1 00:00:09,040 --> 00:00:12,240 Friends, our teaching scripture this morning comes from Matthew 2 00:00:12,240 --> 00:00:18,960 chapter 13 verses 47 to 52. It says again the Kingdom of 3 00:00:18,960 --> 00:00:22,640 heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught 4 00:00:22,640 --> 00:00:26,080 fish of every kind. When it was full, they drew it 5 00:00:26,080 --> 00:00:31,000 ashore, sat down and put the good into baskets, but threw out 6 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:34,280 the bad. So it will be at the end of the 7 00:00:34,280 --> 00:00:37,240 age. The angels will come out and 8 00:00:37,240 --> 00:00:39,840 separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into 9 00:00:39,840 --> 00:00:43,120 the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of 10 00:00:43,120 --> 00:00:46,160 teeth. Have you understood all this? 11 00:00:46,640 --> 00:00:50,240 They answered Yes. And he said to them, Therefore 12 00:00:50,240 --> 00:00:53,480 every scribe who has become a disciple in the Kingdom of 13 00:00:53,480 --> 00:00:57,240 heaven is like the master of a household, who brings out of his 14 00:00:57,240 --> 00:01:00,120 treasure what is new and what is old. 15 00:01:01,440 --> 00:01:06,200 This is the word of the Lord. It's good to be with you. 16 00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:10,920 If you are new with us. My name is Jared and I'm a a 17 00:01:11,200 --> 00:01:15,760 fair bit shorter than Parker is. There we go. 18 00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:18,560 My name is Jared. I'm one of the pastors here. 19 00:01:18,560 --> 00:01:20,320 It's good to be with you. This morning. 20 00:01:21,520 --> 00:01:26,000 We are going to get to some of the oddity of the passage that 21 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:30,240 we've just read. But first I want to show you a 22 00:01:30,240 --> 00:01:33,920 picture of Gertrude Stein. This is a picture of Gertrude 23 00:01:33,920 --> 00:01:39,960 Stein by Pablo Picasso. Picasso's nineteen O 6 portrait 24 00:01:39,960 --> 00:01:44,320 of Stein is a painting that she hung above her chair until the 25 00:01:44,320 --> 00:01:48,720 day she died. She sat in a cold room on 90 26 00:01:48,720 --> 00:01:52,840 occasions to have this portrait done of her from Pablo Picasso. 27 00:01:53,480 --> 00:01:57,640 So Gertrude Stein was an American writer who moved to 28 00:01:57,640 --> 00:02:02,920 Paris in 1903, and she spent the next 40 years there writing and 29 00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:06,200 thinking and writing poetry and collecting art. 30 00:02:06,600 --> 00:02:10,280 And she is now most famous for one sentence. 31 00:02:10,280 --> 00:02:13,560 A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. 32 00:02:14,440 --> 00:02:19,040 And in their apartment, she and her brother Leo, they were about 33 00:02:19,040 --> 00:02:21,360 30 years old or so. They were intellectuals. 34 00:02:21,360 --> 00:02:24,560 They were relatively financially comfortable, but they weren't, 35 00:02:24,560 --> 00:02:28,280 like, super, super wealthy. And they loved art. 36 00:02:29,240 --> 00:02:31,840 And so they decided to do something that nobody 37 00:02:31,840 --> 00:02:34,520 respectable in Paris was doing at the time. 38 00:02:34,520 --> 00:02:36,960 They started walking in the galleries in the back streets of 39 00:02:36,960 --> 00:02:40,640 Paris, and they started just buying up almost 40 00:02:40,640 --> 00:02:44,720 indiscriminately, every piece of art that they could find that 41 00:02:44,720 --> 00:02:50,600 just sort of caught their eye. And at the time, art was kind of 42 00:02:50,600 --> 00:02:53,400 in a bit of a flux. It was a bit of an eclectic mix, 43 00:02:53,480 --> 00:02:56,800 and it was a moment in the art world when a lot that was being 44 00:02:56,800 --> 00:03:00,040 put out there, a lot that was being painted, was sort of 45 00:03:00,040 --> 