Kingdom Parables: The Parable Of the Net Matthew 13:47-50 47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: 48 Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. 49 So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, 50 And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Again: A Parable Reframed Jesus begins this parable with the word again o indicating that there is some repetition in the parable. This parable has some similarity o with the parable of the wheat and tares. It differs, however, in the diversity of the intended harvest. The farmer whose enemy o sowed tares among his wheat was still focused, all through the growing season, o on a harvest of wheat to the exclusion of the tares, even though they were allowed o to grow side by side. This story contains some of o the same elements as that story but with a distinct and important twist. This is a parable about fishing o and it is one that the disciples, particularly, could certainly relate to. Many, though not all, of the disciples were former fishermen. o This is how they had made their living for many years. When Jesus called them to follow Him, o they left their nets and walked away from a life that had revolved around fish o to pursue a new promise. o Jesus said, come follow me
and I will make you fishers of men. So, no doubt, when Jesus began o to talk about nets and fishing, their ears perked up. This is something that they understand. 47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: 48 Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. The fist significant thing that needs o to be pointed out here is that, while the word net in the English language can be a pretty general term, o referencing a broad variety of nets of all types and sizes, the word used in the Greek is very specific. Jesus was talking about a certain kind of net. o The Greek word used is the word from which we derive our English seine, as in seine net. The net that Jesus is referencing o is not a small net that might be worked by a single man, it is a large dragnet that takes a big crew, o usually two boat crews working together, to manage the net and secure the catch. The common description was a dragnet. o It was used in the fishing industry of the time and would have been very familiar to the disciples. The dragnet had floats at the top and weights at the bottom. o It was an indiscriminate fishing method. It caught anything that was larger than the gauge of the netting. It was employed in a variety of ways. o Sometimes the fishermen would deploy the net in an area where a school of fish was visibly feeding at or near the surface. o At other times they would deploy it in known feeding areas. In either case, a group of fishermen o would spread out the drag-net
between 2 boats and then the boats, together, o would drag it toward the shore. These nets were huge. o As much as a whole square mile of water surface area might be seined in a single pass with this kind of net. By the time they got the net to shore o it would be filled with all sorts of sea creatures. It would trap every kind of fish in the targeted area, o both those edible and those not. This is one of the key differences about this parable o that distinguishes it from the other. The end goal, the final harvest, o does not all look the same. This is a harvest of unique individuals, a harvest of a tremendous variety of fish. The farmer exclusively harvested wheat. o But here we have a group of fishermen laboring hard for many hours, casting a broad net o and indiscriminately pulling together an eclectic harvest. This kind of net could literally gather o hundreds and hundreds of fish. I read somewhere last night that the largest haul ever in history, o with this kind of net, was somewhere north of 68 tons of fish. o That s a lot of fish. The fishermen in our parable o didn t have the advantage of mechanical machinery to assist them, and their catch certainly wasn t 68 tons. However it was a tremendous amount of fish. Everything in that stretch of water o was caught in that net. This is a key point in the story. There is no discrimination about netting fish. o Every kind of fish, both good and bad, as well as all kinds of trash and debris,
o all of it is caught in the net. After the catch was hauled to the shore, o the diverse nature of the catch demanded a season of separation. The fishermen would begin o to go through the harvest of fish and separate the edible from the inedible. Those who lived around the Sea of Galilee o would often have seen fishermen doing this kind of thing, making the point of Jesus story o very obvious to them. One thing that distinguishes this parable o is that it is not about an individual effort. In the previous parables we ve always seen an individual at work, even in the places where there was some assistance o from farm hands, the story really revolved around one central figure. o However, that s not the case here. This story is about a group of fishermen. No single member of that group o is distinguished from the rest. This is a parable of harvest, o much like the parable of sower and the seed, however, the story is not about a lone individual, it is about the corporate effort of the church. This parable is really about the mission of the church. o It describes what we do, how we should do it, and what the final result o of our efforts will be. There are two main divisions to the parable. o The first half of the parable focuses on the evangelism efforts of the church. o It focuses on our response to his command to go reach our world with the gospel of Jesus Christ o and it gives some important insights into the way we are to approach the prevailing mission of the church.
o We are to reach out to our world without prejudice, reaching for whosoever will. Our efforts are to be all-inclusive. However, the second half of the parable o focuses on the day of judgment, the end of the age, it emphasizes the fact that there is coming o a day of separation. Though the church casts a large net o and gathers without discrimination, there is coming a final day of judgment and a final moment of separation. We really have two key actions: o The Gathering and The Separating. The two are distinct. They each have their place o and time in the story. The Gathering In this parable, the sea is representative of lost humanity. o It s a sea of despair and hopelessness. It s a deep, dark abyss of iniquity, pain and despair. o Men and women from a vast variety of backgrounds are lost in the depths of that sea. The net represents the efforts of the church. o This is our main mission. Jesus called us to go make disciples, to dredge the depths of the sea of humanity and compel men and women to turn away from the bondage o of sin and death introducing them to salvation and eternal life. This is what we exist for. o We are disciple makers. We are not free agents who have benefited from o such a wonderful gift of salvation, we are laborers in his harvest, we are the fishermen that he has employed o to reach the lost before it is too late.
