Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Dragnet of Destiny: The Visible Church, the Inevitable Shore, and the Final Severance of the Age (Matthew 13:47–50)

Transcript

The Dragnet of Destiny: The Visible Church, the Inevitable Shore, and the Final Severance of the Age (Matthew 13:47–50) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  All right, hello and welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
• 0:02
  I'm really glad you can join us for another another deep dive.
• 0:05
  It is good to be here. If you're a regular with us, you
• 0:07
  know how this works. We take a whole stack of
• 0:09
  sources, commentaries, theological papers, sermons, you
• 0:13
  know, the whole 9 yards, and we're really trying to wring
• 0:16
  them out to get to the heart of the matter for your walk with
• 0:19
  Christ. And today we're definitely
• 0:21
  heading into some heavy waters. Literally and metaphorically,
• 0:24
  Yeah. We are continuing our series on
• 0:26
  the hard sayings of Jesus, and today we're looking at a parable
• 0:31
  that, well, doesn't usually make it onto the nursery wall murals.
• 0:35
  Not at all. We are opening up Matthew
• 0:37
  chapter 13 to look at the parable of the dragnet.
• 0:40
  And you're right to call it heavy.
• 0:42
  This really isn't the kind of story you'd, you know, see
• 0:45
  stitched onto a throw pillow. It's a parable that deals with
• 0:47
  finality. It deals with judgement and with
• 0:51
  the the absolute holiness of God.
• 0:54
  Right. I think when most people think
• 0:55
  about the parables, especially the ones right here in Matthew
• 0:57
  13, they think of, say, the mustard seed.
• 1:00
  Sure, the growth story. Yeah, small beginnings, huge
• 1:03
  growth, you know, birds nesting in the branches.
• 1:06
  It all feels so optimistic, or maybe the hidden treasure, the
• 1:10
  pure joy of finding something so valuable.
• 1:13
  But this one, this one feels like the terrifying crescendo of
• 1:18
  history. That is a very, very good way to
• 1:20
  put it, a terrifying crescendo. If Matthew 13 is a kind of
• 1:23
  Symphony, the Kingdom, the dragnet is that final movement
• 1:27
  where the drums roll and the symbols just crash.
• 1:29
  You see the earlier parables in this chapter.
• 1:31
  They focus on the growth, the the permeation of the Kingdom in
• 1:35
  the world right now. But here the focus shifts
• 1:37
  completely. We move from the chaotic,
• 1:39
  concealing sea of the present age to the silent, decisive
• 1:44
  shore of judgement. And that contrast, the sea
• 1:46
  versus the shore, that's something we're really going to
• 1:48
  need to unpack today. But before we get into the
• 1:49
  fishing gear and the sorting, I want to start with the problem
• 1:52
  this parable is trying to solve. Because looking through our
• 1:55
  sources, it seems like Jesus is targeting a very specific kind
• 1:58
  of spiritual danger. Yes.
• 2:00
  It's not the danger of being an atheist or, you know, an open
• 2:03
  enemy of the church. It's the danger of of nearness.
• 2:07
  That's the central tension as it right there.
• 2:10
  There's a common misconception, and look, it's one that has
• 2:13
  played the church for 2000 years, that just being close to
• 2:16
  Christianity is the same thing as being safe with God.
• 2:19
  Right. It's this idea that if I sit in
• 2:21
  the pews and I know the vocabulary, I sing the hymns.
• 2:25
  If I'm basically swimming with the school of fish then I'm
• 2:28
  fine. It's like guilt by association
• 2:30
  in reverse. It's saved by association.
• 2:32
  Precisely. And the whole mission of this
• 2:34
  deep dive, and I would say really the mission of Jesus in
• 2:37
  telling this parable is to absolutely shatter that
• 2:40
  complacency. He wants to dismantle the
• 2:43
  illusion that just associating with the visible church is any
• 2:47
  kind of guarantee of salvation. Our sources, one of them, called
• 2:51
  this an unsettling mercy. Unsettling mercy.
• 2:54
  Wow, that's a phrase that really sticks with you.
• 2:56
  It should. It's unsettling because it warns
• 2:58
  us about a furnace. But it is mercy because he's
• 3:02
  warning us before we get there. He's dismantling our false
• 3:05
  confidence right now while there's still time to turn to
• 3:08
  him. So let's set the stage a bit
• 3:10
  more. We're in Matthew 13.
• 3:11
  Give us the Kingdom logic happening here.
• 3:15
  Why does Jesus drop this specific heavy truth on the
• 3:19
  disciples at this particular moment?
• 3:21
  Well, we have to remember that Matthew 13 isn't just a a random
• 3:26
  grab bag of stories. It's structured.
