Matthew 13 verse 47, Jesus says, again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, the men drew to shore and sat down and sorted the good into containers and threw the bad away. So it'll be at the close of the age the angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, Throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Have you understood these things?

And the disciples said to Him, Yes. And He said to them, Therefore, every scribe who's been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a house who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old. This is the word of God, and I pray that He would awaken your consciences and seal it in your heart. In 1997, a 57 year old Oklahoma woman named Rita Ruppe was enjoying a cross country drive from Oklahoma, I believe, to California. And early on in this drive, she began to let a fear settle into her heart.

What would happen, she thought, if she were kidnapped on this drive? If highway robbers took over her van, took her into custody, tied her up, would anybody even know to look for her and her husband? And this is one of those fears that is, of course, irrational, but once settles in the mind, you can't escape it. Her family knew that she was going on a drive that would last four days. They wouldn't even look for her for four days, she thought.

And so, she did what I'm sure to her seemed like a reasonable response. She wrote down on a piece of paper, Help, I've been kidnapped. Call the highway patrol. And she wrote a description of the van they were in, as well as its license plate number. She folded it up and put it in her sweater pocket.

At the very first rest stop they stopped at, the note fell out of her jacket, was found pretty quickly by somebody who did exactly what was asked, called the highway patrol. And they started what turned into, over the course of the next four days, a nationwide manhunt. Now, it will not surprise you, you who are so familiar with the way governments work, that she was, in fact, able to take major highways from Oklahoma all the way through Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, and get to her hotel in California without being apprehended despite four days of a massive search. Once at her hotel in California, she called her boss back at her work in Oklahoma City just to check-in, and her boss said, you have no idea what's going on, do you, right now? Everybody's looking for you.

This is a situation that so many of us find our self in, living our life unaware, really unaware, that there is a massive manhunt on for us, unaware of the danger that we are actually in. The scripture teaches that every single person has a death appointed to them, and after death, it is appointed their judgment. People are naive to that or they neglect that. They don't let it settle in their heart. They don't understand the concept that they'll be held accountable before God for judgment because their logic often goes like the fish in the net.

They're just minding their business, swimming along with everybody else, doing what every other fish in the sea is doing, unaware of disaster closing in around them. They think that as long as their conduct is more or less on the curve, that they will be fine. The truth is what Jesus says in this parable, as well as so many other places in scripture, both the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, is that judgment awaits everybody at death. In fact, the reality of hell is one of the more controversial things Jesus taught, but not for the reasons you would think. Jesus taught so much about hell, probably I've heard said more than any other topic.

But what's unusual about this part, so much of Jesus' teaching is controversial because it's different than the world. You know, Jesus' ethics stand out because they're not like any other religion's ethics. Jesus' way of salvation stands out because it is not like any other way of salvation taught by any other religion in the whole world. It's exclusive. But His teaching about hell stands out because it is, in fact, very similar to what almost every other religion teaches.

In fact, every religion has some concept of eternal judgment. In Judaism, there's the concept of Sheol, a place that you go and you die. And, of course, the righteous find rest in Sheol, but the wicked find torment and darkness. Where their worm, the prophet Isaiah says, never dies. And, of course, what that means is the worm always has something to eat.

The body becomes eternal, and the worm is constantly attacking the flesh. In other words, Isaiah says that shield for the unrighteous is the source of eternal suffering. The Greeks had the concept of Hades, the realm of the dead where souls went to be tormented by the gods that they had wronged in this life. Islam has Jahannam, which is, in the Quran, just described as a place of darkness and torment, a place of hot fire, a dark abyss. In fact, the most common word the Quran uses for it is a place of incarceration.

