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And now for the high and sacred privilege of coming to God's precious Word and I would
encourage you, if you will, to take your Bible and turn with me to Matthew chapter 13 ... Matthew
chapter 13, and we are examining this morning verses 47 through 52 ... Matthew 13, verses
47 through 52.
We come to the last of seven parables given by our Lord Jesus Christ in this thirteenth
chapter. And this one is the climax. This particular parable is a parable about judgment.
It is a parable about hell. And the keynote of the parable is found in verse 50, the furnace
of fire, where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Our Lord spoke very much and very often about hell. He said many things about the abode
of the damned, the wicked, the Christ rejecters. But of all of the startling, terrifying things
that Jesus ever said, perhaps the most startling was when He said to the Jewish leaders, - How
can ye escape the damnation of hell? In Matthew 23:33. How can ye escape the damnation of
hell?
It seems strange to us to hear words like that coming from the mouth of the Lord Jesus
Christ. For we don't associate the Lord Jesus Christ with hell, as often as we ought. He
said more about hell than he did about love. He said more about hell than all the other
biblical preachers combined. And if we are to model our preaching after His, then hell
is a major theme for us.
The other night I heard a teen age punk rocker being interviewed. And the reporter said to
her - What are you looking forward to? What is in the future for punk rock? She said - Death.
I'm looking forward to death. He said - Why? She said - I want to go to hell. Because hell
will be fun. I hope I go to hell, I want to die so I cat get to hell and have fun.
What deception. Hell is not fun. One writer said, "There is no way to describe hell, nothing
on earth can compare with it. No living person has any real idea of it. No madman in wildest
flights of insanity ever beheld its horror. No man in delirium ever pictured a place so
utterly terrible as this. No nightmare racing across a fevered mind ever produced a terror
to match the mildest hell. No *** scene with splashed blood and oozing wound ever
suggested a revoltion that could touch the borderlands of hell. Let the most gifted writer
exhaust his skill in describing this roaring cavern of unending flame and he would not
even brush in fancy the nearest edge of hell," end quote.
This is a parable in which our Lord warns about hell. Now remember, in these parables
the Lord is telling us what it will be like in this period of the world's history, this
form of His rule. He is the King and He rules in the world. And He is allowing, in this
period of time, good and evil to grow together as we saw in the parable of the wheat and
the tares. He's ... He's tolerant of the good and evil through this period. But in the end
will come a judgment. And that's why this is the last parable. We have now swept through
the parables that describe the nature of the kingdom, the power of the kingdom, the personal
appropriation of the kingdom, and now we come to the climax and the end and the judgment.
And it is a warning. It is a fearful warning that in the end there will be an eternal separation
of the damned from the redeemed. And the world, you see, is moving toward this. Every human
life is moving toward that inevitable hour, today at least, five thousand two hundred
and eighty two people in the United States alone will die and enter eternity, most of
them will go to hell. And this final parable brings us up short with a sense of severe
warning.
Now, I want us, first of all, to look at the picture the Lord paints, the picture is first.
Verse 47, "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was cast into the sea and
gathered from every kind."
Now this gives us the imagery that we need to understand the teaching here. Fishing in
our Lord's time was a common enterprise. Fishing was a way of life. Fishing for some of the
disciples was their way of life, so they would understand very clearly of which He spoke.
Basically there were three ways to fish. And these three ways are still being used in that
country in the Lake of Gennesaret, the Sea of Galilee. First was with a line and hook
which caught fishes one at a time. In Matthew chapter 17 and verse 27, the Lord Jesus said
to Peter - Put your line and your hook into the sea and catch a fish and open its mouth
and find a piece of money and take it and use if for your taxes and for mine. And that
was an illustration of the kind of fishing they did which was done with a line and a
hook.
Earlier, in the fourth chapter of Matthew, the Lord had come across the disciples, Peter
and Andrew, and they were fishing it says, in 4:18, casting a net into the sea. The second
king of fishing was a casting net ... amphiblestron is the word in the Greek. And it was a very
special net. It was a net that was like a large circle and on the outer perimeter of
the circle were weights. It was pulled together in the middle. And there was a rope attached
to the arm of the fishermen. The net was draped over the shoulder and as the fishermen came
to the shore, he threw the net and had become, of course, so deft at it that it would go
into its entire circular: form and it would hit the water as a large circle and as it
sunk toward the bottom it would capture in it as the lead weights pulled down the edges,
all the fish that were in that area. So the fisherman would watch until he saw the school
of fish, and then he would spin that thing and it would open its full circle and capture
the fish and then that cord attached to his wrist would be pulled tight and it would pull
the net together until he had a sack and he would drag the net on to the shore full of
the catch.
