The king's son was getting married, said Jesus, in His parable about God's kingdom and Himself. The invited guests refused to come but when He issued new invitations to whoever would accept them ... they came without hesitation. However one man got in but did not value the honour, nor did he prepare himself to be the King's guest.
Jesus never tried to trap people, but His enemies tried to trap Him. Ultimately, they expressed their hatred in a night-time arrest, followed by an unfair trial without true evidence being presented leading to a corrupt sentence, physical violence and death. They hated Jesus so much that they wanted Him physically out of the way.
The human way of resolving difficult situations is to compromise. That is not God's way: He never compromises on truth. However, divine truth often presents us with two issues which are different but both true and need to be held in tension. For example: God loves sinners, but hates sin; God is invisible but God the Son is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15) ... etc.
In Jesus’ day, the religious leaders were in two main groupings: Pharisees (who believed in an afterlife with a bodily resurrection), and the Sadducees (who did not).
The Sadducees had asked Jesus' opinion on a story they had made up. After all, if He could tell them parables with a meaning, surely they could do the same. Their intention was to trap Him into denying that there could be a bodily resurrection (Matthew 22:23-30). Their ruse failed as Jesus plainly told them that they did not understand the Scriptures or the nature of His eternal Kingdom.
The Pharisees were obsessed by rules. They believed that keeping the rules would earn them favour with God: the more diligent they were in their religious practices, the more God would be pleased, or so they thought. They had forgotten that God demanded that every law was kept perfectly all the time and that even the smallest sin was enough to invalidate their salvation. Yes, they had the sacrifices to atone for their sin temporarily, but there was no sacrifice for intentional sin.
Jesus was respected as a rabbi/teacher even though the religious leaders were frightened by His teaching, because it did not support them or their petty power structures. The Pharisees had just asked Jesus a question about the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:34-40). It was then Jesus' turn to question them about who they understood the Messiah to be. By asking "Whose son is he?" Jesus was forcing them to think about His own personal identity.
In many cultures it is considered rude to say anything which other people might not agree with. It is important for communities to exercise social tolerance in order to bond together. However, when lies, error or falsehood of any kind is tolerated, the society bonds are weakened and the society will fragment. Jesus spoke directly about this problem to the crowds and His disciples. It was an essential part of His teaching to His trainee apostles who would, in the future, have to deal with false prophets trying to pull the church away from the truth of the gospel.
When Jesus exposed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, He was not just rebuking error; He was also training the disciples how to behave when they became church leaders (1 Peter 5:1-4). Enlarging on His teaching against hypocrisy (in Matthew 6:1-18), Jesus explained that the motivation for their behaviour was pride.
The purpose of learning, understanding and teaching God's Word is that people may come to know Him and enter His eternal kingdom. The Pharisees were expert theologians, or so they thought, and were confident that they knew the Old Testament. They certainly knew a lot, and also thought they had the right to invent more rules in addition to God's laws.