This is what Jesus meant o when he told the disciples that he would make them into fishers of men. This was their purpose from the very beginning o and that purpose has been extended to the church. o This is why we exist. This is the only important thing that we do. This matters more than everything else. o That prayer room in the back and these altars in the front are the most important parts of this church. o Nothing else matters if we aren t reaching the lost! o We must NEVER lose sight of the fact that this is what we exist for. In many ways, we ARE the net. o We are the only hope that a lost world has of ever reaching heaven. I m going to tell you right now o that we have all become too content with the fact that a lost world is rushing headlong o towards a final day of judgment and that if we don t reach them before it is too late, o there is no hope for them. We ve been conditioned, by our society, o not to be so offensive, to maintain the boundaries of political correctness. o Can I tell you something? There is nothing prim and proper about fishing with a seine net. o It s a broad effort, that encompasses a huge swath of water and reaches indiscriminately o for whosoever will! It catches fish and trash alike. Whosoever will! o I heard it said once, and completely agree, that those two words may well be the two most precious words
o in the whole Bible! The gospel is available to the entire sea of humanity. o No one is excluded. Nobody is so high the net cannot reach them, and none are so low that the net cannot descend to them. o This gospel was custom made to catch every kind of man woman and child that swims in the sea of humanity. None are too large, none are to small, none are too lost, none are too broken, none are too hopeless and none are excluded o from the gospels passionate call. They don t design a seine net o that can only catch specific breeds of fish. Now when you are fishing with tackle, you can put together a bait combination o that is geared towards a specific breed of fish. o And, while you may, from time to time, catch other things, the tackle is specific enough o that it mostly catches what it was designed to catch. Not so with the net. o The catches everything, regardless of the type or value of the fish. The key principle here o is that the net does not discriminate as it gathers the fish, and neither should the church o as it reaches for the lost. o This is the grand application of this parable to the mission of the church. At least twenty-four different species of fish o swam in the waters of The Sea of Galilee. Many of those fish were considered to be ceremonially unclean o or were simply inedible. o There were a lot of trash fish,
the kind you just don t keep. o However, the net didn t recognize the difference. It could not discriminate in its catch. It just catches everything. Lady Huntington, was a wealthy noblewoman o in the late 19 th century who was saved during the great Welsh Revival, one of the forerunners o to modern day Pentecostalism. Someone once asked her o how a woman of her background came to be saved, o she replied, The letter M is partly to credit for me and then she quoted: 1 Corinthians 1:26 not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called She said, notice that it does NOT say, not any, o it only says not many. That M is the reason why I m saved. What she was saying o was that she fell into one of those not many categories, wealthy, of noble birth, o and not likely to submit her life to a savior. o However, the scripture doesn t say not any it says not many. There s enough wiggle room o in the difference between any and many that anyone could be saved! o Come on somebody, thank God that even when we fall in the category of not many o the Bible doesn t ever say not any! Our job as the church is to indiscriminately evangelize our world. o We are to love like we have been loved. We are to reach without reservation for whosoever will. It is not our job to judge folks o worthy or unworthy of the kingdom. It is not our job to separate
the wheat from the tares, o the clean from the unclean, or the good from the bad. Our only job is to reach as many as we can, o as fast as we can, because the day of salvation is quickly coming to an end o and the night is about to descend, in which no man can work! Too often we do our fishing with individual tackle. o We tailor our evangelism to appeal to people just like us. o We are discriminatory, sometimes, in our presentation of the gospel. o We rule some folks out before we ever even talk to them. But that s not what we are called to do! o We are called to reach a lost world! We are called to love the unlovable. We are called to evangelize the lost. o No matter what they look like, no matter what they smell like, no matter what their background is, o what kind of baggage they are carrying or how offensive their sin may be! Listen to the words of Paul: 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 (NKJV) 9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. However, before you start adjusting your net o to release these undesirables that will not inherit the kingdom, you need to read the next verse: 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. It may say not many but it doesn t say not any. o And we can t afford to be exclusive
in our effort to reach the lost. o We must reach for everyone with love and compassion, compelling them towards the cross. o That s our calling. There is a day of separation coming. o There will be a moment in time when the angels of heaven will segregate all those o that have been caught in the net. The clean and the unclean o will be separated. But that day hasn t come yet. o No fishermen ever tried to cull the fish while they were still in the net and the boats were still on the water! The culling happens at the end, not during the process. The message here is simple but bold: o we are to reach for the lost, all kinds of lost, regardless of their history, o their faults, o their failures o or their shortcomings! Jesus died on the cross for them too! Listen again to Paul, o he was concerned that he not abuse his authority in the gospel by attempting to segregate the harvest. That s God s job, not ours. o Our job is to reach the world, to love the lost, to show them the same mercy o that we have received. 1 Corinthians 9:18-22 (NKJV) 18 What is my reward then? That when I preach the gospel, I may present the gospel of Christ without charge, that I may not abuse my authority in the gospel. 19 For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more; 20 and to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law;
21 to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God,[c] but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law; 22 to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. Paul recognized that he was never going to save them all. o But he purposed in the heart that they would not be lost simply because he neglected to reach for them. o Paul said I may not save them all, but I m going to reach for them all. I have become all things o to all men that I might, by any means, save some of them! That s the mission of the church. o We cast a large net. We reach for whosoever will. We cannot and will not discriminate. Whoever ever walks through those doors o better find the love of Jesus Christ. Not everyone who comes into this house o is going to look like you, act like you or even have the same interests as you. o Some of them are going to come from such depths of brokenness that you won t even know o how to relate to them. o But mark my words, we can t afford to abuse our authority in the gospel. o It is not our job to limit the invitation! The Separation 49 So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, 50 And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. After the fishing is complete o and the net is hauled to the shore, a familiar scene unfolds on the shores of The Sea Of Galilee.