And that is the net our Lord used to speak of being fishers of men, throw out the net
and catch men for Christ and pull them in. But that is not the net that is used here.
This is a completely different Greek term. This term is a unique term. It is the term
sagene and it has to do with what we'll call a seine net, or a troll net. It's a very distinct
term. It speaks of a very, very large net. Now when I say very large, I mean very large.
Lensky, the commentator, says that some of these nets covered one half mile of area.
Very large nets. A net that could not be worked with the hand of a man. How it was used is
very simple to understand.
One end of this large net was attached to the shoreline. The other end was attached
to a boat. As the boat left the shore, it pulled the net into a form where the net was
stretched between the boat out in the lake and the net hooked to the shore. And then
the boat would begin to move in a circle. And as it moved in a circle, it would sweep
into this massive net, all the life in front of the net. It would complete an entire circle,
come all the way back to where it was attached, and would have gathered into that entire net,
all the life that was in the sea covered by that net.
Because the top of the net had floats, it floated on the surface of the water. The bottom
of the net had weights, it sunk to the bottom so that the net moved through the sea like
a vertical wall capturing everything. Now what our Lord wants us to understand in this
net is basically two things ... one, is the immense size of the net. And two, is the fact
that it brings in everything... a conglomerate inclusive catch. Now once this has happened
and the boat has moved through the sea, this great vertical wall has swept up everything,
living and dead, it sometimes drug the bottom and pulled up all kinds of things, seaweed,
every form of life that would be there would be caught in that net, then it comes back
to the shore and at that point we're introduced to verse 48.
"And when the net was then full, they drew to shore and sat down and gathered the good
into vessels, but cast the bad away."
Now, the central figure of the parable is a group of fishermen. They're on the shore
in verse 48. And lying there at the edge of the water is this recently drawn massive net
and it is literally soaking and teeming with life, filled with the conglomerate of creatures
taken from the water. And then begins a very slow, deliberate careful, patient, unhurried,
accurate, knowledgeable, skillful process of sorting out the good from the bad. They
sat down. It was something they did very carefully ... very patiently.
Now this scene would be very common to the people to whom our Lord spoke, particularly
the disciples. They would take the good and put it into some vessels, very often water-contained
vessels, to keep the fish alive if they were to be transported. If they were immediately
to be used in some form, they could be put in another vessel. The bad was just thrown
away.
Now the picture is very clear, isn't it? Let's look secondly, at the principle ... verse
49. And here's our Lord's own interpretation. "So shall it be at the end of the age: the
angels shall come forth and separate the wicked from among the righteous." We can stop at
that point.
There's a lot that you could say about that parable. There's a lot you could do with it.
There are some interesting possibilities. But the Lord is only interested in one element
and that is the separating process that went on on the shore as a picture of the angelic
separation in judgment ... that's what He's after.
You see, all along in this era, as we've been learning, the good and the evil go together
and God tolerates the evil. But the time is coming when He will make a separation ... between
those who know the King and are subjects of the King and know the Lord Jesus Christ, and
those who do not. And that separation is inevitable and it is ultimate. And little by little,
imperceptibly and silently, that net moves through the sea of time drawing all men to
the shores of eternity for that inevitable separation. That is the principle. The net
draws in all kinds of fish. It is indiscriminating, in the sense, that it just catches everything
in its way. And so it is it says in verse 47, the kingdom of heaven is like that net,
it moves silently through the sea of life, drawing men, almost without them knowing it,
to the shore of eternity. And by the time they awaken to what is happening, it is too
late ... they're already there. They are drawn to the separation.
Now this same truth was taught in the parable of the wheat and the tares,as you can go back
to verse 41 and see. "The Son of man shall send His angels, and they'll gather out of
His kingdom all things that offend and them that do iniquity, and they shall be cast into
a furnace of fire where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth." Same idea ... but
the Lord repeats it.
