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47 Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 49 This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50 and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
51 “Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked. “Yes,” they replied. 52 He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.””
Charles Templeton and Billy Graham—Billy Graham and Charles Templeton; those were the household names of English language evangelism in the mid-twentieth century. You likely know Graham, but perhaps not Templeton. His faith unraveled. Five years before his death, he published a memoir, Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith.
About that same time, journalist Lee Strobel interviewed him. He asked Templeton his thoughts on Jesus and Templeton replied, “I know it may sound strange, but I have to say, I adore him! Everything good I know, everything decent I know, everything pure I know, I learned from Jesus… there’s no question that he had the highest moral standard, the least duplicity, the greatest compassion, of any human being in history… and if I may put it this way, I miss him!” Something about Jesus gripped Templeton but is Templeton in the kingdom? Remember his memoir—Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith.
What about Solomon? He was God’s chosen king; wrote three books of the Bible. He was caught up in the kingdom’s workings but his heart was turned away by his wives. Is Saul in the kingdom? He did some marvelous deeds in the Lord’s name but ended his life indulging in witchcraft and unbelief. Is Levi in the kingdom? Jacob’s son never seemed to repent of his murderous rage and at the end of Jacob’s life, Jacob gave him no blessing. Levi is, however, head of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Are Job’s friends in the kingdom? They were quite misguided about God, but how misguided?
Judging by their end, it seems to me that neither Templeton nor Saul has any claim on the kingdom. They were caught up in the kingdom’s workings and fell away; both ended their lives in settled unbelief. Job’s friends were wrong about God but their errors sprung from hearts of faith. We know too little about Levi to judge. Perhaps the book of Ecclesiastes is Solomon working his way back to faith.
I’ve talked to enough people about faith to know that someone right now is likely thinking, “well, you’ll be surprised by who’s in the kingdom.” I’m sure I will, but we will also be surprised at who is not in the kingdom. Jesus’ parable for tonight explores that tension—the mystery and the certainty of final judgment. That’s a sober ending to this series on the parables of the kingdom; not all who are part of the kingdom’s workings are in the kingdom; get in the kingdom; that’s the claim of this sermon.
We see this in two points. First: Jesus’ parable. Second: Jesus’ conclusion. First, in verses 47-50, we see Jesus’ parable. Second, in verses 51-52, we see Jesus’ conclusion.
We see the kingdom’s draw and division in our first point: Jesus’ parable. This is our final parable and it begins with Jesus drawing attention to how many parables he’s told; verse 47, “Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like…” There’s seven parables in this chapter; this is our twenty-seventh week with Jesus in the parables. Jesus loves parables—“once again… again… listen to another parable.” Jesus loves parables like Shakespeare loved plays or Alfred Hitchcock loved suspense. Jesus is a communicator too
He likes similitudes because when we humans make connections, we get the point. You know a child is beginning to grasp a concept when they say the word “like”—“is getting married sort of like being best friends?” or “so multiplication is like addition over and over again!” Jesus’ loads us into the vehicle of his parables and drives us to the point.
This drive is about a net; “Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore.” This was a dragnet, which was held between two boats; it had corks on the top and weight on the bottom and it moved like a wall through the sea catching all the creatures in its path. It was a shotgun approach to fishing.
Jesus’ original disciples would have been as familiar with this net as a framer is with a laser level or a farmer with a flex header on a combine. Many of Jesus’ original disciples were fishermen and had used such a net regularly. We need to be wary of limiting religion to pious forms. Jesus’ religion was remarkably earthy.
Jesus told his disciples about this tool they regularly used; he also told them their new work would be much the same; they would now be fishing for people. This parable tells them, and us, to expect to catch all kings of fish, all kinds of people. “God casts a very wide net, and it draws in all kinds of people,” as Willard explains. “God is not saying this is wrong. This is what we should expect.”
We are told to expect Jezebels and Ruths, Augustines and Ariuses; we are told to expect that all sorts will be drawn to something in the kingdom. Templeton really did admire Jesus’ character as did Arius, but neither of them had faith in him as God. Jezebel enjoyed far more of the blessings of the kingdom’s prosperity in her day than Ruth id, but Jezebel, unlike Ruth, loved the gifts more than the Giver.