• 3:29
  It's very deliberately structure.
• 3:30
  This is specific instruction on what he calls the mysteries of
• 3:34
  the Kingdom. And by this point in Matthew's
• 3:36
  Gospel, the lines are being drawn you.
• 3:39
  Know you're getting tense. Very tense.
• 3:40
  You've got these huge crowds that are intrigued by the
• 3:44
  miracles, but they're not converted, they're not
• 3:46
  repenting. You have the religious leaders
• 3:48
  who are becoming openly, venomously hostile.
• 3:51
  They're even attributing Jesus power to Satan.
• 3:54
  And then in the middle of all that, you have the disciples.
• 3:56
  Who are probably just a bit confused by the the mixed
• 3:59
  reaction to their master. Confused.
• 4:01
  Putting it mildly. I think we have to manage your
• 4:02
  expectations of what they were thinking.
• 4:04
  The disciples, like most Jews of their day, they had a theology
• 4:07
  of glory and conquest. They expected the Messiah to
• 4:10
  bring an immediate, visible triumph.
• 4:12
  They thought the King shows he purges all the evil, he kicks
• 4:15
  out the Romans and bam, he sets up a pure Kingdom right now.
• 4:19
  So they were expecting a sudden clean sweep like D-Day and V Day
• 4:22
  all at once. Correct.
• 4:23
  A final, decisive victory. And because that wasn't
• 4:27
  happening, because Jesus was eating with tax collectors and
• 4:30
  sinners, He was letting this opposition rise.
• 4:33
  He wasn't calling down fire from heaven.
• 4:36
  The disciples were facing 2 very specific temptations.
• 4:39
  OK, the first one was despair. They might look at the mixed
• 4:43
  response to Jesus, the hypocrisy in the crowds, the weakness even
• 4:46
  in themselves. And they start to ask, is the
• 4:48
  Kingdom failing? Is this not working?
• 4:51
  Why are there so many weeds in the field?
• 4:53
  Why isn't everyone bowing down to him?
• 4:55
  That feels incredibly modern, doesn't it?
• 4:57
  I mean, we look at the church today, we see the scandals, we
• 5:00
  see apathy, we see the cultural decline, and we can think, is
• 5:03
  this whole thing working? Has God lost the plot here?
• 5:06
  It's the perennial struggle. It really is.
• 5:07
  The second temptation was impatience.
• 5:09
  So if the Kingdom isn't pure, they might start to think, well,
• 5:14
  must we purify the net ourselves?
• 5:16
  Should we start ripping out the weeds and judging everyone right
• 5:19
  now? Which connects directly back to
• 5:21
  the parable of the weeds, which he told just a bit earlier in
• 5:25
  the chapter. It does.
• 5:27
  The parable of the weeds and the parable of dragnet are literally
• 5:30
  twins in that regard. They both address this central
• 5:33
  theme of mixture. Mixture.
• 5:35
  Yeah, the reality of the present age, this time between Christ's
• 5:39
  first coming and the habits in hell, his second, is a time of
• 5:43
  mixture, the Kingdom's outward sphere, the visible church.
• 5:47
  It includes both the true and the false, the genuine and the
• 5:50
  counterfeit. So Jesus is telling them this is
• 5:53
  by design. He's teaching them that this is
• 5:55
  not a family on the design. It's not that things have gone
• 5:57
  off the rails. This is the present
• 5:58
  administration of the Kingdom, and it will be this way until
• 6:01
  the harvest. So the messiness, the mixture,
• 6:04
  it's allowed for a purpose. It's a feature, not a bug of
• 6:07
  this specific period in history, yes.
• 6:10
  And it's crucial we get that the delay of judgement is not the
• 6:14
  absence of judgement. It is patience.
• 6:17
  It is God allowing the net to be dragged through the whole sea
• 6:20
  before he finally pulls it. Up OK, let's get into the
• 6:23
  imagery itself. Then verse 47 says again, the
• 6:26
  Kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and
• 6:29
  gathered fish of every kind. Now I'm not a commercial
• 6:32
  fisherman, but I know there are different ways to catch fish.
• 6:35
  The text uses the specific word here for net.
• 6:37
  Right, it does, and it's very important.
• 6:39
  The Greek word is sagona. It refers specifically to a
• 6:43
  dragnet. And this is completely different
• 6:45
  from fishing with, say, a hook and a line, or even a smaller
• 6:49
  casting net. How so?
• 6:50
  Well, when you fish with a hook, you're targeting a specific
• 6:53
  fish. You choose your bait for bass or
• 6:55
  for trout. You're being selective.
• 6:57
  But a dragnet? A dragnet is massive.
