The Dragnet, Part 1

If you have your Bible, I would invite you to once again, turn with me to the book of Matthew, the 13th chapter, Matthew chapter 13, on the kingdom parables, as outlined by our Lord.

And tonight we're going to talk about what I would say was our Lord's favorite topic. And that was the topic of hell. Now, you might think that's a little weird, but the Lord spoke more about hell than he ever did about heaven. And you'd think it'd be just the opposite. That he'd be trying to convince people that this is where you need to be. You need to come home and be with me. And this is what it's going to be like. And this is what I'm going to do for you. This is where you need to go. So let me explain it to you.

But that's not what Jesus did. He spoke more about hell than heaven, more about hell than love, more about hell than peace, More about hell than prosperity. Tonight, as you talk about the parable, the dragnet, we realize the end of the kingdom. What's going to happen at the end of that mystery age? What happens at the end? And this is how Christ ends these series of parables on the kingdom age. And our outline is quite simple. It's like it's been the last several weeks. We're going to talk about the instruction of the parable, the interpretation of the parable, and just to let you know, that in the United States, today, somewhere between five and six thousand people went into eternity, most of them into a Christless eternity.

Tomorrow, the same thing will happen. Christ knew that people were dying right and left, and they needed to know where they would spend eternity. So he ends this series of the parables with the parable of the dragnet. And by looking at the instruction, two things I want you to see. Number one is the collection, and number two is the categorization.

Let's look at it together. Matthew 13, verse number 47. 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. 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 will 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. In looking at the instruction, the first thing I want you to see is the collection.

The imagery that Christ gives is a very common imagery to the disciples. A lot of them are fishermen. Fishing was a mainstay there in Israel, especially around the area of the Sea of Galilee. And there are three ways that the people during the time of Jesus fished in there, they basically keep those three ways even today in the Sea of Galilee. The first one is with a line and a hook.

Second is by casting nets, and the third is with a drag net. You need to understand the collection, how they would collect these fish. The third way was the use of what we call a drag net.

In fact, some of these nets were a half a mile in length. All that was in that net would be gathered together. That was a dragnet. That was how they did their commercial fishing. And that's what Christ is talking about in the parable of the dragnet. That somehow the kingdom of heaven is like this huge dragnet. And this dragnet emphasizes two things about the kingdom of God. One, it's immense. Two, it catches everything. And in this case, it brings it together for judgment. That's the collection. The second thing I want you to see is in verse number 48, and that is the categorization.

That is, there is a separation that Christ speaks of. He separates, he says, this in verse number 48. 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. Now, this is very important because you see the good fish are going to be used for resale. The good fish you're going to be able to use to eat. The bad fish, they're useless. They're no good. And you would think that as Christ begins to conclude the series on the kingdom age, that he would focus in on the good fish.

He would focus in on what's going to happen to the good guys. But he doesn't do that. In fact, he ends the whole series of the world. of parables, he ends the whole message on what we would call a bad note, not so much a good note, because he spends the rest of the time talking about the separation and what's going to happen to the bad fish, not what's going to happen to the good fish. Now, Christ is a master preacher. He's a master communicator. There's no better preacher that ever lived than Jesus Christ.

So if there's anybody who knows how to conclude a sermon, it's Jesus. If there's anybody who knows how to wrap it all up, it's Jesus. And he wraps it up by helping us understand the separation, the damnation, so that we would come to a realization of hell. Important. for all of us to grasp. And that leads us the main point number two, the interpretation.

And we'll look, first of all, at the separation. Of all the things that Christ could say about the dragnet, of all the things that Christ could say about the collection of those fish, he focuses in on the separation of those fish. And he tells us that there's going to be a separation. And so it will be at the end of the age. Now we know that the good and the evil are going to coexist throughout the kingdom age. Jesus already told us that. That's in the parable the wheat and the tears. We know that the enemy would sow the tears all in the field.

And we know that they're going to coexist together because Jesus said, that's the way it's going to be. And the disciples are thinking in their minds, wow, if the majority of people are going to reject the gospel, and only a few are going to accept the gospel, and we're going to grow together in the kingdom, a mage, this is going to be a mammoth, mammoth kind of separation. And so when Christ begins to explain to his men, the dragnet, he wants them to understand that little by literal, very silently and imperceptibly, God's net, the dragnet, is moving through the seas of time in bringing all men into the shores of eternity for that inevitable separation, the good fish, and the bad.

In verse number 47, he says, the kingdom of heaven is like a net. It's like a net that moves silently through the sea of life, and by the time people awaken to what God is doing, they will have already been brought to the shore of eternity to be separated. The only spiritual application the Lord makes for the parable is about the separation process on the shore. In verse number 49, he says, the time of the separation is going to be at the end of the age. It's going to be the time when at the end of this age, at the end of the kingdom age, when our Lord is going to come and return and set up his glorious kingdom.

our Lord at this time is not trying to give us a chronology of in time events. He does that in Matthew 25, in Matthew 24, and we'll talk about those parables as we get further in our study. At this time, he's not trying to give a chronology of events that are going to take place at the end of the age. He's just letting us know that there's going to come a day where there's going to be a time of separation, and at that separation, there's going to be a judgment. For the Bible says, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every man will that which has done in his body, whether it be good or bad.

