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1:11Now, if you're less than 50 years old, you've probably never heard of this guy, but he tells a story about when he went home to his hometown to do some fishing, nobody was catching any fish. Everybody was having a hard time fishing except one fellow named Claude. Claude Leadbetter was catching a lot of fish. He'd come into town every day, and his truck would just be full of fish. And everybody's like, Claude, how are you doing that?

1:41And he said, Well, you guys are all doing it wrong. You'll just have to come out with me and see. Well, this got the attention of the Fish and Game Commission, and the game warden showed up and said, Claude, how are you catching all these fish? And he said, Well, just come out in my boat with me, and I'll show you. Everybody else is doing it wrong. I'll show you how this is done. So the game warden loaded up in the boat with Claude. They went out in the middle of the river, and the game warden said, All right, Claude, show me how you're catching all these fish when nobody else can catch any. Claude lifts up the lid of the seat of the boat and pulls out a long stick of dynamite and lights it, lights the fuse, lets it burn down real short, tosses it overboard into the water, and kaboom.

2:29All these fish come floating up to the surface, and Claude starts scooping them up with his net. And the game warden goes, Claude, that's against the law. You can't fish with dynamite. You can't be doing that. Meanwhile, Claude has lit another stick of dynamite. Hands it to the game warden. The game warden says, What are you doing, you idiot? This is against the law. We can't fish with dynamite. And Claude says, Are you going to sit there and argue or are you going to fish?

2:57Well, I can't tell it as well as Jerry Clower. But I appreciate your laughter. You know, Jesus liked to tell stories, and he also told a fishing story. That's what we're going to look at today. But the stories Jesus told always had a point, unlike fishing with the game warden. The parable of the dragnet is the final lesson that Jesus would teach his disciples about the kingdom of heaven. And so let's read Matthew 13, starting in verse 47.

3:32Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. And there'll be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

4:08Well, as you all, I've been preaching through these parables in Matthew chapter 13, and you really have to start to put it in context in Matthew chapter 12. In Matthew chapter 12, Israel's rejection of her king was made evident when the Pharisees declared, after watching year after year, of Jesus' earth. Ministry and all the teaching and miracles that he had been doing, the Pharisees declared that this fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons. Now, when you're face to face with God incarnate and you see his works, and your conclusion is that these are from the devil and that this person is from the devil, your heart must be very hard indeed. They were so caught up in their works righteousness system that when God, the God that they had worshiped for centuries, appeared to them in bodily form as Jesus, they could not even recognize him.

5:10Instead, they rejected him as empowered by Satan. So the earthly reign of Christ, because of their unbelief, would be postponed. And the kingdom would take on a new form, which had not been previously revealed in Scripture. So this brings us to Matthew 13, which is a series of eight parables where Jesus reveals the form of this kingdom that the disciples would be preaching about and living in, and that you and I are living in now. It's not a kingdom like other kingdoms that you've heard about, where the king is in the land physically ruling his subjects, but this is one where he rules from afar. The underlying truth was that the kingdom in its final fulfillment would be postponed until the time that. Israel would believe in and receive her king.

6:05The parables contain truths that they needed to understand, and I began with the parable of the four soils. This parable teaches that in this form of the kingdom, not everyone will be a true follower of the king. There will also be pretenders. There are some who are deceived, who love the world more than the king, and some who will reject the king outright in this form of the kingdom. The next parable was about the wheat and the tares, and this parable would teach that this form of the kingdom will continue to have good and evil existing together in it. The next two parables were about the mustard seed and the leaven. And these parables would teach that this form of the kingdom will start small, but it will grow in numbers and grow to influence the entire world.

6:58And the next two parables, which I taught last time, were about the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price. And taken together, these two parables teach that entering the kingdom means recognizing the matchless value of the kingdom and the worthlessness of everything you have when compared to it. So that brings us to this final lesson about the kingdom. And Jesus would use a familiar tool of the fisherman, a dragnet. And while the parable begins with what seems like an enjoyable fishing story, it ends with a sobering final lesson. At the end of this kingdom, the final separation of the wicked from the righteous is certain. Let me state it in more detail.

