<p>22:3&nbsp;<em>And sent out his servants</em>- The parable is similar to that of the preceding parable of the wicked husbandmen. These servants are God's &quot;servants the prophets&quot; who in Old Testament times called Israel to repentance and the Kingdom. The term &quot;servants&quot; is used throughout the parable. The servants go again to Israel, and are beaten and killed (:4). Those &quot;other servants&quot; are perhaps the apostles in their witness to Israel after the Lord's death, whose rejection culminated in the burning up of their city of Jerusalem (:7). More &quot;servants&quot; are then urgently sent to bring in anyone willing to say &quot;yes&quot;. And they refer to our witness in this age. Yet it is also the &quot;servants&quot; who bind and destroy the rejected (:13). These servants are all &quot;sent&quot;,&nbsp;<em>apostello</em>. There is a clear continuity between the witness of the prophets, the apostles and ourselves. &quot;The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy&quot; in the sense that our preaching of Him is in the spirit of the Old Testament prophets (Rev. 19:10). Again we are all encouraged to see ourselves as brethren of the prophets; they were not, as Judaism supposed, some separate group of white faced saints. Our witness is the equivalent of being them in the new Israel. The &quot;servants&quot; who bind the man in condemnation refer in other parables to the Angels. It could be that we too do this work; or it may be that we're being shown that we are not only in a continuum with the Old Testament prophets and 1st century apostles, but are likewise inline with the Angels. Hence an Angel urged the apostle John that He was one with John and also &quot;your brethren the prophets&quot; (Rev. 22:9). We are not alone. We are in a direct line, on a continuum, with Angels, prophets and apostles, the&nbsp;<em>elohim</em>&nbsp;of the new Israel and new age created in Christ.</p><p>God's servants (the Old and New Testament prophets - Rev. 2:20;&nbsp;Acts 2:18;&nbsp;4:29;&nbsp;Am. 3:7;&nbsp;Zech. 1:6) were sent by God &quot;to call them that were bidden to the wedding:&nbsp; but they would not come&quot; (Matt. 22:3).&nbsp;&nbsp; The Greek word for &quot;call&quot; being the same translated &quot;bidden&rdquo;, we have here an example of the interplay between predestination and the calling of God through the Gospel - the word of the prophets/apostles 'called them who were (already) called' in God's purpose.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This class must primarily refer to the Jews.&nbsp;&nbsp; The refusal to attend the wedding obviously equates with the Jewish rejection of Christ's work.&nbsp;&nbsp; God pleaded, &quot;I have prepared my dinner&quot;, i.e. the Kingdom (Matt. 22:2).&nbsp;&nbsp; This corresponds with the Kingdom 'coming nigh' to Israel through the first century preaching of the Gospel (Luke 10:9,11) and the primary fulfilment of the Olivet prophecy in the run up to A.D. 70 (Mark 13:29).</p><p><em>To call them that were invited-</em>&nbsp;Literally, 'to call the called'. Israel and in a sense all God's people were called from the foundation of the world. The allusion may be to the way in which people were invited to banquets, gave their agreement to attend, and then a servant was sent to actually take them to the banquet. But we should be aware that the language of 'calling the called' doesn't necessarily mean that there is a list of called ones, established from the beginning of the world, and our preaching is a hit and miss affair, sometimes reaching the 'called' and sometimes not, in which case our words were wasted. 'Calling the called' could equally mean that whoever hears the call is therefore and thereby 'called'. The invitation is to &quot;whomsoever will&quot;, and the more people we call, the more are called. The urging of men to respond with the encouragement &quot;whomsoever will...&quot; is hardly appropriate if some cannot respond because they were not 'called' from the beginning, were never on the list. And yet in the bigger picture, there clearly is an element of predestination involved with calling; and Paul references this in Romans as the ultimate example of grace. In the final picture, not all have heard the call. Because God's servants didn't take the call to all, and so for whatever reason, some are not called- and in that is the element of predestination. And yet the parable gives some further insight into this question. The first group of servants 'call the called', but the last group of servants after the burning of Jerusalem are urged to drag in whoever they can find. It's as if in Old Testament times, the appeal was to all within Israel, the called people. But now, all men can be called.</p><p><em>To the marriage feast</em>- An engagement banquet, or the actual wedding? In either case, the principle is established that the Messianic banquet of the Kingdom could have come in Old Testament times; it could have come when the second set of servants the apostles made their appeal in the first century up until the burning of the city in AD70; and it will come whenever we as the servants of God in this age have finally gathered in enough potential guests. This is the same idea as in the preceding parable, where the harvest was ready, the time had 'drawn near', at the time of every appeal to Israel through the prophets. God's purpose is taught, time and again, to be open-ended and dependent upon Israel's response and our efforts in witness. For&nbsp;<em>when</em>&nbsp;the Gospel has gone to all the world,&nbsp;<em>then</em>&nbsp;shall the end come (24:14). The whole idea of a royal couple being kept waiting, in fact kept waiting for centuries and a few millennia, is shocking and tragic. We feel sorry for them, just as we in a sense feel sorry for the Father and Son. This unexpected delay in the wedding banquet is developed in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins in chapter 25. Because of it, they all fell asleep when, according to the allusions to the parable in 1 Thess. 5, they should have stayed awake. It was a huge tragedy and shame all round, if we put the parables together.</p><p><em>But they would not come</em>- The same words in 21:29 of the son who said &quot;I will not&quot; work in the vineyard but repented and went to work. The Lord wished to gather Jerusalem's children under His wings to save them from the great fire of destruction coming upon them, but they &quot;would not&quot; (23:37 s.w.). But in what practical way did they not want to come? The same words are used of how the Jews &quot;would not&quot; help their brother with the burden of human failure (23:4), or how the unforgiving debtor &quot;would not&quot; forgive his brother (18:30) and the older brother &quot;would not&quot; go in to the celebration banquet for the returned prodigal (Lk. 15:28). They &quot;would not come&quot; to Jesus in repentance (Jn. 5:40). Their refusal of the invitation to the Messianic banquet, to the Kingdom, was in terms of their attitude to others. Just as if we don't want a part in the church as the body of Christ, we don't want a part in Him.&nbsp;</p>