00:03:04,800 outside the bounds of what the art world considered good. 46 00:03:06,160 --> 00:03:10,720 And so in 19 O 5, they walked into a salon in the Grand Palais 47 00:03:10,720 --> 00:03:14,000 and they stumbled into an art show where the biggest scandal 48 00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:16,880 of the show was a portrait of a woman with a green face and a 49 00:03:16,880 --> 00:03:22,280 hat that looked like a melting flower garden by a guy named 50 00:03:22,280 --> 00:03:28,000 Henry Matisse. And people hated this picture 51 00:03:28,240 --> 00:03:32,120 when it first came out. But the Steins, they went back 52 00:03:32,120 --> 00:03:33,720 to this art show week after week. 53 00:03:33,720 --> 00:03:37,720 And after five weeks, they ended up buying it for about $100. 54 00:03:38,640 --> 00:03:41,160 And they just kept walking the streets of Paris 55 00:03:41,160 --> 00:03:44,080 indiscriminately picking up pieces of art. 56 00:03:44,440 --> 00:03:48,440 You know, this is a time when art was flooding the streets of 57 00:03:48,440 --> 00:03:50,840 Paris. They stumbled on this back alley 58 00:03:50,840 --> 00:03:53,920 little shop where a former circus clown literally was 59 00:03:53,920 --> 00:03:58,040 trying to sell some paintings by an unnamed 24 year old Spaniard 60 00:03:58,040 --> 00:04:02,760 named Pablo Picasso, The Steins. They bought a famous painting 61 00:04:02,760 --> 00:04:06,640 called Girl with a Basket of Flowers for $30.00. 62 00:04:07,040 --> 00:04:10,480 I don't have a picture of it because it's a naked girl and 63 00:04:10,480 --> 00:04:13,320 she's a minor and I thought that that would not be a good idea. 64 00:04:14,600 --> 00:04:17,640 Gertrude hated the painting at first, but over the next nine 65 00:04:17,640 --> 00:04:21,399 years, working with very limited money, the Steins, they kept 66 00:04:21,399 --> 00:04:24,520 buying paintings. Cezanne before anyone thought 67 00:04:24,520 --> 00:04:26,800 that he was important. Renoir, Matisse. 68 00:04:26,800 --> 00:04:30,080 They ended up with so many Matisse's that they lended out 69 00:04:30,080 --> 00:04:32,240 Matisse paintings to their friends so that they couldn't 70 00:04:32,240 --> 00:04:35,320 display them in their living room on Saturday nights. 71 00:04:35,320 --> 00:04:39,520 They opened up their apartment at 27 Rue de Flore for a weekly 72 00:04:39,520 --> 00:04:43,360 salon, and Picasso came and Matisse came, and Hemingway 73 00:04:43,360 --> 00:04:46,000 would later stop by, and Fitzgerald and Sherwood, 74 00:04:46,040 --> 00:04:49,880 Anderson and Ezra Pound. This became the place to be. 75 00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:58,600 They were walls covered floor to ceiling with art and not every 76 00:04:58,600 --> 00:05:02,080 painting that they bought however made it onto the walls. 77 00:05:02,080 --> 00:05:05,280 The ones that Gertrude had bought that she felt like we're 78 00:05:05,280 --> 00:05:08,560 maybe not quite her flair and not quite her style. 79 00:05:08,560 --> 00:05:10,840 They no longer seem to be alive to her. 80 00:05:11,200 --> 00:05:16,080 There was some paintings that kind of displeased her and you 81 00:05:16,080 --> 00:05:20,040 know, those got consigned to a little backroom that they called 82 00:05:20,040 --> 00:05:25,120 the Salon de refuse the the the salon of the rejected, rejected 83 00:05:25,120 --> 00:05:27,360 paintings in the back corner of their apartment. 84 00:05:29,600 --> 00:05:37,320 So the selection of paintings was always being sorted, it was 85 00:05:37,320 --> 00:05:40,800 always being sort of moved and shifted around, mounted on the 86 00:05:40,800 --> 00:05:43,560 wall, re evaluated. Some would move up to the living 87 00:05:43,560 --> 00:05:46,160 room, some would be back to the refuge. 