7:51Too many here. There we go. A day of reckoning will come in which God will separate the true believers from mere pretenders, and those found to be false will be cast into hell. Hell with a capital H. It's okay to say hell in church when we're talking about capital H. If you're using hell with a lowercase H, like in some of our Aggie yells, well, that's not what we're talking about here. A day of reckoning will come when God will separate the true believers from mere pretenders, and those found to be false will be cast into hell. Jesus taught this parable as a warning to the wicked and an admonition to the just or to the justified. So it's a warning to the wicked and an admonition to the justified.

8:49Well, let's look at today's passage, the parable of the dragnet. It begins with the word again. He'd been teaching many parables, so he's got another lesson here. Again, verse 47, the kingdom of God. Of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind. Jesus' final lesson in this series of parables begins, like his others do, with an illustration. And we're going to see here that this is an illustration of judgment. An illustration of judgment. He would use a dragnet. He makes this illustration by saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet. When he's talking about the kingdom of heaven here, Jesus is revealing the hidden mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. He's not describing his earthly reign because the promised earthly kingdom would be delayed because of Israel's unbelief. Christ's kingdom would take on a form that had not been previously revealed in Scripture, where Christ would rule his kingdom from heaven and from the hearts of his followers on earth. So Jesus is comparing this new form of the kingdom, which the disciples would be experiencing and preaching about, to a dragnet. And specific attention is made to the catch made by the dragnet.

10:12Now the word dragnet here is a Greek word, sagone, sagone, which is a large fishing net. It's a dragnet. We would call it a seine today. Some of you river fishermen have probably used a seine. It's used for fishing in shallow water near the shore. Now, this is a different type of net that would have been used from a boat out in deeper waters. As a matter of fact, there's an episode in John chapter 21 where the disciples were fishing on the Sea of Galilee after Jesus' resurrection. He appeared to some of them and he yells out to them. They're not catching any fish, and he says in verse 6, throw your net on the right side of the boat, and you'll find some. So, this net that he's talking about here in John 21 is a cast net. It's a circular net flung out in the water from the side of the boat with great skill to make it land on the water in a circle. And the net, the cast net, had weights on the edge to spread it out and then causes it to sink in that circular form rapidly while the fishermen pull the drawstring and the drawstring closes the net around the fish that are trapped underneath. But that's not the type of net we're talking about here today. This is a dragnet or a seine. It was a very long, narrow net with floats at the top edge and weights along the bottom. So the floats at the top edge would keep the net vertical as the weights drug along the bottom, as one man at either end of the net would drag it in toward the shore. When I was a boy, I'd watch my dad and a neighbor take a net like. This is into the Brazos River when it wasn't flowing too strongly. And same for fish. My dad would hold one end of the net and he'd wade out into the river while our neighbor would stand on one side on the shore.

12:13And they would both hold a net upright in the water. They had poles that would keep it upright. And it would stay upright in the water like a vertical wall. And my dad would make a circle as far as he could stretch the net around to the other shore. And in doing so, he would encircle an area and catching whatever was in the area contained by the net. Then they drew it toward the shore, dragging it along the bottom, keeping the top above the water, trapping all kinds of fish in the net. So you caught the fish you were after, like bass or catfish or crappie, but you also caught some undesirables, alligator gar, turtles, and an occasional water moccasin. But this net would gather everything in its path. That was the point of the dragnet. Everything was captured. This was not selective fishing like a bait and a hook where you're looking at you're trying to get one fish. This is capturing the fish that you were after as well as those you were not. And when you brought it onto shore, you had caught some of every kind. So one aspect of fishing with the dragnet is it's comprehensive. You catch some of every kind.

13:30There was no escaping the dragnet. It wasn't selective. It caught everything in its path. Everything that was encountered was eventually caught and brought up to the shore. The net was so large, it covered an area of water that was very likely to catch some of everything. That's one great advantage of this type of fishing: you're going to catch a large catch and typically a great deal of variety. Moving along to verse 48: when the net was full, they drew it to shore and they sat down and they gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away.

14:09So the net eventually becomes full. There's a time when the net is full and the drag is complete. And it's time to bring the net in. The intent of fishing had been accomplished, and because it's full, it's heavy, it's laden with fish of every kind and other things. The fishermen would be working very hard to pull this heavily laden net up to the shore, which is what they did. You keep reading, they drew the net to the shore. They drew the net to the shore. Up until this point, it's been all about the net. Now the invisible fishermen appear.