The fishermen begin to sort the catch. o Caught within the vast expanse of the net is an eclectic blend of fish, representing all 24 species o that swim in the Sea of Galilee. o Some are profitable and others are not. The fisherman doesn t judge the catch based on appearance, attractiveness, or even size and coloration. All the things that make a fish a trophy to us, o are inconsequential to the commercial fishermen. Only one thing matters to them, can the fish be sold for a profit? This a point of similarity o with the parable of the wheat and the tares. In the end it is the fruitfulness of the harvest that becomes the measuring stick o of separation and discrimination. o That which is profitable, that which produces good fruit, is kept and that which is not is cast into a furnace of fire. o This parable and the parable of the wheat and tares end with identical language, Matthew 13:42 and Matthew 13:50 o say the exact same thing. o [They] shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. A fiery judgment is coming o on that final day of separation. The only sensible time for sorting o comes after the net has been dragged to the shore. Nothing would ever compel the fishermen o to attempt to cull the fish while they were still in the net and on the water. As a matter of fact, in both o the parable of the wheat and tares and this parable
o Jesus makes a distinction between the laborers and the harvesters. In both instances it is the angels, o not the fishermen, which segregate the catch. Like the wheat and the tares that grow together, o the net gathers fish indiscriminately. But not all who attach themselves to the church o are among the righteous. Not all who come into the sphere of influence of the net o will produce fruit. There is a day o separation coming. And that s a scary thing to contemplate o because that day of judgment will be final. There will be no appeals. There will be no loopholes, no way out. o Once that day comes, it is too late to suddenly become fruitful. The devil has had some success o at convincing people that there s no hell. He s even has some success o at causing some to believe that there is no heaven. But his most persuasive tactic o is not to convince folks that there is no heaven or hell, his most effective ploy o is to convince folks that there is no hurry! o That there is no urgency. That we have all the time in the world. o The siren voice of hell whispers into the ears of men and women, Go ahead and live like you want to live, o there will always be time to get right with God. But there is a day coming o when it will finally and completely be too late. There will remain no chance of salvation,
CLOSE o no hope for the hopeless, no opportunity to suddenly get right. o On that final day, the end of the age, the day of judgment, o our eternity, o yours and mine, will be settled forever more. What is the point of this parable? o It is different than the others. The others were designed to cause a man to examine himself. And while this parable, too, demands that we measure ourselves o against the standard of fruitfulness, the purpose of this parable is much broader. o This parable is designed to compel us to reach the lost before it is too late. The church is a sacred institution, o but it is not an exclusive entity. It is our job to reach the world without discrimination. o God made men and women in his image. And, like it or not, the most vile sinner in the world o was made in the image of God and possesses that singular redeemable virtue. o Just like you and just like me, their failures don t have to be final because they were made for eternity! We can t afford to filter sinners. o We don t turn folks away from the altar. These doors are open to whosoever will. The moment we begin to limit our message o is the moment that we betray our mission. Come on somebody, o the emergency room doesn t turn anyone away. That s what this is. This is a spiritual triage station.
Not everything that walks through those doors o is going to be attractive. Sometimes it s going to be bloody, messy, ugly and downright repulsive. But if we are going to have the kind of revival o that God wants us to have then we must learn to love the unlovable! Our job is not to dissect o wounded and broken people, our job is to introduce them to healing and help. o To bring them to an altar where they can find forgiveness for their sins o and salvation for their soul! I once heard a story about a church o that put up a sign on the front of the church. Gold letters were affixed to the exterior of the building o that said Jesus Only. However, one day a mighty storm blew through o and the first three letters of the sign were blown away. What remained was a message to the world o that said, Us Only. Listen to your pastor for just a moment this morning. o That is a message that we cannot send to the world. This gospel isn t limited to people like us. It is for whosoever will! How do you respond to a parable like this? o By humbly falling on your face before God and crying out, help me reach the lost. Help me make a difference in the sea of humanity. Let me become a part of the net that is gathering o of all kinds of people and bringing them to the altar! o Let me make a difference before it is too late!