Saturday, August 5, 2023

PT-1 "The Intruder Expelled" (Matt. 22:11-14)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/5/2023 10:14 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                 Focus: PT-1 “The Intruder Expelled”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                              Reference:  Matthew 22:11-14

 

            Message of the verses:  11 "But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, 12  and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. 13 “Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw 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.’”

 

            Today we will begin to look at the fourth and the last scene in the parable, which focuses on an intruder attending the wedding feast, who did not belong there because he was not dressed in wedding clothes.  Now looking back on this parable we saw that it seemed that it was difficult for the king to get people to his wedding feast, and so once his servants went out and asked what could be called “common people” to the wedding feast then this man that we are talking about this morning could surely been invited to come for the king made no restrictions as to who was invited.  I guess the bottom line was this man was not a party crasher, but the problem was that he was improperly dressed, and he obviously stood out in the great wedding hall, in stark contrast to all the other diner guests. 

 

            John MacArthur addresses a question that others have probably thought of.  “At first reading, one wonders how any of those who accepted the king’s invitation could have been expected to come properly attired.  They had been rounded up from every part of the land, and many had been taken off the streets.  Even if they had time to dress properly, they had no clothes befitting such and occasion as the wedding of the king’s son.”

 

            Now as we think about this problem we can see that all of the other guests had the proper clothes on to come to the king’s son’s wedding feast.  This shows us that the king was the one who had given the proper wedding clothes for his guests as they all but this one man had the proper clothes on.  MacArthur writes “It would have been a moral mockery, especially for such an obviously kind and gracious ruler, to invite even the most wicked people in the land to come to the feast and then exclude one poor fellow because he had no proper clothes to wear.”

 

            I will close this rather short SD with some comments that I am thinking about, and those thoughts have to do with how people look at God, for this parable is obviously about the God being the King, and His Son being about Jesus Christ.  I have to say that there are times when I probably don’t have the right thoughts or opinions who God really is.  I have mentioned about studying in the past about the attributes of God, and so I believe this is the key in understanding who God is, as these attributes that I had studied about are all in the Scriptures.  In this parable we can see that God is love by inviting these “uncommon people” to the wedding feast of His Son, but as we go through the verses in this section we can see that God is just in throwing out this improper dressed man, who by the way it seems had the ability to change into the clothes that the king had given to all of his guests.  Bottom line is knowing God by knowing His attributes.  The following is a website that gives readers the opportunity to learn about the attributes of God https://bible.org/series/joy-knowing-god. The book is entitled “The Joy of Knowing God” by Richard Strauss.  This is a great book to help us understand the attributes of God as it is easy to read and understand and all you have to do is click on this website and read it on your device.

 

8/5/2023 10:43 AM

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