judgment.
Look with me at verse 7, “The king was enraged, and he sent out his troops, killed those murderers, and burned down their city.”
There’s a sense in which the Jews who refused to obey Jesus in the first century had experienced God’s rage against His Son.
Jerusalem was utterly destroyed by the Romans in AD70.
However, verse 7 is also a warning for us.
If we choose to dismiss God’s summons, if we choose to ignore God’s invitation to His Kingdom, destruction awaits us, for we have insulted Jesus His Son, and so we have insulted God himself.
And yet the wedding is not cancelled — only the guest list changes.
Look with me at verses 8-9, “Then he told his servants, ‘The banquet is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. 9 Go then to where the roads exit the city and invite everyone you find to the banquet.’” (vv.8-9).
Those who dismissed the King’s invitation were not worthy to come to the wedding banquet anymore.
They proved their unworthiness by refusing to listen to the King’s summons.
And now, the invitation will go to everyone else.
There’s a parallel between this and what happened to the Jews.
There was a sense in which God sent his invitation firstly to the Jews, but now, the invitation is for all kinds of people everywhere.
All kinds of people, whether you’re English-speaking, Chinese-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, Nepali-speaking, everyone is summoned to come to God.
Over the past week, we’ve been giving Father’s Day cards and invitations to over 1,000 people in Kogarah.
We’re inviting everyone we could think of to come and join us this morning.
We’re actually servants of God, sent by Him to summon everyone to come to Church this morning.
So glad that you have received the summons and came this morning!
The servants of the King in the parable went and gathered everyone they could find, both bad and good, and the whole place was filled with guests.
When we were planning for today, we weren’t sure how many would respond to our invitations.
I’m truly thankful to God for everyone who came this morning!
Just like in the parable, there were some who dismissed the summons; and even though some people refused our invitation, God still made today happen.
God’s purposes are not hostage to the refusals of the people we assumed were essential.
Though the invitees on the original guest list didn’t come, God’s plan will continue, albeit with a new guest list, a new summons.
To be clear, the farm and the business, the visits, the time spent with families and friends, are not in and of themselves sins.
Those who choose these will give very compelling reasons for doing all these, which is exactly why they work so well at keeping people from God’s summons to the banquet.
When good things are placed above the best things, namely God’s things, these good things become bad things.
What farm or business is currently a good enough reason to keep you from the King’s table?
What excuse do you give to refuse the King’s summons?
Can these not wait until you come to the King’s table?
The parable could’ve stopped at verse 10; the old invitees who snubbed the summons were sentenced.
Their places were filled with new invitees who responded to the King’s summons and came to the banquet.
However, there was one man in the new guest list who caught the King’s attention when he was looking at his guests.
He wasn’t suited up.
3. The banquet’s searched: Suit up, for the King comes in to see his guests (vv.11-14)
Look with me at verse 11, “When the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed for a wedding.”
The man came in; he was at the banquet, but he wasn’t suited up.
He wasn’t dressed for the occasion.
One of the ceremonies where you find the best dressed people on the planet is the Oscars ceremony.
It’s a ceremony where people wear expensive tuxedos and beautiful dresses for the prestigious event.
In 2025, Adam Sandler, the comedian, dressed in a hoodie and shorts.
Even the host joked that Adam looked inappropriate for the event.
Adam should’ve known better.
This was a set-up of course; they planned for this to happen.
But in the real world, dressing sloppily for a formal occasion, just as in the parable, is no joke.
If you’re in the military, you will be expected to wear your uniform in formal military settings.
If you’re representing your country in a sport, you will be expected to wear your uniform proudly.
If you’re at a wedding in the ancient Near East, you will be expected to wear appropriate wedding clothes.
The King, the father of the groom, walked around to see his guests.
He found one man who didn’t wear the correct wedding clothes.
Now some people would argue that he was only asked to go to the wedding on the street corners and so didn’t have time to get the right clothes.
And so the King asked him, in verse 12, “‘Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ The man was speechless.”
He could’ve explained to the King that he couldn’t get the wedding clothes, but he didn’t.
The man was speechless.
Unlike those in the original guest list, who had plenty of excuses (even though they were bad ones), this man had no excuse.
He was speechless.
He couldn’t defend himself.
Whatever happened between the time when he answered the summons and when he was questioned by the king, he had the opportunity to wear wedding clothes.
The King might have had some prepared for him or he could’ve got some on the way to the banquet, but he didn’t.
And it’s not like it was something that he couldn’t figure out.
