The Stories of the Kingdom: The Parable of the Net
Sunday, August 6th, 2006
Beartown Road Alliance Church
Intro:
How many of you like to fish? Now, I would assume, that every one of you that raised your hand has one thing in common besides liking to fish, you all have a good fishing story. Every fisherman needs one. You can tell people about the one that got away or the one that fought you for two hours before you finally got it into the boat or you can go into great detail about the size and weight of your trophy catch. My uncle’s favorite fishing story is the time he went to cast and he caught my other uncle in the middle of the back. He says it was the ugliest thing he ever hooked.
I am not a fisherman. I don’t have the patience. My father used to try and get me to go and as soon as the words, “we’ll leave at 4:30 tomorrow morning,” came out of his mouth, he lost me. I wasn’t going to do anything at 4:30 in the morning, especially sitting on a boat in the middle of a lake, freezing cold and holding a pole in hopes that a fish might take the bait. Besides, I didn’t even like fish and the whole baiting the hook thing and playing with a worm was not my idea of a good time. I was a bit of a wimp. Plus, my dad didn’t seem to realize that other people had already done the hard part and all we had to do was go to the grocery store and get all the fish he wanted! My fishing stories are all about the ones that got away. The closest I’ve ever come to actually catching a fish was at Delta Lake. I hooked a huge 3 or 4 inch sunfish and actually had it out of the water before it jumped off the line. That was about when I decided I was not going to make it as a fisherman. My fishing stories aren’t that exciting.
That wasn’t a problem for Jesus’ disciples. They had some exciting fishing stories! Fishing played a large part in Jesus’ relationship with His disciples. He called Peter and Andrew, James and John away from a life of fishing the seas and into a work of fishing for men. Luke tells us that in His first encounter with Peter, He instructed Peter to put down His net into the water even though Peter had fished all night and had no luck. Peter listens and catches enough fish to fill two boats so full that they began to sink! Peter falls at Jesus’ feet and Jesus tells him to get up and to follow and he does. We see a similar scene after Jesus has risen from the grave. The disciples have returned to fishing and have caught nothing. Jesus appears, and they don’t recognize Him at first, he tells them to throw the net on the other side and they do. It fills so full that they can’t even bring it up and then John recognizes Jesus and Peter jumps out of the boat and runs to Him. At another time, when asked about paying the temple tax, Jesus tells Peter to go and throw his line in the water and he does. The first fish he catches has a coin in its mouth that is just enough to pay the tax. How would you like to have fishing stories like that?
I had a lot of friends in Ohio that were avid fishermen. A few of them were sport fishermen and would enter fishing contests 6 or 7 times a year. These guys had stories. But there was something else that they used to do, they could take anything and relate it to fishing. You could be talking about something that you would think was totally unrelated to fishing and they would say, “Oh, that’s just like this one time I was fishing and…” they would tell a story that was a great illustration of what you had just been saying. They could illustrate anything with a concept found in fishing.
As we open our Bibles this morning to Matthew chapter 13 and verse, 47, Jesus is doing what these guys would do, he’s telling a fishing story. He’s using fishing and fish as an illustration for something else, in this case, the Kingdom of God. Now remember from last week. Jesus had gone out to get some peace and quiet by the lake, but His fame was spreading too quickly and before long, the shore of that lake was filled with people. Jesus climbed into a boat and pushed out into the water ad from there, He began to teach the people about the kingdom of God. We’re told that He taught them using parables, stories with a deeper truth for those who were sincerely looking for it. The parable that we’re going to look at this morning is the 7th and final story that Matthew records as Jesus taught that morning. It’s the parable of the Net.
Read Matthew 13:47-50.
The parable that we looked at last week, the Parable of the Sower, talked about the way that the Kingdom would begin and spread. And now, Jesus has come full circle from the initial parable of the beginnings of the Kingdom, to this, a story of the end. This parable is a look at the Judgment Day that is approaching for all, that Day when the righteous and the unrighteous will be judged, one to their reward, and one to their punishment.