14:50They weren't previously mentioned, but now here they are drawing the net to the shore. They're hauling in the catch. The contents of the drag net are pulled up on the dry land, no longer. In the water where they were safe, but up in a dry land. The fish and everything else are revealed for the first time. We get a glimpse of what's in the dragnet. They're caught in a net that they could not see and brought to a place of no escape. The first part of the fishing expedition is over. Now another task begins. They sat down. They drew the net to the shore, then they sat down.

15:30They sat down because what happened next takes a lot of time. And the fish weren't going anywhere. They're caught in the net up on the dry land. So the fishermen can take their time now, be very deliberate about examining their catch, and making decisions about what to keep. And there was a separation that occurred as the fishermen gathered the good into vessels. So the good fish, the ones that they wanted to keep, they would gather into vessels. Here the separating begins.

16:04They would first take the fish they wanted to keep and carefully preserve them in vessels. Now, what makes these fish good? Well, these fish are good because they have, that's what the fishermen are looking for. This is what they were fishing for. They have the characteristics that made them valuable. Perhaps they were edible. Perhaps they were good for breeding, but they would be kept. This is how. The fishermen made their living. But they threw the bad away.

16:36Now, one downside of this type of fishing, when you have a comprehensive catch, catching some of every kind, your net is so full, you've also caught some things in your net that you don't want. So, your catch is not only comprehensive and complete, but it's also, for want of a better word, contaminated. It's got some things in there that you don't want. Worthless fish, other things of no value. Everything that was not valuable to the fishermen, maybe an old shoe, a hubcap, or a chariot cap, whatever they threw away back then. They discard with the edible fish. The turtles, the gar, the tuna. I don't like tuna, so throw those away. Anything that was not a good fish, it wasn't marketable, it wasn't valuable. What did they do with them? Did they put them back in the water? No, they threw them away. These were bad. We don't want to even put them back in the water to be caught again. They will be thrown away.

17:36So the kingdom of heaven in this way is like a dragnet. Its catch is comprehensive, it's complete, but it's also contaminated, requiring the bad to be taken out and throw away. Thrown away. Well, another way the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet is like this. As the dragnet begins encircling, The fish. Many of them don't even notice it's there. They're swimming around and they don't know that this dragnet is moving around them. And then, as it's drawn toward them, they might see it, they may not, and maybe they'll be touched by it and they'll swim away from it. And they swim away from it a few feet, and man, glad I got away from that. Everything's okay now.

18:26They think they've escaped, but they don't realize that they're trapped. Even swimming in the water, which they think is safe, the net is being drawn slowly and completely around them, bringing them toward the shore where there's no escape. So I think you can see why the dragnet is an illustration of God's judgment. The invisible net of God's judgment is closing around every person, just like the dragnet closes around the fish. Most people don't even see the kingdom, they don't see it coming, but it's there. Many people will encounter it. It'll bump into them, or they will bump into it.

19:07Some will respond, and some will flee from it, thinking they've escaped it. But there is a day when it's too late to escape. And this is what Jesus describes next as we look at the interpretation. That's why this parable is so easy, because the interpretation is given to us right there in the text by Jesus. Himself in verses 49 and 50. How is a dragnet like the kingdom of heaven? Verse 49, so it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus makes this transition with, so it will be.

19:58He makes a direct similitude between a dragnet and the approaching judgment at the end of the age. This parable is not just a fishing story, it's a picture of the end of the age. Jesus is revealing to his disciples the final lesson of the mysteries of the kingdom. The kingdom will end with the ultimate judgment on the wicked. By the way, have we read this before? I mean, these verses, 49 and 50, should be familiar to us. You can turn back to verse 24, back to the parable of the wheat and the tares, because that's where these verses appear previously. I won't read the whole parable, but in that parable, Jesus revealed something to his disciples that had also not been previously revealed. Remember, a man sowed good seed in his field. And at night, an enemy came and threw some other seed out there, some weeds or tares, as they called them.