88 00:05:46,160 --> 00:05:50,440 And the sorting happened slowly over time. 89 00:05:50,920 --> 00:05:55,920 But it could not have happened without this indiscriminate 90 00:05:56,560 --> 00:05:59,320 buying that they participated in. 91 00:06:00,680 --> 00:06:04,800 Most of what they bought is now considered priceless. 92 00:06:07,440 --> 00:06:11,240 The Matisse, the woman with a hat that nobody wanted in 1905, 93 00:06:11,240 --> 00:06:14,680 is now in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 94 00:06:16,200 --> 00:06:20,600 So we're going to come back to this again. 95 00:06:20,920 --> 00:06:25,840 The Kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea 96 00:06:25,840 --> 00:06:27,880 and caught fish of every single kind. 97 00:06:28,400 --> 00:06:32,040 When it was full they drew it ashore, and they sat down, and 98 00:06:32,040 --> 00:06:34,960 they put the good into baskets, but they threw away the bad. 99 00:06:35,960 --> 00:06:38,760 So it will be at the end of the age. 100 00:06:39,160 --> 00:06:42,600 The angels will come out and separate the evil from the 101 00:06:42,600 --> 00:06:46,480 righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there 102 00:06:46,480 --> 00:06:48,160 will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 103 00:06:49,760 --> 00:06:57,320 Would you spray with me? Oh Lord, we welcome your 104 00:06:57,320 --> 00:07:00,480 presence. We ask God that you would come 105 00:07:00,480 --> 00:07:07,800 and sort and sift our lives. Give his ears to hear Lord, and 106 00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:12,160 eyes to see in Christ's name. Amen. 107 00:07:14,120 --> 00:07:18,120 So as I'm sure you're aware, this passage is going to need a 108 00:07:18,120 --> 00:07:21,760 little bit of explanation, but we'll get there. 109 00:07:23,320 --> 00:07:27,040 So we've been in this series on the parables, which I'm going to 110 00:07:27,040 --> 00:07:28,680 try to wrap up with a bit of a zinger. 111 00:07:28,920 --> 00:07:32,040 If you were here with us a few weeks ago, Parker preached on 112 00:07:32,040 --> 00:07:37,200 the Pearl of Great Prize following a week of preaching on 113 00:07:37,200 --> 00:07:40,480 the hidden treasure in the field, and he encouraged you and 114 00:07:40,480 --> 00:07:43,480 I to read the next paragraph. How many of you went and did 115 00:07:43,480 --> 00:07:45,640 that in your Bibles? You just opened up your Bible 116 00:07:45,640 --> 00:07:47,440 and you read well. You would have come to the 117 00:07:47,440 --> 00:07:53,560 parable of the dragnet, which is rounded out this way. 118 00:07:54,520 --> 00:07:59,920 Have you understood all of this? They answered yes. 119 00:08:00,680 --> 00:08:03,400 And he said to them, therefore every scribe who's become a 120 00:08:03,400 --> 00:08:05,680 disciple in the Kingdom of heaven is like the master of a 121 00:08:05,680 --> 00:08:09,120 household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is 122 00:08:09,120 --> 00:08:10,600 old. And when Jesus has finished 123 00:08:10,600 --> 00:08:13,120 these parables, he left that place. 124 00:08:13,520 --> 00:08:17,880 So Matthew basically puts the most complex and hard parable at 125 00:08:17,880 --> 00:08:21,240 the end of the collection and basically has Jesus saying, you 126 00:08:21,240 --> 00:08:24,680 got all that right? And they're like, absolutely. 127 00:08:24,680 --> 00:08:26,080 And I'm like, I don't think you did. 128 00:08:27,720 --> 00:08:29,800 So what is actually going on here? 129 00:08:30,280 --> 00:08:35,000 So, friends, the parables are designed to help us lean in. 130 00:08:35,640 --> 00:08:40,159 They're meant to draw us deeper into the mystery of the coming 131 00:08:40,159 --> 00:08:42,280 and unfolding Kingdom in the world. 