• 6:59
  In the ancient world, it would be weighted with lead or stones
• 7:03
  at the bottom and have corks at the top to keep it afloat.
• 7:05
  You'll be strung between two boats or maybe anchored to the
• 7:08
  shore while a boat rode out in a big arc and came back.
• 7:11
  Its job is to sweep the bottom of the sea.
• 7:13
  So it's indiscriminate. It literally catches everything
• 7:16
  in its path. Everything it captures, anything
• 7:18
  that swims, it scrapes up. The good fish, the bad fish, the
• 7:21
  weeds, the driftwood, the old boots, you name it, it's in the
• 7:25
  net. And Jesus uses this precise
• 7:28
  image to describe the outward administration of the Kingdom.
• 7:33
  What do you mean by that outward administration?
• 7:35
  This is the preaching of the Gospel.
• 7:37
  It's the visible church as an institution.
• 7:40
  It's the general call that goes out to every creature.
• 7:43
  It's not selective. That really changes how we view
• 7:46
  the church, doesn't it? I think we often want the church
• 7:48
  to be this, you know, pristine club of only the Super holy.
• 7:52
  But Jesus is saying the net, the visible community gathered by
• 7:56
  the Gospel, is going to have fish of every kind.
• 7:59
  And that is a crucial theological distinction that
• 8:03
  Reformed theology has always, always prioritized the
• 8:06
  distinction between the visible church and the invisible church,
• 8:09
  OK. Walk us through that distinction
• 8:10
  because I think that is where a lot of people can get tripped
• 8:13
  up. So the visible church is the
• 8:15
  net. It's everyone who professes
• 8:17
  faith, everyone who's been baptized, everyone who's named
• 8:19
  on the membership role, everyone who shows up on a Sunday
• 8:22
  morning. It is the community that we can
• 8:25
  see with our eyes. Right.
• 8:26
  But the invisible Church consists only of the elect,
• 8:30
  those who are truly born again, who are united to Christ by a
• 8:33
  living faith, and who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
• 8:38
  And only God sees the invisible Church perfectly.
• 8:41
  And the scary part of this parable is that the net, the
• 8:43
  visible church, is full of both. It is the catch is mixed.
• 8:46
  You have this sincere and you have the hypocritical.
• 8:49
  You have those who genuinely love Christ and you have those
• 8:51
  who just love the community or the music or the moral stability
• 8:56
  it provides for their kid. Or the business connections?
• 8:58
  Or the business connections. Absolutely.
• 9:00
  And this connects directly to another theological distinction,
• 9:03
  the external call versus the effectual call.
• 9:06
  Many, many people hear the external call of the gospel.
• 9:10
  They come into the sphere of the church, they get caught by the
• 9:13
  ministry, and they might even look like genuine believers for
• 9:16
  a long, long time, but they never respond with saving faith.
• 9:20
  The call wasn't effectual in their hearts.
• 9:23
  And the prime example of this, the one that I mean, it always
• 9:25
  sends a shiver down my spine, is Judas.
• 9:28
  Judas is the ultimate warning. I mean, think about his
• 9:31
  position. He was not on the fringes of the
• 9:33
  movement. He was in the net.
• 9:35
  He was in the inner circle. He was an apostle.
• 9:37
  He preached the Kingdom. He was sent out by Jesus to cast
• 9:40
  out demons. Wait a minute, Judas cast out
• 9:43
  demons? The text says Jesus set the 12
• 9:45
  out and gave him authority to cast out unclean spirits.
• 9:48
  Judas was one of the 12. He participated in the ministry.
• 9:51
  He held the money bag for goodness sake, which implies he
• 9:54
  was trusted. He was caught by the ministry of
• 9:56
  Jesus Christ. Wow.
• 9:58
  But he was, as the parable will later describe, a bad thoush.
• 10:03
  He was never of the Kingdom. That really just drives the
• 10:05
  point home. You can be baptized, catechized,
• 10:07
  active, busy in the church and still be lost.
• 10:10
  That is a terrifying thought. It should be.
• 10:12
  It completely destroys the refuge of mere association.
• 10:16
  Just because you're in the boat, or in this case in the net, that
• 10:19
  doesn't mean you're right with the captain.
• 10:20
  It means you're in the proximity of grace.
• 10:22
  But proximity is not the same thing as possession.
• 10:25
  So the net is out there. It's sweeping through the sea of
• 10:28
  history, but it doesn't stay there forever.
• 10:31
  Verse 48 says when it was full, men drew it ashore.
• 10:35
  When it was full. That is such a small phrase, but
• 10:39
  it has massive implications. It speaks to the element of time
• 10:42
  and to God's complete sovereignty over history.
• 10:47
  It's not random. It's not drawn in randomly.
