The Invitation Nobody Wanted.
Matthew 22 — Everyone tried to outsmart Jesus. It didn't go well.
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Matthew 22 — Everyone tried to outsmart Jesus. It didn't go well.
7 min read
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The tension in was building every day. had already cleared out the , told that made the religious leaders furious, and showed no signs of backing down. Now he told one more story — this time about a party that nobody wanted to attend. And then the leaders came at him with everything they had: trick questions, theological puzzles, political traps. One after another.
What happened next is one of the most impressive stretches of dialogue in the entire Bible. Every question was designed to destroy him. Every answer left the room stunned.
told another — and this one cut even deeper than the last:
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like a king who threw a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to tell the invited guests it was time. But they wouldn't come.
So he sent more servants: 'Tell them — the feast is prepared. The best food, everything ready. Come to the wedding.'
But they couldn't be bothered. One left for his farm. Another went to handle some business. The rest grabbed the king's servants, abused them, and killed them.
The king was furious. He sent his army, destroyed the murderers, and burned their city.
Then he told his servants: 'The banquet is ready, but the people I invited didn't deserve it. Go out to the main roads and invite anyone you find.' So the servants went out and gathered everyone they could — bad and good alike. The wedding hall was packed."
But the story didn't end there:
"When the king came in to see his guests, he noticed a man who wasn't wearing the wedding garment. He said, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?' The man had nothing to say.
The king told the attendants: 'Bind him hand and foot and throw him into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'
For many are called, but few are chosen."
There's a lot happening in this story. The original guests — the ones who had standing invitations — didn't just decline. They were actively hostile. They had better things to do. Then the invitation went wide open, to everyone, no prerequisites. But there's still an expectation once you're in. The wedding garment wasn't about earning your spot — garments were provided by the host. It was about whether you took the invitation seriously enough to put it on. You can accept the invitation and still refuse to be changed by it.
The regrouped. They'd been losing these public exchanges, so this time they came with a plan — and they brought backup. They sent their own students along with the (political allies of , which tells you how desperate the Pharisees were — they normally couldn't stand these people). The goal was simple: ask a question where every possible answer gets in trouble.
They opened with the most transparently fake compliment in :
"Teacher, we know you're honest and you teach God's way truthfully. You don't care about anyone's opinion and you're not swayed by appearances. So tell us — is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?"
Here's the trap. If Jesus says "yes, pay taxes," he looks like a Roman collaborator and loses the crowd. If he says "no, don't pay," they report him to Rome as a rebel. It's a perfect setup. No way out.
Except Jesus saw through it immediately:
"Why are you testing me, you Hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax."
They handed him a . He held it up.
"Whose face and inscription is on this?"
"Caesar's," they said.
"Then give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar — and give to God what belongs to God."
They stood there, stunned. Think about what he just did. He didn't pick a side in their false dilemma. He reframed the entire question. Yes, coins have image — give those to Caesar. But you? You bear God's image. Give yourself to God. It wasn't a political statement. It was a theological one. And it left them with nothing to say. They walked away.
The same day, a different group showed up. The — wealthy, politically connected, theologically liberal. They didn't believe in . No afterlife, no , no coming back from the dead. So they brought what they thought was the ultimate "gotcha" question:
"Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies without children, his brother must marry the widow and have children for him. Well, there were seven brothers. The first married and died childless. His wife went to the second brother. Same thing happened — then the third, fourth, all the way to the seventh. Finally the woman died too.
So in the resurrection, whose wife is she? All seven had her."
They were so pleased with this one. It was designed to make the resurrection sound absurd. If there's an afterlife, this creates an impossible situation, right? Case closed.
didn't hesitate:
"You're wrong — because you don't know the Scriptures and you don't know the power of God.
In the resurrection, people don't marry or get married. They're like angels in Heaven.
And as for whether the dead are raised — haven't you read what God said to you: 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He's not the God of the dead. He's the God of the living."
Notice what Jesus did. He didn't just answer their riddle — he exposed the assumption underneath it. They were imagining eternity as just a longer version of life as we know it. Jesus said no. The next life isn't a continuation of this one with the same social structures. It's something entirely different, something bigger than our categories can hold. And then he quoted the — the only part of the Sadducees actually accepted — and used their own text to prove the point they were trying to disprove. The crowd was astonished.
When the heard that had silenced the , they huddled up again. One of them — a lawyer, an expert in — stepped forward with a test question:
"Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?"
(Quick context: Jewish scholars had identified 613 individual commands in the . Debating which ones mattered most was a whole genre of theological discussion. This wasn't casual — it was designed to see if Jesus would say something they could use against him.)
Jesus answered:
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.
And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.
Everything in The Law and the Prophets hangs on these two."
Six hundred and thirteen commands. Centuries of debate. Jesus compressed it all into two sentences. And the second one, he said, is "like" the first — meaning they're inseparable. You can't God and ignore the person next to you. You can't love people well without being anchored in your love for God. Every rule, every command, every "do this" and "don't do that" in the entire Old Testament is just a specific application of these two things. If you get these right, everything else falls into place. If you get everything else right but miss these, you've missed everything.
All day, they'd been coming at him. Question after question, trap after trap. Now, with the still gathered, flipped the script. He had a question for them:
"What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?"
Easy answer. Everyone knew this one.
"The son of David," they said.
Jesus pressed further:
"Then how is it that David, speaking by the Holy Spirit, calls him Lord? David said: 'The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.'
If David calls him Lord — how can he be David's son?"
Silence. Nobody could answer. In that culture, a never called his descendant "Lord" — it was always the other way around. So if , the greatest king in history, looked at the coming and called him Lord, then the Messiah must be something far greater than just another king in David's family line. Jesus was pointing at himself without saying it directly. The Messiah isn't just David's descendant. He's David's God.
And from that day on, nobody dared to ask him another question.