132 00:08:42,559 --> 00:08:46,880 And at the beginning of Matthew, his disciples asked him, why do 133 00:08:46,880 --> 00:08:50,200 you speak in parables? And he basically tells them that 134 00:08:50,200 --> 00:08:54,080 those who want to see and hear the Kingdom will be the people 135 00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:58,560 who stick around and ask the questions and lean in and things 136 00:08:58,560 --> 00:09:02,000 will eventually begin to make sense is what Jesus says. 137 00:09:02,720 --> 00:09:05,840 Those who have ears to hear, let him hear. 138 00:09:07,360 --> 00:09:10,920 But he also says that those who don't really have the appetite 139 00:09:10,920 --> 00:09:15,080 for it, it's going to be hard to make sense of the things that 140 00:09:15,080 --> 00:09:19,920 I'm saying, says Jesus. And here's the good news already 141 00:09:19,920 --> 00:09:27,320 at the beginning here for you and I is that if our posture is 142 00:09:27,320 --> 00:09:33,640 to stick around, to stay in the room and to keep following the 143 00:09:33,640 --> 00:09:36,800 rabbi who occasionally says some really weird things and tries to 144 00:09:36,800 --> 00:09:40,120 help us understand what the Kingdom of God is like by 145 00:09:40,120 --> 00:09:43,480 telling stories with the occasional unsavory character 146 00:09:43,480 --> 00:09:45,920 like an unjust judge or a tipsy slave owner. 147 00:09:46,200 --> 00:09:50,880 The promise is that somehow all of these different ways of 148 00:09:50,880 --> 00:09:54,400 seeing the Kingdom will accumulate in us something that 149 00:09:54,400 --> 00:09:58,640 comes to be called faith and hope and trust. 150 00:09:59,280 --> 00:10:03,400 It just takes time. And so these parables, they 151 00:10:03,400 --> 00:10:07,120 serve as metaphors and the way that Matthew sort of gathers 152 00:10:07,120 --> 00:10:10,000 them all up and puts them together back-to-back in this 153 00:10:10,000 --> 00:10:13,840 rapid fire setting that we find in chapter 13 of Matthew is 154 00:10:13,840 --> 00:10:16,960 meant to help us understand what the Kingdom of God is like. 155 00:10:17,880 --> 00:10:21,520 The Kingdom of God. This is the primary thing that 156 00:10:21,520 --> 00:10:25,600 Jesus talks about in the Gospel narratives and the way that we 157 00:10:25,600 --> 00:10:29,080 have come to understand what Jesus means when he talks about 158 00:10:29,080 --> 00:10:32,160 the Kingdom of God. Specifically for those of us in 159 00:10:32,160 --> 00:10:35,760 a church like ours, the Vineyard Church, the way that we have 160 00:10:36,040 --> 00:10:39,560 conceptualized what it means when Jesus talks about the 161 00:10:39,560 --> 00:10:43,200 Kingdom of God is a particular theological framework that takes 162 00:10:43,240 --> 00:10:48,440 Jesus to mean that the dynamic activity of God's rule and reign 163 00:10:49,080 --> 00:10:55,080 is breaking into history, into your life and into my life, into 164 00:10:55,080 --> 00:10:59,440 all of the lives around us. That God is actively at work in 165 00:10:59,440 --> 00:11:03,120 the world and in our community and in all of different 166 00:11:03,120 --> 00:11:07,920 situations of your life. And so we live our lives ideally 167 00:11:07,920 --> 00:11:12,080 seeing the world in a different way because God is cultivating 168 00:11:12,720 --> 00:11:17,560 his own desires for the world that he is creating right in the 169 00:11:17,560 --> 00:11:19,040 middle of the one that we're living in. 170 00:11:19,200 --> 00:11:23,600 Does that make sense? God wants the world to go in a 171 00:11:23,600 --> 00:11:26,240 particular direction. He has these deep desires. 172 00:11:26,240 --> 00:11:29,600 He's trying to make the world come into this way. 173 00:11:29,880 --> 00:11:35,280 And God is giving us his desires over time and inviting us to 174 00:11:35,280 --> 00:11:39,360 participate in the rule in the reign of God, breaking into the 175 00:11:39,360 --> 00:11:42,640 present. He's growing in US hearts that 176 00:11:42,640 --> 00:11:45,520 want the things that he wants and works for, the things that 177 00:11:45,520 --> 00:11:48,680 he is working for. And through US, He is doing this 178 00:11:48,680 --> 00:11:53,520 through the ordinary things of our lives, the way we, you know, 179 