2 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.
The parable of the nets gives us a little insight into what that day will be like and more insight into the Kingdom.
I. The Kingdom on Earth Includes Us All.
My brother and Father and Grandfather and I went fishing once when I was little. They all caught several fish and I caught my usual, none. As we were leaving, we had all of the fish strung together in the water and as he went to pull them up, my Grandpa slipped and dropped them back in the water. We thought they were gone. My brother caught something shiny in the water and thrust the net in, when he pulled it back out, because all of the fish were bound together, he had caught all of the fish again! With one net, he caught all of the fish.
The Kingdom of God has been established here on Earth and all of us are a part of it, joined together. Saints and sinners, believers and unbelievers, all of us are caught in this one net, the Kingdom net. All of us are bound together in that we share the honor of being God’s Creation, created in His image, whether we acknowledge that or not.
Now, in those days, there were several different kinds of nets that fishermen would use to catch fish. There was a small one that could be thrown from the shore and hauled back in. This one had very limited range and would catch only a few fish, that’s not the word that Christ uses here. The one that Christ chooses to use here is the drag net. Do you remember the old cop show, Dragnet? I remember watching reruns of that growing up. The police use the term dragnet to describe a coordinated effort in a particular area to catch a criminal. As the net is cast and drawn tighter, the criminal has nowhere to go and the police can get him. It gives a picture of the net grabbing everything in its path so that the criminal cannot escape. That’s the kind of net Jesus is referring to.
The Greek word, sagene, literally means dragging a net. It was a huge net that was drawn along between two boats or tied on shore at one end and put out by a boat at the other end, which was then drawn to land by ropes. It was meant to catch everything in its path.
So we have the picture of our time on Earth moving along like this dragnet, moving us, pulling us all towards the end of days and the judgment. We are all involved, whether we know it or not and we are all in the same net. Jesus is affirming here what He just taught in the parable of the weeds, that the righteous and unrighteous will live side by side until the day comes when the angels will begin the work of separating the two. Note that this passage teaches that the angels do the separating, not us. It’s not up to us to decide or guess who the righteous and the unrighteous are, that’s the Lord’s responsibility.
With a dragnet, when fish were caught up in it, it was large enough that they could still swim around and not be aware that they were caught in the net until the end when the net tightened and they understood the situation they were in. That’s the reality today. Many deny God and His Kingdom and they don’t realize that they are a part of something so much bigger than this life. They don’t realize that they are created for eternity. And as we move further and further towards the last days and towards everything that the Bible lays out for us, many will realize their situation too late and discover that they have been living in god’s Kingdom but never took advantage of the offer to join that Kingdom.
The net is cast across the Earth and is pulling us all towards that great Day of the Lord, all of us are caught up in this drag net, but we have to realize that just being in the net is not enough.
II. The Kingdom in Heaven Includes Only Some.
I went fishing last summer on Lake Erie. My friend had a boat and all of the equipment and was determined that I was going to catch a fish. I fished for about a half of an hour before the waves got to me and I had to lay down for a while. I caught nothing. But I watched him and the others on the boat catch fish after fish. Each fish that was caught looked pretty much the same to me. I couldn’t tell them apart. But my friend was an expert, a master fisherman and he immediately knew which ones to keep and which ones were no good and needed to be thrown back.
Jesus says the same thing will happen on the Day of Judgment. The angels, at the Lord’s bidding will begin to separate those who will remain in the Kingdom, now the Kingdom of Heaven, from those who will be removed. The reality is that many will be cast away. This is where Christianity becomes offensive to people. People call Christians pig-headed, narrow-minded, bigoted and ask, “You mean to tell me that if I don’t believe in your God, then I’m not going to heaven?”