Now, the only spiritual thing that the Lord pinpoints in this parable is that last act
of the fishermen. Every thing else passes without comment. And I think we ought to leave
the rest without comment ... and just take what our Lord meant to teach. When He spoke
of the casting net, He used that in a positive way to speak to the disciples of catching
men for Christ. When He speaks of this drag-net as it's called, or this troll net, or seine
net, or sagene net, He is talking about gathering men for judgment.
Look at verse 49, "So shall it be at the end of the age." When man's day is over and Jesus
returns to set up His glorious kingdom, then comes the judgment. Now this is not a ... a
technical, chronological, eschatological layout, this is not trying to pinpoint every element
of judgment, every time and place and are we talking about the great white throne, or
the sheep and the goats, or the bema seat judgment or whatever, this is just a general
statement that all in the world are caught ultimately in the net of judgment, to be separated
in the end. And you notice again, would-you please, in verse 49 that the angels are the
executioners? The angels are the separators, just as we saw in verse 41, just as we see
in Matthew 24; the angels come with the Lord to act out judgment. Just as we see in Matthew
25, just as we see repeatedly in Revelation, particularly chapter 14. The angels are the
agents of God's judgment. So while the kingdom may, for a while, tolerate good and evil growing
together, the separation is moving closer and closer all the time.
Jesus spoke of this same thing in Matthew chapter 25 when He said in verse 31, "The
Son of man shall come in His glory and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit
on the throne of His glory." And what will He do when He comes? It says, "And before
Him shall He gather all the nations and He shall separate one from another. Separation.
"And He'll say to them, on His right hand, Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. And He'll say to them on the
left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and
his angels."
And Jesus said in John chapter 5 that there's coming a resurrection of all men, some to
the resurrection of life and some to the resurrection of damnation. There will be a final separation,
an eternal destiny will be determined for every soul that has ever lived on the face
of the earth.
Now some people have asked - Why this parable is included if the basic idea of separation
is even also included in the parable of the wheat and the tares? And the answer to that
is several things. Number one, it is repeated because the wheat and the tares emphasize
particularly the co-existence, this emphasizes only the separation. It is repeated also because
the Lord has a compassionate heart and He wants to add one more warning. That's typical
of our Lord. He warned about hell ... many times ... many times, so concerned was He
that men not go there. Many times He said - Watch, watch, for you know neither the day
nor the hour in which the Son of man comes. Many times He warned the people not to take
lightly their sins because there would be the inevitability of the accounting that God
would make. He talked about the days of Noah, that men would be living in ease and apparent
prosperity, and happiness, going through the motions of life, and there would come horrifying
judgment. He warned again, and again and again. He told men that through His prophet John
the Baptist, that He would come with unquenchable fire to burn up those that were lost. He looked
out at the world in Matthew 9 and He saw a harvest moving toward judgment. He was compassionate
enough to see men on the way to damnation and call to them. And so that's why this is
here. It emphasizes the separation that is the end of this age and it gives the Lord
a chance to release that compassionate heart.
See, the Bible says God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. The Bible says that
He is not willing that any should perish. The Bible says that God our Savior will have
all men to be saved. Jesus wept over Jerusalem and said - 0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft
I would have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her brood, but you would not. You will not
come unto Me, He said pensively, that you might have eternal life. His heart of compassion
is one that warns because He loves.
Now look again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net ... and you can see the vividness of
this imagery. That net moves through the world. It is invisible to those around who can't
yet see it. And if perchance it touches the back of a fish, the fish simply flits a little
further ahead and enjoys the freedom he things is his permanently. And men live in this world
imagining themselves to be free, moving about, fulfilling their own desires, going here and
going there as they will, with little knowledge that the net comes closer and closer and closer.
People float about in the liberty of the wide-deep sea of life, not knowing the invisible lines
of judgment move closer and closer and closer. And each time they are touched by it, they
move a little further away. And they're touched again and they move a little further away.
