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Sermon
The Gospel of Matthew

Parable of the Net

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November 16, 2025
Matthew 13:47-52
Sam Crabtree
Pastor for Care

Heaven & Hell

End Times

Joy in God

The Gospel

Transcript

0:14How important is God? He's significant. Of course, we all believe that. That's why we're here. But how significant, how would you measure his significance? Can you put any metrics to it? How majestic, how glorious and how serious is he about how significant he is? By the end of this message, I hope to give you one way to measure the immeasurable, a way to gauge his worth.

0:47And by the end of this message, I want us to behold two things about God, two aspects of his character. We'll come to them a little bit later though today's text that Nate just read refers to terrifying horror. And though this sermon will not skip over that dreaded terror, neither today's text nor this sermon is sufficient to get anyone to see Jesus as delightfully satisfying, which is the only rescue from that horror.

1:23The words in today's text are said by Jesus. Now, I want to give a heads up to Hong Fe and his translation team. You may not know that Hong Fe and a group of of his uh colleagues translate all of our sermons into Chinese home. Fay is a good guy. I played pickleball with him on Friday and he introduced me to humility several times And I'm grateful for what that team does. And so team, I'm gonna skip to verse 51. So there the manuscript I gave them doesn't go to verse 51, but I'm taking you to verse 51. So take a look at it there. Jesus says, do you understand? So Nate just read a passage. Do you understand that passage?

2:12It's possible to hear the teachings of Jesus even be a scholar about the teachings of Jesus and not understand to be lost. It's not a matter of intelligence's but of heart. The final separation in this text will produce instantaneous horror and the realization that that annoying Bible was right all along. For others, the unspeakable glories of heaven will explode on their senses. Glory is previously hidden. All of that when Jesus returns, Which is not yet in verse 52, we see the point of this second and final parable about the kingdom wise disciples or they're called scribes here and obviously Matthew is a scribe.

3:10He's written down the book of Matthew Wise scribes embrace the continuity and there's a little bit of discontinuity between the old and new revelations. There was an old revelation, we call it the Old Testament and a new revelation that came in Christ, the covenant of grace and there's continuity between them and there's a little bit of disconnect because the new completes some of the old to be trained for the kingdom. You see it there in verse 52. To be trained for the kingdom of heaven is to undergo a heart transformation so that you earnestly treasure that which is most to be treasured, namely Jesus.

3:57There are treasures in both the Old Testament and in the New Testament. And what do you know? The treasure in both places is Jesus. The fact that the instruction a person has received has awakened him to a treasure, is evidence that his heart allegiance has been transformed. He's gone from blindness to seeing and he embraces something that he didn't embrace before. He tastes something that he didn't taste before. And this is a miracle of grace.

4:31So Jesus is the treasure. Now I want us to go back to verse 47. So let's go there. We could ask again why parables? There's been a whole series of parables that we've been preaching here in recent weeks. Why parables? Well, it's because Jesus is speaking to a mixed multitude. Parables are test cases. Open hearts receive the truth by grace, and dead hearts don't get it and will be judged. And so I ask myself, do I get it? Do I receive what's in these parables? Do you?

5:10Now in verse 47, Jesus invites us to consider a net, a saying, a drag net that they would, they would take a big net and they'd hold onto two ends and they would pull it through the water and it would pick up all the fish that it encountered, good or bad. And there's no escape from this net. If you're a fish and you're in the water and the net passes through that water, you're caught. There's no escape. God is inescapable. You can deny him for a while, but only for a while. Let me read to you from the Old Testament, from this old treasure, Amos nine, two. If they dig into Sheol from there, shall my hand take them?

5:57If they climb up to heaven from there, I will bring them down. If they hide themselves on the top of Mark Carmel, from there, I will search them out and take them. If they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea there I will command the serpent and it shall bite them. God is inescapable. You can run but you cannot hide. Verse 47 is about a net and it parallels verse 24. If you run your eyes back up to verse 24, which is about weeds and the meaning is parallel, there's gonna be a sorting of wheat and tears, a sorting of good fish and bad fish. And so if the point is similar, why does Jesus repeat himself?

6:43Well, here's an answer. It's because Jesus loves and these are warnings and in love. He's warning us. Now everyone, including you and me is a fish. And in verse 48, we see that all the fish will be sorted or the word sorted in verse 49 is separated. And I want to allege to you that this is the main point of this parable. There's a separation coming, there will be a final separation. It's not yet. It's at the end, but it's coming. Of all the operations that Christ's return will inaugurate and introduce like the revealing of his glory and the redemption of our bodies. We get new bodies, hip, hip, hooray.

