Matthew 13:47-50

B. THE PROBLEM OF EVIL IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD: THE TRIALS OF TRUTH
2. THE PARABLE OF THE DRAGNET
TEXT: 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 filled, they drew up on the beach; and they sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but the bad they cast away. 49 So shall it be in the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the righteous, 50 and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

THOUGHT QUESTIONS

a.

What is God planning to do about all the hypocrites in the Church?

b.

For whom was this parable originally planned? What would this fact have to do with its interpretation?

c.

Is there any similarity between this parable and that of the Weeds? If so, what features are similar? If not, what differences exclude their consideration as parallel stories speaking to the same problem?

d.

Since Jesus gave a partial interpretation without defining precisely the kingdom of heaven, what phase of the Kingdom was foremost in His mind, and how would you go about deciding that?

e.

Where do you think Jesus got this story? By direct inspiration from God or out of His personal, human encounter with real life in the midst of the daily business of living? Where was Jesus when He told this story?

PARAPHRASE

From another point of view, Jesus went on, God's Kingdom is similar to a fisherman's dragnet which, when lowered into the sea, brings in a haul of all kinds of fish. When it is full, the fishermen haul it ashore. There they sit down to sort the good fish into containers and throw the unusable away. This is how it will be at the end of the world. The angels will come and divide the wicked from the righteous. Then they will throw the wicked into hell, where they will know sorrow and impotent anger.

SUMMARY

The grand scope of the Kingdom of God takes in the whole world, a fact, of course, that means the inclusion of many wicked people. Nevertheless, the final judgment will definitively separate these from God's people.

NOTES

While covering essentially the same ground as the Parable of the Weeds, slight differences of emphasis are traceable. While the latter story sets forth the present mixture of good and evil and the necessity of allowing this mixture to stand until judgment, the Dragnet story acknowledges the mixture, but gives more emphasis to the ultimate separation. Coming, as Matthew lists it, almost on the heels of Jesus-' interpretation of the Weeds Parable, this illustration is its perfect complement and parallel.

Matthew 13:47 The word for net (sagéne) pictures an enormous, crescent-shaped seine (from the same Greek word) utilized much like a huge fence lowered into the water between two boats. With floats fastened to the top of the fence and weights at the bottom so the lower part would trail over the lakefloor, these large dragnets were then slowly towed toward shore, entrapping any fish in its path. Once near the shore the fishermen could then haul this heavy, fish-ladden fence close enough to drag it out of the water. At this point they could easily divide the unusable rejects from the good fish.

But to what aspect of the Kingdom does the net refer?

1.

The Gospel and its effect in the world? The visible Church? Lenski (Matthew, 547, 549) so pictures it;

This net is the gospel, The sea is the world, and of every kind means some (partitive ek) of every kind, race, type, social and intellectual grade of men. Being the gospel, the net belongs to God or Christ and, of course, is handled by all who promulgate the gospel, i.e., the church. But the parable omits mention of these, as not belonging in the picture at this time. To bring them in, nevertheless, spoils the whole comparison for all the members and pastors of the church are also the fish caught in the net. the whole of it is one great sweep of the net through the waters of the sea. The picture is not that of repeated casting. The parable deals with all those who are caught by the great gospel net. All kinds and conditions of men are swept into its meshes, but these are of two classes. Here on earth both are mixed together in the outward body of the church. They all confess and profess faith, but not all are vere credentes and thus pronounced righteous by the divine Judge. Church discipline cannot eliminate them, for we cannot judge men's hearts.

Trench (Notes, 51) takes a similar view.

However, Lenski's admission that to mention the evangelizing Church as part of the parable, in that she manages the Gospel-net, spoils the comparison, is really fatal to this too-exclusive interpretation. In fact, it ignores Jesus-' own explanation that the fishermen who separate the fish represent the angels, who, it may be supposed, superintend the entire operation, (See below on angels, Matthew 13:49.)

Also his interpretation of ek as exclusively partitive in the sense of some of every kind, as if Jesus did not mean ALL of every kind, too arbitrarily sets aside the significant class of uses of ek denoting the origin, family, race, city, people, etc., from which someone or something comes, hence, the kind to which he belongs. The idea of each fish's belonging to a kind, here, completely overshadows the idea of its separation from the group of his own kind. The attentive reader will notice that the translators have rightly added, not (some) of every kind, but (fish) of every kind.

2.

He refers, rather, to the Rule of God over the world. The net, in this case, is not the visible Church in the world nor the mixed catch its true and false members. The net is the invincible power of the Kingdom of God itself. The sea is the world in which the net begins almost invisibly to exert its influence. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, but ever more certainly the Rule of God closes in on humanity bringing men ever closer to judgment. This interpretation has the advantage of including the former, in the sense that the Church and its Gospel are subsumed under the prejudgment activities of that portion of humanity under God's dominion that, in the end, will be declared righteous. It is, in fact, the Church's proclamation of the Gospel that makes good men good, and prepared for that happy conclusion prepared for them. Nevertheless, this is but one aspect of God's Kingdom, and must not be made to overshadow what God is doing to tighten His grip on the greater majority of mankind which rejects His benign rule and so will be rejected. (Cf. Matthew 7:13-14)

It is a fact that while the net is yet in the sea, the quality of character of its catch is yet unknown, since the fish are still free to swim around in its ever smaller radius. What they are is hidden from view until the haul is brought out onto the bank. Is this, too, part of Jesus-' thought? If so, it is perfectly parallel with the striking similarity between the wheat and the tares in the companion parable. In fact, it is not until judgment that the formerly invisible distinctions in men come to light. So long as men are left together until judgment, for the present, at least, it often appears to make little difference whether a man sees the truth and goes all out to possess it. The big fish gobble the small fry, the rich get richer and the poor get trampled. It becomes an especially strong temptation to play the fool and say that truth and righteousness do not matter. (Study Psalms 73: Asaph felt this keenly.) But after the time together, the great separation will reveal what had so often been hidden before, i.e., the chasmic difference in the final destiny of men who saw, understood and made the rule of God their own, and that of those who did not.