• 10:49
  The fishermen don't just get tired and defied to quit for the
• 10:52
  day. There is a specific capacity, a
• 10:54
  fullness of time, that is ordained by God Himself.
• 10:57
  It reminds me of that phrase in Romans, the fullness of the
• 10:59
  Gentiles, correct? It's the same idea.
• 11:01
  History is not an endless pointless cycle.
• 11:04
  It's a line. It has a beginning and it has a
• 11:06
  fixed expiration date. The times of the Gentiles, this
• 11:09
  day of grace we are living in right now, It will end.
• 11:12
  God has determined the exact moment when the net is full.
• 11:14
  And when it's full, the scene shifts dramatically.
• 11:18
  We move from the sea to the shore.
• 11:21
  And you mentioned earlier that this shift is really
• 11:23
  significant. It's the shift from the
• 11:25
  concealed, chaotic present to the place of total disclosure.
• 11:30
  The sea hides things. You look at a net in the water,
• 11:33
  you see a lot of thrashing around, like you can't really
• 11:34
  tell what you've got. It's murky, right?
• 11:37
  But the shore is the place of revelation.
• 11:40
  Everything is brought out into the full light of day.
• 11:43
  There's no hiding. And then the text says the
• 11:45
  fisherman sat down. Now, to a modern reader like me,
• 11:49
  that might sound casual. You know, that was hard work.
• 11:52
  Let's take a break. But that is not what's happening
• 11:54
  here, is it? Not at all.
• 11:55
  We have to read this with ancient eyes.
• 11:57
  In the ancient world, sitting is the posture of a judge rendering
• 12:01
  A verdict. King sat on Thrones to judge.
• 12:05
  Elders sat at the city gates to decide cases.
• 12:08
  When these fishermen sit down, it indicates A settled
• 12:10
  assessment. A formal judgement is about to
• 12:13
  take place. So it's not a frantic scramble.
• 12:15
  I think that's how many people imagine Judgement Day.
• 12:17
  Just chaos, panic, God trying to figure out who goes where at the
• 12:20
  last minute. It's the absolute opposite of
• 12:23
  panic. It's calm, it's orderly, and
• 12:26
  it's infallible. This is a deliberate judicial
• 12:28
  act. The sorting is not a reaction to
• 12:31
  a crisis. It is the planned, settled
• 12:34
  conclusion of the whole mission. And now we get to the sorting
• 12:37
  itself. The text says they gathered the
• 12:39
  good into vessels, but threw the bad away.
• 12:42
  The Greek words here seem really important.
• 12:44
  Let's start with the bad. What makes a fish bad?
• 12:47
  Is it just a fish that misbehaved a bit?
• 12:49
  This is where we have to dig into the language.
• 12:51
  The Greek word for bad here is sapra.
• 12:53
  It doesn't just mean naughty or small or unhelpful.
• 12:56
  Means rotten, putrid, corrupt. It's the exact same word Jesus
• 13:01
  uses in the sermon on the mound to describe a bad tree that
• 13:04
  cannot bear good fruit. Yikes, that is, that's a
• 13:06
  visceral word. It is meant to be Now in the
• 13:09
  context of Jewish fishermen. This likely also had a secondary
• 13:12
  reference to unclean fish, those without fins and scales, like
• 13:15
  catfish or eels, which Leviticus prohibited them from eating.
• 13:19
  But the primary force of the word sapira points us to the
• 13:21
  very condition of the fish. It implies that they are
• 13:24
  rejected not simply for what they do, but for what they are.
• 13:27
  That's a huge anthropological implication.
• 13:29
  It's saying that by nature, we aren't just good people who make
• 13:33
  mistakes. Right.
• 13:34
  It aligns perfectly with the doctrine of total depravity.
• 13:38
  By nature, fallen humanity is sapros.
• 13:41
  We are spiritually dead, corrupt at the core, and completely
• 13:45
  unfit for God's presence. A rotten fish cannot make itself
• 13:48
  fresh. A dead fish cannot swim its way
• 13:50
  into the boat. And then on the other hand, you
• 13:52
  have the good fish. The word is kala.
• 13:55
  Yes, kala, which means beautiful, healthy, or good in a
• 13:59
  functional sense. And this immediately raises the
• 14:02
  miracle of grace. If we are all naturally sapros
• 14:05
  rotten, then how does anyone become kala?
• 14:08
  How does a rotten fish become a good fish?
• 14:09
  It can't be by swimming harder or trying to be a better fish.
• 14:12
  You know, amount of effort turns a catfish into a trout.
• 14:14
  It's impossible. This points us directly to the
• 14:16
  necessity of regeneration, the new birth.
