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Matthew 22:1-14
1Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2"The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. 4"Then he sent some more servants and said, '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.' 5"But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. 8"Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.' 10So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. 11"But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12'Friend,' he asked, 'how did you get in here without wedding clothes?' The man was speechless. 13"Then the king told the attendants, 'Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' 14"For many are invited, but few are chosen."
Have you ever been invited to a party that you did not want to go to? You look at the invitation and you begin to come up with every excuse you could possibly come up with in order to not go. Today, we have the story of a great wedding invitation. God has given us an invitation to come to his banquet and yet we continue to refuse. We spend a lot of time in our life making excuses for not attending the things that God has invited us too. I have often wondered why we spend all our time running from God when he has spent his life running toward us. He sent the greatest invitation of all he sent his only son. We make every excuse that we can in order to push God to the side. Why do we constantly turn down God's invitations, because we are scared that the things that we are holding so tightly too will be taken away. What we do not understand is when we say yes to God's invitation, we learn what we have been missing.
But the catch to this whole parable is that one is thrown out for not wearing the right clothing. So often we hear the statement come as you are but in this parable: God lets us know that there is a dress code. But these are not garments that you shop for in a department store. These are the garments of salvation and the righteousness of Christ. We cannot expect to attend God's Kingdom bash with the rags we have in our closets. These are the rags of self-importance, self-righteousness, self-conceit, and if we attend with this dress code violation we'll get bounced out of the event on our cans. God has sent you an invitation and my advice is that you RSVP today. You will be glad you attended.