The picture the parable of the drag net presents is a very simple one. The Kingdom of God is like a net in which every kind of fish is caught, quite indiscriminately, and then when it is dragged ashore the good are sorted from the bad. That is what the reign of God is like; everyone is caught up in it, but not everybody has a place in it. There will be a sort-out, but only at the end of the age.
Again let us note the true-to-life details in the picture.
There were two ways of fishing with a net practised in our Lord's time, one with a hand-net, the other with a dragnet, or a trawl-net as we should say today. The hand-net was shaped rather like a bell tent, with a long cord fastened to its apex. One end of the cord was tied to the fisherman's arm so he would not lose it when he cast it. It was so folded that when he threw it, it spread out into a big ring like a lasso. Lead weights all round its circumference made it sink to the bottom at once. The technique was to stand in the water up to your waist, watch for a shoal of fish to swim within range, then fling out the net so it sank round the shoal and trapped it as though in a cage. You then hauled the net in with the cord. It was a skilled operation. You had to have a keen eye, real skill in throwing out the net, and spot-on timing. It was a selective method too, which was its chief advantage: you only threw out the net when you had in view the kind the fish you wanted.
The other method was the one Jesus referred to in this parable. The seine net, or dragnet, was a great square net with cords at each corner. A combination of weights and floats ensured that when it was let out it sat in the water like a submerged house. Then when you drew it after the boat by the four cords it assumed the shape of a huge cone, and netted fish indiscriminately. Once ashore, you had to sift the catch. The good fish you put into water-filled containers to keep them alive as near as possible till market time; the rest you flung away. Generally, you did not throw them back into the lake; if you did, you only helped the kinds of fish you did not want to spawn and multiply there. It was a rough and ready way of controlling the lake's population of fish. It was not a selective method at all; the trawl netted everything. Only when you dragged it ashore could you sort out your catch.
This is the method Jesus referred to in the parable. The Reign of God, He said, is like this. What did He mean?
I have come across some way-out interpretations of this parable. Dispensational Pre-Millennialists say it pictures the end of the Great Tribulation when the judgment of Israel and the nations will take place preceding the establishment of the Millennial Kingdom. Others say it means that the Church will always be a mixture of true and false disciples. Neither has grasped the point.
We have already seen that the Kingdom of God is not to be confused with the Church. The reign of God is His rule over the whole of the world's life. (The Church is an instrument of the Kingdom.) And none of the parables in this chapter so far has even hinted that Jesus had any sort prophetic programme in view. It must surely be understood in a quite straightforward way. It means, very simply, that God has put Christ in charge of the world's life, and nobody is unaffected by it. He rules over the whole of life. The rule of God is not like a hand-net, which nets only selected people; it is like a dragnet that nets everyone. Nobody's life lies outside Christ's rule. Not everybody acknowledges it, of course, and certainly not everybody submits to it; but nobody escapes it. They may think they do; but the day is coming when they will wake up to discover how wrong they have been - the day when the catch is sorted.
The thread that has run through all the parables in this chapter is the theme of the Kingdom's hiddenness; the same theme underlies this parable as it does the others.
The whole of Book III of Matthew, indeed, has for its theme the Veiled King and the Hidden Kingdom. The narrative section started at 11:1 with John the Baptist's bewilderment, went on with the deafness of the lakeside villages to its announcement (with an aside which indicated that not everyone was blind to it: the disciples were blessed by God with eyes to see it), continued with the offence the Jewish religious leaders took to Jesus as its King, went on to discuss the signs by which its presence can be detected, and ended with the affirmation that it belongs to those who are brothers and sisters to Jesus in their obedience to the Father. Then the teaching section of Book III opened with ch. 13, and it consists entirely of the parables of the Sower, the Wheat and the Tares, the Mustard Seed and the Leaven, the Hidden Treasure and the Priceless Pearl and finally the Dragnet.
1. The Sower - The Kingdom is your life; the Harvest will be huge.
2. Wheat and Weeds - Good and evil both must grow together until God harvests the age.
3.Mustard Seed & Leaven - Small beginnings will lead to unimaginable endings. It produces irresistible ferment.
4. Treasure and Pearl - Pay any price for the joy of it.|
5. The Dragnet - All are affected; not all are included.
Gather the teaching of those parables together.
The Kingdom of God is His active rule over the whole world's life. That Jesus announced the arrival of the Kingdom meant that God had taken the stage of this world Himself in the person of His incarnate Son. With Him have come into our world all the blessings of heaven. To receive Him as Lord of our life is to receive the full salvation that He brings, but to reject Him is to incur final judgment. The salvation that belongs to Messiah's reign is not some distant future thing, it is now. But neither is the judgment a distant future thing; it too is now. In the Galilee days of its beginning, the reign of God looks a small and insignificant thing. But it will grow and ripen. Salvation and judgment, both, are ripening toward an unimaginable harvest.