00:11:53,520 --> 00:11:59,520 love each other, the way we asked for forgiveness or 180 00:11:59,520 --> 00:12:04,600 disperse forgiveness to someone else, these seemingly very 181 00:12:04,600 --> 00:12:07,840 ordinary things. Did anybody ask for forgiveness 182 00:12:07,840 --> 00:12:13,280 this week for anything good? Did anybody disperse forgiveness 183 00:12:13,280 --> 00:12:17,040 this week? OK, these are things that you 184 00:12:17,040 --> 00:12:21,000 should pay attention to, by the way, like, like at the end of 185 00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:23,320 your week, did I ask for forgiveness for anything? 186 00:12:23,320 --> 00:12:25,600 Did I forgive anyone? And if at the end of your week, 187 00:12:25,600 --> 00:12:30,800 you can't think of anything in either of those categories, you 188 00:12:30,800 --> 00:12:37,560 might not be paying attention. So friends, when we sort of 189 00:12:37,640 --> 00:12:41,200 honour one another with our words and we seek reconciliation 190 00:12:41,200 --> 00:12:44,240 as best as we can with the people that we've hurt or who 191 00:12:44,240 --> 00:12:47,640 have hurt us, this is how the Kingdom of God comes. 192 00:12:48,920 --> 00:12:52,640 So friends, the central claim of Jesus is that this reign, this 193 00:12:52,640 --> 00:12:57,760 world where things are operating in line with the desires of God, 194 00:12:58,360 --> 00:13:02,000 which everyone tends to think is coming at sometime in the 195 00:13:02,000 --> 00:13:07,480 future, is actually breaking in from the future back towards 196 00:13:07,480 --> 00:13:11,120 where we live. And it's like leaking out 197 00:13:11,120 --> 00:13:14,200 slowly. That's the picture of the 198 00:13:14,200 --> 00:13:17,240 message of the Kingdom of God that Jesus brings to us in the 199 00:13:17,240 --> 00:13:22,800 Gospels. And what happens is we see 200 00:13:22,800 --> 00:13:27,360 people reacting to that message in all kinds of ways. 201 00:13:28,080 --> 00:13:31,520 You got a Roman centurion servant with no religious 202 00:13:31,520 --> 00:13:34,680 background but the Roman Pagan one that he's been raised on, 203 00:13:34,920 --> 00:13:38,520 believing that Jesus could heal his son from a distance. 204 00:13:38,800 --> 00:13:41,040 And then Jesus praises him for his faith. 205 00:13:41,040 --> 00:13:44,600 While at the same time you have religious leaders and people 206 00:13:44,600 --> 00:13:47,560 responsible for guiding the spiritual lives of the masses 207 00:13:47,560 --> 00:13:52,080 responding with suspicion and envy and concern when they see 208 00:13:52,080 --> 00:13:55,320 Jesus opening the eyes of the blind and causing the lame to be 209 00:13:55,320 --> 00:13:59,800 able to walk. It is a mixed bag of how we all 210 00:13:59,800 --> 00:14:02,960 are responding to this message of the Kingdom of God leaking 211 00:14:02,960 --> 00:14:08,360 into the present. What is this Kingdom like? 212 00:14:09,960 --> 00:14:12,640 The people of surrounding Jesus begin to ask him. 213 00:14:13,240 --> 00:14:16,520 Because it doesn't quite make sense that the ones that we 214 00:14:16,520 --> 00:14:19,400 thought were all about this stuff seem to not quite get it. 215 00:14:19,560 --> 00:14:23,040 And those of us who have been furless from God seem to see 216 00:14:23,040 --> 00:14:25,240 something that others can't quite yet see. 217 00:14:25,920 --> 00:14:30,280 The Kingdom of God is like a sower sowing seed, and the seed 218 00:14:30,280 --> 00:14:34,400 is getting generously and indiscriminately scattered all 219 00:14:34,400 --> 00:14:38,160 around, almost carelessly. But whether the seed takes root, 220 00:14:38,160 --> 00:14:41,200 it kind of depends on the kind of soil, says Jesus. 