Dave's Diary

Prayer

Briefly prepare your heart in silence, and ask the Holy Spirit to awaken your sense of anticipation that God is about to speak to you through His Word. Then, before you read, I invite you to pray this simple prayer:

Almighty and ever-living God, I trust in You.
Please help me to hear, understand and obey Your Word
Amen.

Reading

Matthew 22:1-14

In reading this parable, one can feel the tension that must have been in the air during Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem. Fully aware of the religious leaders’ intentions to have Him done away with, and wanting to warn them that their eventual decision would have devastating consequences, Jesus told this confrontational parable.

With hindsight, the first half of the parable clearly seems to point prophetically to the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70AD. The religious leaders’ refusal to receive Christ with faith and their decision first to have Him crucified and then, in the years that followed, to persecute and martyr His disciples would bring God’s active judgment upon them. The first half of the parable was a way for Jesus to warn the religious leaders that their rejection and their actions would have consequences! It was a call to the individuals listening to repent!

The second half of the parable is a more general word of warning to all of us. The Kingdom of Christ is open to all who will enter it, “the bad as well as the good” (v.10); but let us not imagine for a moment that we can enter the Kingdom and continue to live however we please, with no regard to the Lordship of Christ.

Apparently there was a custom in Jesus day’ that when a king threw a great feast, he provided a special garment for each guest to wear. This would, of course, be necessary when ordinary, poor people were invited to the banquet (such as in this parable). But in the parable, one man clearly thought he had no need of the king’s garment. He was like someone who thinks they can enter the Kingdom without repentance, surrender to Christ, and an obedient commitment to the transformation that the Holy Spirit brings. As Spurgeon wrote,

“He came because he was invited, but he came only in appearance. The banquet was intended to honor the King’s Son, but this man meant nothing of the kind; he was willing to eat the good things set before him, but in his heart there was no love either for the King or his well-beloved Son.”

So the clear call of Jesus in this parable is that we should receive Him as King and also surrender to His transforming, life-changing power at work in us, by which He not only clothes us in His righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21) but also actively changes us from glory to glory into His own image (2 Cor. 3:18).

Contemplation

Please take time to ponder what Jesus has commanded us. Turn one or more of these declarations over and over in your mind. Keep them in mind throughout the day and live in step with Your King, Jesus.

As a disciple of Jesus Christ:

• I will enter His Kingdom more fully today by ongoing repentance and faith.
• I will surrender to His transforming power through following Him with my life.

Holy Spirit, please deepen my faith in Jesus as Lord; and please inspire and empower my transformation into His image. Amen.