Egyptians had this concept of eternal annihilation, and it wasn't like what we mean of annihilation where the soul just runs out. What they meant by eternal annihilation is that the soul ceases to exist, but in a way that always provides torment for it. The Mayans had something very similar to what Mormons teach, and Mormons, of course, will claim that as evidence that their religion has deep American roots, but the Mayans had a nine level realm called Zibala, in nine different levels, and you could work your way up and down in those realms, but the lower realms were a place of, again, suffering and torment. Mormons adopt that to teach that their own works on your behalf can elevate you in the afterlife. Aztecs taught that those who led horrible lives would be condemned to wander the mountains lost, the dark mountains lost, being hunted by jaguars.

Only the jaguars never pounced. They only terrified. The Celts had this idea of a departed place haunted by unsettled spirits. Eufrin, they called it. And it's, in fact, the Celtic word that we get our English word furnace from, implying a place of hotness and torment.

The Slavic people had a realm of Peklo. They called it a realm of darkness. Asian religions, of course, generally teach reincarnation. But for those particularly wicked, they get lower and lower on the realm of reincarnation, the possibly lowest being the Dalits people. You resurrect as a very low caste that deserves to be abused and scorned.

As I mentioned, almost every religion has some concept of this. Even in Catholicism, there's the safety net of purgatory where everybody who dies ends up, you know, basically caught at some level of purgatory. Those who are exceptionally bad go to hell. Those who are exceptionally good, of course, can bypass that and go to heaven. Everybody else has a place of torment.

It's called purgatory. American Catholics sometimes picture it as a waiting room, but that is not at all what the Catholics are teaching. It's a place of fire and torment. It's purging you from your suffering. The scripture puts forward the notion of hell.

The New Testament refers to it as the abyss. In fact, you know who calls it the abyss in the New Testament? Demons in Luke chapter eight who confront Jesus and say, are you gonna send us to the abyss now? It's not our time. Two Peter two verse four calls it Taurus.

Taurus, a realm of torment designed for the devil and for his demons. It's a place of darkness and suffering. In Revelation 20, it gives you a timeline of it that when people die, their souls go into Sheol, where there is, of course, suffering and torment, like the Torah and the Old Testament scriptures declare. And yet, at the end of the kingdom, the end of the millennial reign of Christ in the earth, their souls will come out of Sheol. Sheol will empty its contents.

Their bodies will be physically resurrected. Their soul will be rejoined with their body, and they'll be cast into hell, which is the lake of fire. It was designed by God for the devil and his demons, but he will place every person there who dies outside of faith in Christ. This fulfills in Revelation 20 what Isaiah said in Isaiah 14. The devil fell and will fall all the way into suffering, but he'll bring with him all those who are in the likeness of Adam, all those who descend from Adam.

Matthew chapter 10, Jesus says this happens after the body is destroyed. You die, your soul goes to the grave, your body goes to the ground, the worm never dies, your body never truly disintegrates, even if it's entirely annihilated by earthly worms here. Jesus will resurrect your body, unite your soul to it, Matthew chapter 10, and then cast both body and soul into hell forever. That's what Jesus says in Matthew 10. Matthew 25, He says this is the place of eternal fire.

In John chapter five verse 29, He calls it the resurrection of the judgments. He described it in an earlier parable in Matthew 13 as the place where there's a fiery furnace. And that language fiery furnace, by the way, that's from Daniel chapter three. Jesus borrows the language in Daniel chapter three where Daniel, whoever doesn't bow before the idol, is thrown into the fiery furnace. And, of course, for Daniel, it was a literal fiery furnace.

And if you're familiar with Daniel's story, you recognize that the angel knew how to rescue people with faith from the fiery furnace. That becomes the main point of Daniel three. So it's not coincidental that Jesus uses that language. Matthew 13 says the fire is accompanied by the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Revelation 21 verse eight says as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, all liars, their portion will be with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

Again, this is a Bible taught a doctrine taught all over the Bible. Some people say it's an Old Testament doctrine, but I've given you almost entirely New Testament verses other than Isaiah 14 and Daniel. It is very much a New Testament doctrine, taught repeatedly and consistently. And it is one of Jesus' most frequent teachings. Here in Matthew 13, Jesus is concluding His sort of school of the parables with His disciples.

