Chapter 36 - Judgment and Proclamation (13:47-52)

36 Judgment and Proclamation (13:47-52)

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea, and gathering fish of every kind; and when it was filled, they drew it up on the beach; and they sat down, and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they threw away. So it will be at the end of the age; the angels shall come forth, and take out the wicked from among the righteous, and will cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

“Have you understood all these things?” They said to Him, “Yes.” And He said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings forth out of his treasure things new and old.” (13:47-52)

The last two of the eight parables on the kingdom found in Matthew 13 illustrate the separation and judgment of unbelievers and the preaching and teaching of God’s ministers. The first gives a warning, and the second gives a call to proclaim that warning to a condemned world.

THE PARABLE OF THE DRAGNET—JUDGMENT

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea, and gathering fish of every kind; and when it was filled, they drew it up on the beach; and they sat down, and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they threw away. So it will be at the end of the age; the angels shall come forth, and take out the wicked from among the righteous, and will cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (13:47-50)

In the previous parables Jesus illustrated the nature of the kingdom, the power and influence of the kingdom, and the personal appropriation of the kingdom. Now He focuses again (see v. 42) on the judgment connected with the kingdom.

The parable of the dragnet is a frightening warning about what happens to the wicked when they are separated from the righteous in the last days. Here Jesus gives a vivid picture of judgment, a brief explanation of the principle of judgment, and a sobering warning about the peril of judgment.

THE PICTURE

The activity Jesus uses to illustrate God’s judgment on unbelievers was a common one to His hearers. It was especially familiar to those who lived near the Sea of Galilee, and most especially to those, including several of the disciples, who were fisherman.

On the Sea of Galilee three basic methods of fishing were employed, all of which are still used there today. The first was with a line and hook, which was used to catch one fish at a time. That was the type of fishing the Lord instructed Peter to do when they needed money to pay the two-drachma tax (Matt. 17:24-27).

The other two types of fishing involved nets. One net was a small, one-man casting net called an amphiblstron. Peter and his brother Andrew were taking turns casting an amphiblstron when Jesus called them to become “fishers of men” (Matt. 4:18-19). The folded net was carried over the fisherman’s shoulder as he waded in shallow water looking for a school of fish. When the fish were near enough, he would hold the center cord in one hand and with the other hand throw the net so that it opened into a large circle and came down over the fish. Weights around the perimeter of the net caused it to sink and trap the fish. The fisherman then pulled on the cord, which was attached to the center of the net and drew it around the fish like a sack. When the net had been pulled closed, the fisherman would haul his catch to shore.

A second type of net was the sagn, a very large dragnet, or seine, that required a team of fishermen to operate and sometimes covered as much as a half square mile. It was pulled into a giant circle around the fish, between two boats out in deep water or by one boat when working from the shore. In the latter case, one end of Judgment and Proclamation (13:47-52) 13:49

the net would be firmly moored on shore while the other was attached to the boat, which would make a large circle out into the water and come back to the starting place. Floats were attached to the top of the net and weights to the bottom, forming a wall of net from the surface to the bottom of the lake.

Because the net permitted nothing to escape, all sorts of things besides the desirable fish were caught. It swept everything in its path—weeds, objects dropped overboard from boats, all manner of sea life, and fish of every kind.

When the net was filled, it would take a large number of men several hours just to drag it up on the beach. Then they sat down, and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they threw away. The fish to be carried to a distant market would be put in containers with water to keep the fish alive, and those that were to be sold nearby were placed in dry containers, usually baskets.

THE PRINCIPLE

So it will be at the end of the age; the angels shall come forth, and take out the wicked from among the righteous, (13:49)

Jesus begins His interpretation of the parable by explaining that the separation of the good and bad fish represents God’s judgment at the end of the age. The parable of the wheat and tares illustrates the coexistence of believers and unbelievers in the present form of the kingdom, and this parable illustrates their separation as the form of the kingdom changes.

In His interpretation of the parable of the wheat and tares Jesus stated the same truth He gives here: At the end of the age [His] angels shall come forth, and take out the wicked from among the righteous (cf. vv. 39-41). During the present era, which is the church age, God permits unbelief and unrighteousness. But the time is coming when His toleration will end and His judgment begins. The first phase of judgment will be the separation of the wicked from among the righteous, the tares from among the wheat. The dragnet of God’s judgment moves silently through the sea of mankind and draws all men to the shores of eternity for final separation to their ultimate destiny—believers to eternal life and unbelievers to eternal damnation.