221 00:14:41,840 --> 00:14:45,720 There are all kinds of people in the world and we are living in 222 00:14:45,720 --> 00:14:50,000 all kinds of seasons in our lives and, and the Kingdom seed 223 00:14:50,000 --> 00:14:52,240 is dropping on particular kinds of soil. 224 00:14:52,240 --> 00:14:55,520 And sometimes that's going to grow and sometimes it's not 225 00:14:55,520 --> 00:14:57,880 going to grow and sometimes it's going to grow in a way. 226 00:14:58,080 --> 00:15:00,800 But later on there are these weeds that are going to come and 227 00:15:00,800 --> 00:15:03,640 choke out the life of the Spirit that God is doing inside of us. 228 00:15:06,080 --> 00:15:10,040 Some of you like, know about the weeds. 229 00:15:11,880 --> 00:15:13,880 Some of you know what the weeds feel like. 230 00:15:15,120 --> 00:15:18,640 You know that God has planted something in your heart and 231 00:15:18,640 --> 00:15:21,400 you're living in a season where it's like, man, I think this 232 00:15:21,400 --> 00:15:27,120 thing's getting choked out. The Kingdom of God is is is 233 00:15:27,120 --> 00:15:30,080 like, is like a little bit of yeast working its way through 234 00:15:30,080 --> 00:15:33,240 the dough or like the tiniest of the seeds in the garden, the 235 00:15:33,240 --> 00:15:37,840 mustard seed, which grows up to be this giant tree where the 236 00:15:37,840 --> 00:15:42,400 birds come and nest. It's like a hidden treasure that 237 00:15:42,400 --> 00:15:45,080 someone finds and sells everything in order to buy in 238 00:15:45,080 --> 00:15:47,920 the field to make it his own. It's like that once in a 239 00:15:47,920 --> 00:15:52,320 lifetime Pearl that when you see it, when you get your eyes 240 00:15:52,320 --> 00:15:56,000 around it, all of the other things in your life of value 241 00:15:56,000 --> 00:15:59,240 begin to sort of fade into the backdrop because this one 242 00:15:59,240 --> 00:16:02,160 particular prize begins to be the thing that you look at. 243 00:16:04,480 --> 00:16:06,520 This is what the Kingdom of God is like. 244 00:16:06,520 --> 00:16:09,880 This is the the story that we hear in the parables. 245 00:16:09,880 --> 00:16:13,960 And I want to close our sermon series on the parables, at least 246 00:16:13,960 --> 00:16:22,320 for now, by saying this. I think the thing that Jesus is 247 00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:27,160 primarily trying to say to the parables is that the Kingdom of 248 00:16:27,160 --> 00:16:37,200 God is coming for everything. It's meant to spread everywhere, 249 00:16:39,040 --> 00:16:43,320 but it's not going to happen all at once or to tighten it up a 250 00:16:43,320 --> 00:16:46,640 bit. Everything and everywhere, but 251 00:16:46,640 --> 00:16:51,040 not all at once. He who has ears to hear, let him 252 00:16:51,040 --> 00:16:55,000 hear. Matthew chapter 13 once again. 253 00:16:56,160 --> 00:17:00,800 Again, the Kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into 254 00:17:00,800 --> 00:17:03,480 the sea and caught fish of every kind. 255 00:17:04,839 --> 00:17:08,960 And when it was full, they drew it ashore and they sat down and 256 00:17:08,960 --> 00:17:12,839 they put the good into baskets and they threw out the bad. 257 00:17:14,400 --> 00:17:19,240 So the kind of net that Jesus is referring to in this parable is 258 00:17:19,240 --> 00:17:23,319 what would be called a dragnet, and it's a specific kind of net 259 00:17:23,319 --> 00:17:29,200 that was almost 3 football fields long and it would stretch 260 00:17:29,200 --> 00:17:32,480 across a large portion of the Sea of Galilee. 261 00:17:32,760 --> 00:17:37,520 It was probably 10 or 12 feet on the wings and probably 25 feet 262 00:17:37,520 --> 00:17:40,600 in the middle. And so it was shaped really long 263 00:17:40,600 --> 00:17:44,240 and it kind of went down like this to arc and to sort of model 264 00:17:44,240 --> 00:17:48,480 the bottom of the sea. So get that into your mind. 265 00:17:48,920 --> 00:17:53,680 And three football fields is like 1000 feet long. 266 00:17:54,480 --> 00:17:58,240 And this is basically a wall of netting dragged through the 267 00:17:58,240 --> 00:18:03,720 water by 16 men, 8 on each rope, walking along the shore towards 268 00:18:03,720 --> 00:18:07,240 each other. And a net that size, a dragnet 269 00:18:08,440 --> 00:18:13,040 dragged through the entire water column from bottom up, doesn't 270 00:18:13,040 --> 00:18:19,360 discriminate. It catches everything, every 271 00:18:19,360 --> 00:18:22,800 kind of fish. Everything in its path is 272 00:18:22,800 --> 00:18:26,880 getting swept up in this net that Jesus calls the Kingdom. 