And for many of us those questions make us uncomfortable and we begin to wonder if maybe there is another way. Let me tell you something with certainty this morning. The Truth of God, written in His word, is that the Kingdom is exclusive to the righteous. This is narrow-minded, Jesus said I am the Way, no one comes to the Father except through me, and you can’t get much narrower than that. To believe that there are alternatives is to call God a liar and to reduce what Christ accomplished on the cross, that once for all sacrifice of the perfect for the imperfect, that offering to God of the spotless Lamb to save man from his sins, the forgiveness of sins through the Blood of Jesus, access to God through belief in His Son, to believe in any other truth is to reduce that to something that ultimately was meaningless because we decided there should be other ways to God.
Jesus teaches that there will be a separation and the criteria that will be used is righteousness, the Kingdom is exclusively for the righteous. Only the righteous, those who live right, can enter God’s Kingdom. The one who is righteous is morally upright, without guilt or sin.
That’s bad news for humans.
Paul tells us in Romans 3:10
"There is no one righteous, not even one;
Humans cannot stand before God on their own and be counted as righteous because all of us have been born into sin. Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. RO 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned
We all stand guilty before God, deserving of being tossed away like the bad fish, but God loved us, and because of that love He provided a way for us to be counted as righteous in His sight. That way was Jesus.
RO 5:18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
We are made righteous through the work of the cross. There is no other way. It must come through faith, belief, that Jesus is the Son of God and that He died for your sins.
Phil 3:9 …and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.
This net pulls us all in and towards the final judgment, but at that time a separation will take place and only those who can stand righteous and without guilt before God because they have accepted the gift of forgiveness through Jesus in faith, and their unrighteousness, their sin, has been washed away, only those will enter into the Kingdom in Heaven. In the end, the wicked and the righteous will be separated.
We can’t always tell them apart. That’s one of the hardest things about this teaching. It would be easier if the wicked were all blatantly evil, but there will be those who lived good lives on the outside that are included among the ones who are cast out.
***I have twin uncles named John and Joel. When I was little, I could not tell them apart at all. They were identical; I used to call them both uncle JohnJoel figuring that I would just cover all the bases. They were the same on the outside but very different on the inside.
We may look alright on the outside, but that alone can’t save us. When God does the separating, outer appearances won’t matter. Living a good life and being a good person isn’t the criteria, God looks inside, at the heart and those who have loved Him and served Him, those who have called on His name, will be collected and ushered into an eternity with God in heaven.
Which leaves us with the last part of the story. If the righteous enter in and the wicked are cast out, where is it that they are cast to?
III. Only Alternative is Hell
This is one of the hardest teachings in the Bible. But it is a reality that ought to change the way that we live and the urgency with which we share our faith with others. Those wicked that are cast away, Jesus says are thrown in to the furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Hell is a reality and it is punishment and pain for those who have rejected the Gift of the Kingdom that God made available to them.
I know some parents who try to explain everything evil away to their children as just being make believe. One teen told me that every time something bad would happen in the news or on TV, his mother would tell him that it was just pretend and that nothing bad would ever happen to him. It’s a parents natural tendency to shield their children from evil, to try and protect them. But the reality is, whether the child believes it or not, evil exists and bad things do happen. I think there are many Christians who take that stance with Hell. They want to believe al of the nice things and the gifts and benefits and love of God, but the can’t comprehend hell and the horrors of it and so they pass it off as not being real. Heaven we love, hell, that’s just something to scare us into being good. Again, if we choose to turn away from this uncomfortable Truth, we are calling God a liar because His word clearly teaches the reality of a place called hell that is reserved for Satan and his demons and all who have turned away from God to follow their own paths.
Scripture teaches us this about what Hell will be like, I don’t have time to go into great detail but copy the verses down and you can look them up later.
1) Eternal Fire – Mark 9:43, Matt 25:41
2) Conscious of your suffering – Luke 16:19-31
3) Aware of the choice you made – Luke 16:19-31
4) No second chance – Luke 16:19-31, Hebrews 9:27
5) Many will go there – Matt 7:13-14
6) Darkness, Solitude - Jude 13, Matt 25:30
7) No Rest or Relief - Rev 9:10-11
8) Separation from God – 2 Thes 1:9
There are not words to describe the despair and hopelessness that will accompany this fact about hell, this is what will make it unbearable, the sinner, whom God has allowed a taste of his presence through life will now be shut out from that presence in death. That is, in my opinion, the worst part about all that Scripture teaches about hell, the removal of God’s presence from those who are condemned.