Men move about within that net as if they were forever free. It may touch them from time to time, as it were, startling them. But they quickly swim away, thinking they have escaped, not realizing they are completely and inescapably encompassed in God’s sovereign plan. The invisible web of God’s judgment encroaches on every human being just as that of the dragnet encroaches on the fish. Most men do not perceive the kingdom, and they do not see God working in the world. They may be briefly moved by the grace of the gospel or frightened by the threat of judgment; but they soon return to their old ways of thinking and living, oblivious to the things of eternity. But when man’s day is over and Christ returns to set up His glorious kingdom, then judgment will come.

Jesus is not giving a full description of the last days, but is concentrating on the judgment of unbelievers. He is speaking of judgment in general, with special focus on what is referred to as the final judgment at the great white throne (Rev. 20:11-15). There “the dead, the great and the small” will be “judged, everyone of them” (vv. 12-13).

As already mentioned in the interpretation of the wheat and tares parable (v. 41) and declared in many other New Testament passages (e.g., Matt. 24:31; 25:31-32; Rev. 14:19; 15:5-16:21), angels are the Lord’s instruments of separation and execution of sentence. The separation will include all persons who are then living and all who have died—”those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment” (John 5:29).

Some people wonder why Jesus repeated the teaching about the angelic separation in this parable, when it is almost word for word what He had just said at the end of His explanation of the wheat and tares (Matt. 13:41). For one thing, the emphasis here is exclusively on the aspect of separation of believers from unbelievers, whereas in the other parable the major emphasis is on their coexistence. For another, it is such a vitally important truth that it bears frequent repetition.

Over and over Jesus warns about the horrors of hell and pleads with men to avoid it by coming to Him for salvation. He warned that, just as in the days of Noah before the flood, people will be “eating and drinking, . . . marrying and giving in marriage.... Then there shall be two men in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left” (Matt. 24:38, 40-41).

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek. 18:23) and does not desire that anyone perish (2 Pet. 3:9). The Lord wept over Jerusalem because the people would not come to Him and be saved (Luke 19:41). He warned about hell not to put people in agony but to save them from it. Hell was not even created for men but for the devil and his fallen angels (Matt. 25:41).

THE PERIL

and will cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (13:50)

Perhaps no doctrine is harder to accept emotionally than the doctrine of hell. Yet it is too clear and too often mentioned in Scripture either to deny or to ignore. Jesus spoke more of hell than any of the prophets or apostles did—perhaps for the reason that its horrible truth would be all but impossible to accept had not the Son of God Himself absolutely affirmed it. It had special emphasis in Jesus’ teaching from the beginning to the end of His earthly ministry. He said more about hell than about love. More than all other teachers in the Bible combined, He warned men of hell, promising no escape for those who refused His gracious, loving offer of salvation.

In the Sermon on the Mount alone, the Lord gives several specific and direct warnings about hell: “Whoever shall say, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell” (Matt. 5:22), and, “It is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell” (v. 29; cf. v. 30; 18:8-9; Mark 9:43).

Jesus declares that the wicked “sons of the kingdom shall be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12) and that unbelieving Capernaum would “descend to Hades” (11:23; cf. Luke 10:15). He asked the evil and hypocritical scribes and Pharisees, “How shall you escape the sentence of hell?” (Matt. 23:33). On many other occasions Jesus alludes to hell and warns about damnation (5:20; 7:13,19, 23, 27; 10:28; 12:36; 16:18; 18:8-9; 21:43-44; 23:14-15; 24:40-41, 51; 25:30, 46; Mark 3:29; Luke 12:9-10, 46; 16:23; John 5:29; 15:6).

Hell is not merely the fate of forever reliving bad memories or of going out into nothingness, as many people believe and teach. Nor is it a place where sinners will continue their sinning, unrestrained and unrebuked. There will be no pleasure at all in hell, not even the perverted pleasure of sin—only its punishment.

When an interviewer asked a young punk rock singer what she was looking forward to at the end of her career, she replied, “Death. I’m looking forward to death.” When asked why, she said, “I want to go to hell, because hell will be fun.”

Such deception is tragic beyond words. Nothing could less describe hell than fun. The human mind cannot begin to conceive of the eternal horror that is hell. Even the biblical figures related to hell are only suggestive, because the finite mind cannot comprehend infinite pain and torment any more than it can comprehend infinite joy and bliss. But from God’s Word we learn four basic truths about the furnace of fire that will help us to partially grasp its terror.