273 00:18:28,320 --> 00:18:31,360 It would have picked up a bunch of tilapia, which was the main 274 00:18:31,360 --> 00:18:34,400 kind of fish that they would have been fishing for. 275 00:18:34,400 --> 00:18:37,040 They were actually looking primarily for tilapia. 276 00:18:37,040 --> 00:18:40,200 There were five different kinds of tilapia in that time, and in 277 00:18:40,200 --> 00:18:43,520 that area it was the main stain of the the Galilean diet. 278 00:18:43,520 --> 00:18:47,280 Sardines would have been, you know, side by side with the 279 00:18:47,280 --> 00:18:51,640 tilapia, and those would need to be separated for a separate 280 00:18:51,640 --> 00:18:54,200 processing. You know, we can sell those at 281 00:18:54,200 --> 00:18:56,480 the market. The Romans love their sardines. 282 00:18:57,920 --> 00:19:02,320 And alongside all of the stuff that the fishermen would have 283 00:19:02,320 --> 00:19:07,680 been looking for were all other kinds of fish, catfish, which 284 00:19:07,680 --> 00:19:11,520 really they couldn't do anything with because according to 285 00:19:11,520 --> 00:19:14,240 Levitical law and custom, the catfish would have been 286 00:19:14,240 --> 00:19:18,320 uncleaned or unclean. They were actually, you know, 287 00:19:18,320 --> 00:19:20,520 some of the biggest fish in the sea. 288 00:19:20,520 --> 00:19:23,200 You know, theoretically, it's the thing that, like most people 289 00:19:23,200 --> 00:19:25,840 in Ohio, when they're catching fish looking for catfish. 290 00:19:25,840 --> 00:19:28,640 And I don't know if you've ever tried to eat some catfish, but I 291 00:19:28,640 --> 00:19:32,040 don't like it. I mean, give me some salmon or 292 00:19:32,040 --> 00:19:33,640 some halibut or something like that. 293 00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:35,480 But I don't know how people do it. 294 00:19:35,880 --> 00:19:38,080 If you have a good catfish recipe, you're welcome to invite 295 00:19:38,080 --> 00:19:42,080 me over. So there would have been eels 296 00:19:42,080 --> 00:19:44,720 that would have been caught up into the net, which also were 297 00:19:44,720 --> 00:19:48,160 unclean and they needed to be tossed aside, and all other 298 00:19:48,160 --> 00:19:50,520 kinds of dead fish and diseased fish. 299 00:19:50,520 --> 00:19:54,160 But all of the other things that also would have been resting at 300 00:19:54,160 --> 00:19:59,080 the bottom of the sea, lake bottom debris like sticks and 301 00:19:59,080 --> 00:20:03,080 leaves and. Reeds and branches and stones 302 00:20:03,080 --> 00:20:05,600 and rocks that would get caught in the netting and pottery 303 00:20:05,600 --> 00:20:09,200 shards from broken jars and oil lamps from fishermen who had 304 00:20:09,480 --> 00:20:13,600 tossed over a lamp on the side, and broken fishing gear and and 305 00:20:13,720 --> 00:20:16,320 broken Nets and broken fishing line. 306 00:20:16,680 --> 00:20:19,600 All of it would have been gathered in a dragnet, every 307 00:20:19,600 --> 00:20:22,600 single bit of it. Nothing would have been allowed 308 00:20:22,600 --> 00:20:26,440 to pass through. And so once it got up on the 309 00:20:26,440 --> 00:20:32,560 shore, what would come next is hours of sorting tilapia into 310 00:20:32,560 --> 00:20:37,120 the basket, sardines into this basket, and everything else that 311 00:20:37,120 --> 00:20:40,560 they couldn't eat or that was sort of rotten would get 312 00:20:40,560 --> 00:20:44,200 gathered up and it would get thrown into a fire and get burnt 313 00:20:45,120 --> 00:20:47,000 because they don't want to throw it back into the sea because 314 00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:48,360 they're just going to have to catch it again. 