Many enjoy parts of the kingdom but we are naïve if we believe that anyone with any attraction to the kingdom is in the kingdom. You can be pro-Jesus’ mercy, integrity, and wisdom without believing you need Jesus’ mercy, his integrity rather than your own, or that your life’s business is to live out his wisdom. You can be attracted to the kingdom without being in the kingdom. You can be caught in the net without being kept.
This is, in some ways, the bookend to our first parable, the master parable—the sower. In that parable, the same seed fell in different soil; some immediately rejected it, some accepted it and then gave up, some accepted it but loved something else more, and some bore fruit; in this parable, you have the same net but different fish.
Not all the fish are kept; “Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away.” There were as many as two dozen species of fish in the sea of Galilee, but not all were edible for the Jews. They kept the kosher fish—those with scales and fins—and left the rest. That’s the many different kinds of people. “This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” as Jesus tells us.
You can’t tell the difference between the fish while they are in the water. “As long as the fish remain in the lake, and indeed in the net, they remain undifferentiated. It is only when they come up for final scrutiny that some will be preserved and others destroyed,” as France explains.
This is a reminder that the righteous and the wicked will be caught up in the kingdom’s workings together until the end. For the last two weeks we saw the reminder that the poor will always be among us and we might be they. This week we see the warning that the wicked will always be among us and we might be they. There will, until the end, be wolves in the midst of the sheep. They will claim some sort of connection to Jesus or with his ideals and standards but have no willingness to die to themselves and live for him. Expect it. It’s only the in the new creation that we find a heavenly city which doesn’t need gates to keep the evil out.
This parable focuses on the final differentiation between the righteous and the wicked at the end. That’s not to deny the discernment necessary in this life. Unwillingness to distinguish between a Charles Templeton and a Billy Graham or a David and a Saul isn’t a sign of intellectual humility; it’s gullibility. Books like 2 Peter, Jude, 1 John, and Galatians give us marks by which to discern.
This parable is included to tell us that perfect and eternal discernment will come only at the end and then it’s the angels that do the sorting then; “The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous.” As with the wheat and the weeds, Jesus takes pains to make clear that this won’t be our role. We disciples fish for people; these people will respond as they choose; at the end the angels, not we, will separate the good from bad. We will not have to sit on the eternal judgment seat.
A great deal of the difficulty of this life comes down to role confusion. We rightly sense that someone needs to control the chaos of this life but wrongly take that on that role ourselves or we demand such control from another mere mortal. We rightly sense that someone must be the standard of righteousness and then foolishly think it must be us or some mortal hero who will serve as our conscience rather than accepting the clear message of Scripture that God is this standard and that God controls the chaos. So it is with this parable which tells us that final judgment is the Lord’s and that given the mixture caught up in the kingdom such final judgment will be necessary.
That’s the tension of this parable—the mystery of the final judgment and the certainty brought about by the final judgment. This parable tells you that the kingdom includes this whole process of the net—the gathering, separating, and eternal destination.
It tells you this so that you will be wise about the current situation. Life isn’t merely about knowing how it should be; it requires knowing how to live in a fallen world as a fallen person in the midst of redemption surrounded by fallen people only some of whom are being redeemed. This parable tells you to be wise about when you live. Expect Charles Templetons and Billy Grahams, Ishmaels and Isaacs, Mary Magdelenes and bloody Marys; don’t blind yourself to the fact that they aren’t the same. We aren’t yet at the end. Be discerning.
Be discerning enough to recognize that it isn’t yet the end. We can talk about Charles Templeton and Saul being excluded from the kingdom because Templeton confessed his unbelief and Saul displayed it. Such explicitness is rare in this life. It will all, however, be quite explicit at the end. There will then be no mystery about destinies nor the choices which led to them. “The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Some people kick back against this judgment because it makes the condemned seem unimportant as if eternal wrath is unfit for anyone made in the image of God; the message is that is that they are made in the image of God and so they will continue forever as will you. The angst we tend to feel about the final judgment isn’t that it reveals this life to inconsequential; the angst that we feel is that the final judgment reveals this life to be eternally important.