Everyone else in the banquet was in the same position as this man.
They were summoned just like this man.
But unlike this man, all of them wore wedding clothes.
This man, this friend, had no excuse.
This man’s silence is his own verdict.
He was already seated inside the feast, he was in the middle of enjoying the hospitality of the King, and he was still put out (v.13).
He accepted the summons but he was still unfit to be in the banquet.
His refusal to obey the expectation of the King warranted him being thrown outside into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
This man who refuses to wear the wedding clothes is like many of us who are complacent just being in the Church, enjoying God’s blessings but not obeying him from the heart.
We might hide ourselves among God’s people, looking like we’re part of the group, but deep inside, we don’t want to obey God’s rule.
We want to run our life with God, our way, and not God’s way.
We want to have the final say in how we obey God, rather than letting God have the final say.
But we forget that God is present among his people.
He knows who comes to his Church.
And he knows what’s in each of our hearts.
While the parable doesn’t explicitly say what the wedding robes represent, we can be sure of at least one thing: being a guest at the wedding banquet and wearing the wedding clothes go together; you can’t have one without the other.
In the same way, being someone who has a good relationship with God and walking according to God’s way go together; you can’t have one without the other.
If we truly have a good relationship with God, we will see the outworking of that relationship.
We will see an eagerness to pray, because we want to spend time with God, something that you would expect from being in a good relationship with God.
We will have an eagerness to love God’s people, because God loves his people, and we love those whom God loves.
While we do it imperfectly, people will see us and catch a glimpse of what being in a relationship with God looks like.
If there’s no evidence in our life that we’re walking with God, then it’s very possible that we actually don’t have a living relationship with God at all.
We may be able to hide the true state of our relationship with God with others, but not from God.
God won’t pretend and just keep one eye open and the other eye closed.
He will throw out the pretender into the cold, away from his Son.
The pretender will weep and gnash his teeth, frustrated at himself or herself for failing to accept Jesus from the heart.
I still remember my Dad taking me to my first job interview when I was in year ten.
It was for work experience and I wanted to work in a music shop because I liked music.
I got dressed and ready to go when my father stopped me and said, “You’re going to wear that to an interview?”
I was wearing my tracksuit pants and a white t-shirt.
I thought that it was pretty good but my Dad said, “Change into something better.”
I did, and I changed into a shirt and pants, I think.
And I got the job for work experience.
Why did my Dad ask me to change?
It was because the way I dressed showed whether I was serious about my job.
The same idea goes for the way we dress at Church.
I’m not talking about the actual clothes you wear but the way we act, the way we behave.
What do our actions say about what we believe about God?
If we only give our spare time to God, and come only when we have free time, what does it say about our view of God?
If we only give minimal thought to how we serve, if we only give a fraction of what we give at work, what does that tell us about our view of God?
Spare time and minimal effort are like t-shirts and tracksuit pants at a job interview: they betray a dishonouring heart, not fit for the banquet of God’s Son and destined for banishment.
Bridge: summarises the talk up until now.
Anticipates a climactic finish to the talk
Fathers, what would you do if someone insults your son on his wedding day?
If you love your son, you would get angry, and you would do something about the man who insulted him.
You have spent years raising up your son.
You have spent thousands on the wedding.
And you will not have this unworthy man insult your son.
For when he insults your son, he insults you and your love for your son.
God loves his Son Jesus and gave him the name that is above every name.
God made Jesus the King of kings and Lord of lords.
When we dismiss God’s summons to come to Jesus, when we treat what Jesus did as nothing, we insult God.
When we don’t care, when we show apathy towards God and his people, we betray our rebellion.
And so, friends, don’t insult the Heavenly Father’s invitation with excuses or defiance — come when he summons, clothed in what he provides.
As En Bo mentioned earlier, there will be a special Discover course for anyone who wants to find out more about Jesus.
You will find an invitation at the back of the church.
Come and find out more about Jesus’ summons.
Come and learn about what God has provided for us in Jesus.
Only this: don’t insult the Heavenly Father’s invitation with excuses or defiance — come when he summons, clothed in what he provides.
Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, come to the wedding banquet, come to Jesus.
Let’s pray, “Father, we thank you for preparing everything that we need for us to have a good relationship with you. We pray for everyone here, especially the fathers, that we may all come to you and find the blessings and joys that you have for us in Jesus. Please don’t let our foolish hearts fool us, thinking that we can fool you with our lame excuses. Please let us live and behave as the people you’ve made us to be. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.”