In fact, I'll give you that outline this morning, a school of parables. If you recall the really, the crowd, which is standing here for the nation of Israel, turned against Jesus. For a while, they were entertained by him. For a while, they thought he was it was a spectacle. Remember, they said after a Sermon on the Mount that he taught with authority, not authority like the scribes and Pharisees had, not like the religious leaders and the rabbi had, but a different kind of authority when they came because He was the author of the word of God.

And so this drew the crowd out to Jesus in the wilderness. He had thousands of people following Him for His teaching, for His signs, for His miracles. He healed the sick. He raised the dead. He did so many things.

He attracted a massive crowd. But then when His teaching got more and more exclusive, when He, to use the language of the Pharisees, they said they rejected Him because He kept, though He was a man, kept making himself out to be equal to God. The crowd turned against him. People in Matthew 12, remember, decide they were going to kill him. The religious leaders, the rabbis, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, which is the political party, Jewish leaders who are aligned with Herod, they should have nothing in common with the Pharisees.

The, you know, the Greek party and the Pharisees align together with the Sanhedrin, which is the 70 rabbis that are the leaders in Israel. They align together and determine to murder Jesus because He keeps making Himself out to be like God. So the crowd starts to dissipate, and yet it grows more hostile. Jesus pushes himself out on a boat, that's the start of Matthew 13, and begins teaching in parables. And remember, the point of parables was to teach the disciples who had faith while blinding the eyes of the Jewish leaders who did not have faith.

So Jesus threads a very narrow rhetorical needle here. He's using truth that is clear and obvious to people with faith, but is blinding to people without faith. It is, of course, supernatural. And I mentioned our first Sunday in parables. I said, you know, that's the thing about being a Christian is you understand these pretty easily.

And I had so many people come up to me after the first hour and say, I don't understand them. Alright. Well, Matthew 13 is written for you then. We've spent the last seven weeks or so going through it. So now it's time to examine and see how we did.

Do we better understand the parables now than when we started? I'll give you an outline that walks yourself through these. First of all, to understand the parable we just read. It's the dragnet. The Jews had lots of different words for fishing nets because they were a fishing people, at least around the Sea Of Galilee.

The Jews in Jerusalem, of course, weren't fishermen, but the Jews in Galilee were. And they had all different kinds of fishing nets. They had the hook and line, of course. They had small nets you could drag behind the boat. But this is a different word.

This is a big dragnet. They had a word for it. Some English translations just bring it across as dragnet. But what it is, it's a massive net. It's weights.

The weights aren't close together. They're kind of at the corners like the fitted sheets, the inside corners of the fitted sheets. That's the only example I can think of. I'm sorry. That's what's weighted.

So the net falls to the bottom of the lake with those weights on it. It then has strings that come up from the outer corners of the fitted sheets. Those strings come up and they have cork that give them buoyancy. Those from the cork goes out to the boats. You could have one boat that does this, or you could have, like, four or six or eight boats to drag a net.

Doesn't really matter. One boat would just float the net there and then come fetch it the next day. But a lot of people will will boat in teams here, have lots of teams of boats. They'll get the big net and they'll bring it across the sea. This is the Sea Of Galilee, so it's, you know, it's a lake.

It's a big lake, but it's still a lake. They'll bring it it's smaller than Lake Anna, to give you a scope here. We're not talking like a massive thing, but it is is bigger than, like, Lake Of The Woods. You got a grid here? Between Lake Anna and Lake Of The Woods.

You with me? They'd bring the net across and they would gather all kinds of fish. And then, of course, you would. You would gather all kinds of fish from Lake Of The Woods. You can get all kinds of things in it.

They'd bring it up up on the shore. The Jews could only eat certain kinds of fish, had to have fins and scales, so eels right out. And they would separate the fish from the good fish and the bad fish. Good meaning clean or holy, allowed by Torah to eat, the bad fish meaning unclean. And you'd get rid of those.

