Baptized believers in Christ are the chosen people of God

Sermon for Trinity 20

Ephesians 5:15-21  +  Matthew 22:1-14

Once again the Church’s lectionary, our annual schedule of weekly Scripture readings, is very relevant to what’s going on around us. Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet teaches a powerful lesson, for example, about the things going on today in Israel. But not only in Israel. It has a powerful lesson for everyone in this room. In His grace, God prepared a wedding banquet for His Son, and He invited the people of Israel to attend, but they didn’t want to come. Now He sends out invitations to all people. Who will come to the wedding? And who will be properly dressed for it, so that they are allowed to stay? May the Holy Spirit open our hearts to understand and to heed His message: It’s baptized believers in Christ who are the chosen people of God.

Jesus told the parable of the wedding banquet during Holy Week, just days before He would be crucified. He was teaching some final lessons to the people in Jerusalem’s temple. And included in those lessons were also some stern warnings, because He knew what the Jews were about to do to Him, and why. So He tells the parable of the wedding banquet.

A certain man, a king, arranged a wedding banquet for His Son. This is God the Father, who arranged from eternity to send His Son into human flesh, to redeem fallen mankind by giving His Son as the perfect sacrifice for the world’s sins. True God, true Man, the perfect Substitute for mankind, the perfect Mediator between God and man, the perfect Savior, who makes all who believe in Him heirs of eternal life, fit to live with God forever in the new heavens and the new earth after this earth is destroyed in judgment.

Ever since Adam and Eve fell into sin, God had been sending out invitations to celebrate the future arrival of His Son into the world. But eventually, after practically all mankind had become corrupt and unbelieving, after the nations all went their own ways after the flood and the tower of Babel, God focused on one nation in particular, one people: on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their descendants who became the people of Israel. And God cultivated them as His people and trained them and taught them and sent His prophets to them to give them His Word, not only orally, but also in writing. They were the guests whom God invited beforehand, before He sent His Son into the world.

Then, finally, He sent His Son into the world. The Savior had been born! And the servants of the king—the shepherds of Bethlehem, Simeon and Anna, and the wise men, among others, were sent out to call the invited guests to the feast. “Jerusalem, this is your time, the time of your visitation!” But few paid attention. Still, the king had it proclaimed again, Tell those who are invited, “See! I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and all things are ready. Come to the wedding!” For three years or so that message kept going out in the land of Israel. The promised Savior stood among them and taught among them. John the Baptist, Jesus’ disciples, Jesus Himself kept on announcing that the kingdom of heaven was at hand!

But they disregarded it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. And the rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. That was how Israel, as a whole, reacted to the preaching of the Gospel. John the Baptist was imprisoned and then beheaded. Jesus was crucified. Stephen was stoned to death. James, the brother of John, was killed by the sword. St. Paul himself was, at one time, responsible for persecuting the servants of the King, and then, after his conversion, Paul and the other Christians were persecuted constantly by the Jews who refused to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, to the point that, in the book of Revelation, Jesus refers to the Jewish synagogue as the “synagogue of Satan.”

And so, when the king heard about it, he was angry. And he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned up their city. The Father had given His greatest gift to Israel, and had prepared them for it in advance, and Israel stubbornly rejected it. Not all of them, of course, but the nation as a whole. And so, as Jesus predicted, because Jerusalem was not willing to come to the banquet of God’s salvation in Christ, Jerusalem was eventually burned up and destroyed by the Roman armies. The previously invited guests missed their chance to come to the banquet.

So please don’t let anyone convince you that the modern city of Jerusalem belongs to any people by divine right. God had that city burned down long ago as the capital of His Old Testament people Israel, and as far as their rejection of Christ goes, nothing has changed since that time. That doesn’t justify the horrific atrocities being committed against those who seek peace, atrocities which are being committed, by the way, by people who are just as Christ-less and lost as the unbelieving Jews. But the punishments God sends against any nation are meant to serve not only as punishments, but as calls to repentance, because for the Jews, for the Muslims, and for the American unbelievers, too, it isn’t too late, yet, to repent! It isn’t too late to come to the wedding!