And finally they've moved one time and they've hit it on the other side because it's moving
toward the shore and then wildly the fish may dart for the sea only to be caught again
in the same net ... finally to be dragged in the shore and the last throws of a flailing
and flipping enter into a silent death. And that's how it is. Men may not perceive the
kingdom, they may not see God moving in the world, but He is moving. And men very often
when touched by the gospel of Jesus Christ, or threatened by the threat of judgment, dart
into the freedom they think is ahead of them but sooner or later they run right back into
the same net because there's no freedom there. And they are inexorably moving toward inevitable
judgment.
All men are gathered in the net. The kingdom will ultimately engulf them all. And God with
His angels will separate.
Now, that leads me to a third thought, and that is the peril ... the peril. Verse 50,
"And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."
Now that is a fearful verse. And I confess to you that it affects me just as it affects
anybody. It is a horrifying, fearful verse. And if there's any doctrine in the Bible that
you wish were not there it is the doctrine of hell, but that does not eliminate it. It
is there. And this is the heart of the matter. --Cast into the furnace of fire -- those are
terrifying words from our Lord. A d yet He spoke more of hell than anybody else. And
I think there's a reason.
Do you know what I think? I think that if Jesus hadn't taught us about hell, we wouldn't
believe whoever did. It had to be Him. It is so inconceivable, so causes us to be revulsed.
We cannot conceive of eternal damnation. And it had to be our Lord who said this or we
never wouldhave been able to accept it. It was His own special emphasis. And He was a
preacher of hell. More than anything else, He threatened men with hell. And if you don't
think He did then you haven't been carefully noting His ministry.
In chapter five, for example, and you could take ... I could spend ... you know, the whole
morning just on the statements Jesus made about it. Don't turn with me, just listen
and jot down verses if you care to, but listen to what He said in Matthew 5:22, He said,
"Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." In verse 29 of chapter
5, "If your right eye offend you, pluck it out and cast it from you for it is profitable
for you that one of your members should perish, and not your whole body should be cast into
hell." Verse 30, "If your right hand offend you, cut it off, throw it away, for it is
profitable for you that one of your members should perish and not that your whole body
should be cast into hell."
In chapter 7, verse 27, He said, "And the rain descended and the flood came and blew
and beat on that house and it fell and great was the fall of it." And that's an allusion
to damnation as well.
In chapter 8 verse 12, "The sons of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness, there
shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Chapter 11 and verse 20, "He began to upbraid the cities in which most of His mighty works
were done because they repented not" and He says to them, "You will be brought down to
hell." Serious ... serious words from our Lord.
The same thing is true in chapter 12, He says in verse 36, "Every idle word that men shall
speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment, for by thy words thou shalt
be justified and by thy words thou shalt be damned, or condemned."
He talks about a demon who leaves a man and then seven more come back in more wicked than
himself, and the last state of that man is the first, even so shall it be unto this wicked
generation.
In chapter 18, and these are examples, it says, "Whosoever offends a little child who
believes in Me, it would be better off if a millstone were hanged around his neck and
he were drowned in the depth of the sea." And then He goes back into talking about being
cast into everlasting fire, verse 8, into everlasting hell fire, verse 9, chapter 18.
This was a constant part of what our Lord taught. And you go into chapter 21, verse
43, "The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation, bringing forth
the fruits of it and whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken, but whomsoever
it shall fall it will grind him to powder."
Chapter 23 talks about hell repeatedly. Chapter 24, chapter 25, Mark chapter 9, Luke chapter
6, Luke chapter 12, Luke chapter 16, it just goes on and on. Jesus told a whole story about
a man that died and went to hell, being in torment, screamed for someone to come with
water and cool his tongue.
Now if you, then, are to evaluate what should be the emphasis of preaching, based on the
example of Christ, it should be preaching on hell. Our generation doesn't do that. It's
convicting that we say so little about hell. It's so hard to believe. It's so terrifying.
It is so awesome that it had to come from the Lord or we never would have been able
to accept it.
Now, what is this furnace of fire? What is hell? Let me give you four truths about hell
... that I think will answer that question. Number one, hell is a place of unrelieved
torment. It is a place of unrelieved torment. It is a place of a horrible misery. And the
Bible defines it as darkness, outer darkness. That is deep pit darkness, darkness that's
way out from the light, impenetrable darkness. Darkness that closes in. And it is darkness
without the hope of light forever. Have you ever been in the darkness and longed for the
daylight? Have you ever been in the darkness and longed for someone to turn a light on?
