Matthew 22 – A Wedding, Taxes, and Heinous Evil

Among the many limitations that result from writing about Scripture in sections, the most grievous is treating each section in isolation from the surrounding context. This week’s passage really only makes sense if we refresh our memory about those verses that came before. Jesus had just told two parables, one about two sons and one about a vineyard, and told the Pharisees that the crooks and whores would enter heaven before them and, additionally that the Father’s kingdom was being taken from Israel and given to “a people producing its fruit.” As a result, the Pharisees wanted to arrest Jesus but they didn’t because they feared the power of the crowds: the crowds believed Jesus was a prophet. This brings us to this week’s passage where Jesus tells another parable while the Pharisees are deciding how to respond. Matthew writes,

1 And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, 3 and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.”’ 5 But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. 7 The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’ 10 And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11 “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. 12 And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Matthew 22:1-14

Jesus provides no detailed explanation for this parable, but it seems reasonable to conclude that the king is the Father, the son is Jesus, the servants are the prophets, and those invited to the wedding are Israel. Israel had received the Father’s word about his coming Son through the mouths of the prophets, but most people chose to focus on their own concerns. There were some who treated the prophets poorly and even a few killed them. These responses provoked the Father’s anger who then sent Babylon and Assyria to destroy the Israelites — the invited guests — and send them into exile. By the time Jesus tells this parable, Israel was living in the promised land but they lived under the hand of the Roman empire. The Father once again calls out to his chosen guests, but the Pharisees and the nation of Israel rejected the Father’s Son and would (spoiler alert) eventually kill him. Undeterred, the King goes ahead with the plans for his Son’s wedding, but this time he fills the wedding hall with people from the highways and byways, but the Father’s invitation isn’t a free pass. The Father’s guests need to be properly dressed for the wedding otherwise they will be cast out, bound, and tormented, much like the original guests. This parable has no devil, no pitchforks, and does not take place during a dank night with heavy fog, but this is still a story about evil. In place of the devil, we have the Pharisees; in place of a pitchfork, we have their selfish will; in place of a dank night with heavy fog, we have their willful blindness. The Pharisees’ rejection of the King’s invitation to his Son’s wedding was evil pure and simple: they rejected God, they rejected God’s word, and they rejected God’s Son: we all need God’s hand of protection from similar evil lurking in our hearts.

We are not, however, the Pharisees, nor are we the ancient nation of Israel, the first invited guests, we are those that have been called in from the road and we must be dressed for the coming wedding otherwise we will find ourselves in the same place as the guest who was bound and cast out into the outer darkness for not wearing a wedding gown. Just because the Father has extended an invitation to us doesn’t mean we are free to do as we like: we have a responsibility to follow God’s word. Paul wrote that we must, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13). Once invited to the wedding, we must wear the proper wedding gown by opening ourselves to the work of God both in our lives and through our lives.

Jesus concludes this parable by saying,

14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Matthew 22:14

Those who accept the Father’s invitation to the wedding but come on their own terms arrive without a wedding garment. Such a person wants God’s hand of salvation but they are unwilling to let go of the freedom to act as they wish. These have been called to the wedding, but they weren’t chosen. I realize these words make it seem like we are about to fall down the rabbit hole of predestination, but if we take a second look at what is being said, I think we will see that God’s choice is not arbitrary, nor does his choice run contrary to the will of man. When the Father sent the invitation to those on the road, his servants brought everyone they could find, “both good and bad” (Matt. 22:9). Everyone was called and everyone came, but not everyone came prepared to meet the Father’s standards; many came on their own terms.

Those who arrived with a proper wedding garment are the ones who have been chosen by God and have themselves chosen to allow God’s hand to work in their lives. Those, on the other hand, who came without a proper wedding garment are the ones who have chosen to not follow God’s words, and who have not been chosen by God. They may have heard the Father’s call, and they may have even followed the crowd, but they still wanted to approach God on their own terms. They did not choose God, and God did not choose them. To put this in even simpler terms, God never rejects any person who chooses him, and God never chooses any person who rejects him. That our choice works with God’s choice seems to be, from the Scriptures, indisputable, but how this works is beyond our comprehension. Please do not think that this is a contradiction, this is a mystery beyond our pay grade, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” (Rom. 11:34) What is in our power to do is to continue, each day, to put on the proper wedding dress so that we will always be prepared for that time when the doors to the Father’s house are opened.

