Context for Matthew 22:1-14
Jesus continues to prepare His disciples for what is about to happen by focusing them on what the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven would really be rather than what people hoped it would be.
Jesus’ parable of the Wedding Feast clearly outlines the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven as promised throughout the Scriptures. The language of this parable is important, because it communicates everything God promised to His people from Adam until John the Baptist and everything that the Word communicates to us about the fulfillment of God’s promises to us.
Within this parable, we see God promising His Messiah to His chosen people, the Jews. Within this promise, God assures His chosen people redemption, not from earthly trials or hardships, but from the root cause of those trials, sin, death, and the power of the devil. The Father’s Messiah would come to bring the Kingdom to His chosen people, to purchase them back from the debt of sin and return them to their place as heirs.
Instead, God’s chosen people rejected the message and the Messiah. Through countless generations, the Jews turned away from their God, persecuted and murdered His messengers, and created for themselves a truth that defied the Truth. They even murdered their own Messiah in the end, ironically helping to fulfill the very mission the Messiah came to fulfill.
Because of this, God withdrew His grace from His chosen people, and they were destroyed and scattered as a result. This is not to say that no Jews will reach Heaven, rather those Jews that believe in the Gospel will reach Heaven just as surely as everyone else who believes the same. The result of the Jews rejection was the hastening of the Gospel reaching everyone else, namely us.
But even the Gospel reaching us is not enough in itself. We cannot merely hear the Word and believe whatever we want about it. The truth of the Gospel must come alive in us by grace through faith. Through faith in that Gospel, we receive the promised redemption the Messiah brought and further receive the promise of Heaven. It is by this means alone that one becomes part of the Kingdom.