1. The Sower
In the parable of the sower, Jesus concentrated attention on two things: how men live with the Gospel of the Kingdom, and how big its harvest will be.
Some do not live with it long: its seed of truth sown in their hearts is quickly snatched away. Some receive it joyfully and it blossoms swiftly, but withers as soon as the heat is really turned on. With others it takes root and begins to grow; but like growing wheat choked by weeds, the delight in riches and the cares of this life choke it to death. But there are those in whom it takes deep root and grows sturdily, surviving all weathers and defying all threats to its growth; and of these there will be a simply huge harvest. No-one could doubt the optimism with which Jesus viewed the future.
2. The Wheat and the Weeds
In the next parable of the wheat and the weeds, Jesus answered the question that was bound to be asked in the face of His exciting proclamation: "If the final rule of God over the whole of the world's life is now, why hasn't the last judgment happened? Does not the last judgment bring the Kingdom in?"
And Jesus answered, "No. It's the other way round: the establishment of the Kingdom brings judgment on ... but slowly, for God gives to all room and time in which to repent. While His patience waits evil continues to grow, and it is tragic; But if you uproot evil swiftly, you uproot with it the growing seeds of righteousness, and that my Father will not permit."
Both must grow together until harvest - the end of the age, when final judgment will indeed swiftly overtake the world.
3. Leaven and Mustard Seed
In the parables of the leaven and the mustard seed, Jesus went on to teach that the dynamic of the Kingdom, though hidden, is nonetheless a thing of immense vigour and effect. Like a pinch of yeast in a great lump of dough, which produces an irresistible ferment throughout the whole mass, so Christ's reign, hidden and apparently insignificant in its beginning, will generate an irresistible ferment that finally affects everything in the world. Like a tiny mustard seed, it seems lost in the soil of the world's wide field, but it grows into a tree. Insignificant beginnings God's rule may indeed have had, but it is leading on to simply unimaginable endings.
4. Hidden Treasure and Priceless Pearl
With the little tales of the treasure hidden in a field and the pearl of great price, Jesus urged upon us that the Rule of God, therefore, is a treasure worth the payment of any price to possess it. It is the most valuable thing this world affords.
Some stumble on it, so as to be surprised by joy; others find it only after long and diligent searching; but have it we may, and pay any price for it we must.
5. The Dragnet
Finally in the parable of the dragnet, Jesus gathers it all together, and tells us that whilst the reign of God of God is as wide as the world so that no man's life is unaffected by it, only those will enter in to the everlasting enjoyment of it who have yielded allegiance in their hearts to the King.
Judgment to come is the last note Jesus sounded.
But it need not be a sombre note. For those who reject Him it is, for there is left to them only "a fearful prospect of judgment and a fury of fire which will consume His adversaries." (Heb. 10:27) But for those who receive Him, the climax of the age shines with the light of a very great hope, for "then they shall shine like the sun in their heavenly Father's Realm." (Matt. 13:43)
The question all this leads to that we each must face is not: "Are you in the Kingdom?" For if we have understood these parables rightly, we are all in the Kingdom, in the sense that over all our lives Christ rules. It rests with Him what shall become of us. He will have the last word.
The question we must face is rather: "Are you of the Kingdom? Are you a King's man, or a rebel in the realm? Do you belong to Jesus, and Jesus to you, or are you a stranger to Him, so the day you have to meet Him and bow to Him will be your final undoing?"
For He rules the world in His Father's Name, and "He must continue to reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet" (I Cor. 15:25).
The pursuit of these studies has impressed on me a feature of the end of the age of which Jesus repeatedly spoke which receives scant attention: the rôle of angels in it.
At v. 39 He says that "the reapers are the angels."
At v. 41 He says, "The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all causes of sin and all evil-doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire."
At v. 49 He says, "At the close of the age the angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous."
In 25:31, where the Last Judgment is pictured as a separation of sheep from goats, He begins, "When the Son of Man comes, and all the angels with Him ..."
In Mark 8:38, He says, "Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of Him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with His holy angels."
We tend to picture the Second Coming as an event in which Jesus occupies centre stage alone. Not so. It will not be a solo appearance. All the hosts of heaven will be visible with Him.
That says to me that the Second Coming will be an event in which all heaven breaks in upon this world. I cannot conceive a thing so unimaginably supernatural as being anything but absolutely shattering. The corrupt order of this world will simply not be able to stand the impact and will disintegrate, to usher in the new heavens and the new earth. * Then surely will be fulfilled what is written in Heb. 12:26-29: "Yet once more I will shake, not only the earth but also the heaven." This phrase 'Yet once more' indicates the removal of what is shaken, as of what has been made, in order that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a Kingdom that cannot be shaken; and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire."
* If so, it hardly fits the picture of a Second Advent in two stages followed by a terrestrial millennium!
This material is copyright; it may not be quoted, published or reproduced without the author's permission, nor preached without acknowledgment!