Matthew 13: The Net, Being Near the Kingdom Is Not Enough

Introduction

"Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a dragnet, that was cast into the sea, and gathered some fish of every kind." Malcolm Duncan, pastor of Kensington Temple in London, continues the series on the parables of the Kingdom in the Gospel of Matthew with a passage of just four verses, which he calls an "uncomfortable" reading.

There is no long introduction, no complicated characters, no plot. A net is cast, it fills up, it is hauled onto the shore, and the catch is sorted. Jesus explains the image himself: at the end of the age, the angels will separate the wicked from the righteous. The pastor admits the temptation to hurry past this parable, or never to preach it, because the modern Church avoids questions of judgment.

Jesus' question is not first of all "What will happen at the end?" but "How should you live now, knowing that the end is coming?" Malcolm Duncan draws three truths from the text: the Kingdom casts its net very wide, it tolerates a present mixture that looks like a mess, and it moves toward a final separation that is certain and unmistakable.

Outline of the Message

1. A parable that confronts as much as it comforts

This passage should not be confused with the miraculous catch of fish told elsewhere in the Gospels. It is a parable, a story that "hits" and goes to the heart of our lives.
We prefer the parables where what was lost is found: the shepherd who carries the sheep, the father who runs to his son, the seed that grows mysteriously, the merchant who finds the pearl. Those are good parables. But the same Jesus who speaks of the lost sheep also speaks of the net.
History is not cyclical. It does not go around in circles forever. It will not remain unresolved for eternity.
"If Jesus is Lord, we do not have permission to edit him." You cannot build a Jesus who welcomes but never warns, who forgives but never commands, who saves but never judges.
Jesus does not paint a picture of the end times to satisfy our curiosity. He brings God's future judgment into the present hearing of his listeners.

2. The Kingdom casts its net very wide

The word translated "net" refers to a large seine, sometimes hundreds of feet long, weighted at the bottom and held up by floats at the top. It gathered everything in its path.
This is not fishing with a rod and line, with bait chosen to attract a single species. The net does not interview the fish. It checks neither their origin, nor their importance, nor their respectability. It takes "fish of every kind" because that is what it was made to do.
"The Gospel is not your private property, or mine." It does not belong to one class, one culture, one generation, one nationality, or one church tradition. The Kingdom is not a private club for respectable religious people.
The Church's persistent temptation is to want people to become socially and culturally like us before they even arrive. We create unspoken requirements: the right vocabulary, the right dress, the right music, the right codes. The pastor invites you to listen to the announcements one Sunday and ask whether they make sense to someone who is not a Christian.
He tells of a friend who once asked him to imagine walking into a betting shop for the first time, with a language he does not understand, strange gestures, and the expectation of feeling at ease right away. His father and older brothers spent their Saturdays there. "That is what most people feel when they come to church."
One of his colleagues, on arriving at Kensington Temple about twenty years ago, thought: "These people are all crazy." The Kingdom does not begin with people adapting to our culture, but with Christ calling people under his rule.

3. A hyperdiverse Church in a world city

London makes this parable impossible to tame: a sea of peoples, languages, cultures, wounds, and beliefs. On the Underground you sit next to people hurt by churches, and others with no Christian memory at all.
The pastor is carrying out academic research on what is called a "hyperdiverse" community. He wonders what it means to be its pastor, and why Nigerians, Ghanaians, Irish, Kenyans, or French people choose a British Pentecostal church rather than a church of their own nationality.
At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was not given so that the Church could talk louder to itself. People in the street heard the wonders of God in their own language (Acts 2). The Church received the Spirit to cross barriers, not to maintain them.
The Church does not decide who deserves to be reached. "We do not preach because someone looks promising. We do not serve because someone looks grateful. We bear witness because Jesus is Lord."
"He would make a lovely Christian," "he is a Christian in everything but name": for Malcolm Duncan, this confuses goodness with faith. Few people, no doubt, said that about Saul. Ananias, sent to pray for him (Acts 9), essentially asks the Lord whether he has the wrong person.
Social media locks us in with people who think like us. The pastor says he takes time each week to remove from his feed the comments of those who think as he does, so that he hears different voices as well. "That is not the Kingdom. The Kingdom is a great net cast over London."