Matthew 13:48 They sat down and gathered the good into vessels. This refers to nothing other than what, in other descriptive expressions, is termed the granary for the wheat (Matthew 13:30; Matthew 3:12), the many dwelling places (John 14:2), the bosom of Abraham (Luke 16:22), eternal habitations (Luke 16:9), the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God (Hebrews 11:10), a homeland; a better, heavenly country; a city (Hebrews 11:14-16).

Matthew 13:49-50 This is practically a repetition of Matthew 13:39-42 on which see notes.

The angels shall come forth. How could Jesus have affirmed the express activities of angels, if such beings did not exist? The skeptics who see in His teaching nothing more than accommodation to the traditional superstitions then current among the Jews will have to give this same down-grading to a wide range of situations in which He affirms their certain existence and activity. (Cf. Matthew 16:26; Matthew 18:10; Matthew 22:30; Matthew 24:31; Matthew 24:36; Matthew 25:31; Matthew 25:41; Matthew 26:53) Their reality stands (or falls) on the same basis as anything else about whose existence we cannot know otherwise than because He tells us. These heavenly ministers of God will proceed to do what His earthly ministers dare not begin: they carry out the actual work of severing the wicked from among the righteous. (Cf. Matthew 13:30) The great, fundamental concept of God's Kingdom pictured in this illustration is the final and full realization of its holiness. The Kingdom may be temporarily forced to tolerate the existence of the moral uncleanness and vileness forced upon it by its self-chosen commitment to use every means available to bring about the conversion to Christ of unclean, vile men. But this temporary, longsuffering toleration must never be mistaken for the final goal or confused for secret compromise with evil, for the threatened separation WILL come.

This parable, like that about the tares, is Jesus-' simple, unphilosophical revelation about God's ultimate answer to the problem of pain and evil in the world. Since the fundamental assumption is that the world is God's domain, this illustration deals with all evil in the Kingdom: God is neither powerless nor unconcerned about these seemingly insurmountable problems. In fact, Jesus is here shouting for all to hear that God's mercy and longsuffering gives sinners thousands of opportunities to know the truth and change before the net gets to shore. But it is also abundantly clear that God shall have the last word. The Lord SHALL judge His people, bringing all the present confusion to an end by separating the precious from the worthless and vile. (Cf. Psalms 1:5; Hebrews 10:30; Matthew 25:32; Matthew 13:39 ff)

Furnace of fire is a picture of horrible suffering, arising perhaps from some terrible historical realities like Nebuchadnezzer's burning fiery furnace (Daniel 3:6) developed into a figure of Gehenna contrasted with Paradise in later Judaism. (Cf. IV Ezra 7 :36) See Notes on Matthew 13:42; Matthew 3:12; Matthew 8:12.

AN INTERESTING COINCIDENCE?

The prophet Habakkuk, inspired to prophesy the horror-provoking Babylonian invasion of Israel, and shocked by the ruthlessness and violence of those pagans rolling over the people of God, felt driven to protest. In his complaint against this apparent injustice his prayer took the form of a comparison:
Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One?

We shall not die.

O Lord, thou hast ordained them as a judgment;

and thou, O Rock, hast established them for chastisement.

Thou who art of purer eyes than to behold evil

and canst not look on wrong,

Why dost thou look on faithless men,

and art silent when the wicked swallows up
the man more righteous than he?

For thou makest men like the fish of the sea,

like crawling things that have no ruler.

He (the Chaldean) brings all of them up with a hook,

he drags them out with his net,

He gathers them in his seine;

so he rejoices and exults.

Therefore he sacrifices to his net

and burns incense to his seine;

for by them he lives in luxury,

and his food is rich.

Is he then to keep on emptying his net,

and mercilessly slaying nations for ever? (Habakkuk 1:12-17)

To the prophet the Kingdom of God was being twisted all out of shape. The victory of evil over good was too real, screwing men's faith down to the very limits of endurance. Nevertheless, God's response to his perplexity demanded that he live by his faith. (Habakkuk 2:4)

Foreseeing that godly men would ever be perplexed by the apparent weakness and failure of the Kingdom of God, as they judge its progress in a chaotic world before the appointed time for judgment, did Jesus just take Habakkuk's illustration of the net and turn it right side out? The real net is not in the hands of evil men or godless empires endlessly gobbling up defenseless people, good and bad alike. The true seine is in the hands of the living God whose government slowly, solemnly draws all men closer into His control, some to their everlasting destruction, others to the eternal life of God itself. And Jesus-' Parable of the Dragnet, like God's answer to Habakkuk, while revealing the final victory of Jehovah, demands that the believer bow in humble submission to His rule, even if he does not understand it all nor can see the outcome on the horizon.

FACT QUESTIONS

1.

In what way is the Parable of the Dragnet similar to the Parable of the Tares? List the various points of resemblance.

2.

Summarize in one sharply pointed sentence the teaching of this story.

3.

Describe the net used by Jesus to create this illustration and then indicate the way it is used in fishing.

4.

Explain how this parable illustrates the Kingdom of God.