• 14:20
  We need the completely new nature, and it points to
• 14:22
  justification. We need a righteousness that is
• 14:25
  not our own. The only way a fish in this net
• 14:27
  ends up in the good vessel is if a miracle of divine grace has
• 14:30
  happened to its very nature. And the outcome is completely
• 14:33
  binary. There are only two options here.
• 14:36
  Only two, the good are put into vessels.
• 14:39
  They are kept. They are preserved, they are
• 14:40
  secure. The bad are castaway.
• 14:43
  The language implies being thrown out as refuse, like
• 14:46
  garbage. There is no recycling bin.
• 14:48
  There is no purgatory. There's no middle ground where
• 14:50
  the pretty good people go. You are either kept or you are
• 14:53
  cast out. It's final.
• 14:54
  It is so stark and I think we need to sit with that starkness
• 14:58
  because verse 49 takes it even further.
• 15:00
  Jesus stops using the metaphor and he just tells us exactly
• 15:04
  literally what this means. He says so it will be at the end
• 15:06
  of the age. He steps out of the story.
• 15:08
  He asserts his divine authority. He uses the term syntelea to
• 15:11
  Ainos, the consummation of the age.
• 15:14
  This is not a local crisis. This is not the fall of Rome or
• 15:17
  the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, though those were
• 15:20
  certainly judgments in their own right.
• 15:21
  This is the terminus of history. And seeing he introduces the
• 15:25
  agents of this judgement. In the parable it was fishermen,
• 15:28
  but in the interpretation it is angels.
• 15:30
  What angels? Why not just let the church
• 15:32
  leaders sort out? Or why not let us sort
• 15:34
  ourselves? Because humans are terrible
• 15:36
  sorters. We are utterly unqualified for
• 15:39
  the job. We lack 2 essential things,
• 15:42
  omniscience and impartiality. We can't see.
• 15:45
  The heart. We cannot see the heart.
• 15:47
  We mistake the wheat for the weeds all the time.
• 15:49
  We might look at a polished, articulate hypocrite, someone
• 15:52
  who says all the right things and looks apart, and say what is
• 15:54
  Saint. And at the same time, we might
• 15:56
  look at a struggling, weeping Sinner who's fighting an
• 15:58
  addiction and say what a mess they must not be saved.
• 16:02
  That is so true. We judge by the outward
• 16:04
  appearance constantly. But the angels are the
• 16:07
  ministering servants, acting on the King's direct decree.
• 16:11
  They have unclouded moral clarity.
• 16:13
  They are carrying out what you could call a divine severance.
• 16:17
  The separation is objective. It is not based on who you knew
• 16:20
  or how popular you were or how much you gave to the building
• 16:22
  fund. The text says they'll separate
• 16:24
  the evil from the righteous, and again, these are absolute
• 16:28
  unbending moral categories. They are.
• 16:31
  And this immediately begs the question, who counts as
• 16:34
  righteous? Because if the standard is God's
• 16:36
  perfect holiness, then none of us, not one, makes the cut.
• 16:39
  Right. If the angels are looking for
• 16:41
  people who have never sinned, the good vessel is going to be
• 16:44
  completely empty. Precisely.
• 16:46
  And this is where the Reform, some doctrine of justification
• 16:48
  shine so, so brightly. The only righteousness that
• 16:52
  survives the sorting on the shore is an alien righteousness.
• 16:55
  It's the righteousness of Christ.
• 16:57
  It's. Not our own.
• 16:58
  It's not our own, it's the righteousness that is received
• 17:00
  by faith alone. When the angels look at a true
• 17:03
  believer, they don't see our own tattered, sin stained record.
• 17:07
  They see the perfect unblemished record of Jesus Christ credited
• 17:11
  to our account. That, and that alone, is what
• 17:14
  makes us righteous in that final sorting.
• 17:17
  And the word separate aphrodis you.
• 17:19
  What does that? Mean.
• 17:19
  It means to mark off by boundaries.
• 17:21
  It's a very final word. It's the same word used for
• 17:23
  setting a final boundary. Once that line is drawn, it
• 17:26
  cannot be crossed. The opportunity for change is in
• 17:29
  the sea. Once you are on the shore, your
• 17:31
  state is fixed forever. This brings us to verse 50, and
• 17:36
  honestly, this is the verse that makes people, including me, the
• 17:39
  most uncomfortable. It says the angels will throw
• 17:41
  them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be
• 17:44
  weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's the dreadful reality.
• 17:48
  Yeah, and you're right. The modern tendency is to to
• 17:51
  soften this, to edit Jesus. We want a Jesus who affirms us,
• 17:56
  not one who warns us of fire. We want the gentle shepherd, not
• 17:59
  the judge of all the earth. But we can't have one without
• 18:01
  the other. The Bible presents both.