4. A wide call, but not a shallow one

The Gospel is not "come to Jesus and he will make you happy" or "he will fulfill all your dreams." It does not invite us to add a little spirituality to a life we run ourselves. It calls us to surrender our lives to Jesus because he owns us: to repent, to believe, and to follow him.
"The breadth of the invitation must never be used to hide the depth of its demand." Hudson Taylor, missionary to the Chinese people, said: "Anyone can be a committed Christian. All it takes is giving your life." The pastor also quotes: "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
You cannot follow Jesus without the cross. Do not confuse breadth with shallowness: the Gospel is for everyone, but it leaves no one untouched.
Grace does not mean that God is indifferent to what we have become. It means that in Jesus, God acts to pull us out of what we have become and to shape us into what he meant us to be. Everyone is welcome, but no one comes to Christ on the condition that he will never change them.
The pastor takes up a formula he attributes to the Reformers, Calvin in particular: the cross is sufficient for all, effective for those who believe. Christ died for the sins of the world (John 3:16-18; 1 John 2:2). John the Baptist presents him as "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).
"We are not the sorting center that decides. We cast the nets." The Church is not a Sorting Hat that assigns people according to its own preferences.

5. The Kingdom tolerates a present mixture

The sorting does not happen while the net is crossing the sea, but when it reaches the shore. The fishermen sit down: this is going to take time. Matthew 13 has already introduced this idea with the parable of the weeds, a plant that looks like wheat until it has grown.
The pastor confesses that he cannot recognize many species of fish, nor tell edible mushrooms from deadly ones. Jesus describes a coexistence of good and evil in the present world, which is uncomfortable for traditions like his own.
The Kingdom has already come, but not yet in its fullness. The victory was won at the cross and sealed in the resurrection, but its consequences are not yet fully visible. We live between the beginning and the fulfillment.
Before asking why God does not remove all evil right now, "be careful what you ask for." Malcolm Duncan quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Russian dissident and Templeton Prize winner in 1983: "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being." It runs through your heart and mine.
"Write this in your notes: being near the Kingdom is not the same as submitting to the King." In Matthew 7, some will say: "Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name?" And Jesus will answer that he never knew them.
The pastor says he has often walked alongside people hurt by churches where Jesus was talked about but the leadership was corrupt. It sometimes takes years of patient care for them to find healing.
"You can sing about surrender without surrendering. You can talk about generosity without giving. You can defend the authority of Scripture while refusing to obey it." As James says, this ought not to be so (James 3:10). "I do not want to be necessary to the Church without being known by Christ."

6. The righteous, fruit, and discernment

The "righteous" are not morally perfect people, nor people who saved themselves by good behavior. Matthew is a Gospel of mercy: Jesus comes to save his people from their sins, he touches the unclean, and he speaks of his blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:28).
The righteous are those who have received God's reign and whose response to grace has become visible in a disciple's life. We are not saved by our works, but the grace that saves us is not a barren grace. "Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of repentance!" (Matthew 3:8). "Therefore by their fruits you will know them" (Matthew 7:20).
When the pastor asks someone how their soul is doing and they answer "I am a member of KT," he insists: "That is not my question. Are you becoming more like Jesus?"
The Beatitudes (Matthew 5) do not say how to earn God's love. They describe the character of those who have come under his rule: the poor in spirit, the gentle, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers.
Discernment is not suspicion. Suspicion begins with "I am not going to trust you." Discernment begins with "I want to trust you," while staying alert, with restoration as the goal.
Some can spot a heretic from three hundred meters away but cannot sense their own hypocrisy. The pastor calls them "self-appointed spiritual detectives." Jesus does not tell this parable so that we can decide which kind of fish other people are, but so that we ask ourselves which kind of fish we are.
The final separation is entrusted to the angels. The Church must confront sin, seek restoration, protect vulnerable people, and exercise discipline (Matthew 18), but it must avoid two opposite mistakes: careless tolerance, which is not grace but destruction, and spiritual arrogance, which makes everyone a defendant. The judgment seat belongs to Christ.