First, hell is a place of constant torment, misery, pain. The torment is often described as darkness (Matt. 22:13), where no light can penetrate, and nothing can be seen. Throughout the numberless eons of eternity the damned will never again see light or anything that light illumines. Hell’s torment is also described as fire that will never go out and cannot be extinguished (Mark 9:43) and from which the damned will never find relief. Hell could not be other than a place where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Second, hell will involve the torment of both body and soul. Neither the soul nor the body is annihilated at death; nor will they ever be. When an unsaved person dies, his soul goes out from the presence of God into everlasting torment. At the resurrection of all the dead, the bodies of the unsaved will be raised, and those resurrected bodies will join the soul in hell’s torment (Matt. 10:28; cf. John 5:29; Acts 24:15; Rev. 20:11-15). Just as believers will be fitted with resurrected bodies so they can enjoy the glories of heaven forever, unbelievers will be fitted with resurrected bodies so they can endure the torments of hell without being destroyed.

Jesus spoke of hell as a place “where their worm does not die” (Mark 9:44). When physical bodies are buried and begin to decay, the worms can attack them only as long as the flesh lasts. Once consumed, the body can experience no more harm. But the resurrected bodies of unbelievers will never be consumed, and the hellish “worms” that feed on them will themselves never die.

Third, the torments of hell will be experienced in varying degrees. For everyone in hell the suffering will be intense and permanent, but some will experience greater torment than others. “Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses,” says the writer of Hebrews. “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?” (Heb. 10:28-29). Those who willfully reject Jesus Christ and trample, as it were, on the sacrifice He made for them with His own blood will receive much greater punishment than those who had only the light of the Old Covenant. And on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for the pagan cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom than for the Jewish cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum—who not only had the light of the Old Covenant but the opportunity to see and hear the Son of God in person and to witness His miraculous works (Matt. 11:22-23).

In the parable of the slaves who awaited their master’s return from the wedding feast, Jesus explains that “that slave who knew his master’s will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, shall receive many lashes, but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of flogging, will receive but few” (Luke 12:47-48).

“Hell will have such severe degrees,” writes John Gerstner, “that a sinner, were he able, would give the whole world if his sins could be one less.”

Fourth, the torment of hell will be everlasting. Nothing will be so horrible about hell as its endlessness. Jesus uses the same word to describe the duration of hell as the duration of heaven: “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt. 25:46). People in hell will experience the total absence of hope.

Although God originally designed hell for the devil and his fallen angels, men who choose to follow Satan’s way instead of God’s will also suffer Satan’s fate.

The great Puritan writer and preacher John Bunyan describes hell with his customary vivid imagery:

[In hell] thou shalt have none but a company of damned souls with an innumerable company of devils to keep company with thee. While thou art in this world, the very thought of the devil’s appearing to thee makes thy flesh to tremble and thine hair ready to stand upright on thy head. But oh, what wilt thou do when not only the supposition of the devil’s appearing but the real society of all the devils of hell will be with thee—howling, roaring and screeching in such a hideous manner that thou wilt be even at thy wit’s end and ready to run stark mad again for anguish and torment. If after ten thousand years, an end should come, there would be comfort. But here is thy misery: here thou must be forever. When thou seest what an innumerable company of howling devils thou art amongst, thou shalt think this again—this is my portion forever. When thou hast been in hell so many thousand years as there are stars in the firmament or drops in the sea or sands on the seashore, yet thou hast to lie there forever. Oh, this one word—ever—how will it torment thy soul. (New Cyclopedia of Prose Illustrations, ed. Elon Foster [New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1877], p. 450)

THE PARABLE OF THE HOUSEHOLDER: PROCLAMATION

Understood comes from sunimi, which has the literal meaning of bringing or putting together. “Have you rightly put all these things together?” Jesus was asking. “Have you understood what I have been saying about the kingdom in these parables? Do you comprehend the truth that the present form of the kingdom will continue to have good and evil in it? Do you realize that believers will continue to grow in numbers and to permeate and influence the world? Do you know that entering the kingdom involves the recognition of the worthlessness of everything a person has apart from salvation in Jesus Christ? Do you see that the final separation of the righteous and wicked is inexorable and inescapable, and that the fate of both is eternal—the righteous to everlasting life and the wicked to everlasting punishment?”