To be in that encroaching, encompassing, moving kind of darkness and know that for all the
eons of eternity, you will never see light ... is how our Lord describes hell ... unrelieved
darkness forever ... with no hope of the light ... no hope of the dawn. And the Biblealso
says it is a fire. Now it is not a fire that we would know as fire, to burn something in
this world. But fire is God's way of describing it because it is a tortuous, unrelieved kind
of fire ... more terrible than any fire that we would ever know. But fire describes the
torment of the damned; blackness describes the torment of the damned, no light, no light
ever, ever ... no relief from the suffering, the agony and the pain, forever. And there's
only two times in all of Scripture that we have any insight into how people respond to
hell. The one is the Lord's parable in Luke 16 where He says the man cried out in torment
and said - Cool my tongue for I'm tormented in this flame. And the other is that constant
statement of our Lord there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. The response
to hell is not fun, it is weeping, that's crying, wailing, screaming and grinding of
teeth in pain. That's what the Bible says. That's hell.
It is a place of unrelieved torment. Secondly, it is a place of unrelieved torment for both
body and soul ... for both body and soul. Soul being the inner part. When a person dies,
their soul goes out of the presence of God, into the torment of hell. It may not be the
full final lake of fire that comes after the judgment in the great white throne, for that
needs a transcendent body to endure it, but it is a torment just as well as illustrated
by the rich man who in hell was tormented. When a person dies now, their soul descends
into that torment. In the future, there will be a resurrection of the bodies of the damned,
they will be given a transcendent body that will then go into a lake of fire. It will
be a body not like the body we have now. It will be a very different one. They will be
resurrected just like we will, as Christians. We will be resurrected because this body could
never live eternally in heaven, right? We have to have a transcendent body, a glorified
body, a different body, and so do the damned. And they will be raised, John 5, they will
be raised in new bodies for the single purpose of being punished forever in those bodies.
That's what the Bible says ... tormented forever. They have to have a body to fit that eternal
torment.
And that's why Jesus in Matthew 10:28 said, "Fear not them that can destroy the body,
but fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." You see, hell is soul and
body. Some people think it's just bad memories. No, it isn't just bad memories. It isn't just
the inner thinking processes; it is that body as well. Transcendent, eternal bodies, greater
than anything we have on this earth, are going to be given to the damned so that they can
suffer in those bodies forever. And that's the only reason that they'll have those bodies.
With the present body, man couldn't endure hell. You ... the body that we have now would
be consumed in a moment. So as God fits the redeemed with new bodies for heaven, He fits
the damned with new bodies for hell.
We know a little about that ... from two things the Lord said. He said, first of all, the
worm dieth not. Now what did He mean by that? When a body goes into the grave and to decay,
worms descend into that body and they begin to consume that body and the worms will die
when the food is gone. So once the body is consumed, the worms die. But in hell, the
worms never die because the body, though it is continually being consumed, is never consumed.
So the worm never dies. In other words, t he Lord was saying the unrelieved torment
of body goes on and on. And it says also, the fire is not quenched. Now a fire always
goes out when the fuel is gone. But the fuel will never be gone, though the burning goes
on, the fuel is never consumed. And so you have unrelieved torment of body and soul.
And that brings me to the third thought, you have in hell - a place of relieved torment
of body and soul in varying degrees ... in varying degrees. In other words, for some
people, hell will be worse than others. For all who are there, it will be horrible, it
will be ultimate suffering, there will be no relief for that ... but there will be even
more severe degrees of suffering for some. It says in Hebrews 10, "Of how much more severe
punishment shall they be thought worthy who have trodden underfoot the Son of God and
counted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing." People who have stepped on Jesus Christ,
who have rejected his cross, will know a greater hell than those who have not. There will be
degrees, just as there will be degrees of reward in
heaven.
We saw that, also, I think, in Matthew chapter 11, when it said, "It will be more tolerable
for *** than for you." In other words, it's only relative, it isn't going to be tolerable
for anyone, but it will appear to be more tolerable for them than for you because of
what you have experienced. You had Jesus Christ in your city, they didn't. You rejected Him
with more light; therefore hell will be more severe for you.