• 18:04
  In fact, Jesus spoke more about hell than he did about heaven.
• 18:08
  To deny the furnace is to directly contradict Christ.
• 18:11
  He uses the image of the Caminos, the furnace of fire.
• 18:14
  It recalls Daniel chapter 3, the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar.
• 18:17
  But. There's no rescue here, no.
• 18:19
  Here there is no 4th man in the fire.
• 18:22
  There is no rescue for the wicked.
• 18:23
  And the description of the suffering is very specific.
• 18:26
  Weeping and gnashing of teeth. We hear that phrase a lot in
• 18:29
  church, maybe so much that it loses its punch.
• 18:32
  What is it actually describing? It's describing conscious,
• 18:36
  personal, eternal misery. Weeping speaks of anguish, of
• 18:40
  catastrophic loss, the overwhelming sorrow of a
• 18:44
  completely wasted opportunity. It is the full realization of
• 18:48
  what has been lost forever. It's the sound of eternal
• 18:52
  regret. And the gnashing of teeth,
• 18:53
  that's different. That's a just rage, bitterness.
• 18:57
  It's the reaction of those who hate God even while they are
• 19:00
  under his just judgement. It's not just sadness, it's a
• 19:03
  seething, impotent resentment. So they don't become repentant
• 19:07
  in hell. No, it suggests that the wicked
• 19:09
  are confirmed in their rebellion.
• 19:10
  They gnash their teeth at the God who judge them.
• 19:13
  And this is so important because it corrects some very common
• 19:15
  theological errors. Like annihilationism for
• 19:18
  example. Yes, annihilationism is the view
• 19:20
  that the wicked just cease to exist.
• 19:22
  They go poof and are gone, but you cannot weep and you cannot
• 19:26
  gnash your teeth if you don't exist.
• 19:27
  This imagery requires a conscious subject.
• 19:30
  And it also refutes universalism, the idea that
• 19:32
  everyone gets saved in the end. Absolutely.
• 19:35
  If everyone is eventually saved, then there's no furnace and
• 19:38
  there's no separation. Jesus is being painfully clear
• 19:42
  that there is a group that is castaway permanently.
• 19:46
  Now I can hear a listener thinking, how does any of this
• 19:50
  fit with a loving God? This just sounds harsh and
• 19:52
  cruel, and our sources use that phrase we mentioned earlier.
• 19:57
  Unsettling mercy. How is this warning mercy?
• 20:01
  The warning is the mercy. I mean, imagine a bridge is out
• 20:04
  up ahead and there's a massive 1000 foot drop off into a
• 20:07
  Canyon. Is it loving to let people drive
• 20:10
  60 mph toward it because you don't want to upset them?
• 20:12
  Of course not. Is it loving to say, well I
• 20:13
  don't want to be negative so I won't say anything?
• 20:15
  No, You put up a barricade, you put up flashing lights, you
• 20:18
  scream and wave your arms if you have to.
• 20:20
  Precisely in this parable, Jesus is screaming.
• 20:24
  He is telling us the end of the story so that we do not walk
• 20:26
  blindly into the fire. He is dismantling our false
• 20:29
  sense of security now, while there's still time to repent and
• 20:33
  flee to him. And we must always remember
• 20:35
  this. The judge who speaks these
• 20:37
  terrifying words is also the Savior who endured the furnace
• 20:41
  of God's wrath on the cross. That's the key connection right
• 20:44
  there. He took the fire so that his
• 20:46
  people would not have to. He's not a judge who stands afar
• 20:50
  off, detached from it all. He's the judge who stepped into
• 20:53
  the courtroom and took the penalty for the bad fish to make
• 20:55
  them good. He became what the fish are,
• 20:58
  sapros, so that they could become what he is, righteous.
• 21:01
  That is the gospel. He became sin for us so that in
• 21:05
  him we might become the righteousness of God.
• 21:07
  OK, so we've looked at the text and I want to move into more of
• 21:10
  a diagnostic phase. We called this a deep dive, and
• 21:14
  part of that is looking at our own hearts.
• 21:16
  The sources list several false refuges that this parable just
• 21:19
  demolishes. I'd like to walk through these
• 21:21
  because I think many of us might be hiding in them without even
• 21:24
  realizing it. Let's do it.
• 21:26
  These are the places we hide to avoid facing the reality of the
• 21:29
  sorting on the shore. OK refuge #1 near association.
• 21:33
  I'm around Christians, so I must be safe.