That's the parable. Now, let's work our way through this. The first group of people in Jesus' school are those that are flunking out of heaven. They're gonna fail the test. These are the people in the parable that do not have faith in Christ.

They have rejected Him. They're turning against Him. They do not have ears to hear or eyes to see. They don't understand what He's talking about. They are outside of the gospel.

And for them, the main point of this parable is that they stand condemned for the reality of hell, which is final judgment. They're compared here to all the fish in the sea. Notice the phrase, it's filled with all kinds of fish, at the end of verse 47. This is speaking not just of the Jewish leaders, but people from every nation, every ethnic group in the world. It's the fish from all kinds of seas.

It's the fish of the world. The idea, the main teaching of this parable is that everybody stands condemned to hell. This is an Old Testament truth as well as Ecclesiastes chapter nine verse 12, Solomon, in the wisdom literature writes, quote, man does not know his time. Man is like a fish that is taken in an evil net, a bird that is caught in a snare. So are the children of man snared at an evil time.

It suddenly falls upon him. Now Solomon is using the word for a little net or a bird that gets his foot caught in a snare or falls into one of those bird traps that the Jews often used. Solomon is talking about individual death. You die and then you face the judgment. And people live naive to that.

They don't think about their death. They don't think about their judgment. In Matthew 13, Jesus strengthens that parable because it's not about a little net, it's not about a fish hook, it's not about a bird in the snare, it's about a massive net that corrals everyone. You know, the fish that gets caught in the hook, you think there's a little bit of culpability. You might even feel sorry for it, but when you, you know, when you catch a fish that has, like, three other hooks in his mouth from before, you start to lose your sympathy, don't you?

It's like, I know your brain is small, but come on. Four times fish? This dragnet, it's not talking about the fish here. This dragnet, the point is that everybody is on their way to that end. It's not that one fish is particularly evil.

The fish are all caught up irrespective of their deeds. It doesn't matter if you're a good fish or a bad fish, you're all caught up. In other words, it is appointed for man once to die and then the judgment. Everybody is going to die, and everybody will stand condemned based upon how they lived. It is not that one person is more evil than the next, but rather that the law condemns everyone.

Only those who are in Christ are spared judgment. Evangelism might be compared to, you know, fishing with one hook. You're going for one person at a time, but God's judgment is a massive dragnet. And you think, how can everybody be condemned by God's law and God still be just? The book of Romans has a lot to say about this.

Romans three twenty three says that all have sinned and are condemned. They all are sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans two explains the two categories of people. Romans two divides it up, the two categories, being Jew and Gentile, and it engages them in both categories. To the Jew, you are given the 10 Commandments.

You are given the law. You will be judged by that. Have you ever worshiped an idol? Meaning, have you ever pursued satisfaction in life absent the covenant God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? The fifth commandment, honor your father and your mother.

Have you ever not honored your father and your mother? The sixth commandment, the seventh commandment, adultery, murder. Have you ever broken those commandments? Have you ever hated somebody? Have you ever looked at somebody with lust, so you become a lawbreaker?

The ninth commandment. The eighth commandment, stealing. Have you ever stolen something? The ninth commandment, lying. Have you ever born a false witness?

The tenth commandment, coveting. Have you ever coveted something that's not yours? And you start to see the commandments piling up. And that is sufficient to condemn a person. The argument of the Old Testament is not you can live by the commandments and actually gain life.

Of course not. The argument of the Old Testament is that the commandments are given to you and you fail to live by them and stand condemned. And so there's sacrifices you can do for intentional sins, sacrifices for unintentional sins. But the idea is that the debt keeps increasing until ultimately you're condemned by the very law which you proclaim. It is the same that is true for the Gentile.

The Gentile who doesn't have the 10 Commandments, that's fine. They'll still be condemned by their own law. That's Paul's point in Romans two. You have enough truth that you yourself proclaim to condemn you. So forget the Torah for a second.