7:37The setting of creation free from its bondage to decay, rewarding the righteous that'll happen at the end, making all things new, et cetera. Among all those things, there'll be this one primary operation when he returns and that operation is separation. Wheat from tears, sheep from goats, good fish from bad fish. And once the gospel is preached, the response to the gospel begins to tell us something about the heart of the hearer, whether it's wheat or tear, sheep or goat, good fish or bad.

8:20Now, what is the gospel? The Bible presents it many different ways and describes it many different ways. Here's one one, Peter three 18 for Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God. That's the good news. The gospel Jesus suffered to take us to God. He's righteous, we're unrighteous, and he fixes that problem for us. Now still in verse 48, we see the word full. Now this parable about the net is similar to the one about the wheat and tears, but the wheat and tears is a parable about what happens until the end. Until the end let 'em grow together.

9:09But this parable about the net is the end. It's the time for separation. It's come some of the fish are good, others are bad, which is parallel to the words that you'll see there. Evil and righteous. Evil and righteous. A good fish trusts in or treasures or delights in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of his sins and the fulfillment of all God's promises to you, including eternal life, which we just heard John Nolan say in the tank here, that tank was full of good fish in there Elsewhere in the Bible, good fish are described as being born again, being raised from the dead, made new, transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son.

9:56There's more than one way to describe it in the Bible, but that's what it's getting at here with good fish and bad fish. And there's no gray area, there's no sort of good fish. They're good or bad. Wheat or tears, sheep or goats. Now let's go to verse 49. He says, so it will be when he says that, here comes the explanation. I was gonna explain what the parable of the net is about. And he refers in 49 to the end of the age, judgment is on its way. There will be an end to the age, a culmination no matter what's going on around us. Ladies and gentlemen, God is still on his throne bringing history to a point of separation and we must respond to Jesus warning while we have opportunity, we're not in charge of history, even our own personal history, we're not in charge of the timing and the nature of our judgment, our judgment.

11:08Kobe Bryant didn't expect his helicopter to crash. Steve Irwin didn't expect a stingray to stab him in the heart. Michael Jackson didn't expect his physician to give him an overdose of sedative. Those events weren't scheduled by Kobe or Steve or Michael. And God spares us from knowing when the net will draw us in, but in it will draw us sooner or later.

11:44So if you're thinking, well, there's no hurry, let's go have lunch. I can think about this later. That is not God's voice in your head. I plead with you. Don't shrink back into indifference. As noted a moment ago in verse 49, we see the word separate or sorting. Our culture is averse to divine judgment. Don't like the idea, but this doctrine of separation, separating sheep from goats does away with universalism. The notion that everybody ends up in heaven. What is universal is that everybody will be swept up in the net. Nobody escapes the net. Now, according to the Los Angeles Times, for every American who believes he's going to hell, there are 120 who believe they're going to heaven.

12:46That's like there was a survey done in my high school and none of the students thought they were below average. Hmm. But earlier in Matthew, this book that we're preaching our way through, Jesus said, enter by the narrow gate for the gate is wide. The way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life. And those who find it are few seems that the people in the Los Angeles time survey were not listening to Jesus in Matthew Heaven is not everyone's default destination. People don't go there automatically. John three 18, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God.

13:52So today's text about a net and good fish and bad fish being separated shows us that there are two eternal destinations, not one. Now also in verse 49, we see angels. Who are they? What are they? Let me take you over to two Thessalonians one, six which says, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction, those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels Inflaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the gentle presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.

14:53Angels we see in that text that hell is eternal and angels are mighty inflicting vengeance with flaming fire. They're agents, mighty agents of God. They're not chubby. Little cherubs like you might see on some of the handycrafts at home goods and other places, they're not cutesy tootsy, they're terrifying. That's why the Christmas story that's coming up, when the angel appeared, appeared to the shepherds in the field, they were terrified and the first thing outta the angel's mouth was fear. Not. There's something fearsome about these angels. So when they come at the end of the age to separate the wheat and the tears and the good and the evil and the good fish and the bad fish, it will be terrifying.