7. The Kingdom is moving toward a final separation

The net will reach the shore. The story will reach its conclusion, and the mixture will not last forever. The furnace and the gnashing of teeth already appear in the explanation of the parable of the weeds: this repeated language underlines the seriousness and the finality of the judgment.
Malcolm Duncan rejects the idea of salvation offered after death: "it is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). "A preacher who never talks about judgment does not make God more loving. He makes the Church less truthful."
God's judgment is an expression of God's love. If God loves the oppressed, he must oppose oppression. If he loves truth, he must confront lies. A God who looked at violence and corruption with permanent indifference would be a tyrant. The God of the Bible hears the blood crying out from the ground (Genesis 4:10) and the cry of the slaves (Exodus 3:7). Evil will not have the last word.
Jesus has received the name above every name: every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is Lord (Philippians 2:9-11). Since it is the angels who separate, we are protected from the danger of vengeance. "Pastor, I just want justice," he often hears, when the person actually wants vengeance. Justice, for its part, trusts God.
This does not make us passive in the face of evil. The pastor tells how he handcuffed himself to railings outside embassies, glued himself to a chocolate manufacturer in Geneva that used forced labor, and joined campaigns against human trafficking. "I am a servant of the judge. I do not replace the judge."
Weeping and gnashing of teeth are not preached with a twinkle in the eye, but with a broken heart. Through Ezekiel, God says that the watchman who does not warn bears responsibility for the blood (Ezekiel 33:8-9). The point is to warn, not to frighten.
A God who pretended to let us choose, then overturned that choice at the end, would be a liar. But whose heart will be the most broken at the moment of separation? "The God who made you will feel that pain." And the pastor bears witness: "While I was running away from him, he was running after me." At the moment he said "I need you," God answered: "I know. I was waiting for you. Welcome home."
The pastor needs God to put everything right, starting with himself: "I have hurt people. I have let people down. I have failed." We would like God to judge others now and us later. His closing prayer: "Lord Jesus, never let me be near you without having surrendered to you."

Key Takeaways

The Kingdom casts its net over everyone: the Church does not sort, it announces the Gospel to each person without judging who is worth it.
The invitation is wide, but the call is deep: no one comes to Christ on the condition that he will never change them.
Being near the Kingdom is not submitting to the King. You can know the language of the Kingdom without living its values.
Discernment begins with trust, and it is exercised first on yourself. The final separation belongs to God, not to us.
God's judgment is an expression of his love: evil will not have the last word, and God still runs after the one who flees from him.

Personal Application

What unspoken requirements (vocabulary, dress, codes) might keep someone from feeling welcome in your church?
Are there people you have silently judged as too far away to be reached by the Gospel?
In what area do you know the language of the Kingdom without living its values: generosity, forgiveness, obedience to Scripture?
When you say "I am discerning," do you start by wanting to trust, or by protecting yourself?
If someone asked you today, "Are you becoming more like Jesus?", what would you answer?

Passages Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the parable of the net in Matthew 13 mean?

According to Malcolm Duncan, it teaches three truths: the Kingdom casts its net very wide, it tolerates for a time a mixture of good and bad fish, and it moves toward a final separation at the end of the age. Jesus does not draw up a calendar of the end. He raises the question of how to live today.

Is it the Church's job to separate the good fish from the bad?

No. In the parable, it is the angels who do the separating. The Church must confront sin, protect vulnerable people, and exercise biblical discipline, but it is not the judge of anyone's destiny. Only God sees the whole heart and judges with perfect justice.

Why talk about judgment if God is love?

Malcolm Duncan affirms that God's judgment is an expression of God's love. If God loves the oppressed, he must oppose oppression. A God indifferent to violence and corruption would not be loving. A preacher who never talks about judgment does not make God more loving: he makes the Church less truthful.