Forget the 10 Commandments. You who are a Gentile, you say don't steal. Have you ever stolen? You say don't lie. Have you ever lied?

And so forget the Torah. You, with your own gentile logic and gentile reasoning, as dark as it is, still condemn yourself. So that Romans two twelve can say it this way, all have sinned without the law will perish without the law. You don't believe in the Torah? That's fine.

You'll be condemned by your own beliefs, and there's nothing in your own beliefs to save you. And all who have sinned under the law, speaking of the Jew, will be judged under the law. And, of course, there's no way for salvation there. The law does not provide salvation, but only condemnation. It's not about doing good and trying hard, but it's about recognizing the law can't save.

The law bids, really, both Jew and Gentile. The law bids you things to do, but doesn't give you hands to do them. The law bids you to come to God, but doesn't give you the feet to go to God. The law bids you to believe in Christ, but doesn't give you a heart to receive the news of the savior. The law doesn't do those things.

It can't give you hands. It can't give you feet. It can't change your heart. But it can condemn you by what your hands do. It can condemn you by what your feet do, and it can condemn you by what your heart loves.

The law only condemns so that all have sinned and stand before God's judgment. And here in the parable, the angels will come and rescue the good fish from judgment. Why the angels? Well, first of all, we've seen this in an earlier parable, the parable of the weeds. Remember?

The gospel's growing up in the world, and the weeds are growing up in the world. In other words, the church doesn't eradicate evil from the world. We're not going to war against the sins in the world. We're evangelists. We're not world changers.

The angels will weed the field. We want to get rid of the evil, and God says, no. You don't know what you're doing. You can't recognize a good weed from a bad weed. Stop it.

The angels will do that. It's above our pay grade. But you recognize this is an Old Testament image as well. When you think of God judging both Jew from Abraham and Gentile together for their lack of law breaking by throwing them into a fiery furnace and yet sending an angel an angel to rescue them, your mind should probably go to either Daniel three or Genesis eighteen and nineteen, Sodom and Gomorrah. In Daniel chapter three, it is an angel that comes to the fire and rescues those with faith out of it.

Meanwhile, the wicked people get thrown into it. In Genesis with Abram, the angels are coming to Sodom to judge them. Lot, who's related to Abram, is in Sodom. Lot is just as bad as the Sodomites, by the way. That's kind of the heart of story here.

He's sitting at the gate like one of them. He's a leader in the city that is totally depraved. And yet the angel knows how to rescue Lot. The angel does not rescue Lot because Lot is better than everybody else in the city. You can't get a moral lesson from this.

Like, Lot, you know, Lot was actually really did better moral, virtuous things. He he kept more of the commandments than the Sodomites did. No. They're all condemned. Lot was rescued for one reason.

He had faith in the God of Abraham so that when the angel said, pack your bags, let's get out of here, Lot went running. Two Peter three says Lot was saved because of his righteousness. And, obviously, it was not a righteousness of works, It was not a righteousness of things he had done. His righteousness was given to him through faith in God who knows how to rescue his people. So here in Matthew 13, when Jesus talks about the angels rescuing people from judgment, your mind should go to Sodom, and you should remember God knows how to use angels to rescue both Jew and Gentile who place their faith in the rescuer.

In this parable here, the rescuer is none other than Jesus Christ. He is the one who knows how to rescue. And he does that by keeping the law. He does that by fulfilling the Torah from the inside out, keeping every command. He does that by being the better Adam.

Adam stood in the wilderness and sinned, bringing sin to mankind. Jesus stood in the wilderness right where Adam stood and resisted the Devil, fulfilled the law, and so Jesus' obedience is given to us through faith. Our sin is given to Jesus through his own taking it on his own self. He dies bearing our penalty for our sin on the cross. He gives us his life.