There's going to be an inevitable judgment. And during that judgment, there's going to be a separation. And so he makes a general statement that everybody in the world, everybody in the kingdom age is going to be caught in this net. And at the end of the age, they are going to be separated. The good fish are going to go here, and the bad fish, they're going to be separated, and this is what's going to happen to them. and he spends his time talking about this separation and the damnation of these bad fish.

Bible tells us that the angels are going to be the ones that do the separation. We knew that from the parable of the wheat and the tears over in verse number 41. It says this, the son of man will send forth his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all stumbling blocks and those who commit lawlessness and will cast them into the furnace of fire in the place there shall be. be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So we know that the angels are involved in the separation process. Did you know? Listen carefully.

Did you know that hell was never prepared for human beings? Hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. And yet, at the great white throne judgment in Revelation chapter 20, when the books are open and all the dead are raised, those, whose names are not found written in the book of life, are cast into the lake of fire. They are cast into the place that has been prepared for the devil and his angels, because they have rejected the gospel, the truth of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Everybody who has ever lived and died will have an experience a resurrection.

The believer, resurrection unto life, the unbeliever, a resurrection unto judgment, or as Revelation 20 says, a resurrection in order to inherit the second death.

Now, some people ask the question, well, didn't Jesus talk about this in the parable of the wheat and the tears? Why is he emphasizing it again? Well, two things you've got to understand. The parable of the wheat and the tears emphasize the fact that the good and evil people would coexist together. The parable of the of the dragnet emphasizes the separation of the good and the evil. While in the wheat and the tears, judgment is delayed in the parable of the dragnets, justice will not be denied. And God says, vengeance is mine.

I will repay, says the Lord. He said, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Christ was compassionate. The Bible tells us that he would come and he would weep over Jerusalem. Why? Because they rejected him as their Messiah. He wasn't an angry Messiah. He wasn't a mean Messiah. He was a loving, caring Messiah. And that's why he told him about hell. And that's why he warned them about judgment to come. Oh, that's so important. Let me tell you something.

At Christ's Community Church, we care about your soul. At most churches, they just care about your body. They want you there. They want your money. They want your check. This past weekend I heard a preacher say, you know, we got five services at our church. We got five different services. One to meet your needs. And all the while, you had all these unsaid people in the audience. The main emphasis of his message was this. Our church is about community. Our church is about making a safe environment for your children.

And never once that he warned them about the damnation of hell. and never once did he tell them about the consequences of their sin, and never once that he mentioned the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and what must you do to be saved? And all these unsaved people were in the audience, and yet he says, come to our church. We have five different services, one that will meet your needs. There is a church that doesn't concern themselves with the souls of man, but concerns themselves with the bodies of men.

You can't be a preacher of hell and be a user-friendly kind of church. Why? Because nobody's going to come. They don't want to hear that. What do they want to hear? They want to hear about the marriage. They want to hear about communication. They want to hear about relationships. They want a hear about love and they want to hear about all that good stuff. But they don't want to hear about hell and they don't want to hear about the fires of hell and they don't want to hear about the destiny of the wicked.

That doesn't make it feel very good. You can be a Seeker, sensitive, user-friendly church and preach the true gospel. Can't do it. Because you're going to negate it. the one topic that Jesus spoke the most about. And if you want to be like Jesus, you've got to talk about hell. So we preach about hell. In fact, we've got a two-taped series called The Horrors of Hell. You might want to pick that up. Because we want people to understand the destiny of the wicked. We need to understand what Christ understood.

He knew where they were going. He is the Alpha, the Omega, the God who is and who was and who is to come. He knows all about the place. of the wicked, he created it. He knows what it's like. If you come to Christ, what do you say? I come to set a sword in the family to turn a father from his son, a son from his mother. I come to separate the family. Why? Because the gospel separates. The unbeliever wants nothing to do with it. They want nothing to do with truth. They hate truth. And Christ says, I came to divide.

I came to separate the wheat from the chaff. I mean, most people, they don't have enough trust in God to believe that no matter what happens, he's in control and will rule and reign in their lives supreme. Jesus was concerned that the kingdom of God is going to engulf man so much so that at the end of the age, There's going to be a separation. The good for the bad. Second point in the main point number two, not only the separation, but the damnation.

He says in verse number 50, Matthew 13, these words, He will cast them into the furnace of fire. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. That's a horrifying verse. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. If there is any doctrine that we, wish we could we could just do away with it would be the doctrine of hell if we could just minimize it a little bit if we could just eliminate it from our bible and many many and sad to say theologians have done that so much so that they they believe in what what is called annihilationism that is that you won't burn forever and ever and ever in hell but eventually you'll just completely be annihilated and go out of existence but that's not what the bible teaches that's not what Jesus said.

Jesus said that heaven is as long as hell and hell is as long as heaven. And that's forever, not just until you're annihilated. And Christ says he'll cast them into the furnace of fire.

