Welcome to Form Now. I'm Tim Gray, president of the August Institute. And joining me is Dr. Michael Barber, who's a professor of Scripture here at the Augustine Institute. And we're going to continue our ongoing Bible study on the Gospel of Matthew. So whether this is your first time where you've been one of the veterans going through with us, we are going to open up to Matthew chapter 22. So grab your Bibles, open up with us, and we're looking for you joining us.

And chapter 22, Michael, there's so many great things.

But it's interesting, Jesus is close to his death.

We're in the last few days of our Lord.

We're in the midst of his teaching during Holy Week.

And Jesus tells the story, now, a parable that's rather unique in Matthew, and it's about a wedding feast and about

a king. So not just any wedding feast, but a royal banquet, a royal wedding feast, and getting

ready for that banquet. And it's kind of, for a lot of people, they think, well, why is it in this

position? Why does Jesus tell a story about a king

having a wedding feast for his son when there's so many other things for Jesus to teach on

and he's running out of time? This is true, right? Well, obviously throughout the Gospel of Matthew,

we see that Jesus is presented as a royal figure, and we see that Jesus is the son of David.

He is the king and it was understood that the king, the son of David, was the son of God.

We see this in Psalm 2 and other places. So this parable is very appropriate, can be nicely

mapped on to Jesus' own identity. So the idea of a king throwing a feast for his son works

quite well with the imagery that we see throughout the gospel.

It really is. You know, I think of even David saying, my God and my king in the beginning of Psalm 5.

So God is the Lord, is the king of Israel, ultimate.

He's the ultimate king.

And David is a steward.

We've talked about this many times in Matthew's Gospel.

He's a vicar of God's kingship for Israel as a king.

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