I saw on my original schedule that I’m to review Matt 22:1-23:28.  I was wondering why that section seems so hard to review when I realize it has been since March that I originally memorized that section.  Yikes!  Did I really stall that bad? Uh….looks like it.  So here’s the new thoughts because while I do have recorded that I memorized it, I didn’t get it blogged.
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Parable of the Wedding Banquet:

This is one of those parables that if Jesus would have stopped just a few verses earlier, I wouldn’t have minded.  The King invites those to his son’s wedding and they refuse to come.  He invites them again and lets them know he has prepared an exorbitant feast but they’re too busy.  And then some even have the audacity to murder those who delivered the invitations.  No fury like a woman scorned?  Try a King whose son’s wedding was scorned.  Gathered the army, destroyed the murderers and burnt the city down.  He instead ends up inviting those on the streets–both good and bad.

So far I’ve got this one.  It doesn’t bode well for those who don’t respond to the king.  But then enters the man who responds but doesn’t wear wedding clothes.  From what I understand wedding clothes were given to the guests, perhaps so that there was equality among them and not a rich/poor disinction.  Nonetheless, one man comes but doesn’t wear the wedding clothes.  He is perhaps in a state of rebellion as it would seem to imply by the Greek text used.   The king interrogates him and he is speechless.  His dismissal wasn’t a simple escort to the door, but a binding hand and foot and tossing outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  YIKES!  This was BAD.

Upon meditating upon it, I think there are a lot like the man not in wedding clothes.  They want to be at the party of heaven but on their own terms.  I can have my live-in boyfriend/girlfriend and Jesus too.  I can have unforgiveness in my heart and worship Jesus at the same time.  I can acquire as many possessions as I’m financially able to and not able to (greed) and love Jesus too.  In the words of yesterday’s youth–NOT.

The King requires that we come on His terms–clothed in righteousness, and that can only come through Jesus.  He is our Savior, but He is also our LORD.

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Matt 22:1-14 reviewed
12/27/10