People say they want their lives to matter; motivational speaker after motivational speaker leans hard into that message, but the fact is that we humans, in our sin, would rather not have our lives matter in the way that God says that they matter. This parable says, “this life matters eternally so choose wisely.” Don’t imagine that anything less than coming into the kingdom will do. “Without judgment life is cheapened, for what we do does not matter,” as Snodgrass explains. “With Jesus and his kingdom what we do matters.” Your life matters more than you know. What are you doing with it? That’s this parable and that’s the final reflection of this series on the parables and our final point: Jesus’ conclusion.
I chose this parable as our final one not only because it deals with the final judgment and not only because it is a contains a strong dose of both certainty and mystery, but primarily because here at the end of Matthew 13’s seven parables, Jesus gives a concluding statement about parables and so Jesus’ concluding words on the parables can be ours. ‘“Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked.’
Have you understood the parable of the net? Do you know that this life matters eternally and that you need to be in the kingdom not just caught up in its workings? Have you understood the parable of the forgiving father? Do you know that you need to get over your shame and your self and go home and stay home with the Father? Have you understood the parable of the unjust judge? Do you know that you need to pray and not lose heart?
The disciples say, “yes.” That’s verse 51, ‘“Yes,” they replied.’ We disciple can be unreasonably hard on the original disciples. We can also be unreasonably hard on ourselves. Jesus accepts their, “yes.” He has just told them up in verse 11, “the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you.” They don’t understand perfectly nor comprehensively but Jesus knows they understand what’s essential. We do them and ourselves a disservice when we forget that. There is, as we’ve seen, an ignorance and arrogance which leads us to assume we understand what we don’t, but there is also a shame and an intellectual dishonesty which leads us to assume we don’t understand what we do understand.
We have been instructed for 27 weeks now by Jesus through his favorite form of teaching and we do him a disservice by pretending that we haven’t and so we are now the people of verse 52, “ Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”
Jesus was training his disciples to out-scribe the scribes of his day, to out-teach the teachers of the law. If you grasp the parable of the unmerciful servant, you understand life better than the Pharisees who devoted their lives to studying God’s word. If you grasp the parable of the hidden treasure, you understand life better than the zealots who gave their lives in pursuit of a political kingdom. You likely know much, much more than you assume you know about the kingdom.
If you’ve paid attention over the past twenty-seven weeks, if I’ve paid attention, we can now bring out treasures new and old. We , with Jesus’ original disciples have now learned from our master who brings out treasures new and old; we are the people of this final similarity, “like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old,” or as the NET translates it, “who brings out of his treasure what is new and old.” That’s the Sermon on the Mount—“you’ve heard it said, but I say to you…” Jesus explains how it’s always been in new ways. That’s the parables too. They describe what we studied in the Exodus—the unexpected, the grace, the need for faith. They describe what we’ll see in 1 Kings with the kingdom there. The parables and all Jesus’ teaching describes life but we need to get over pride and accept that they describe life more clearly than we our native understanding.
Jesus is saying that if the parables are having their way with you, you are a well-stocked host who can bring out dishes and gadgets and art to share so that others by engaging with these can taste and see and feel the kingdom. They are being caught up in the net; how they will respond is their choice, just as whether you will enter is your choice. The point here is that you can tell your child the message of the parables that life is about learning to be a gracious receiver like good soil. You can remind your brother that this life will not be fair but that will prove, in the end, to be good. You can remind me that it’s not really about me and my use of talents or time but it’s really about me and God. You can tell your friend that it’s not so much about leaning to accept himself but learning to be accepted by God.
Some will accept. Some won’t. That’s the division after the net is dragged up. The parables tell you how the process works. Some of us will accept that. Perhaps some won’t. The choice is ours and that choice, like this life, matters eternally. Amen.