Parable Of The Net

^{Matthew 13:47-5047} “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 blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The net here is a sagene, or a dragnet. The word sagene only shows up once in the entire New Testament even though there are other references to nets elsewhere, they use different words. So this is the type of net that gets dragged through the water and picks up EVERYTHING in its path. So when you throw this net overboard you get everything from seaweed, fish, boots and tires. This is the idea that the kingdom touched everything in the world, not just humans or the fish that they are after.

The net itself also doesn’t do any sorting whatsoever, it just gathers up everything within its reach. This is the same message as we saw in the Wheat and the Weeds that Joe talked about when the master said to not pull up the weeds. That will be done at harvest time. In other words, we can’t tell what the difference between the wheat and the weeds are now and we’ll wreck everything if we start putting our fingers where they don’t belong. The message is the same for the first half of this parable. We get caught up in the same net as everyone else, and it’s not our job to sort out everything before being brought up onto the boat, that gets done later. So let’s focus on being fish.

Let’s make no mistake about it; this parable is a judgment parable. This parable is split up into two parts. The first part we have Jesus telling the story and then the second part he explains what he is talking about. In this part we got angels replacing the fishermen and getting the willful sinners out of the midst of the righteous.

Let’s make no mistake, Jesus uses strong language here to highlight what this kind of life is like. A life that refuses to come into the party is a life that is hell. It is a life that continually tries to earn purpose and pleasure through whatever means they can. Judgment is a central part of Jesus’ message. Without judgment there is no need for salvation and life is cheapened. However, like we have already discussed, the beautiful part about judgment is that we are not judged by our own works (because we would fail miserably) but we are judged based on what Jesus has already done