Matthew Parables: The Parable of the Net

So we've been going through Matthew chapter 13, which is this chapter on the parables, is the kingdom parables.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

So it's it's different parables, different stories Jesus is telling, and he's telling one story to tell a truth about something else, a more profound truth.

And so we've gotten ourselves to the last parable.

Now, what I didn't highlight last week is what this parable is on, because a lot of you wouldn't be here.

Or perhaps if you brought a friend, you're already reading it in the bulletin.

You're like, oh dear Lord, what did I do?

He's preaching on hell this morning.

So glad I brought a friend.

This is going to be so warm and fuzzy and wonderful.

Well, I even have kind of mixed feelings this morning.

On one side, I'm actually incredibly excited because it's so needed to have a thoughtful conversation about hell.

And then on the other side, uh, it's so incredibly sobering that you just don't even want to come near it or talk about it.

So my hope is as a preacher, as a pastor, is just to lay it out there this morning.

Just kind of lay out there what the scriptures say about hell, and we'll let that speak for itself.

So our text is Matthew 13, starting verse 47.

We're going to work our way through this and we'll look at some other words that Jesus talked about when it comes to hell.

So Matthew 13, verse 47.

Matthew 13:47

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.

Now, this word net, and anytime I'll start to dig into a word, I only do that because it actually means something really profound, really great for us.

And so this word net is sagani, and this is the only place in the Bible where this word is used.

There's lots of other words for net, but this is the place that Jesus chooses this kind of net.

And this is interesting because this kind of net is a net that does not discriminate against anything.

It sort of just takes it all up.

So here's what this means: it means me and you and this church and any church leaves no one out.

The seaweed, the old nasty boot, they all get caught up with the fine fish.

Like the little tiny, useless fish, it gets caught up with that fat, desired fish.

The kingdom, it gathers up everything in its path.

And Jesus wants us to understand this first.

That's why he chose this word for net.

He could have chosen another word for net.

That's why he chose this word for net, is that at this point there is a great inclusivity here to the kingdom.

Because it's for the religious fanatic, it's for the moralist, it's for the morally broken, it's for the messy, it's it's for the achiever, it's for the weary, it's for the proud, it is for everyone.

Then the parable moves on.

Verse 48 When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers, but threw away the bad.

So it will be at the end of the age.

The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

So it's pretty clear here that this is a parable about the end of the age and what God will do.

What's also really clear here is it's not our role to determine who is in and who is out.

Because of what church they went to, or what church they didn't go to, or who they hang out with, or what their life looks like, or what they did with who, when, and what happened.

We are greatly relieved from having to do this sort of sorting of our friends and our families and of human beings.

Because we are not the sovereign judge.

He is.

Now maybe you're here, and this idea of hell is just the reason why maybe coming to church is actually something that you've had no interest in doing.

But you go, this is the sort of narrow-minded, antiquated thinking that has put me off for so long.

And I would just say, well, hold on, give me a minute, let's flesh this out a little bit.

Or maybe you're like me, and growing up, you never heard an intelligent overview of hell.

All you ever received was the concept of hell as a guilt producer to get you into certain behaviors.

And I'm not gonna do that.

We don't do that.

So, but I am gonna ask you to think as we go.

I would ask you to think with me.

Here's the temptation.

For me, it's the temptation for me, it's the temptation for you.

The temptation is for us to redesign God as we want him to be and not accept him for who he is.

So, I mean, all of us remember this guy, right?

Y'all remember him?

If we can just break this down as simple as possible for us all to get on the same page, we can start with Mr.

Potato Head.

I might be able to use Mr.

Potato Head in so many different places throughout sermons because it's so fantastic, right?

We all remember this guy, whether it was years ago in your house or right now, or you're gonna have him in the future.

He's gonna be in your house, you're gonna find the ear in the couch, you're gonna get up in the middle of the night, you go to the bathroom, you step on the mustache, and it hurts so I mean, how does a mustache in the bottom of the foot in the middle of the night cause so much pain, or maybe you have boys, you got little micro machines and you you go down.

But anyway, so Mr.

Potato, isn't it cute when your two-year-old puts the mustache on top of the head and the ear is in place of the nose?

It's just so cute.

You also have to remember that two-year-old can't use the restroom, okay?