In answer, the disciples said to Him, “Yes.” But from what they later said and did, we know their understanding was far from perfect. But Jesus accepted their response as genuine; otherwise He would not have said to them the words of verse 52. On the level at which they were able to understand at that time, they understood.

Jesus had instructed the disciples to “beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest” (Matt. 9:38)—to proclaim the coming harvest of judgment and to warn men of it and tell them how to escape it while they could. In the following four chapters we see Him specifically call them to this ministry and begin teaching, training, and in every way preparing them for it.

Based on their affirmative response, Jesus then said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household. A grammateus (scribe) literally referred to one who wrote. But among Jews the term had long carried the distinctive connotation of a man who was a learner, interpreter, and teacher of the law, God’s revealed Word that we now call the Old Testament. Although the scribes and rabbis had added so much tradition that it subordinated and often contradicted God’s true Word (Matt. 15:6), their purported task was to study and interpret Scripture. They were the theologians of Judaism, and many were members of the high Jewish council, the Sanhedrin.

Under Jesus’ instruction, each of the twelve was becoming a genuinely learned scribe and a true disciple of the kingdom of heaven. They had become like a head of a household, who brings forth out of his treasure things new and old. The head of a household was responsible for the entire welfare of the family, and a major part of his duty was to maintain ample supplies of food, clothing, and all other things the members of the household might need. He kept these supplies in a storehouse, or treasure, from which he would dispense items as they were needed.

The wise householder was frugal and was careful not to waste the supplies. When they were reusable, food that was uneaten and clothing that was no longer worn were returned to the treasure to be used again. When further need arose, economy demanded that these old supplies would be dispensed first, before any things new were issued.

The twelve disciples (learners) would become the twelve apostles (sent ones), Judas being replaced by Matthias (Acts 1:23). Through these twelve, along with Paul, the apostle appointed “last of all” (1 Cor. 15:8), the Lord entrusted the continued revelation of His Word and the founding of His church. They knew the old truths of His previous revelation and were being given additional truths that were new. They would proclaim the significance of both.

Brings forth is from ekball and carries the idea of casting out, scattering, or distributing widely. In this context it also connotes generosity, giving out the truth of God both wisely and liberally. Apart from the Lord Himself, the apostles were the supreme Bible scholars, preachers, teachers, and theologians of all time—scribes and disciples without equal (cf. Matt. 11:11).

As is clear from the parables of the sower, the wheat and tares, and the dragnet, the message of the gospel is not simply the offer of heaven but a warning about hell. What makes the gospel such good news is its power to save men from the indescribably bad destiny toward which every person without Christ is headed. A person does not have to choose hell to go there. He only has to refuse the claims of Jesus Christ—or do nothing at all.

Though not with the same degree of authority, Jesus’ charge to the twelve is given to every believer, and in particular to those He has called to teach and preach His Word. It is an awesome responsibility to warn the unsaved about hell and to offer them the way of escape through our precious Lord. “Therefore knowing the fear [or terror] of the Lord,” Paul says, “we persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11). The Christian’s heart is cold indeed who is not deeply concerned and exercised about those around him who are destined for the eternity of hell. To have the gift of eternal life but not to share it with those who now have only the prospect of eternal death is the epitome of selfishness and lovelessness.

Yet some who call themselves Christian refuse, in the name of love, to proclaim anything that is fearful or uncomfortable. I recently read that the purpose of a certain “Christian” broadcasting organization is “to be a good neighbor to a variety of listeners.” The policy statement given to prospective broadcasters includes the instruction: “When you are preparing your program for these stations, please avoid using the following: criticism of other religions and references to conversion, missionaries, believers, unbelievers, old covenant, new covenant, church, the cross, crucifixion, Calvary, Christ, the blood of Christ, salvation through Christ, redemption through Christ, the Son of God, Jehovah or the Christian life. These people listening are hungering for words of comfort,” the statement continues. “We ask you to adhere to these restrictions so that God’s Word can continue to go forth. Please help us maintain our position of bringing comfort to suffering people.”

How tragic that an organization dedicated to bringing comfort refuses to so much as mention the elements essential to the only message that can bring true peace and comfort to a troubled soul! Whatever message of comfort would be left after complying with the restrictions of that network would be the false comfort that damns people by leaving them content in their sins. Whatever the foolish motivation for such thinking, it could not be the love of Christ—who loved the world and its people too much not to warn of the imminent and eternal danger that faces every person apart from Him.