The Pharisees evidently knew Jesus was talking about them so they, like angry children, sought to fight back. Matthew writes,

15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. 16 And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians,

Matthew 22:15-16

I picture a group of Pharisees huddling together in a dark room drumming their fingers together while they debate how to continue their attack on Jesus. Since they had already been put in their place, they chose not to approach Jesus themselves so they sent some underlings. They were not sent, however, to discern the truth, they were sent to entangle Jesus in his own words. The Pharisees wanted to keep the status quo of the kingdom requirements as they had designed — they wanted to attend the Father’s wedding wearing their own garments — so they asked Jesus what seems like a bizarre question. Matthew writes,

16 And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” 21 They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.

Matthew 22:16-22

One big benefit of being God in the flesh is that Jesus knew his questioners were not concerned with paying taxes, nor were they concerned with whether Jesus paid taxes, their goal was to get Jesus to say that paying taxes to Caeser was wrong. If they could get Jesus on record defying the Roman government, then they would be able to rid themselves of Jesus. Another big benefit of being God in the flesh is that Jesus knew exactly how to respond. He began by calling them hypocrites because they were pretending to care. We often think of a hypocrite as one who says one thing and does another, and that is a hypocrite, but the word hypocrite, in its most basic sense, is one who pretends. Jesus doesn’t call them hypocrites because they paid taxes but hoped Jesus would say they shouldn’t, or the other way around, Jesus called them hypocrites because they were pretending to care about God’s will, and that, I might add, is another evil found in this week’s passage.

After calling them hypocrites, Jesus responded with what might be one of the most profound answers in scripture: money is Caesar’s because it bears his image, but we are God’s since we bear God’s image. The Pharisees certainly must have known they were made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), but they were unwilling to listen to the Father’s word or accept the Father’s Son. This seemingly bizarre question unmasked the pretense of the Pharisees. They were unwilling to give to God the one thing that had been made in God’s image: themselves. This too is evil.

Confounded by Jesus’s brilliance, the religious leaders tried another approach. Matthew writes,

23 The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, 24 saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. 26 So too the second and third, down to the seventh. 27 After them all, the woman died. 28 In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.”

Matthew 22:23-28

We all know why the Sadducees were called Sadducees, right? The Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection…this is why they were sad-you-see. When they asked a question about a topic they didn’t believe, it sent up a glaring signal that they had other motives in mind. The Sadducees, like the Pharisees, only wanted to trip up Jesus. They wanted Jesus to say something against the Mosaic law so they could pass judgment, but again, Jesus, God in flesh, wasn’t falling for their poorly laid trap. Matthew writes,

29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 31 And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”

Matthew 22:29-32

When Jesus said that God is the God of the living, not the dead, he strikes at one of the roots of the Sadducees’ belief system. By calling living, Jesus affirms the resurrection since he claims that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not dead but living and the only way Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob could be living was if the resurrection was a reality. The Sadducees were like the Pharisees in that they imposed heavy regulations upon the people to guide their behavior; they just didn’t believe in a resurrection. The Sadducees, however, aren’t the only ones who held to such a moralistic view of the world. There is an evil quite prevalent today that focuses on moral behavior while essentially dismissing the transcendent element of God. Moralists simply want people to behave in a moral way without imposing on them the teeth of the resurrection. I use the word “teeth” because the resurrection is not a soft idea: the resurrection leads to eternal life for those dressed properly for the Son’s wedding, but the resurrection leads to the torments of hell for those rejecting the Father’s invitation or choosing to wear their own clothing. When moralists deny the resurrection they are promoting a “toothless” religion — morals without a foundation — something, I might add, that is another evil from which we need protection.