15:47But wickedness now pause and think. Don't you agree? You don't even have to be a Christian to agree with this. Doesn't wickedness deserve punishment? Doesn't deserve something akin to weeping and gnashing of teeth. Justice calls for it and the Bible is teaching us that only God's patience delays it. Romans 9 22, what if God desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power has endured with much patience, vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction. God has all authority, righteous authority to do it, to punish wickedness. Jesus put it this way in Matthew 10 28, and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

16:41Rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell. And we know that Jesus said more about hell than he said about love, and one of the things he's saying about it is that it is God inflicted this teaching in today's text is a repetition of what we saw just a few verses earlier in verses 41 and 42, which says, the son of man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom, all causes of sin and all lawbreakers and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

17:24It's very sobering, it's very terrible, but oh, beloved, it's avoidable now. Verse 50, he says they'll throw them hell is not locked from the inside. Some have written as though it is. You volunteer to go there. Well, not if you know what's there, not if you know about it from the Bible. Occupancy is not voluntary. There's no end. There's no mitigation to the suffering, no rest and no substitute to take your place. Matthew 25 46. These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life there in verse 50, you see the word weeping. This is similar to the word shrieks screams hell is not fun.

18:25People don't knowingly choose hell, but they do make choices that continually deserve hell. They want out and they can't ever get out. This is all very serious. God is serious. I pray that God would help us to get this next statement. Hell is a place for glorifying the justice of God. The awakened penitent thief on the cross captured this a little bit when he said, we are receiving the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. There will be nobody in hell who does not deserve to be there. You and I deserve to be there. So why aren't we there?

19:25None of us has ever been treated as poorly as we deserve. Can you get your mind around that? Psalm oh three says, he does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our inequities. I've never gotten fully what I deserve and none of us has ever treated God as well as he deserves. The book of Romans says, we fall short of the glory of God. We don't give God the glory he deserves. So I don't get the punishment I deserve and he doesn't get the glory he deserves. And because I don't give him the glory he deserves, I deserve punishment.

20:13I'm glad it's as quiet as it is in here. You're thinking in our conversations about afterlife and in our condolence cards, when someone dies, let us beware false comfort dams people or rather deceives them or lulls them to sleep, abandoning them in their peril. Luke 1220. But God said to him, you fool this very night, your life will be demanded from you.

20:45We don't understand or appreciate or welcome the gospel until we understand or grasp the wrath that God has for sin, the wrath to come. And so now we come in verse 50 to the furnace. This coming judgment is a certainty and is terrible. It's fiery, a dreadful pit bottomless gulf. Jonathan Edwards says, its mouth is gaping wide open and I'll go there unless Jesus saves me the furnace throbs with raging flashing flames of the wrath of God, a furnace of wrath, no pity. Listen to God in Ezekiel eight 18. Therefore, I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. And though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them.

21:49JI Packer says, scripture affirms three things. One, the reality of hell. Two, the certainty of hell. Three, the justice of hell. RC RC Sproul said, the sinner's problem with hell is not the absence of God but the presence of God in hell. God will be present in the fullness of his divine wrath. He will be there to exercise his just punishment of the damned. They will know him as an unremitting fire, fire that never burns out. We have seen that in in human history. Remember when Moses met the burning bush, it was a fire but it did not consume the bush. God can desire. Can can decide whether his fire, whether his flames will consume or not.

22:45Now, how do we avoid this fiery furnace? Well, not by denying that it exists. How do we avoid it? Answer by turning away from our self justifications and our excuses and supremely valuing the supremely valuable, namely Jesus Christ. The furnace shows no compassion, only justice. And when the net comes, then it'll be too late. Beloved, now is the day of pity of mercy.

23:25Both heaven and hell have a way in, but no way out. Now at this point, it feels like I should ask a common question. Can heaven be enjoyable for its occupants for us when we know there are people suffering in hell? Here's an answer, and I suspect some of you will stumble over this. Fasten your theological seat belts in our heavenly transformation when we go to heaven, when we're glorified, when we see Christ face to face and we're like him and we understand more than we stand understand now, a day will come when we will be so enraptured by and so concerned about the glory of God and the gloriousness of his perfect justice, that we will rejoice in the knowledge that there are people in hell, even people who used to call loved ones because the glory of God is of infinite value, not to be besmirched.

24:39Psalm 1 39, to help you picture this mindset says, do I not hate those who hate you? Oh Lord. And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred. I count them my enemies. That's the psalmist. He's not even, not even in heaven yet. Or Luke 1426. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. I'm getting at the question at the beginning of the sermon, how significant is God? He's that significant. He's infinitely glorious, infinitely valuable, Preferring something else or someone else to God is an infinite outrage to his glory.

25:41Last week, pastor Steven rightly pointed out that we exchange what we perceive to be lesser for what we perceive to be greater, and that that exchange expresses a preference. Well, everything God has made and every one God has made is infinitely less than the God who made it. For him to not honor God is God or to give thanks to him is an immeasurable insult because of the one we're insulting, you can't do anything worse.