And then you have, of course, that incredible parable in Luke 12 where the Lord says, "To
the servant who knew and didn't do right, many stripes. To the servant who didn't know
and didn't do right, a few stripes." So, hell will be unrelieved torment of body in soul
in varying degrees. But John Gerstner says, "Hell will have such severe degrees that a
sinner, were he able, would give the whole world if his sins could be one less."
And fourthly, hell is a place of unrelieved torment for body and soul in varying degrees
endlessly... endlessly. The worm never dies, the fire never goes out, the light never breaks,
the sweet relief of death never comes, endlessly. The only reason or the only way in which we
in this life can even make it through trials and pain and suffering and disease is because
we believe there will be an end to it. But they won't have that. You can imagine the
resultant insanity that will come. And you say - Are you sure it's everlasting? It's
just as everlasting as heaven is because in the same verse, the Lord used the same terms
... Matthew 25:46, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, the righteous into
everlasting life." Whatever everlasting life is in terms of its length, so is everlasting
punishment. That's hell.
God never prepared it for people. He prepared it for the devil and his angels ... but people
choose to go there. Inconceivable misery ... some people have been in this kind of torment in
their souls waiting for that body for thousands of years and they're no closer to the end
then they were when they began. No wonder Jesus had to teach this doctrine.
You say - Well, how do you avoid hell? You avoid hell only by the ... receiving of Jesus
Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you don't appropriate the kingdom, you see, if you don't
take the treasure, if you don't purchasethe pearl of great price, there's no way out.
John Bunyan, that great saint of God, wrote this, "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 devils 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."
And many are in the net moving to that inevitable furnace of fire.
Now, that leads us to the fourth and final point, the proclamation. We saw the picture,
principle, the peril; the proclamation is in verse 51, look at it. "Jesus said to them,
Have you understood all these things?" Literally, the verb understood is - put it together.
Have you put all this together? Have you got this all put together in your minds? That
this form of the kingdom has good and evil going together? That the good is going to
continue to permeate, continue to grow, continue to influence? That in order to be a part of
the kingdom you have to purchase by giving all you have for all Christ is? Have you put
it all together? And do you see that it's going to go along like this with good and
evil until the end and then comes a final separation? Do you have it?
"And they said unto Him, Yes, Lord." We understand it. We understand it. And I believe He accepted
the correctness of their affirmative answer, otherwise He couldn't have said what He did
in verse 52. He's saying to them - Do you understand this? Why does He say that to them?
Listen to me, because back in 9:38, He saw the world as a harvest moving to judgment,
He saw that God would come and put that sickle in the harvest. And He said - I ... pray with
Me that the Father would send forth laborers, send forth people into His harvest to warn
men. And so in chapter 10 He called the disciples, didn't He? And in chapters 11 and 12, He trained
and prepared the disciples. And in chapter 13, He taught the disciples. And now He says
- Are you ready to go out and be those warners in the harvest? Are you ready to go out with
the message? And they say - We ... we've got it. We understand it.
And so, this is what He says, "Then here's what you're like," verse 52, "every grammeteus,"
that's a word that we translate scribe, but it means a learner, a teacher, an interpreter
of the law, the Old Testament, "every trained teacher is instructed," and that's from the
verb matheteuo, is discipled, "concerning the kingdom of heaven."
Now, He's discipled them concerning the kingdom, so He's talking about them. Every one of you,
prepared, trained learners, have been discipled in the things of the kingdom of heaven ... you're
trained now, you're prepared now. That ... that's what He's saying. In fact, you could translate
it - You are now discipled, biblical scholars and teachers. That's what a scribe was, really.
He was a student, an interpreter, a transmitter of Scripture, he was known as atheologian,
a lawyer and a teacher and preacher. They were members of the Sanhedrin. They were acknowledged
authorities on the Old Testament and tradition. They were called Rabbi. They were influential.
And He's saying - I've done the same to you, just like the Jews do with their scribes,
I've discipled you, I've made you into discipled, biblical scholars and teachers. And now, here's
what you're like, verse 52, "You're like a man who is the head of a house who brings
out of his storehouse things new and old."