That’s the picture of Hell that Scripture teaches, it will not be the social club some think it will be.
Mark Twain once wrote: I’ll take heaven for the climate and hell for the company
Ted Turner was quoted as saying: I look forward to dying and going to hell because that’s where everyone I know is heading. Hell will not be a party, it will be darkness and torment and solitude and an eternity apart from the presence of God.
When we look at this teaching about the end times and the casting of the wicked, those who have rejected Christ, into Hell, you have to understand this. Hell was not created for man, it was created for Satan and his Demons
MT 25:41 "Then he will say to those on his left, `Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
God created hell as a place of punishment for the fallen angels who have deceived and tormented His creation since the beginning of time. It was created for Satan and it is Satan’s ultimate Destiny, we know the ending.
And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Revelation 20:10
Hell is where Satan will spend his eternity in the same environment that we just described. Let’s clear up one common misconception, Hell is not Satan’s home, it is His punishment. And it was created for Him to punish him for His rebellion against God. However, when man fell and turned our back on God and His ways, and fell for the lies of Satan, we opened ourselves up to judgment and punishment that was created for Him.
So, in reality it is not God dooming people to Hell, it is people choosing willingly to follow Satan and share in His future and missing out on what God provided for them.
People say a loving God would not have created Hell, but Hell is in keeping with the nature of God. God is a just God and justice requires payment for wrongs.
You cannot serve a God who has an absolute set of morals and gives us a blueprint for how to live and then imposes no penalty on those who choose their own way. He would cease to be a just God and so would cease to be God at all. But out of that justness we are able to see His love because justice required death and God provided death, the death of his son so that many could live.
You want to see evidence of a loving God? How about one who would give his only son for people that He knew would reject Him. He is loving beyond what any of us can comprehend because He has provided a way for us to have our sins wiped clean and to stand in His presence again and to spend eternity with Him, none of us deserve that! And it came at the expense of His Son! And yet many are so quick to grab the doctrine of hell and accuse God of being a God of wrath and judgment overlooking His great love. The reality is that he is a god of wrath and judgment because he is a Just and Holy God, but those aspects of his character are driven by a deep love for His creation and Scripture tells us that his desire is that none should perish but that all would come to repentance and believe in Him. But He lets us make the choice.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Matthew 23:37-38
Have you ever just wanted to hold and comfort a child that did not want to be in your arms. It’s impossible. I used to pick Catherine up and just want to snuggle and hug her and she wanted to run off an play and she would wiggle and let her whole body go limp so that I couldn’t hold her and eventually I’d put her down because that’s what she wanted. Jesus longs to gather all of us up into His arms. But we were not willing, like that little child, we wanted to go off and do our own things instead of resting in the strength and security of His arms. He loves us enough to let us make that choice but He stands waiting to gather up those who run to Him instead of their own way.
All of us have the choice, God’s way or our own way. God’s way brings us a righteousness through Christ and an eternity in the Kingdom, our way may bring us pleasure for a time but it will lead to us being cast out of the Kingdom and into an eternity apart from God in Hell, that’s the only alternative.
The parable of the net teaches us about the way it will end. It teaches us that the Kingdom net catches us all. It teaches that only the righteous will be kept in the Kingdom when the angels come and separate the “fish.” And it teaches us that the only alternative to God’s Kingdom is a reality called Hell. When that day comes, which fish will you be?
You can know for sure that you’ll be among the righteous on that day if you have asked Christ to forgive your sins and to come in to your life. The Bible says that whoever believes in Him, will not die, but have eternal life. You can have a relationship with Him and it can begin today.
Let’s Pray
