Questions – What’s Up with Heaven or Hell?
Matthew 22:1-14
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
April 11, 2010
Peace, Friends!
This past Monday was a pretty heavenly day for me. Yeah, you knew it was coming. I had the opportunity to go watch my alma mater, Duke University, win the NCAA championship. I had an awesome time if you consider three hours of gut wrenching anxiety awesome. So my step-dad got his hands on some tickets and offered for me to come down to Indy to go to the game with my mom. It didn’t really fit in my schedule, but this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I made it work. So I drive down and get to my mom’s house. We leave about three hours early to find good parking and brave the crowds at the Lucas Oil Stadium. I’m pumped walking in amidst a sea of Butler fans. It was a zoo. The street we’re on has been shut down because there are too many people to walk on the sidewalks. So we’re walking down the street and Lucas Oil Stadium comes into view. I’m even more pumped. We go under a bridge and come out right in front of Lucas Oil Stadium. I’m even more pumped. I turn my head to the right and there’s these two guys wearing red and one of them is holding a big red sign that says, “You don’t deserve Jesus. You deserve hell.” What?! All of a sudden it’s like I’m at a family reunion and uncle Jack is spouting off his wacko theories again. Embarrassment. I try not to look. I try to ignore them, but their sign is designed to not be ignored. “You don’t deserve Jesus. You deserve hell.” Do I even really believe that? Is this strategy for drawing people to Jesus Christ even working? But they’re family, Christian family, so I chalk it up to the more eccentric side of the family and head into Lucas Oil Stadium to root for the Devils, the Blue Devils!
Today we continue the series of Questions. Each question is being introduced by a teenager in our church. Last week Alex asked the question: How do I know that Jesus is who he said he is? We explored uncertainty, doubt, and faith. Today Alyssa asks the question: What’s up with heaven or hell and what about my friends who die? Is it just like that sign said: You deserve hell? Or is there another way to look at this heaven or hell question? Let’s dive into a story that Jesus tells to begin exploring this question. It’s the parable of the wedding feast.
Matthew 22:1-14 (NLT)
1 Jesus told them several other stories to illustrate the Kingdom. He said, 2 “The Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a king who prepared a great wedding feast for his son. 3 Many guests were invited, and when the banquet was ready, he sent his servants to notify everyone that it was time to come. But they all refused! 4 So he sent other servants to tell them, ‘The feast has been prepared, and choice meats have been cooked. Everything is ready. Hurry!’ 5 But the guests he had invited ignored them and went about their business, one to his farm, another to his store. 6 Others seized his messengers and treated them shamefully, even killing some of them.
7 “Then the king became furious. He sent out his army to destroy the murderers and burn their city. 8 And he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, and the guests I invited aren’t worthy of the honor. 9 Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see.’
10 “So the servants brought in everyone they could find, good and bad alike, and the banquet hall was filled with guests. 11 But when the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man who wasn’t wearing the proper clothes for a wedding. 12‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how is it that you are here without wedding clothes?’ And the man had no reply. 13 Then the king said to his aides, ‘Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”
This is God’s story for us today. Thank you, God!
What we’ve just read is something unlike anything we’ve read up to this point in my time with you. It’s a parable or what the NLT calls a “story.” It’s not about something that actually happened, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Parables are symbolic stories. We understand symbols because they are used in our story telling today. Take these numbers for instance:
4 8 15 16 23 42
Those aren’t just any numbers. They are very special numbers. They’re the mysterious numbers that have driven Lost fans crazy ever since the first season. What do they stand for? Where did they come from? In this final season we’ve learned that the numbers are symbols. They each stand for one character in the show:
4 – Locke
8 – Hurley
15 – Sawyer
16 – Sayid
23 – Jack
42 – Sun and/or Jin.
So now we know what the symbols stand for, but what do they mean? What does it mean that each number represents one character. And what about the characters that don’t have a number? Ah, we know but we don’t know. We see but we don’t see. We hear but we don’t hear. A parable kinda drives us crazy sometimes.
There are two lines of thinking about parables. One line of thinking says that a parable has one main point and the details aren’t really very important. A second line of thinking says that the details are what make the story work and that the details have lots of different possible meanings. I tend to take a third line when it comes to parables. I tend to think a parable has one main point and that the details are flexible. A parable then has a certain amount of flexibility in its interpretation.
