THE KING AND HIS OPPONENTS (Matthew 22)

THE KING AND HIS OPPONENTS (Matthew 22)

H. A. IRONSIDE

MATTHEW 22:1-14 - “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son.” The “certain King” is God; the Son is Christ Himself; the marriage is the union of believers with Christ, those who put their trust in Him and are thus united to Him. The marriage supper is really the gospel feast—the feast of good things which God has provided for all who will accept His gracious invitation. But observe, the feast is prepared by God for the joy and glory of His own beloved Son. The thought was in the heart of God, and He expressed it by sending the Lord Jesus Christ into the world to save us from our sins. We read that the king “sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.” This first invitation was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, bidding them come to the marriage feast which the king had prepared. They refused the gracious invitation. “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not” (John 1:11). 

  In the next verse we read, “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.” Now notice, this is the second invitation, a most urgent one, extended to the same people, telling them that were bidden that the feast was ready. Still they would not come. The king said, “Go again and call them!” After the Lord Jesus ascended to heaven we find Peter and the other apostles, in the early chapters of the Book of Acts, pleading with Israel to repent of the rejection of Christ and turn to Him and trust Him, confessing Him as their Saviour. A few accepted Him, but the great majority spurned Him and actually persecuted His servants. 

  In order to be lost forever it is not necessary to be opposed to Christ. It is not necessary to say definitely, “I reject Jesus.” Just neglect Him and you will never get in to the feast. “The road of by-and-by leads to the house of never.” Shut out in the darkness forever. 

  After Christ had been rejected and crucified, God still waited for some forty years for Israel to repent, but they would not. Then He sent forth His armies. His armies? Yes. He is the God of hosts; He is the God of armies. And when a nation has sinned against Him to such a degree that He must deal with them in judgment, He sends the armies of some other people to visit judgment upon them. In this instance it was the Roman armies which He permitted to invade the land and destroy Jerusalem. The final destruction of that city was the fulfillment of the words of the Lord Jesus, “There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (24:2). 

  MATTHEW 22:9 - Now we see the gospel going out to the Gentiles. Israel had their opportunity; they had an invitation to the feast, but they refused to accept it. So God says to His servants, “Go out into the hedges and the highways; go out among all classes everywhere. No matter what the condition in which men may be, no matter how unclean, no matter how vile and sinful, bid them to the marriage feast; invite them to come in!” It is a graphic picture of what has gone on for the last nineteen hundred years. God’s servants have been going from land to land, from city to city, and out into the uttermost parts of the earth. They have been going everywhere inviting poor, lost men to come to the marriage feast which God has prepared for His Son.  

  MATTHEW 22:11-12 - There was one man at this feast who professed to accept the invitation, but he did not avail himself of the wedding garment. He had accepted the invitation to the feast, but had refused the wedding garment so graciously provided. He is like many who join the church but do not receive Christ as their personal Saviour. This shows what will take place some day.

  You may be relying upon your own good works for your soul’s salvation; you may be resting on the fact that you have joined some particular church, perhaps in childhood, and you think that will get you into heaven; or you may be relying on the facts that you were baptized, and take the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, as we call it, or that you have reformed your life, and are no longer living the way you used to live; but “There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), except the name of Jesus. 

When the heart is right with God, and He is loved supremely, man too will be loved unselfishly, and so the whole life will be ordered in obedience to the divine Word. Love delights to serve the one loved, and thus it preserves from all that would grieve God or injure one’s neighbor.

   When renewed by divine grace, the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). Our Lord’s teaching was designed to convict of sin and to make manifest the need of regeneration. Man has become alienated from God through the fall. When born again by the Word and the Holy Spirit, he receives eternal life. It is the very nature of this new life to love, because it is divine (2 Peter 1:4). Therefore love becomes the controlling principle of the life of the man in Christ. Walking not after the flesh but after the Spirit, the righteousness of the law comes to fulfillment in Him (Romans 8:4), and he finds it as easy to love God and his neighbor as before it was easy to live in selfishness and ill will toward others. A new power dominates him. This is the positive evidence of the new birth (1 John 3:14; 5:1, 2).