So let's be realistic here.

That's a two-year-old.

It's not so cute if a grown, mature, intelligent person does that.

Mr.

Potato Head looks like a certain thing, and this is it.

It starts this way, right?

This is the way he's supposed to look.

This is what the way a potato head looks.

But the temptation is to do this, to redesign, right?

This is what we do.

And we do this with jobs.

We we do it with friends.

We do it with girlfriends and boyfriends.

You ever done that with a girlfriend or a boyfriend because you were just determined that she was gonna be it and you knew all about her, but really you had replaced different things, or you did it for that boy because he was gonna be so great, but really you had just redesigned him.

You had put the mustache up on the head and the ear in front of the nose, and that wasn't who he was at all.

And when we do it to God, it serves us a great.

But it, you know what it does is it forces us to living in falsehood.

And when we live in falsehood, we live in less truth, and when we live in less truth, we live in less freedom.

And when we do this toward God, the big word for it is anthropomorphism, in case you're wondering.

It's the process that we will come to God and we will redesign him based on what we want him to look like, not based on what he has revealed himself to be.

Now, God has revealed himself in history through the person of Jesus, and Jesus comes, and Jesus speaks more about hell than anybody else in the scriptures.

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus speaks more about hell than any other person in the New Testament.

So that's interesting.

Here are a few things that Jesus says about hell.

Matthew 25, 41 and 46, you can just listen.

It's Jesus speaking of the eternal fire and punishment as the final abode of angels and human beings who have rejected God.

Matthew 5, 22, and also Matthew 18, 8 and 9.

Jesus says that those who give their lives to sin will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Now, this word hell is Gehenna.

So Gehenna was a valley outside of Jerusalem.

And so this valley, at first in the Old Testament, we see sometimes where some different cults would go and they would sacrifice children into this valley.

In the New Testament, we see it's almost become this closed-off area, and it's the area where they throw the trash, all the refuse.

And maybe if somebody dies and they don't have family members, they throw the corpse.

It is a place that is it is nasty, it smells, and it burns forever.

You go, well, you know, well, does hell actually have like fire?

I mean, is that that's kind of the imagery throughout the scriptures?

It's like hell's fire and hell's gnashing of teeth.

Is this actually what hell is?

Well, almost all scholars agree that no, it's probably not actually fire and actually gnashing of teeth.

It's probably more metaphorical language talking about something that could be much worse, and it's talking about the separation we feel when we're apart from God.

The isolation, the disintegration of the human being.

To choose to be isolated from God is to put yourself on a process of the soul being disintegrated.

And anybody who's choosing that path, they want that path.

They are self-choosing that path.

And we all feel this in ways now, right?

We all feel this, and people in this world feel this, but still, people in this world today, they still feel the common grace of God drawing them, even though they may be resisting it.

To resist this grace is to determine to be your own deliverer.

It's to say to God, I'm good, I'll go my own way, the way of grace, your work for me, no thank you, don't need it.

I will base my life, my identity, my righteousness, my forgiveness, I will base it all on my work.

And that kind of life is a life of isolation and disintegration, and it is a path toward hell.

It's a hell now, and it is a hell forevermore.

Hell is the constant, continuous, intensifying feeling that without any relief, and it's the thing that a person has wanted the most.

They've always wanted this because they've wanted to be their own deliverer.

And they get it, and they realize that they aren't what they were created to be, because you were created by God, for God, to enjoy God, and so they're realizing they're not what they created to be, but yet they're so addicted to being their own deliverer.

There's no other path.

Yet the further they go into it, they would want nothing more than to be their own deliverer, and it's more and more self-addiction, and it's darker and lonelier and more isolated and more disintegration.

Maybe there's not fire, but that's hell.

Now, people think that good guys are in heaven a lot of times, right?

I mean, if you go out and just kind of like do sidewalk survey, think, well, people who do good are in heaven, people who do bad are in hell, and that's not true at all.

Good guys aren't in heaven, bad guys are not in hell.

That is not how it works.

Who's in heaven are forgiven, messy beggars, sinners are in heaven.

And who's in hell might be the great white, shiny moralist who self-delivers themselves their entire life.

Or it could be the secular guy who's pleasing himself his entire life as well.