• 21:37
  The osmosis theory of salvation, the idea that if I just hang out
• 21:40
  with holy people, surely some of that holiness will rub off on
• 21:43
  me. I You know, my wife is a real
• 21:45
  prayer warrior, or my parents were missionaries, or I go to a
• 21:48
  great church. But the parable says the net
• 21:51
  catches every kind. Proximity does not equal safety.
• 21:55
  You can sit next to a genuine St. every Sunday for 50 years
• 21:59
  and still be a total stranger to grace.
• 22:01
  The fish next to you in the net cannot save you.
• 22:03
  OK, what about refuge #2 religious rites?
• 22:07
  I was baptized. My parents dedicated me.
• 22:09
  I walked an aisle back in 1995. This is the danger of relying on
• 22:13
  a past event rather than a present living faith.
• 22:17
  Sacraments are wonderful means of grace, but they are not
• 22:19
  magic. Being baptized marks you as part
• 22:22
  of the visible covenant community.
• 22:24
  It officially puts you in the net, but it does not
• 22:26
  automatically change your nature from SAPRA to KALA.
• 22:29
  If you are relying on a certificate in a drawer or a
• 22:32
  decision you made decades ago rather than a living, active
• 22:35
  trust in Christ today, that is a false refuge.
• 22:39
  Refuge #3 Moralism. I'm basically a good person.
• 22:43
  I pay my taxes, I don't kill anyone.
• 22:45
  I'm nice to my neighbors. This is probably the most common
• 22:48
  one in our culture. It's the I'm better than the
• 22:50
  average person defense. But the standard at the shore is
• 22:54
  not better than the average fish.
• 22:55
  The standard is righteous versus rotten.
• 22:59
  God's standard is His own perfect holiness.
• 23:03
  Moralism is just polishing a rotten fish.
• 23:05
  It might look nicer on the outside, but the nature has not
• 23:08
  changed one bit. Refuge #4 and this one, this one
• 23:11
  hits close to home for our Reformed thinking audience.
• 23:13
  Intellectual orthodoxy. I know the Westminster
• 23:16
  Confession by heart. I understand the five points of
• 23:18
  Calvinism. I can explain the hypostatic
• 23:20
  Union. Oh, this is such a dangerous 1.
• 23:23
  You can have a head full of perfectly correct theology and a
• 23:25
  heart that is stone cold to the Christ of that theology.
• 23:28
  The devil is a better theologian than any of us.
• 23:30
  He knows the truth, but he despises it.
• 23:33
  Knowing the map is not the same thing as making the trip.
• 23:35
  You can be in the net of sound doctrine and still be utterly
• 23:39
  lost. That is a sobering thought.
• 23:41
  You can win the theological debate and lose your soul.
• 23:44
  OK. And finally, refuge #5
• 23:47
  experience and emotion. I felt a spiritual buzz.
• 23:50
  I cried during worship that one time I had a dream.
• 23:54
  We live in an age that elevates personal experience above
• 23:56
  everything else. But feelings are fickle.
• 23:59
  They come and go. The parable doesn't say.
• 24:01
  The angels separate the emotional fish from the
• 24:03
  unemotional fish. They separate the evil from the
• 24:06
  righteous. Mistaking a tear in the eye for
• 24:08
  the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart is a potentially fatal
• 24:12
  error. Emotions can be manipulated.
• 24:14
  Regeneration is a sovereign work of God.
• 24:17
  So if all of those are the false refuges, what is the only true
• 24:20
  refuge? Union with Christ.
• 24:22
  It is being found in Him. It is abandoning all trust in my
• 24:25
  own swimming, my own goodness, my own knowledge, my own
• 24:28
  experiences, and resting entirely on the finished work of
• 24:30
  Jesus Christ from my standing before God.
• 24:32
  And the evidence of that. The evidence of that is not just
• 24:35
  a past date written in the Bible.
• 24:37
  It's present reality. It's ongoing repentance, a
• 24:40
  growing love for holiness, a hatred of sin, and a daily
• 24:44
  reliance on Christ and not myself.
• 24:46
  So practically speaking, then, what does this mean for us as
• 24:50
  individuals and for us as a church?
• 24:52
  Let's start with the individual listener.
• 24:54
  For the individual, it means, I think urgency without panic.
• 24:58
  We should not be walking around in a constant state of anxiety,
• 25:01
  you know, wondering every single day, am IA bad fish, Am IA bad
• 25:04
  fish. That's not the spirit of
• 25:05
  adoption that God gives His children, but we absolutely
• 25:08
  should engage in honest self examination.
• 25:10
  As the Apostle Paul says, examine yourselves to see
• 25:13
  whether you are in the faith. But that examination shouldn't
• 25:16
  lead us to just look at our own performance, right?
• 25:18
  Because that leads to either pride or despair.
