How Did You Get In Without a Wedding Garment?????

The lesson for today is the Gospel lesson in Matthew 22:1-14.  The thing we have to understand was that at weddings back in the day and the place the master who planned the wedding supplied everything from the food and drink to the clothing worn.  Just as God wants to supply us with everything we need for life in this word and life in the world to come how perverse and foolish to try and come before him dressed in our own righteousness.

And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 

When either in conscience or on Judgment Day such roguish Christians are addressed in this way (Matthew 22:12), then, says the Lord, they will have nary a word to answer; they will be unable to offer any excuse. For what can their excuse be? God did what he was supposed to do. He gave you holy baptism; he gave you the gospel and allowed you to have it in your home; likewise, absolution and the Lord’s Supper; in the church he ordained his servants for you; in the home, father and mother, master and mistress, to teach you what to believe and how to order your life. As a result you will not be able to plead ignorance, that you might otherwise have believed. But you will have to confess, Yes, I am baptized, I have been preached to and told often; with my fellow Christians I have received the Sacrament, but I did not take anything seriously; I did not believe; I loved the world more. In this context, this means that the improperly dressed guest, covered with soot, is struck dumb when in his final hour or on Judgment Day he will have to hear the words, You went to the marriage, you allowed yourself to be counted among the Christians within Christendom, you died without faith. Who, indeed, would then be able to respond to the Judge, of whom we must ourselves testify that he send his Son to us, in baptism, in the Holy Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood, and in the  Holy Gospel pledged us all grace? It is our fault that we do not hold out our hands and take what he so gladly wants to give us. At that point a person would be left without defense.