Matthew doesn’t tell us how the Sadducees responded to Jesus, but he tells us about the nearby crowds. Matthew writes,

33 And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.

Matthew 22:33

The crowds saw that Jesus knew the scriptures better than the religious leaders and they were probably enjoying the direction this debate had taken. The Pharisees had been knocked back on the ropes — they had been shown up, their disciples had been shown up, and the Sadducees had been shown up — so they did what anyone would do: they brought out the lawyers. Matthew writes,

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22:34-40

These lawyers were experts and had the final word when it came to the Mosaic law. They posed a question for the sole purpose of testing Jesus, but to be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure what answer the lawyers were hoping for. Perhaps they expected Jesus to highlight the prohibition against murder or adultery, or maybe they expected to catch him in some sort of contradiction by naming the command to keep the Sabbath. Whatever they expected, however, was not what Jesus gave them. Jesus bypassed any discussion of individual laws and moved directly to the heart of the law: the command to love God with our entire being and the command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

The Pharisees were sticklers for the law that God gave Moses who in turn gave it to the Israelites. The Pharisees wanted to protect this law, so they added many laws of their own. However, instead of protecting the law, by the time Jesus came on the scene, the Pharisees had divorced the law from the lawgiver. No longer was it God’s law, it was Moses’s, and it was theirs. No longer did the law reveal anything about God or how to best show our love for him; the law became a means for keeping people in line. In other words, the law became an idol that replaced God, and the Pharisees worshipped their idol and made the nation bow down to it as well.

Isaiah often describes idols as a block of wood carved by the hand of man that can not see, hear, speak, or breathe (Isa. 44:9-20). Just as idols are lifeless constructs, so also did the law become a lifeless construct in the hands of the Pharisees. No longer did the law bring life, nor did it even point toward the author of life. Even though Psalm 119 says that the commands and precepts of God bring life (Psalm 119:17, 25, 37, 40, 50, 77, 88, 93, 107, 116, 144, 149, 154, 156, 159, 175), the Pharisees’ laws no longer brought such life, a fact that was not overlooked by Jesus when he said the following to the Pharisees,

39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

John 5:39-40

The law, standing on its own, is lifeless — it cannot bring life, it only points out our sins (Heb. 10:1-4) — but Jesus, the fulfillment of the law and the one to whom the law points, is the author of life (Acts 3:14-16). The Pharisees were unwilling to bend their knee to Jesus, the bringer of life, instead choosing to worship a false and lifeless idol of their own making. However, before we smugly judge the Pharisees, we must realize we often do the same thing, choosing to worship a set of rules with which we are comfortable instead of worshipping the living God who is so much more than our comprehension of him (Job 42:1-6). We need deliverance from this evil just as the Pharisees needed it.

Before the Pharisees were able to craft a response, Jesus goes on the offensive. Matthew writes,

41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42 saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,
44  “‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet”’?
45 If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” 46 And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Matthew 22:41-46

At first glance, it seems like Jesus is just giving the Pharisees what they gave him — a trick question — but this is anything but that. Our memory should not be so short as to forget that Jesus had been called, at least four times, and one of them as recently as the day before he entered the temple, the Son of David. Jesus is testing the Pharisees by posing a tricky question about Scripture, but he is also forcing them to a conclusion regarding himself. Maybe I’m giving the Pharisees too much credit, but I think it’s possible the Pharisees knew that if they answered Jesus correctly, they would have had to declare Jesus as the Christ, but that was something they would not, could not, and did not want to do. To admit that the Christ, the Son of David, is the Lord of David because the Christ is the Son of the living God, would be to open the door to Jesus being the Christ, but they had already given their allegiance to the idol of their own hand’s creation. They could no more bow down to Jesus than give up the power they held over the nation of Israel.

I sometimes wonder if there were any closet Pharisees who believed who Jesus was but were held back by either their history or their peers. I also wonder if these closet Pharisees came to the conclusion reluctantly: they didn’t want it to be true, but they knew it was so. If there were any closet Pharisees, I wonder how they responded to that tension. I may never know about the closet Pharisees, but when I read this chapter of Matthew, I am reminded of something C. S. Lewis wrote in his book, Surprised by Joy. C. S. Lewis wrote,

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (1955), 228-9.

Unlike the Pharisees, when Lewis saw the truth of who Jesus is, he chose to accept it. Even though reluctant, Lewis let go of his pride and succumbed to the Father’s kind, yet hard, compulsion; Lewis chose good. The Pharisees, however, chose one of the most heinous of all evils when they rejected Jesus. There are many evils for which we need the Father’s protection, but none so evil as the pride which keeps us from properly accepting the Father’s invitation.

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