So what do the symbols stand for in the parable of the wedding feast? I think it’s fairly obvious that the King equals God. So who are the first guests who were invited: “Many guests were invited, and when the banquet was ready, he sent his servants to notify everyone that it was time to come. But they all refused!” (Matthew 22:3, NLT). These first guests stand for the nation of Israel. God invited the nation of Israel into a covenant with God through Abraham.
Amazingly all these invited guests refuse! Here we catch the first glimpse of what God’s judgment is like. God’s knee jerk reaction is mercy. We read, “So [Again] he sent other servants to tell them, ‘The feast has been prepared, and choice meats have been cooked. Everything is ready. Hurry!’” (Matthew 22:4, NLT). The king makes a second invitation!
What kind of king are we talking about here? This is no king I know about. We don’t quite have the experience here in America of what it must be like to have an absolute sovereign like a king. I have had two run ins with authority that approximate what it must be like to be summoned by a king, but only approximate. The first was the one and only one time I’ve been called to the principal’s office. Actually, it was the vice principal. It was in ninth grade. I was having a bad year with my math teacher. This teacher was horrible. One day I got so fed up with her that I told her to shut up just as the bell was ringing for the end of class, and I walked out of the room. She chased me down the hall and gave me a demerit. Later that day I was called to the principal’s office. What would have happened had I refused?! Certainly it would not have been good for me.
The other time I faced down an authority figure similar to a king was one night in a show-down with my dad. I don’t really remember what the argument was about. We didn’t have too many arguments growing up, but this one was pretty intense. I don’t remember what my dad said, but I just got up and walked out of the room. My bedroom was in the basement so I headed for my room. I remember my father standing at the top of the stairs with his voice booming like a loud speaker demanding that I come back up those stairs. He started to count. He had never counted with me before. I stood my ground…1…2…I caved and came back up the stairs. Had I refused, I might not be alive today to tell the story!
Now neither the principal nor my dad have the kind of power and authority that a king has, and no king has the power and authority that God has, and this king was refused and sent a second invitation. This tells me that the king is first and foremost a merciful king. This king does not rush to judgment but gives every possible chance to accept the invitation.
What kind of invitation is this? This merciful king makes an urgent and generous invitation. We read, “So [the king] sent other servants to tell them, “The feast has been prepared, and choice meats have been cooked. Everything is ready. Hurry!” (Matthew 22:4, NLT) Hurry! The food is getting cold. The meal is ready right now. Don’t dawdle or you’ll miss the good stuff. Good stuff? Yeah. The good stuff. Choice meats. This is an extravagant celebration. I’m reminded of the kind of feast that was put on for us every night when my parents took us on a cruise. Every kind of meat, cheese, vegetable, and sweet you could imagine. You want a second lobster tail? No problem. Would you like some filet mignon with that? No problem. Choice meats. The king makes an urgent and generous invitation.
Recently I came across a commercial that shows the absurdity of what’s going on in this story. Check it out:
This is crazy. The guests are at the table. Your loved one too. A beautiful meal is ready. And here you are laying on the ground playing with the cat! C.S. Lewis reminds us of what’s going on in moments like this:
“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased” (The Weight of Glory).
The generous invitation is really an invitation filled with joy. It is an invitation made to goodness that is beyond our imagination. And it is urgent.
So how do the guests respond? We see two responses from the guests: apathy and antipathy. We read, “But the guests he had invited ignored them and went about their business, one to his farm, another to his store. Others seized his messengers and treated them shamefully, even killing some of them” (Matthew 22:5-6, NLT). Some responded with apathy by simply ignoring the invitation. Others responded violently and killed the messengers!
Let’s look at the first group, those who responded with apathy. It’s a little hard for us to imagine what it would mean to respond to God’s invitation with apathy, but we do it all the time, even those of us who call ourselves Christians. We, like the people in the story, are more interested in our business, our food, or what we’re going to buy next. Our apathy is based in our character. Who would ignore a king’s invitation? Usually we think that people will care about God and love God when they see God after death. But what if they ignore God just as much then? If they don’t like God’s invitation now, what makes you think they’ll like it any more when they die? Perhaps people actually choose hell because they don’t like heaven!