21:07As they sprouted, you couldn't tell the difference at first. But after a while, his servants began to notice you've got some weeds out there. And they asked the man if he wanted if he wanted them to pull up the tares. And the man said no, because in pulling up the tares, you might also uproot some wheat. So let's wait until the harvest at the end of the crop. Then we'll bind up the tares first. We'll separate them out. We'll bring in the wheat, and the tares will be burned in the fire. Jesus' interpretation of that parable is found down in verse 40 of Matthew 13. And I'll read this because it's similar to what we're reading today. Therefore, the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out his angels. There we go. They will gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and those who practice lawlessness and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. It's the same action in the words as we read in verses 49 through 50. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Why is this repetition here?

22:30Well, before we talk about the repetition, let's talk about the similarity of these two parables. They're similar, but there is a distinction. The parable of the wheat and tares primarily taught the disciples that in this form of the kingdom, the wicked would not be punished right away. They're going to coexist with you. And for a time, it's very difficult to distinguish them one from another, but later we'll sort it all out. So, why the repetition? Because it's important. This parable of the dragnet focuses on the sorting, and Jesus uses a different picture where the angels are separating the wicked from among the good. They're all in there together, and the angels are separating them, the wicked from among the good.

23:27So, why the repetition? Well, because it's important. I mean, the disciples would be preaching about the kingdom. They needed to understand that this kingdom is going to include some pretenders, some wicked whose punishment doesn't happen right now. It's going to happen later. Unless they lose hope, because they would see the wicked not coming under God's judgment during their ministry, Jesus gave them this ray of hope, or this understanding, this lesson that they were. Their judgment will come later.

24:04So, in today's parable, the final lesson of the kingdom to his disciples was a warning for the wicked, for those who reject the king. The day of judgment will come. It is certain. It will come at the end. Don't think that it won't come just because it's delayed, but it will come at the end of the age, at the harvest. And the wicked will be gathered up by the dragnet of judgment. They'll be separated and cast into fire. So, when does this occur? Well, verse 49 says, at the end of the age. So, here Jesus is revealing the last event in kingdom history. The end of the age will be this great separation, the judgment. Now, the exact time of this judgment is not really the point of Christ's lesson, although you see much of the same imagery around other judgment passages like we read earlier in Matthew chapter 25. Revelation 14: You have Christ and his angels reaping a mighty harvest on the earth. You have Revelation 19 at the return of Christ when the beast and false prophet are cast alive into the lake of fire, burning with brimstone. Revelation chapter 20: a thousand years after Christ's return and he's reigned on the earth, the wicked are judged and thrown into the lake of fire. But instead, Christ here emphasizes the certainty. And the inevitability of the judgment on the wicked. It comes at the end of the kingdom, not during.

25:40So, who will be doing the separating? Well, the angels will come forth, is what the passage says. And just like earlier, the fishermen were invisible, they appeared to do the separating. Similarly, the angels are the invisible gatherers, they're the ones who are dragging the net, the dragnet of God's kingdom as it comes to his eventual end. And they gather in some of every kind, some true followers, some pretenders, some who never wanted to be in the kingdom in the first place.

26:19And then what happens? They separate the wicked from among the just, the unsaved from among the saved. Notice the wicked are among the just, just like in the field of the wheat and the tares. They grow together for a time. The disciples saw this. We see this today. And this coexistence of the wicked among the just seems so interminable, as if that if Jesus Himself had not told us that judgment is indeed coming, we might lose heart and think that God had simply left people off the hook.

26:56But no, like the drawing ashore of the dragnet, That there's a day that is surely coming when the angels will separate the wicked from the just and cast them, verse 50, into the furnace of fire. Here he speaks and tells of the sure eternal condemnation that would occur in the furnace of fire. Just like the bad, from the back, the dragnet was thrown away, the wicked are cast into the furnace of fire. Not just a furnace of fire, the furnace of fire. The article here, the Greek word h corresponds to our definite article the, which is demonstrative, giving emphasis to the unique nature of the noun that follows it. It's the furnace of fire. This is the furnace of fire that we read about in some of the passages that I mentioned earlier.

27:57The furnace of fire, if you haven't figured it out, is a description of hell. And I know this isn't a comfortable thing to talk about in churches these days, but we just can't skip over the hard parts of Scripture. We must take our Lord at his word here. Jesus, the most loving man who ever lived, taught more about hell than any other subject. There are some things he wanted us to know about it. So let's look at. Into what he wanted us to know about hell. It's most often described as a fire, as it is here. Other fiery descriptions from Jesus Himself include Mark 19, verse 8, I'm sorry, Mark 9, verse 18, where Jesus says, Their worm doesn't die, and the fire is not extinguished. Luke 16:24, you've got a rich man in hell seeing this poor man Lazarus in heaven. He cries out and says, Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus, he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in flame.

