Sorting on the Shore Text: Matthew 13:47-52
Introduction: The Messy Kingdom
We live in an age of curated realities. Our social media feeds, our news sources, our friend groups, are all meticulously managed to create a bubble of comfortable purity. We want our experiences to be seamless, our communities to be sanitized, and our churches to be filled with people who are, by and large, just like us. We want a tidy Christianity. But the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus describes it here, is anything but tidy. It is gloriously, wonderfully, and intentionally messy.
In this final parable of Matthew 13, Jesus gives us a picture of the kingdom that is deeply offensive to two kinds of errors. The first is the error of the sectarian perfectionist, the one who wants to separate from the world so completely that the church becomes a tiny, sterile society of the pure. He is constantly scandalized by the presence of hypocrites and half-hearted members in the visible church. The second error is that of the sentimental universalist, the one who wants a gospel of indiscriminate affirmation, a gospel with no teeth, no judgment, and no final separation. He wants the net to be cast, but he wants to pretend that every fish caught is a prize-winner.
Jesus Christ, the head of the church, demolishes both of these follies. He teaches us that the kingdom in this age is like a great dragnet. The work of the kingdom is not delicate, mountain-stream trout fishing, one at a time with a carefully chosen fly. It is bulk, wholesale evangelism. It is dragging a net through the sea of humanity, and it brings up everything. This means the visible church will always be a mixed multitude. The sorting does not happen in the water; it happens on the shore. And there will be a sorting.
This parable forces us to reckon with the reality of the church as it is, the certainty of the judgment that is to come, and the responsibility of those who would teach these truths. If we have understood these things, as the disciples claimed to, then we have a solemn duty to be scribes of the kingdom, wisely dispensing the treasures of God's Word.
The Text
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea, and gathering fish of every kind; and when it was filled, they drew it up on the beach; and they sat down and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they threw away. So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous, and will throw them into the fiery furnace; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Have you understood all these things?" They said to Him, "Yes." And He said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old."
(Matthew 13:47-52 LSB)
The Great Haul (vv. 47-48)
The parable itself is straightforward, drawn from the daily lives of the fishermen who were listening.
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea, and gathering fish of every kind; and when it was filled, they drew it up on the beach; and they sat down and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they threw away." (Matthew 13:47-48 LSB)
A dragnet was a massive net, sometimes stretching for a half-mile or more, weighted at the bottom and held up with floats at the top. It was drawn between two boats or dragged to the shore, scraping the sea floor and collecting everything in its path. It was not selective. It gathered fish of "every kind." This included edible fish, unclean fish according to the Mosaic law, inedible sea creatures, seaweed, rocks, and whatever other junk was lying on the bottom of the sea.
This is the nature of the kingdom's advance in history. The gospel goes out into all the world, and the visible church, the institutional expression of that kingdom, expands. As it does, it gathers multitudes. Some are true converts, the "good fish." Others are false converts, hypocrites, or those who are merely culturally Christian. They are the "bad fish." The net brings in those who believe the gospel in their hearts and those who merely give intellectual assent. It brings in those who are transformed by grace and those who are just swept along by the current. This should not surprise us. It is precisely what Jesus told us to expect. The church on earth is not the church triumphant. It is the church militant, and the lines of battle run right through the middle of our congregations.
Notice the process. The sorting does not happen while the net is in the water. The fishermen wait until the net is full, and then they drag it to the shore. It is on the beach, at the end of the enterprise, that they sit down and perform the separation. Our job in this age is to be fishers of men, to cast the net. It is not our job to swim alongside the net with a clipboard, trying to perform the final judgment. We exercise church discipline, to be sure, but that is for manifest sin, not for peering into the depths of the human heart. The final, infallible separation belongs to another.
The Final Sorting (vv. 49-50)
Jesus leaves no room for misunderstanding. He immediately provides the divine interpretation of the parable.
