The Parable of the Net

Bible Study series: Matthew 13:47-50. Please be sure that you are a true citizen of the kingdom because people who seem to be in the kingdom actually cause sin and practice lawlessness. Angels will make the final determination.

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In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!

Matthew 13

In this post, links are provided for further study.

Let’s begin.

Scripture: Matthew 13:47-50

⁴⁷ Again the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet thrown into the lake and gathers all kinds of things. ⁴⁸ When it is full, they haul it up on to the beach and sit and gather the good ones into containers, and they throw the bad things outside. ⁴⁹ It shall be like this at the close of the age. The angels shall go forth and separate the evil people from the middle of the righteous people. ⁵⁰ And they shall throw them into the fiery oven. In that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matt. 13:47-50)

Comments:

What Is a Parable?

47-50:

This is another sobering parable, designed to reach ordinary people who understood fishing by the Lake of Galilee.

“lake”: see v. 1 for more comments

The dragnet is pulled between two boats, or it is dragged to shore by long ropes, after it was put in place by a boat. The fishermen tossed aside the unkosher fish and kept the kosher ones. Keener points out there were twenty-four species of fish, and many were unclean and therefore inedible (p. 392). The net did not distinguish between the two kinds, so the fishermen had to sort them out.

“close” see vv. 39-40 for more comments.

Application: The kingdom call goes out to the whole world. Many people join it. But, as noted in Matt. 13:41, people who seem to be in the kingdom actually cause sin and practice lawlessness. Angels will make the final determination.

Recall verses from Matt. 7:21-23. A big separation is coming. Let’s all live repentant, surrendered lives so we find ourselves on the right side. Luke 9:23 says to pick up our cross daily, which to me speaks of a daily surrender to Jesus. Practitioners of lawlessness are the opposite of those who are righteous—that’s behavioral righteousness. Behaving righteously is important to distinguish true kingdom citizens and false ones who practice lawlessness.

For more comments on the imagery of the fiery furnace or oven and the weeping and gnashing of teeth, see vv. 36-43.

Here is a multi-part study of angels in the area of systematic theology, but first a list of the basics.

Angels:

(a) Are messengers (in Hebrew mal’ak and in Greek angelos);

(b) Are created spirit beings;

(d) Have a beginning, but they are immortal (deathless).

(e) Have moral judgment;

(f) Have a certain measure of free will;

(g) Have high intelligence;

(h) Do not have physical bodies;

(i) But can manifest with immortal bodies before humans;

(j) Can show the emotion of joy.