You know, Christ had to be the one that teaches about this. It couldn't have been anybody else. It had to be Jesus. He had to be the preacher of hell because we had to know the truth. If you don't think it's true, Then you haven't paid attention to the ministry of Christ. And that leads us to our third point, the realization of hell.

If you go back to Matthew chapter 5, remember his very first sermon? It's very interesting to note that the very first sermon Jesus preached, he talked about hell.

And the very last sermon he gave, he talked about hell. Think in your own minds, when is the last time you heard a message on hell? Now, if you've been at Christ's Community Church, you've heard several messages about hell. But when was the last time your pastor at your church preached on hell? and the consequences of sin being eternal separation from God forever Jesus began his ministry preaching about hell he ended his ministry preaching about hell and all throughout his ministry he talked about hell Matthew 5 verse number 22 whoever shall say thou fool shall be in danger of hellfire that's his very first sermon in the Mount over in Matthew 12 verse number 36 and I say to you that every careless word that men shall speak they shall render account for it in the day of judgment for by your words shall be justified and by your words you shall be condemned you can read about hell in matthew 23 matthew 25 mark 9 Luke 6 Luke 12 Luke 16 and in fact in Luke 16 he told a story about a rich man who died and went to hell because he wanted you to understand and it's not a parable it's a true story first of all christ doesn't tell you it's a parable and second of all he gives you the names of the people in the parable i mean in the story it's not a parable it's a true story the rich man died and went to Hell.

And Christ lets us know this man would scream to Abraham to send Lazarus just to tip the end of his finger in the water that he might cool his tongue. Based on the example of Christ, our emphasis should be a preaching about judgment and a preaching about hell. But you know what you find? You find very little written about it and hardly anybody's speaking about it. Why? Because that's not the way to grow a church today. It's not the way to meet your building That's not the way to make people happy.

I love Jesus. He didn't care whether or not people were happy. He just cared whether or not they were holy. Right? That's what we should be concerned about. Their holiness. Not their happiness. There's a description of hell in the Bible. It talks about it being a certain place of punishment. I thought that I'd just take a few moments just to talk a little bit about that. Because the Bible describes hell as a place of horrible misery and unrelieved torment. We read it in Matthew chapter 8. It's a place of outer darkness.

Matthew 25 says it's a place of fire. Now think about that. It's a place of complete blackness. Outer darkness. No light. And yet there's fire. You think where there's fire, there's light, right? Not in hell. It's different. Can't see complete blackness. And yet unrelieved misery. And God uses the word fire to describe hell as a place of suffering. and he gives two insights in how people will respond in hell. Very interesting. In Luke 16, he talks about how the rich man would cry out. The one way people are going to respond in hell is the fact that they're going to continually cry out.

And another way they're going to respond, according to Matthew 8, is that there's going to be weeping and gnashing of teeth. We know for certain that two ways that people will respond in hell is that they're going to grit their teeth. and they're going to be so angry, and the majority of them, almost all of them are going to be so angry because they are so mad that their way wasn't right. And they didn't respond to truth. And yet they had it. We told you in the story of Rich Man Lazarus that the key element there is the rich man's memory.

He remembers. Your memory, you don't forget anything in hell. You remember everything, every track you read, every sermon you heard, every invitation you rejected. You remember it all. And it causes you to weep and to gnash your teeth. and to grind your teeth, and it causes you to cry out, but there's no way to respond. It's a place about our darkness, a place of torment. It's a place where your soul goes first, and your body and soul will go together.

Second, we talked about this in our study of Revelation, that the difference between Hades and hell is that in Hades, your soul suffers torment, but in hell, in the lake of fire, both your body and your soul suffer torment.

because in Revelation chapter 20 when the sea gives up its dead, when the land gives up, it's dead, And we talked about in Revelation 20 how that is going to appear to the unbeliever. Those people who have died and are now in torment are going to have their bodies resurrected. And they're going to stand before the great white throne judgment. And just for that one moment, they're going to think, finally I'm out of here.

It's over. It's done. I paid for my sin. Oh, for God to open up the books and say, your name's not here. And to cast them into the lake of fire where now the torment will not just be on the soul, but will be on the body and the soul forever and ever and ever. That's what's going to happen. Amazing. That's why Christ said, fear not those who kill your body. but fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body where in hell. That's the one you need to fear. And you know what? There's going to be degrees of punishment in hell.

Everybody's going to suffer miserably, but some will suffer more miserably than others will. How do I know that? We read about it in Matthew chapter 11. It'll be more tolerable for Sodom than for you, Copernum, because they didn't have what you have. It says this in Hebrews 10, 29, of how much soul. saw our punishment, suppose ye shall he be thought worthy who had trodden underfoot the son of God and hath counted the blood of the covenant and unholy thing. Let me tell you something.

The people who receive the most knowledge, received the greatest torment. That's why the lowest levels of hell are reserved for counterfeit preachers. They'll receive the worst, the worst judgment because they knew the truth and didn't give the truth. They'll find it to be worse there. It was John Gersner who said this, hell will have such severe degrees that a sinner, were he able, would give the whole world if his sins could be just one less. And Matthew 25 says, the wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life, meaning that hell will be just as long as heaven forever, forever.

Let's pray. Thank you.