26:17It's deserving of immeasurable, incalculable, bottomless punishment. Jonathan Edwards explained proportional punishment, the severity of sins punishment should be directly proportional to the wickedness of the crime. He explained it this way. Number one, punishment should be proportional to dignity. That is our love and our honor and obedience should be in proportion to the loveliness and the honor and the majesty and the glory and the authority of the one to be honored. We were kicking around in a pastoral staff meeting earlier this week. What are some analogies for this? What are some ways we could illustrate this?

26:53And the the one that comes to me is if, if I go in your back alley and I scratch your garbage dumpster, you're not too concerned. I mean, if you are, there might be something wrong with you. But if I, if I scratch your new car, oh, now you're a little more concerned because there's greater value in it. If I scratch your wife, the value's gone up. Now the offense is bigger, same fingernail, same scratch, different offense. And if I scratch your wife who's the queen of England, it's a capital offense.

27:46Do you see how there are gradations of punishments? That's what he's saying here. Punishment should be proportional to the dignity of the thing, being offended, being transgressed. And God is infinitely worthy and the punishment Should be infinite. God is infinitely great and glorious, and sin against him is a violation against infinite beauty and glory. Therefore, sin against God is infinitely wicked and treasonous and the punishment should be proportional. Now, I used to wonder, how can you know if I sin? I'm 75, a young 75, and if I sin for 75 years and drop dead today, um, playing pickleball with home fe maybe, uh, if I had dropped dead today and I've sinned for 75 years, is it unjust for me then to be punished forever?

28:44Doesn't that seem unfair? That's the question that comes to many minds used to come to my mind, but, but the thing I'm sinning against is of infinite height in value, infinite height. And if you punish me, I'm not infinitely worthy, but you could punish me forever. That would be infinite. That would match the infinity of the thing that I sinned against.

29:19Hell upholds the infinite value of what is infinitely valuable, namely God's glory, which is insulted in the highest by even the smallest sin. If we understood God's nature, his glory and our nature, we would be shocked. Not that some people go to hell, but that anyone is permitted into heaven. That's the marvel. How will we escape this fiery furnace? Jesus put it this way in Matthew 2333, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore, I send you prophets in wise men and scribes. He sent us Matthew to help us escape this fiery furnace.

30:11Now, allow me a brief parenthesis here about vulgarity. I ask the pastors about this whether I should include this or not. And and the consensus was, yeah, probably in our day, I'm gonna substitute the letter H for the word hell here. Okay? So when I say H, you know what I mean? But I recently was watching a football game and I heard the sportscaster say he's an H of a player. You, you know what I'm referring to there? Vulgarity. Trifles with subjects like hell. And it anesthetizes people to not take such things nearly as seriously as they warrant. So I'm just encouraging us to not go there in our speech.

31:00Close the parenthesis. At the beginning of this sermon, I said I wanted us to behold two things I About God. Here they are, Romans 1122. Behold then the kindness and severity of God. That's a command. Behold the kindness and severity of God, he is severe. We see it in the fiery furnace. We see it in the separation that the parable teaches us. He's severe. He in the end, he's not messing around. His patience has a limit in this regard. He's severe. His glory merits it. It's fitting for him to be severe, but also behold the kindness. Now, here's one way for you. I hope this, I pray that this will happen for you.

32:09As I've pondered this text, it has happened for me. Who's the, who's the guy in Toy story? Which character that says infinity and beyond? That's in my mind here. Buzz light, a buzz light year. Okay, this is the buzz light year moment in this sermon. Sorry about the deter home. That's not in the manuscript either. If the punishment that I deserve for my sin is infinity and beyond And Jesus paid it all, then how valuable is Jesus beyond infinity? Is he not? He's glorious beyond measure. How can you measure The glory of Jesus? Measure the eternity of hell. Compare him with the everlasting ness of hell.

33:10He pays for that. He's glorious. Now, I forgot to check what's coming after this. I think we're gonna sing a song. Aren't we gonna sing a song? So let me pray. Our Father in heaven, you've made a severe hell, but you've made a way of escape it. Hell is avoidable for everyone in this room. And I ask that you would apply the solution, apply the relief, apply the love of your son to each heart here, that they would say yes. I look away from all of my self-justification and all my excuses, all my so-called good deeds. And I look to the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, who took my infinite punishment, took it, drank it down to its dregs in my place so that I might have pleasures at your right hand forever.

34:21I'm asking that you would awaken every heart in this room to that, that this message wouldn't mainly be about a fiery furnace, but mainly about a glorious savior who rescues us. Do it, father, in Jesus name, amen.

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Sermon Text

Matthew 13:47-52

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