Still self-delivering himself.

Now, in verse 49, Jesus intensifies this language at the first.

In verse 48, he uses this word bad to talk about people.

And then in verse 49, when it comes to the judgment, he intensifies the language and he uses the word evil.

They will separate the evil from the, and the word there is kala or righteous or beautiful.

So it's it's it doesn't that's a deep word.

You're fair, you're not just good, you're fair, you're beautiful, you're righteous.

But what does it mean for someone to be willfully evil if the definition is not narrowed to behavioral morality?

Because it's deeper than that, it's more profound than that.

Well, it's speaking about those who are committed to refusing the grace of God.

They're refusing help.

I'll make it on my own.

That's the ugliest, most evil of things.

And it might be in churches or it might be the most hideous of abusers.

And yet we have the gospel, which is wonderfully inclusive of all these people.

All the broken, ugly screw-ups of the world get sorted up in that sagani net.

It's available to them all, and God says, Let me scoop you up in that net.

I will make you kala.

I will make you righteous, I will make you beautiful, and it's going to be by my work, not by your work.

See, this means good people don't go to heaven and bad people to hell.

That's not what it means.

It means forgiven people go to heaven, right?

Love the bumper sticker, and stubborn, self-saving people go to hell because that's exactly what they've always wanted.

Years ago, Christy and I got the chance to hike in Volcano National Park in Hawaii, and so we park the car and we walk out in this huge lava field.

Massive, massive lava field where the volcano had erupted years and years ago, and it's just stark.

I mean, there's nothing.

Walk down and hike through a crater.

There's just nothing.

It is so stark and it's beautiful and it's a little scary and daunting.

I've slept below two other volcanoes.

Have you ever slept below a volcano?

Anybody?

Anyone neurotic enough to confess, like me, that you went online before you went to kind of like do the monitoring, like who's monitoring this?

And none of you.

Yes, you have.

Some of you have.

And so I've slept below a couple other two other volcanoes, and uh I know they're monitored, there's people monitoring, there'd be announcements if something's gonna happen, but still in the back of your mind, there's this fear.

Like if this thing goes, I have no shot, I have no chance.

It will wipe away anything in its path.

It will cleanse this area.

Now listen to this Romans 5, 6 through 10.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Right?

We memorize that one a lot around church, if you've been around.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die, but God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Now listen to this.

A lot of times we we we just leave it there.

Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life.

So this week I'm just like soberly thinking about this, thinking about hell, and then a great week.

Just thinking about this, reading, listening to sermons, and Wednesday morning, I'm in the shower and I'm thinking about this, shampooing, I'm thinking about, and it just sort of clicked, it clicked.

And it's this is that hell will be so horrible because of the wrath of God, but heaven will be so incredible because of the wrath of God.

You go, what does that mean?

How in the world could heaven be worried?

Because the perfect justice of God demands the wrath of God to go and eliminate every ounce of wickedness from our existence and our experience.

So we will have heaven.

A place where there's no fear and no anxiety and no comparison and no judgment and no abuse and no manipulation.

A place like that gets created because the justice of God and the wrath of God.

Hell is so horrible because of the wrath of God, and heaven is so wonderful because of the wrath of God.

And so maybe you don't like the wrath of God, but you love the idea of heaven.

And I would say if you love the idea of heaven, then you're at least agreeing that the wrath of God exists.

Now let's put all of this sort of in the context of the last few weeks, because the last few weeks we've been talking about these kingdom parables.

So we've been talking about how God's about God's power coming into this world.

We've been saying how this is about the forgiveness of sins, the taking away of condemnation and shame, how all things will be made right.

And we've been saying that this is about what it means for God to reign in you, to control your life.

Uh last week we talked about how what it would mean if we sold our attempt to rule.

And if we actually understood and rested in, if that we are the pearl.

The week before that, we saw that the work of the kingdom, the spirit in you, is the fact that the spirit is in you, creating thousands, remember this?

Thousands of tiny air pockets of life inside your heart and soul.

The week before that, we saw that life's hard.

And we have wheat and we have weeds, we have zazania.

And then here we have judgment and we have hell.

Why?

Well, because the kingdom of this world, the kingdom of this world is a foretaste of hell.

Hell is this grumbling feeling.