What does that mean? The Lord says - Now I've discipled you ... I've trained you ... I've
prepared you ... I've nurtured you ... so that you could be the laborers to go into
the harvest and warn men and now you are like a man who is the head of his house. And the
man who was the head of his house has a storehouse and out of that storehouse he dispensed to
people their needs. They needed a certain kind of food, they needed a certain kind of
clothing, they needed a certain kind of care, whatever it was they needed, he dispensed.
And he was wise enough to dispense the new and the old so he didn't always give out the
new so that the old ultimately became useless. It's kind of like the leftovers, you know,
once a week you're going to get them because if you don't get them they're going to get
thrown away ultimately. And the wise head of a household dispenses the old with the
new in balance, being a steward of everything that he possesses. And the Lord says - This
is what you're like. Now you have a storehouse and that storehouse is filled with old and
new. What do you mean? They knew the Old Testament and now they had heard the mysteries of the
kingdom. They knew the old covenant truth and the dawn of the new covenant was coming
upon them. They could not only tell them about the Old Testament and Jewish tradition, but
they could dispense the new mysteries of the kingdom, right? They were one up on the scribes.
All the scribes had was the old stuff ... the old stuff ... the old stuff. But He says - You're
the householder who has the old and the new and in perfect balance. God called you, and
trained you, and prepared you to spread it out.
That's an interesting verb that's used there, it says the man who is a head of a house brings
forth ... it literally means to fling out, or to scatter abroad. In other words, you've
got all this treasure now, fling it out. It talks about liberality and richness. There's
a lot there. Now that you've been discipled and now that you are trained biblical scholars
and teachers fling it out, give them the Old and the New in perfect balance that which
God said in the past, and that which is new in the form of the kingdom.
Now, do you see what He's saying to them? This all comes out of chapter 9 verse 38;
men are on the way to hell. Now I want you to see how the kingdom's going to be, good
and evil, but ultimately it's going to end in a separation. And now you know this, now
dispense it, proclaim it.
Beloved, I submit to you that our message based on this is hell. That's our message.
The world is going to hell. In the parable of Matthew 22, the Lord gives a very similar
illustration. There's a wedding. Lots of people show up at the wedding. But then the king
comes in. And the wedding has gathered everybody, but the king comes in and he sees this guy
who doesn't have a wedding garment and he says - What are you doing here? You don't
have a wedding garment. In other words, you got caught in the net of the kingdom but you're
not really one of the real ones. You don't have a wedding garment. And it says the man
was speechless, he had nothing to say. He had no claim to make. And the Lord said - Tie
him up and throw him into outer darkness ... for many are called, few are chosen. The same
principle.
The kingdom net catches a lot of people, but not all that are caught are going to be part
of the kingdom. We have a tremendous responsibility. It's given unto us to know the mysteries of
the kingdom, isn't it? But unto them it isn't given. We have what they need. And Paul said
in II Corinthians 5, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." If you
can't get your heart exercised about the fact that people are dying and going to hell every
second you breathe, then there's something wrong, isn't there? That's the epitome of
selfishness.
Our Christianity today has lost this somehow. Recently, well just two days ago, a thing
came across my desk from a Christian broadcasting organization. They were sending us their policy
for programming. This is what it said ... I won't tell you the name of it, but:
"Such-and-such a broadcasting network wants to be a good neighbor to the variety of listeners."
Then it lists all different kinds of people. "Therefore when you are preparing your program
for these stations, please avoid using the following: criticism of other religions, 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."
Then it said this, "These people listening are hungering for words of comfort. 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 this suffering people."
That's not comfort ... that's damnation ... false comfort damns people. You must tell people
the truth. Well, let's pray.
Now we know, Father, know we know. Have you understood these things? Yes ... we understand.
Then we are trained biblical scholars and teachers who are to be like the head of a
house, flinging out this treasure of both old truth and new that men might be warned
of the harvest, the separation, the net. Father, help us to be faithful, to set aside the frivolity
and foolishness of life for what really matters ... men's eternal souls. Father, I pray that
You'll bring to the prayer room those who need so much to come. May no one in this place
think they can escape the net. May no one think it isn't true. May Your Spirit drive
them to embrace Christ that they may know the joy and bliss of eternal life here and
now and forever in Your presence for Christ's sake. Amen.