<p>22:10&nbsp;<em>And those servants went out into the highways</em>- The same word in Mk. 16:20 &quot;They&nbsp;<em>went out</em>&nbsp;and preached everywhere&quot;, just as the sower &quot;went out&quot; to sow, with varying response (Lk. 8:5 s.w.).&nbsp;</p><p><em>And gathered together</em>- Just as the net in the sea of nations gathered together fish &quot;of every kind&quot; (Mt. 13:47 s.w.)- here they are called &quot;both bad and good&quot;. The suggestion may be that one intention of preaching is to gather people together into one. Hence the language of gathering together. The figure of the Lord's servants gathering together His called ones is exactly the figure of the gathering to the final judgment (s.w. Mt. 13:30; 25:32). By inviting people to Christ we are inviting them to the day of judgment. Knowledge of the Gospel thereby brings responsibility to the day of judgment. The moment we respond, we begin our journey to judgment. The Lord seems to have developed the thought of this parable in His later teaching in 25:35,38, where the same Greek word translated &quot;gathered together&quot; is translated 'to take in'; the Lord said that those who gathered together or took in a stranger had accepted Him, and those who refused to do so had rejected Him personally. 'Stranger' was understood to refer to a Gentile. The Lord might be saying that our gathering in of the Gentiles, the strangers, the despised, is related to our salvation; and if the early Jewish believers refused to gather in the Gentiles, then the Lord would take that as a personal rejection of Him. Those who refuse to gather in others because they consider them not to know enough or to not be appropriate material may well be under this threat of condemnation by the Lord.&nbsp;</p><p><em>All as many as they found</em>- The specific use of the word &quot;all&quot; here adds nothing, surely, unless the idea is that there is a specific number who must &quot;all&quot; be gathered to the banquet. Rom. 11:25 says this in so many words, in talking of how the 'full number of the Gentiles' must &quot;come in&quot;-&nbsp;<em>ex-erchomai</em>. The same word&nbsp;<em>erchomai</em>&nbsp;is used in 22:3 about how the invited would not &quot;come&quot;.&nbsp;<br /><i><br /><em>Both bad and good</em></i>- This is quite radical for many Christian preachers today. There was&nbsp;<em>not</em>&nbsp;to be any thought about whether the persons being brought to the banquet were bad or good. The focus was upon simply persuading them to come in, to say yes to the most unusual invitation. Just as the servants of an earlier parable were told not to worry about dividing the wheat from the weeds, so here, the servants were not to worry about the impressions they had about the worthiness or sincerity of people. Their job was to persuade them to say 'yes' and to come on in. So much outreach today is tacitly concerned with what kind of person is being brought in to the community of believers. And even more concern is expressed about who exactly sits at the Lord's table. But according to this parable, the general public are to be encouraged to say &quot;yes&quot; to the Kingdom invitation, and come in and sit at the banquet table, the breaking of bread. Only then, once they are sitting there, does the Lord come and judge who is bad and good. The implication could possibly be that He comes to inspect us at the breaking of bread, both mystically every time we break bread, and literally in that His coming may be at the breaking of bread.</p><p><em>And the wedding was filled with guests</em>-When the wedding is &ldquo;filled with guests&rdquo; as a result of the final appeal to absolutely all men, &lsquo;all you can see / perceive&rsquo;, then the wedding starts (Mt. 22:9,10 Gk.). &ldquo;Filled&rdquo; translates&nbsp;<em>pletho</em>, which carries the sense of being filled up. When the full number of guests are seated, when a certain number of true converts to the Kingdom feast have been made,&nbsp;<em>then</em>&nbsp;the King comes in, and the wedding starts. This is what imbues our latter day witness with such a sense of urgency. Every baptism or invitation to the Kingdom could be the last. &quot;They which were bidden were not worthy&quot; (:8) - the Greek could imply not enough numerically.&nbsp;&nbsp; This indicates that in some ways, God does work to a number.&nbsp;&nbsp; Whilst there may be reference here to an appeal to Gentiles, the implication is that it will be to Jews in particular.&nbsp;&nbsp; The servants go &quot;into the streets and lanes of the city&quot; (Lk. 14:21), i.e. Jerusalem.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p><em>&quot;</em>Guests&quot; are literally, recliners at the table. The word is usually translated like this in its 14 occurrences in the New Testament. In a sense, the banquet had begun- even before the King entered to review the guests. Just as the Kingdom experience, crystallized and epitomized in the breaking of bread, has begun for all who respond. Although this is no guarantee of ultimate acceptance by the King. The contrast between recliners at table and servants is brought out in Lk. 22:27: &quot;For which is greater, he that reclines at table s.w. &quot;guest&quot;, or he that serves? Is not he that reclines at table?&quot;. In the parable, we are asked to identify ourselves with the servants. Our audience are the recliners at table. In the context of preaching, of bringing people in to the banquet, we are to consider our audience greater than us and to approach them with every respect. Our witness to them, therefore, is a serving of them; not a showing off to them of our superior Bible knowledge, the superiority of our positions over theirs.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>According to Luke's version of an earlier telling of the parable with some differences, the King Himself invited beggars into His feast. This also stands out as strange... what kind of king is this? And what fortunate beggars. Immediately, we have the lesson powerfully brought home to us. And why ever would a guest refuse the wedding garment offered to him on entry to the feast (Mt. 22:11)? The element of unreality in the story makes it stand out so clearly. And yet ask people why they are not baptized, why they are refusing the righteous robes of Christ, the call of the Gospel... and it is anything from clear and obvious to them. The scandal of the parable hasn't struck them. And there's another strange element to the story. Whilst the supper is still getting cold, the King sends off a military expedition (Mt. 22:7,8), but this is incidental to his desire to get on with the feast with his guests. Surely the message is that what is all important for the Father and Son is our response to their invitation, our desire to be at that feast, our turning up there- and the punishment of the wicked is not that significant on their agenda, even though it has to be done.</p>