It's growing, it's shifting, it's moving.

Here, great thinker and author C.S.

Lewis and The Great Divorce, here's what he says.

Hell begins with a grumbling mood.

Always complaining, always blaming others, but you are still distinct from it.

You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it, but there may come a day when you can no longer.

Then there will be no there will be no you left to criticize the mood or in to even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.

It is not a question of God sending us to hell.

In each of us, there is something growing which will be hell unless it is nipped in the bud.

Now, one more, I think this adds to it.

Tim Keller, pastor author, all-around smart guy.

Here's what he says.

Even in this world, it is clear that self-centeredness rather than God-centeredness makes you miserable and blind.

The more self-centered, self-absorbed, self-pitying, self-justifying people are, the more breakdowns occur relationally, psychologically, and even physically.

They also go deeper into denial about the source of their problems.

On the other hand, a soul that has decided to center its life on God and his glory moves toward increasing joy and wholeness.

We can see both of these trajectories, even in this life.

But if, as the Bible teaches, our souls will go on forever, then just imagine where these two kinds of souls will be in a billion years.

Hell is simply one's freely chosen path going on forever.

So I'm a visual person.

I was just trying to think conceptually, what does this look like?

So this week I kind of came up with how it, and I know some of you aren't gonna be able to see this, so bear with me, come by to see this wonderful artwork after we finish.

It's just gonna be so wonderful.

But this is how, for me, how do I conceptualize how do I conceptualize hell and heaven?

How do I process this now?

And so for me, this is I'm reading these quotes, I'm thinking about these passages.

Uh for me, it's to understand the kingdom of hell, which we we all experience partially now, and some people fully live in because they don't know the grace of God and the rescue of Jesus.

So the kingdom of hell in partial now and in full later, it is this process, it's never any process of seeing your brokenness and your sin.

And yet what you're doing is you're turning to be your own savior, and then you see your own sin, and then you be your own savior, and then you're gonna see your own sin, and then you're gonna be your own savior, your own sin, you're gonna self save, your own sin, self save, your own sin, self save, and it gets tighter and tighter and tighter and lonelier and lonelier and darker.

And the kingdom of heaven works quite the opposite.

Because you see your own brokenness.

And you don't turn to self-save.

You receive Jesus' work for you to be your Savior, and then you see your own brokenness, as we do.

We're not perfect.

This doesn't all of a sudden you become perfect here.

And then you turn to the work of Jesus, and then you see your sin, and you turn to the work of Jesus, and you see your own sin, and you turn to the work of Jesus, and you see your own sin, and you turn to the work of Jesus.

And this is a process that doesn't end, it goes on forever until glory.

But in this process, the spirit is breathing, like we talked about, breathing thousands of tiny air pockets of life into your heart and your soul.

This is this is the foretaste of heaven and hell.

This is what Lewis is saying.

This is what Keller is saying.

See, Jesus on the cross saved you from hell forever.

His work on the cross saved you from the hell forever.

And Jesus on the cross is saving you from a hell today.

He is that good and he is that sufficient.

You do not have to save yourself.

You don't have to save yourself from your own sin or your own shame or your mess-ups or your failures.

You don't have to save yourself from God's wrath.

By his work, he saved you from his own wrath.

And so you don't have to rely on your busy Christian record or effort or whatever.

You are saved only by his work.

So, church, may you know this and live and rest in this good news that Jesus is just and good and he's saves sufficiently.

May you allow him to make you cala, righteous and beautiful, so that you will know the kingdom in you, that you will know the life the Spirit is wanting to speak into you, those thousands of tiny air pockets of life, the foretaste of heaven, that you would taste the sweetness of heaven here and now, and we will know it forevermore.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your grace to us.

We thank you that you are a just God, and while it is incredibly scary to us because we fall short, thank you for your grace, that you have saved us by your work from your own wrath.

Thank you that you are preparing a place for us one day that will not have any of this frustration, this weariness, this exhaustion, brokenness, this sin that's in us, that's in others.

We pray for those who don't know you, who are self-saving.

Would they come to the end of themselves?

Would they see your grace not as a challenge, not as an opposition, not as an enemy, but would they see it as their rescue?

Thank you that you have overwhelmed our disbelief and drawn us to yourself.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.