The Wedding Feast (~19.49) - Moriel Ministries

Feature Article – Continued
These things happened in the first century
in part. But how do we understand,
“he sent his armies”? (Mt. 22:7)
“His army” is not angelic; “His army”
is human. But that does not mean they are
good guys. On the contrary, “His army”
means something very different. Going all
the way back to the book of Judges and
throughout the history of Israel, we see the
same pattern. When God’s people broke
the covenant and were unfaithful – when
they went into idolatry and immorality and
would not repent and began to persecute
the prophets whom God sent to warn them
to repent – He would get somebody, some
nation, worse than they were to invade
them. He would get somebody completely
heathen. He would get the Philistines, He
would get the Amalekites, He would later
get the Assyrians to take the ten tribes into
captivity in 721 B.C. He would get the
Babylonians in 585 B.C., and prior to them
He had the Assyrians. In A.D. 70 it was the
Romans. God’s “army” is somebody worse
than His people. He gets somebody worse
than they are: Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians,
Romans – He always does that.
However, look at what it says in Joel…
“Then I will make up to you for the
years That the swarming locust has
eaten, The creeping locust, the stripping
locust and the gnawing locust,
My great army which I sent among
you.” (Joel 2:25)
There are four kinds of locusts, Joel
says. The “swarming” ones, the “creeping”
ones, the “stripping” ones and the
“gnawing” ones. Joel uses insects the way
that Daniel uses animals or monsters. He
uses them as symbols or metaphors for political
entities. The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar
would invade four times and
he compares the four invasions and what
the Babylonians would do to locusts that
creep, locusts that strip, locusts that gnaw,
and locusts that swarm. There were four
invasions.
Once the people repent, God destroys
Babylon. Joel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah are
all saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon” (Is.
21:9; Jer. 51:8; Rev. 14:8)! Before Babylon
even rose on the scene, God predicted
its destruction. In other words, when
people would not repent, when they broke
the covenant, when they persecuted the
prophets, He might get the Philistines or
the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the
Romans. But once He used them for His
purposes as an instrument of correction for
His own people, then He would destroy the
heathen. Their fate was sealed. They were
very confident in all this, but their fate was
sealed. God just raised them up expressly
for a time and a purpose to deal with His
own people. He is not concerned with the
unbelievers, He is concerned with His own.
This was Joel’s army. The King sends
His army. He gets somebody worse than
they are. The Jews could not believe that
God was going to use the Babylonians.
(This is the book of Jeremiah.) They could
not believe that He would get somebody
so heathen as they. In the same way they
could not believe that God would use the
Romans to destroy Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
They could not believe He would do such
a thing. “We’re not as bad as they are; they
are not the people of the covenant.”
But God would say, “You should know
better. They are just being what they are – savages;
you are supposed to be a holy people.”
He gets somebody who is worse. Once
they persecuted the prophets He would get
somebody worse.
This happens in 721 B.C. with the Assyrians
in Samaria, it happens in 585 B.C.
with the Babylonians in Jerusalem. The
Jews persecute Jeremiah and so forth, and
the Babylonians destroy the first temple in
Jerusalem, the first temple built by Solomon.
They destroy it on a day in August,
“T’sha B’Av,” roughly the 9 th of August.
The Romans destroy the second temple the
same day of the year in A.D. 70 – the same,
exact day of the year five centuries later, the
Romans destroy the second temple. Once
Jeremiah was rejected, the Babylonians
destroyed the first temple; once Jesus was
rejected, the Romans destroyed the second
temple the same day of the year, “T’sha
B’Av.” On this day the rabbis read the book
of Lamentations to mourn the event.
The mystery religions which began in
Babylon with the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11)
– which had their apex under the Babylonian
Empire – these found their way into
the Greco-Roman Empire via a city called
“Pergamum” particularly (Rev. 2:12-17),
and via Pergamum into the Greco-Roman
world. So by the time of Jesus, the mystery
religions of Babylon found a home
in Rome. That is why Peter writes in his
epistle, “She who is in Babylon…sends you
greetings.” (1 Pe. 5:13) He is actually writing
from Rome, but those same mystery
religions come from Babylon. The early
Christians identified Rome with Babylon.
They destroyed the temple the same
day. In other words, what happened n 585
B.C. happened again in A.D. 70 on the exact
day. God’s people would not repent so
He gets somebody worse than them. And
so we see in the first century, when most
Jews reject their Messiah and persecute the
apostles, God gets His army and the Romans
destroy the city.
The Nuptial is at Hand
‘Go therefore to the main highways,
and as many as you find there, invite
to the wedding feast.’ (Matthew 22:9)
God turns His grace to the Gentile nations.
THAT happened in the first century,
but that is not primarily what this parable
is talking about. That is only PARTIALLY
what this parable is talking about because
the wedding feast is at hand. It happens at
the end of the age. It is not only for the First
Coming, it is recapitulated – it happens
again for the Second Coming. The wedding
is at hand. It is not the betrothal, it is the
nuptial – the wedding feast, the banquet.
Notice there are two groups of servants
sent out to invite people in Matthew 22. The
first go out, simply, with an ordinary wedding
invitation. “Réspondez s’il vous plait”
– RSVP. But the people were unwilling to
come. He sends out OTHER servants, telling
them, “Behold, I have prepared my dinner;
my oxen…my livestock…everything is
ready…” The second group does not go
out with a simple response of “s’il vous
plait”; the second group goes out with the
sense of urgency. “The wedding is at hand
– the bridegroom cometh.” This is what we
call, or what Matthew calls, “the Gospel
of the Kingdom.” (Mt. 4:23; 9:35; 24:14)
The Gospel of the Kingdom
The Gospel is the Gospel. God becomes
a man to take our sin in order to
give us His righteousness, He raised us
from the dead in order to give us eternal
life. The Gospel is the Gospel. But there
are different aspects to it, different characters
in which it is preached. In Ephesians
6 and Isaiah 52 it is called the “Gospel of
Peace.” (Is. 52:7; Eph. 6:15) Elsewhere it
is called the “Gospel of Salvation.” (Ro.
1:16; Eph. 1:13) But here it is the “Gospel
of the Kingdom.” What does that mean?
Look to Matthew 24, the Olivet Discourse.
They ask Jesus what is the sign of
the end of the world and His coming, and He
gives all these signs. And then He says…
“This Gospel of the Kingdom shall be
preached… (Mt. 24:14)
The “Gospel of the Kingdom” is what
we see in Matthew’s Gospel where we find
the recurrent “kingdom” theme. The theme
of the kingdom keeps coming up in Matthew
more than in the other Gospels. In
Matthew, in the “Gospel of the Kingdom,”
Jesus speaks of hell three times as much as
He does about heaven.
John the Baptist preached the “Gospel
of the Kingdom”: “Repent, the kingdom is
at hand.” (Mt. 3:2)
What is this “Gospel of the Kingdom”
that is to be preached in the Last Days?
“The Bridegroom cometh.” It is when we
use End Times prophecy to engage people
in evangelistic dialogue.
Moriel Quarterly • December 2009