"So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous, and will throw them into the fiery furnace; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 13:49-50 LSB)
The separation happens at "the end of the age." This phrase, sunteleia tou aionos, refers to a great historical consummation. It certainly points to the final judgment at the end of the world. But it also had a powerful and immediate application for the disciples. The "age" that was rapidly drawing to a close was the Old Covenant age, the age of the temple and the Levitical system. That age came to a fiery end in A.D. 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem, which was for that unbelieving generation a very real fiery furnace, a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. That judgment was a historical type, a preview in time, of the final judgment that will encompass all of history.
The agents of this separation are not pastors or elders' courts. They are the angels. This is a supernatural and infallible work. They will "take out the wicked from among the righteous." This tells us that until that day, the wicked are mixed in among the righteous. They sit in the same pews, sing the same hymns, and hear the same sermons. The line between them is invisible to us, but it is stark and clear to God. And on that day, the angels will make it visible to all.
The fate of the wicked is described in terrifyingly stark terms. They are thrown into the "fiery furnace," a place of "weeping and gnashing of teeth." This is not metaphorical language for being disappointed. Weeping signifies profound sorrow and regret. Gnashing of teeth signifies rage, bitter and impotent fury against God. This is the reality of hell. It is a place of conscious, eternal torment. Modern sensibilities recoil at this, but to soften this warning is to despise the love of God that warns us so plainly. The reality of hell is what makes the gospel such stupendously good news. There is a real fire, and Christ is the only fireman.
The Scribe's Treasury (vv. 51-52)
After delivering this sobering teaching, Jesus turns to His disciples and gives them an examination, followed by a commission.
"Have you understood all these things?" They said to Him, "Yes." And He said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old." (Matthew 13:51-52 LSB)
The question is crucial. "Have you understood?" True discipleship is not blind obedience; it is rooted in understanding. Jesus has been speaking in parables, hiding the truth from the willfully blind but revealing it to His own. Their "Yes" is their graduation. They are now ready to be teachers, to be "scribes who have become disciples of the kingdom."
The "therefore" is massive. Because you understand the nature of the kingdom, its messy growth and its certain judicial end, this is what you are to become. A scribe in that day was an expert in the Old Testament law. But a scribe of the kingdom is something more. He is not just an expert in the old scrolls; he has been discipled by the King Himself.
This new kind of scribe is like a "head of a household," a master of his domain, who has a treasury. This treasury is the whole counsel of God. From it, he is able to bring out "things new and old." This is the great task of every faithful pastor, teacher, and Christian parent. We must be masters of the whole Bible.
The "old" things are the foundational truths of the Old Testament: the law of God, the history of Israel, the prophecies of the Messiah, the patterns of creation, fall, and redemption. We do not discard these things. They are our treasure. The "new" things are the fulfillment of all the old things in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The new is the gospel of the crucified and risen King, the reality of the indwelling Spirit, the establishment of the New Covenant. The faithful scribe does not choose between them. He does not become a crusty traditionalist who only values the old, nor does he become a flighty modernist who is infatuated with the new. He understands how the old illuminates the new, and how the new fulfills the old. He can preach from Leviticus and show you Christ. He can preach from Romans and show you Moses. He is a steward of the whole, integrated, glorious Word of God, and he knows how to dispense it to his household at the proper time.
Conclusion
This parable, and the commission that follows it, sets our agenda. We are to be about the business of casting the net of the gospel far and wide. We should not be timid, and we should not be surprised at what we bring in. The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints, and hospitals are messy places. We should expect the mixed multitude, and we should minister to them all, calling all men everywhere to repent.
But we do so with a sober understanding of the end. There is a day of separation coming. The angels are waiting in the wings. There is a furnace, and there is a storehouse. Therefore, we must not grow weary in the work. And as we work, we must be growing into these scribes of the kingdom. We must sink our roots deep into the entirety of God's Word, the old and the new. We must learn to think God's thoughts after Him, to understand His categories, to love His distinctions.
For we are all heads of households in some sense. We all have a treasury of truth that has been entrusted to us. Our task is to master it, to love it, and to bring it out for the good of our families, our church, and our community, so that when the final sorting on the shore takes place, we and all our house might be gathered as good fish into the containers of the Father.