What did the king do after ordering his servants to burn down the city of those who murdered his servants? He said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore go into the streets and invite to the wedding whomever you find. So those servants went out into the streets and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good, and the banquet tables were filled with guests.

God still desires that all people should be saved. He gave His Son into death for all sinners, that all should come to repentance, believe in Christ Jesus, and receive the forgiveness of all their sins. After Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection, the same Lord Christ sent out His apostles into all the world, to preach the Gospel to all nations. No longer was His invitation sent out to Israel only, as it essentially was in the Old Testament, but now His invitation goes out to every creature, to every ethnicity, to every person: Come to the wedding! That is, Repent and believe in Jesus, the Christ who was crucified and died in payment for your sins! Be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins! Come into the Holy Christian Church that Jesus is still in the process of building! The call goes out to both Jews and non-Jews, to anyone and everyone, to “the good and the bad,” Jesus said in the parable. Here is the forgiveness of sins! Here is life! Here is salvation! Here at the wedding! Here in Christ Jesus!

The invitation has been going out for 2,000 years and will continue to go out until the Church (which is the new Israel, the spiritual Israel) is finished being built. The wedding hall, the Christian Church, is filling up, and only God knows when it will be full, and then the Last Day will come, and Christ will return to take His beloved Church to Himself.

But Jesus adds an important detail to this parable that we shouldn’t overlook. But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man who was not wearing a wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and throw him into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

What does this wedding garment represent? Why is it so important for the guests to be wearing it, so important that, if they’re not wearing it, they don’t get to stay at the banquet, they get tossed out into the darkness? Well, remember, the king didn’t require good works of anyone in order for them to be invited to the feast. What is the thing He requires? St. Paul writes to the Galatians: For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

See how St. Paul ties together faith and baptism. You are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. You put on Christ when you were baptized into Christ. You were clothed with the robe of Christ and His perfect righteousness through Baptism, where God held it out to you, and through faith, where you, by God’s power, put it on. But faith can’t just be put on once and then you’re automatically wearing it for the rest of your life. Faith in Christ, trusting in Christ Jesus, is a continual thing. It has to be. Church membership without faith in Christ is worthless. Calling yourself a Christian without faith is dishonest. When the King comes in to inspect the guests, He will not ask who your pastor was, or which church you or your family belonged to, or how many offerings you gave. He will look to see if you’re still clinging to His beloved Son in faith. And where He doesn’t find that, a person won’t be allowed to stay.

But God will provide everything you need to sustain your faith! Faith still comes by hearing. He’ll keep sending out His ministers to preach His word and administer His Sacraments! He’ll keep calling you to repentance when you go astray, and He’ll keep forgiving you your sins when you repent. Because He wants you there, in His wedding hall. He wants you to be among His chosen people—which is not the physical nation of Israel, but the number of those who believe in Christ Jesus and thereby escape the condemnation that is coming on this wicked world.

Many are called, but few are chosen. That’s how Jesus summarizes the lesson in the parable of the wedding banquet. Many have heard the Gospel invitation, and God sincerely wants the many who hear to believe and be saved. He wanted it for the Old Testament Jews. He wants it for all who hear. But “the chosen people,” the elect, are those who actually enter into His Christian Church by holy Baptism and who remain true members of the Church by faith in Christ Jesus. That means that you, who believe in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, are the chosen people of God. Now continue in that faith, wearing the robe of the righteousness of Christ every day. And, as those who already wear Christ by faith, do as St. Paul said to the Ephesian believers in today’s Epistle. Watch carefully how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise. Make the most of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not be drunk with wine, which leads to reckless behavior, but be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making music in your heart to the Lord. Give thanks always for all things to our God and Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.