He takes our sin. That's the exchange. So that when we die in our sin, the angels come and take those with faith in Christ out of judgment. In fact, it says puts them into containers so they will be used in his kingdom and cast the rest into hell. That's the point.

Elsewhere, the New Testament describes this as the sheep goat's judgment. It's described at the end of Isaiah as well. But in the New Testament, sheep goats, everybody who's alive. Not everybody will die. Not everybody has the experience that Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, to die and then judgment.

Not everybody will die. God will end this age by swooping everybody up, separating those with faith from those without. That's sheep, goats. Sheep, eternal life. Soul goes to suffering, their body will be resurrected at the end of the thousand year reign of Christ on the earth, fulfilling all the promises to Israel.

He will Jesus will then resurrect those whose souls are in hell and cast them into the fiery furnace forever. This is language from the prophet Habakkuk, chapter one. Habakkuk says the Chaldeans go nation to nation, casting their nets, swooping them up and slaughtering them. And in Habakkuk one, God says, that's a great model. I'm going to do that to the nations, God says, until He judges everyone.

Those who die apart from faith in Christ flunk out of heaven and are described as bad fish that are thrown away, sent to hell, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Second, facing the final exam, you see those who fail it. What about the disciples? Verse 53. When Jesus had finished these parables I'm sorry, verse 51.

Have you understood these things? That's the final exam question. Do you understand them now? It's a yes or no question. And the disciples say, yes.

And that's so good news, isn't it? Do you remember the first two times Jesus asked that question after the first and second parable and they said, no? Yeah. Yeah, Lord. We totally get this.

Yeah. I'm tracking with you, Lord. Just I'm confused about, like, who the sower is and the seed and the weeds and the flowers. Other than that, I'm with you. So Jesus takes them aside and explains to them the parables.

Now we're six parables into it. He just gives them the seventh. That's the final exam. Do you understand? I love that the dragnet is number seven because it takes images from the first six and repurposes them.

And the Disciples say yes. I don't know if Peter's telling the truth. What do you think? Jesus asked him, do you understand these? I could totally picture Peter going, yes, I understand this Thomas.

What's the answer? Who knows? Think of the way these parables function. The first two parables explain to you the nature of the church to people who don't know what the church is. So these are Jews that are waiting for the Messiah, they're rejecting the Messiah when He comes, and Jesus says for other Jews who believe, this is what the church will be like, the first two parables.

It's going to be wheat that grows, seed that grows. Some of it will be choked out by the world. Those aren't converted people. True converted people will grow through that. That's the first parable.

The gospel's gonna go into the world through evangelism to every tribe. That's the first parable. You will have the world in the church, of course. That's the first parable. The world is in the church.

There will be people in the church who are not Christians. And Jesus says you can't tell. On the outside, they look the same, but only for a little period of time. So give them time. Let them stay in the oven a minute or two, and then see what they're like.

Let it cook a little longer. That's the first parable. The second parable is about the church in the world. The church is gonna go up in the world, but evil will grow up in the world too. And we can't eradicate that.

Only the Lord, when He comes with His angels, will end the evil in the world. So that's the first two parables. That the gospel goes in the world in evangelism, and it will grow, but there will still be evil. That's the first two parables. That's different than the Jews were expecting the kingdom to be.

They thought the Messiah would come and end the evil in Israel. No, Jesus says, the church will grow with the evil. First two parables. The next two parables, mustard seed and leaven, talks about the invisible working of the kingdom. It's not visible like they were expecting.

It's invisibly working in the hearts of people who believe, but it is growing like leaven. It is expanding Like the mustard seed, it produces a big bush. It grows and grows and grows, and the birds of the nations will come find shelter in it. In other words, the gospel will grow around the world. People from every tribe and every nation and every language will believe in the Messiah sent to Israel to the Jews.

It will grow around the world secretly inside. That's parable three and four. And then parable five and six, the treasure and the pearl, That this is appropriated individually. Remember, the first four parables, very general about the church. The last two, individual, that you have to get saved.