29:12Revelation 14:10. He himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of his indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. Just to make sure the disciples and us got the point about hell, Jesus adds another familiar phrase. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus has used this phrase several times already in Matthew so far, and he will use it many more times to come. This phrase appears seven times in the Gospels, six in Matthew. Matthew, once in Luke, three times in the Psalms, and one time in Lamentations. That's as far as my search took me.

30:10I think this phrase is especially helpful because even with such descriptive images of what hell is like, fiery furnace, fire, brimstone, these images tell us what hell is like. Here, Jesus uses these words to tell what hell will feel like. What does it feel like to be in hell? Some people I know think hell is a party, a great drunken brawl of revelry for eternity, all the sinners living it up and telling dirty jokes. Jesus does not want us to make that mistake, and he doesn't want them to make that mistake either. Wailing.

30:56Sometimes, in some translations, the word weeping, but that word doesn't really capture the intensity of the action here. The word in Greek denotes a loud bewailing. Ah! Times 10, times 100. Lamentation, beating the breast, it's an expression of immense sorrow. This word was used during the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem. There would be a great wailing through Rama. These mothers who had their children slaughtered were wailing. This is what we're talking about, not just a weeping.

31:41And then, gnashing of teeth. The Greek phrase for gnashing of teeth literally means grinding one's teeth together. It's a picture of extreme anguish, continual, unrelieved torment. It describes intolerable pain in your body. So intense that your teeth involuntarily clench and shudder repeatedly. Ah! Have you ever had that kind of pain? I just can't take it anymore. Make it stop. But in hell, it doesn't stop, it's unending forever. Taken together, this phrase wailing and gnashing of teeth has many connotations. Let me list some of them here.

32:34Of course, we're talking about physical pain, a reaction to this kind of pain. One of the most powerful images of the eternal torment is hell. I mentioned earlier, Mark 9:28. I want to read it again. Jesus says, Where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. He's actually quoting from Isaiah 66. Isaiah 66 in verse 24 reads, They will go out. And look at the dead bodies. Aren't you glad you came to church today?

33:05They will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me. The worms that eat them will not die, and the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind. In both texts, Isaiah and Mark, this word worm literally means grubs or maggots, these worms that live in flesh. This is getting better, isn't it? Now, outside Jerusalem, there was a dump. There was a heap called Gehenna.

33:43Anyone ever heard of Gehenna before? Gehenna was where the bodies of dead criminals were thrown to decompose, to decay, to rot, and be eaten by scavengers and to be eaten by worms. The sight of it was repugnant and intentionally so. It was a vivid reminder for everyone who walked past it to steer clear of wrongdoing, lest you end up there and your corpse be eaten by worms. However, the worm that Christ speaks about here will not die. Their worm, it's a personal worm eating your flesh forever. The body is alive eternally while it's eaten by worms. That never finish consuming and never die themselves. This is one of the most horrific descriptions of what hell is like: the thought of eternal torment, likened to maggots eating away at a rotting corpse. It's ghastly, and it's meant to be. It's meant to get our attention.

34:50Other meanings of wailing and gnashing of teeth is a frustrated type of anger and resentment that things didn't turn out as you expected. Imagine this: you're expecting to go to heaven, and you find out that you didn't. In Luke chapter 13, verse 22, Jesus went through the cities and villages teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem, and one said to him, Lord, are there few who will be saved? And Jesus says to him in verse 24, Strive to enter through the narrow gate. For many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.

35:29Once the master of that house has risen up and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open for us. And he will answer and say to you, I do not know you or where you are from. Then you'll begin to say, but we ate and drank in your presence and you taught in our streets. And he will say, I tell you, I do not know you or where you are from. Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. When you, he's talking to the Pharisees, to Israel, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and you yourselves are thrust out. Now there is some anger and resentment. I thought I was in. I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, but no.