C.S. Lewis helps us wrap our imaginations around what hell might be if we chose it over heaven. In his novel, The Great Divorce, he tells the story of a bus that travels from hell to heaven and back every day. People in hell can get on it any time they want, and usually when they get to heaven, they choose to go back to hell. The natural inclinations they had when they were alive only develop further in the same direction when they die. If they were aiming toward God in life, then they develop more love for God after death. If they were aiming toward self when they lived, then they only become more selfish when they die.
The narrator in The Great Divorce meets another person on the bus on their way from hell to heaven. He comes to find out that in hell, anyone can build anything they want by simply thinking about it. At first this sounds great, but then he hears about how people move away from their neighbors at the first sign of conflict. They simply move one street over and build a house by thinking about it. Pretty soon the houses in the neighborhoods are miles, even tens of thousands of miles apart. Hell becomes a place where people who want to be isolated can live out their selfishness in perfect isolation.
One character goes to hunt down Napoleon and after hundreds of years of traveling finally finds him. What he sees is a man pacing back and forth in his house blaming this general or that general. Napoleon is in hell pacing back and forth for hundreds of years blaming others for his failures thousands of miles away from the nearest person. Now that’s what I call hell: allowing our own selfish tendencies to play out to their logical conclusion. This is a hell that we choose both here on earth and after death. This is a hell that is a natural out flowing of our natural nature.
So how does the king in Jesus’ parable respond after the second merciful invitation is refused? The king responds with proportionate judgment. We read, “Then the king became furious. He sent out his army to destroy the murderers and burn their city” (Matthew 22:7, NLT). Notice that the king destroys those who killed his messengers. This seems odd coming from Jesus who taught that we are to turn the other cheek. Wouldn’t God do the same thing? Remember, God is the king, and we are not. Never forget that we are not the king.
Interestingly enough no mention is made of what happens to those who responded with apathy by ignoring the king’s invitation. Does this suggest that there is still time for those people to respond and reconcile with the king?
So at this point the king has had enough of those who were first invited and the king opens up his invitation to others. Who are these others? If the first batch was Israel, then the others are you and me, the church. We read, “[The king] said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, and the guests I invited aren’t worthy of the honor. Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see’” (Matthew 22:8-9 (NLT).
This third invitation is like the first. It is urgent and generous, even to the point of being gratuitous. The wedding feast is still ready. The food is still getting cold. Come right now or else you’ll miss the amazing feast that is prepared. This invitation is made to everyone. Not just a select group but to the entire kingdom. Come!
Something odd happens at this point. After many have responded the king finds someone who doesn’t quite fit in. We read, “But when the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man who wasn’t wearing the proper clothes for a wedding” (Matthew 22:11, NLT). This seems somewhat odd. What are the wedding clothes and what do they stand for? The wedding clothes are faith and good works. We must not only respond to the invitation, but we must respond with the actions that are appropriate for such a response. I can’t say I love my wife and then ignore her. I can’t say I’m a good employee and always show up late. I can’t say I’m trustworthy with money and then blow it every time I get some extra in my pocket. There are clothes that are appropriate for a wedding and there are clothes that are not appropriate.
So the king responds again with proportionate judgment. It is apparently within the king’s power to destroy his enemies, but the king does not destroy this individual. He “bind[s] him hand and foot and throw[s] him out into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 22:13, NLT). Weeping and gnashing of teeth? I wonder if this isn’t the kind of weeping and gnashing of teeth that we saw Napoleon doing pacing back and forth year after year after year blaming this person and then that person, never coming to recognize one’s own responsibility in the matter.
Let’s get back to the question that Alyssa asked: What’s up with heaven or hell and what about my friends who die? Alyssa, I don’t know that any of us can know about the eternal state of someone else after death, but what we do know is that God is like a king who while making an urgent and generous invitation responds first with mercy when refused and judges proportionately to the wrong doing. In other words, we worship a God who is good and we can rest in the good and merciful judgment of God, both for us and for our friends. The parable that Jesus tells us of the king and the wedding feast does put before us and our friends an invitation. Hurry! Have faith. Meet that faith with good works that show your love for God and others. Hurry! The food is getting cold. Hurry! The offer is generous. Hurry! The king is good and merciful. Hurry!
Next Steps
1. Submit Questions (via email, questions@sycamorecreekchurch.org, or in the comments below)
2. Join Small Group (to explore questions with others)
3. Make your neighborhood a little less like hell and a little more like heaven (by getting to know your neighbors and reconciling with them)
4. Other
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