You appropriate this yourself by placing your faith in Christ and having joy in the gospel. I could summarize it this way. The first two parables are agricultural and tell you about the method of the church. The second two are secretive and tell you about the victory of the church. Numbers five and six were joyful and tell you about conversions in the church.

The sower and the seed give you your philosophy of ministry. The mustard seed and the leaven give you eschatology, that the gospel will grow and then the Lord will start his kingdom. And the treasure and the pearl will give you regeneration. So notice in these six parables what Jesus is doing. He's giving them a crash course in systematic theology.

You get ecclesiology here, church growth and church method. You get eschatology here, the nature of the kingdom. And you get soteriology, conversion, regeneration, that you have to get saved by placing your joy in what Jesus did for you on the cross. In light of all six of those, do you see how the seventh parable is the final exam? It has all of it.

It has the first two, that the good fish and bad fish are swimming together. It's not the good fish's job to eat the bad fish. And they're swimming together. You have the next two, that the good fish are gonna grow. They're gonna be like the fish from every ocean everywhere in the world.

It's gonna go global, this thing. In the final two parables, the angels will make individual determinations based upon each fish. Did they place their faith in the Saviour or not? So you have all six parables rolled up here into the final exam. And so when the disciples say, we get it, they pass the test.

Thirdly, graduation day. It's graduation season almost. Graduation day. It now falls to the disciples to enter the world with the good news of Jesus Christ. So Jesus responds in verse 52, therefore, every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom, that phrase, been trained, you wouldn't see this in English, but it's the Greek word, which is disciple.

The place you see that word again is the Great Commission. Go into all the world, preaching the gospel to all creation, making disciples of all people, baptizing them, teaching them to Baal a command. Jesus here is modeling the Great Commission. He's taking his disciples, he's teaching them, and sending them. It's the same word here.

It's translated here in the English, how is it translated? Being been trained. That's the word. Every scribe, speaking of the disciples here, who's been trained for the kingdom. In other words, you understand what the church is.

You're trained for the kingdom. You're gonna be sent into the world to fulfill the Great Commission. Then he compares him to a master of the house who brings out of his treasure new and old. That's kind of clunky language in English, master of a house. What does that mean?

We don't really have that phrase, like a homeowner, I guess, would be the English phrase. It's nothing special. You're like a guy who owns a house who's showing a friend things in his house. Again, it's kind of clunky because we don't have this real concept in English, but maybe you've had this experience. I went to a friend's house.

For the first time, it's a guy I was coaching with in soccer, and we'd become friends through soccer, and he brought me over to his house, and he showed me cool things in his house. It was like show and tell field trip. He was a former special forces in the military. He had this little place in his basement where he had like, trophies that he had taken, I guess would be a way to say it. Like, he'd shot some guy who had a gun and one of his bullets lodged in the guy's armor plate on his gun.

He had his armor plate on his wall. Kind of cool. He had little patches from different places he'd been. He'd had a helmet that had a bullet thing in it. A lot of shooting with this guy.

He had like a little display in his house. That was cool. He was also a bicyclist, and he had a room with all of his bikes. And I fancy being a bicyclist dude, not that I actually bike, but I fancy it, I said. So he showed me he showed me his bikes.

That was cool. That was cool. I was like, should should I have a steel bike? Do I need a carbon one? He's like, you could lose two pounds instead.

Same thing. Thanks. His garage had like animal heads on it that he'd hunted. Animal heads. So he's like his show and tell at the guy's house.

So that's this picture here. Maybe you've had that experience. You go to a friend's house and he's like, oh, here's here's the room with the Redskins paraphernalia, and here's the room with the the the nursery with all the baby stuff, and here like that kind of stuff. That's this experience. So Jesus says, when you understand the parables, you're like a person who goes to someone's house and this is the tropical room and this is the other room and this is the military room and it's just a house tour.