36:25Another image that weeping and gnashing of teeth conveys is an image of being distressed, sad, or lonely. You're wailing, you're gnashing your teeth, not because you're in a party, but because you are isolated alone, not only from God, but from others. Sometimes the phrase is accompanied with the phrase outer darkness, another vivid description of hell. Matthew 8, 12 says, the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

37:04Can you imagine that? Complete darkness forever. For all eternity, never to see light again. In heaven, by contrast, there will be no night, for God is light. But in hell, total darkness, total isolation, separated forever from the blessings of God, from the fellowship of others, never to see another. Human face again. Just total darkness and isolation. That's sadness and loneliness. Well, all indications of scripture about hell lead us to conclude that all of these are true simultaneously. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. Yes, there will be pain. There will be anger. There'll be resentment.

37:53It's a place of undescribable and unending pain, sadness, loneliness, and sorrow. None of these are good. God is holy and just and must punish sin. The day of his judgment will complete his justice, but in his justice, mercy can be found. The Father sent his Son to earth to redeem us from our sins. And a large part of Jesus' teaching emphasizes the punishment that he would save us from. Weeping, gnashing of teeth, the furnace of fire. Jesus makes it clear that hell is a place of intense torment and wailing. It's a place of never-ending pain, gnashing of teeth. It's not a party. It's darkness and loneliness forever. It's a real place. It is the furnace of fire. And it's eternal. It never ends. There is no annihilation of the body or the soul.

39:00In Matthew 25, verse 46, that I read earlier, it ends with, These will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Did you get that in the same verse? Now, some people may think, yeah, I believe in eternal life, but eternal punishment, nah. The same word is used in the same verse by Jesus himself to describe the eternal nature of punishment and the eternal nature of life. It means without end, never to cease, everlasting. So Jesus concludes this parable with what started out to be an affable fishing story into a lesson about the finality of hell as a destination for the wicked. Hell will be a place of anguish, remorse, pain, and misery.

39:50But heaven will be a place where God eventually will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There'll be no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain. For the order of the old things has passed away. The misery that causes the gnashing of teeth will be unknown in heaven, and there'll be no weeping, no wailing, no tears. Now, I mentioned Jesus' purpose here was to provide a warning to the wicked, and I hope that the warning has been made clear.

40:30But also, an admonishment to the justified. Now, before we talk about the justified, unless you get the wrong idea, escape from eternal punishment mentioned here is not by living a good life. He didn't separate the wicked from the good because the good were good of their own merits. We can never live such a good life that we could overcome the punishment that we deserve by sinning against a holy God. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, as a man to live and die on the cross to take on Himself the punishment for our sins. And only through belief in Jesus Christ can we escape the fiery furnace where there's wailing and gnashing of teeth. We must place our faith in him, not in ourselves, in our meager attempt to live righteously. Only by trading our sin for the righteousness of God do we gain eternal life.

41:34That's the warning to the wicked. Now, the admonishment to the just or the justified, to believers. For those of you, just as the dragnet was cast into the sea, drawing many fish, the kingdom of God will draw some of every kind of people up onto the shore for the angels to sort. In his mercy, God may touch you with his greatness. Net. You may flee from it, but he's calling out to you to come to him. Receive the gift of salvation that Christ paid on the cross. Receive it while you can. The net's being drawn closer every day. When the end of the age comes, the net is full. It's fully drawn up on the shore. It will be too late. And the admonition for the justified is this: if you've repented of your sins and placed your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, here's your admonition.

42:32While it may be comforting that God's justice will be done at the end, we must have compassion on those who have not believed. Like prisoners of war, they're captives of the enemy. They've been carried away by a deceptive philosophy. We must tell them that there's a way of escape. In Hebrews 2, verse 3, it says, How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Salvation has been bought for us, provided for us by our Lord Jesus Christ. Tell others about it. Help them to escape the judgment of the dragnet. Let's pray.

43:31Heavenly Father, I know that it's unsettling to hear about the wicked being cast into a fiery furnace where there's eternal wailing, gnashing of teeth. But Lord, I pray that this warning to the wicked would get their attention. Lord, if there are any here who have not placed their faith in you, the knowledge that they're sinned before God and that you're holy and they deserve punishment, I pray that you would help them do so today. Lord, that they might be not sorted and cast into fire, but they might be placed into a vessel for your safekeeping. Lord, we thank you that you provided redemption through our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to tell others about that redemption. Help us to believe what we really believe. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.