Food For Your Soul
by Reverend Hubermann Larose
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The Man Without A Wedding Garment – (Mathew 22:11-14)
The Man Without A Wedding Garment – (Mathew 22:11-14)
The story of the man without a wedding garment is an appendix that Jesus himself added to the parable of the wedding banquet. The parable would be complete without the addition, but we see a great wisdom in the integration of this story, so much the lesson it contains are beneficial to our soul.
The parable concerns a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent its servants to call those who have been invited to the banquet, “but they did not want to come.” (Mat. 12:3) Thinking that there was perhaps a misunderstanding, the king sent other servants with a more precise and a more urgent message: “Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.” (Mat. 12:4) The answer, this second time, was quite as negative. Some quite simply scorned the invitation. Others reacted in a more hostile way, using violence to express their hatred for the king and his son. But this king, who always has his way in every situation, decided to open the doors of the banquet hall to people less qualified than the first ones. The king’s servants “went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.” (Mat. 22:10)
Everything was going well until the king decided to visit the guests in the wedding hall —perhaps to greet and welcome them. But when the king came in, “he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes.” (v. 11) The king said to this man: “How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?” (v. 12) The man was speechless. Indeed, he could not justify he’s being without a wedding garment. He could not say, “I am too poor, I cannot not afford one”, because the dress was offered free of charge to everybody. The only explanation this man could give was that he considered his own clothes suitable enough for the feast. Then the king pronounced this sentence against him: “Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (v. 13)
What Jesus wants to teach us by that, is that there is a way of approaching God that leads directly to eternal perdition, no matter how pious and how religious that appears to be. “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death,” say the author of Proverbs (14:12)
We see this way of approaching God in the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve had sinned, they recognized that they were naked, and so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. God, in turn, made for them garments of skin and clothed them. This gesture of the Lord takes on a threefold meaning:
- Firstly, it proclaims the inadequacy, the insufficiency of our efforts to cover our spiritual nakedness before God.
- Secondly, it teaches that the only garment that will effectively cover our spiritual nakedness is that which God himself will provide, and not that which we will get ourselves.
- It teaches, thirdly, that this garment can only be made available to us at the cost of the sacrifice of an innocent victim, for the skin that was used to make the garments came from animals―perhaps lambs―that God had killed.
So it is until today: our garment of righteousness is provided by another —“the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” (Jean 1:29)
There are two ways to approach God: either you’re clothed with your own righteousness or you’re clothed with God’s righteousness—Jesus Christ himself. The first way is as ineffective as the fig leaves were to cover Adam’s and Eve’s nakedness. The second way is the only one approved by God, because He provided it. When we are clothed with Christ’s robe of righteousness, God does not see us; He sees Christ. He receives us as He receives Christ. He is pleased with us as He is with Christ.
The way sinful man has tried to cover his spiritual nakedness before God has always been similar to that of Adam and Eve in the Garden: fig leaves, their own righteousness, their own good works… The apostle Paul said in the Epistle to the Romans something about the Jews, that could also be said about many of us today: “Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.” (Romans 10:3) That’s the case with the man in the parable who liked his own garment better than the king’s wedding garment, maybe by pride or arrogance.
And what was done to him? Where did he end up? “Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Mat. 22:13) “Outer darkness”, “weeping and gnashing of teeth” are periphrases for HELL, this dreadful, awful place where go those who, instead of being clothed with the righteousness of Christ, the wedding garment provided by God, find more suitable their own garment, their own good works.
It is worth noting that this man who was thrown in the outer darkness was not indifferent to the invitation of the king, no more than he was one of the enemies who used of violence against the king’s emissaries. He was by no means one of the rebels, because he answered the invitation and he entered the wedding hall. So is it with many today who have entered the kingdom of God by joining the Church. Looking at them, you could take them for authentic believers; but God who searches the hearts of men knows that these people were never wearing the wedding garment that He provides them with free of charge in Jesus Christ. These people have “a form of godliness, but deny its power.” (2 Tim. 3:5)
My friend, my advice to you would be to examine your ways to know if you are clothed with the wedding garment provided by God, or if you are satisfied with your rags, your so-called good accomplishments in life (Isaiah 64:5). The lost are not only those who rebel openly against God. One can respond to God’s invitation and still be thrown in the outer darkness. Think about that, and act accordingly, before it is too late!
Hubermann Larose
Associate Pastor
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