But then he categorises the things in the guy's house in two ways, old and new. This is representing the Old Testament and the New Testament. But notice the priority. He says new first and then old. You're bringing out new treasures.

You're pointing people to Christ. But listen very carefully. This is a very complex theological point, but Jesus says it in a parable so simply. The ministry of Jesus Christ does not cancel out the Old Testament. It doesn't cancel out the Torah.

The ministry of Jesus Christ fulfills it from the inside out. So Jesus doesn't cancel out the Torah, meaning don't study it, don't learn it. He fulfills it by obeying it. He fulfills what this is the point of Matthew's Gospel. It starts with a genealogy.

Jesus comes from Adam, through Abraham, through Judah, which means He's rightfully the king of the Jews, through David, to whom was given the kingdom, all the way through Joseph, born in Bethlehem from Nazareth. That's the genealogy. He's fulfilling the promises of the Messiah given in the Old Testament. Also, He's fulfilling Daniel sixty nine of Daniel's seventy weeks with the star the Magi comes. This was Balaam's prophecy as the Jews were in the wilderness, that a star will come and lead you to your savior.

Jesus is fulfilling that. He's flying off to Egypt so that God can call him back so that the words of the prophet Hosea, out of Egypt I called my son, is fulfilled through Jesus. He's standing in the wilderness where Adam stood being obedient where Adam failed to fulfill the covenant of works given to Israel. He goes to John the Baptist, who is the last of the Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist was. The greatest of all people who ever lived, Jesus said.

John baptizes Jesus, not to cancel out the law, but because Jesus fulfills all righteousness is what John says. And the amazing thing about this is that Jesus then says John is the greatest prophet that has ever been. He's the greatest human being who's ever lived, but the most immature believer is greater than him. The least in the kingdom of God knows more about Jesus than John did. That's not disregarding John.

It's not dissing him. It's saying look at the old and the new. See the old in light of the new. They're both there. You study the Old Testament.

You study the New Testament. You study the old in light of the new. You're bringing out treasures from your house, both old and new. You understand the word of God that He gave to Moses, the Torah. You understand the word of God that He gave to Solomon, the wisdom literature.

You understand the word of God that He gave to the prophets and the 12. You understand that, and you understand that it points to Christ and that He is the object they're pointing to, and that He fulfills them. And then you don't just understand backwards. You understand forward. At the end of time is coming, where God will judge the people in this world.

And you know that because the same one who fulfilled the past is telling you the future. You're kind of like the character in the time travel movies who has to convince everybody that he is from the future. You know what I mean? You meet people and you have to say, I know what's going to happen next, Major William Cage. I know what's happening next.

The end is coming. God will judge people. That's what Jesus says. You're sent into the world as an evangelist. To quote the prophet of a former era, Yogi Berra, he said, if you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Such good advice. The end of these parables shows you that the day of salvation is at hand, that you have a choice to make. Do you place your faith and trust and joy in Christ and His fulfillment of the law? Or do you live through yourself like a fish who doesn't know a net that's surrounding it? Lord, we're so thankful that You've made the gospels clear.

You preached it, You lived it out, You told stories to unveil it. You've given us Your Spirit who convicts us of sin and points us towards righteousness. We're so thankful for Christ. Pray for anyone here today that has never trusted You with their life. Pray that their heart would be open to the truth, that they would fear the reality of hell, but they would have a love for you that is greater than their fear of hell.

We know that perfect love drives out fear. Love for Christ eclipses our fear of hell, but I also know that fear of hell can be powerful in pointing people to Christ. So I do pray for anyone here today that has never trusted you, that you would awaken their heart and their conscience today to the beauty of Christ on the cross, crucified and resurrected on the third day, arms open for sinners. It's in his name we pray. Amen.

And now for a parting word for pastor Jesse Johnson. If you have any questions about what you heard today or if you wanna learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church. If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to tms.edu. Now if you're not a member of a local church church and you live in the Washington DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church. Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.