• 25:21
  Correct. The goal of self examination is
• 25:23
  not navel gazing. It's meant to drive us to look
• 25:26
  at Christ. Our assurance ultimately comes
• 25:29
  from looking at Him, not at the strength of our own swimming.
• 25:32
  But if I look at my life and I see absolutely no fruit, no love
• 25:36
  for God, no genuine hatred of my sin, then I need to be worried.
• 25:40
  I need to flee to Christ as if for the first time.
• 25:42
  What about for the church body? How does this parable change how
• 25:46
  we do church? It affects everything.
• 25:49
  I mean, take church membership and discipline.
• 25:51
  We should practice meaningful membership.
• 25:52
  We should take it seriously. But we do it with a humble
• 25:55
  realism. We know we are not the final
• 25:58
  sorters. We cannot see the heart, so we
• 26:00
  discipline visible unrepentant sin, but we don't try to play
• 26:03
  God. We acknowledge that the net is
• 26:05
  mixed until the end. And our preaching, what does it
• 26:07
  say about that? Preaching must be like the
• 26:10
  dragnet. We cast it wide.
• 26:12
  We offer the gospel freely and indiscriminately to everyone.
• 26:16
  We don't try to pre screen people.
• 26:18
  We must always preach with the shore in view.
• 26:22
  We have to warn people of the coming judgement.
• 26:24
  A steady diet of seven tips for a better life this week will not
• 26:28
  prepare people for the furnace. We need to tell them the whole
• 26:31
  truth about the end of the age. And it also gives us a kind of
• 26:34
  hope for evangelism, too, doesn't it?
• 26:36
  It does a great hope. The net is still in the sea.
• 26:40
  The sorting hasn't happened yet. That means there is still time
• 26:43
  that bad fish, that person you know, who you think is too far
• 26:46
  gone, too hardened, can still be transformed by the power of the
• 26:49
  gospel. Their nature can still be
• 26:51
  changed by the power of the Holy Spirit.
• 26:53
  As long as the net is in the water, there is hope.
• 26:56
  And finally, you said there's a comfort here for the weary
• 26:59
  believer. Yes, many genuine believers are
• 27:01
  deeply distressed by the evil they see in the world, and maybe
• 27:05
  even more so, the corruption they see in the visible church.
• 27:08
  We see leaders fall, we see hypocrisy up close, and it
• 27:12
  hurts. It's discouraging.
• 27:13
  It can be. The parable promises us that
• 27:16
  justice is coming. God will set all things right.
• 27:19
  We don't need to take vengeance into our own hands.
• 27:21
  We don't need to try and burn down the whole field to get at
• 27:24
  the weeds. The angels will handle the
• 27:26
  separation perfectly. We can trust the judge of all
• 27:29
  the earth to do right. That's a profound comfort.
• 27:32
  It frees us to be faithful right where we are without needing to
• 27:35
  be the cosmic police. Exactly.
• 27:37
  It allows us to focus on Our Calling, to be salt and light,
• 27:41
  knowing that the final sorting is in much, much better hands
• 27:44
  than ours. Well, we have covered a lot of
• 27:46
  ground or water. I should I'd say we've gone from
• 27:48
  the mixed chaotic sea to the revealing shore.
• 27:52
  We've looked at the dragnet, the sorting, the vessels and the
• 27:55
  furnace. It's a movement from the present
• 27:57
  ambiguity of this age to the absolute clarity of the next.
• 28:01
  So as we wrap up this deep dive, what is the final take away?
• 28:05
  What should the listener be left thinking about?
• 28:07
  The take away is this, do not rest in being in the net.
• 28:11
  Do not be content with just being around Christian things,
• 28:13
  knowing Christian vocabulary or having a Christian heritage.
• 28:17
  Make sure you are in Christ because the net is being drawn
• 28:20
  in every single day. History gets closer to that
• 28:24
  fullness of time. The weights are lifting from the
• 28:26
  sea bed. The fishermen are preparing to
• 28:29
  sit down. That is a very vivid image.
• 28:31
  The net is moving. It is, and so my plea to
• 28:35
  everyone listening is to flee to the righteous. 1 He is the one
• 28:39
  who turns rotten sinners into good vessels of grace.
• 28:44
  He's the only safety from the judgement on the shore.
• 28:47
  Thank you so much for guiding us through this text.
• 28:49
  It's it's heavy for sure, but it is ultimately hopeful if we know
• 28:52
  where to look for our refuge. It's my privilege.
• 28:54
  And thank you to everyone listening to Reform Thinking.
• 28:57
  We really hope this deep dive has challenged you, maybe
• 28:59
  comforted you, and most of all, pointed you to the King.
• 29:02
  Until next time.