315 00:20:49,120 --> 00:20:55,840 And so they would just burn it. Everyone would have had this 316 00:20:55,840 --> 00:20:59,680 idea in their mind when Jesus said the Kingdom of God is like 317 00:20:59,680 --> 00:21:04,440 a net. The Kingdom of heaven is like a 318 00:21:04,440 --> 00:21:09,120 net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every single 319 00:21:09,120 --> 00:21:12,080 kind. And when it was full, they drew 320 00:21:12,080 --> 00:21:15,400 it ashore, and they sat down and they put the good into the 321 00:21:15,400 --> 00:21:17,080 baskets and they threw out the bad. 322 00:21:18,840 --> 00:21:23,920 The Kingdom of God is coming for everything. 323 00:21:26,120 --> 00:21:30,560 It's coming for everything. It's indiscriminately and 324 00:21:30,560 --> 00:21:35,480 eventually going to gather up every single thing in its path, 325 00:21:38,320 --> 00:21:41,760 the same way that the yeast is going to work its way through 326 00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:44,760 the whole dough. And so many of the parables of 327 00:21:44,840 --> 00:21:49,080 Jesus are talking about the scope or the totality of the 328 00:21:49,080 --> 00:21:53,320 reach of the Kingdom of God. It is broad, it is wide, it is 329 00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:57,200 1000 foot net that's gathering up everything in its pathway. 330 00:21:58,280 --> 00:22:00,840 And theologians, they tell us that Matthew has sort of 331 00:22:00,840 --> 00:22:04,360 stitched all of these various teachings together as a way of 332 00:22:05,360 --> 00:22:10,280 giving Jesus the opportunity to lay out clearly this idea that 333 00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:14,480 whatever part of your life or my life or whatever part of the 334 00:22:14,480 --> 00:22:17,920 world that you inhabit that you think cannot be reached by the 335 00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:25,240 Kingdom, it's coming for you. It's coming for everything. 336 00:22:27,480 --> 00:22:35,120 So Jesus is is asking us to imagine the whole world is a sea 337 00:22:35,120 --> 00:22:38,640 full of various kinds of fish. And the net of the Kingdom is 338 00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:42,840 coming from top to bottom and slowly pulling everything up, 339 00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:48,160 dragging everything in its path to to the shore to be sorted in 340 00:22:48,160 --> 00:22:52,080 some sort of cosmological sorting, which we'll get to. 341 00:22:54,280 --> 00:23:00,480 But here's the thing, if that's happening at a macro level, that 342 00:23:00,480 --> 00:23:04,480 all the fish in this cosmic sea are going to get pulled in by 343 00:23:04,480 --> 00:23:09,440 the net of the Kingdom, what it also means is that on a micro 344 00:23:09,440 --> 00:23:14,040 level, in my own life, it's also going to happen that way. 345 00:23:15,560 --> 00:23:20,120 The Kingdom of God is coming for everything, and the net of the 346 00:23:20,120 --> 00:23:23,600 Kingdom is so big and all-encompassing that it's going 347 00:23:23,600 --> 00:23:30,520 to reach everywhere. So if you were to imagine, 348 00:23:31,080 --> 00:23:35,680 friends, that the net of God's Kingdom is gently passing 349 00:23:35,680 --> 00:23:41,480 through the waters of your life right now, what are some of the 350 00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:46,080 things that you would hope would get caught up in the Kingdom, 351 00:23:49,240 --> 00:23:50,600 like just right now in your life? 352 00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:58,280 What are the parts of my life that hope that you hoped would 353 00:23:58,280 --> 00:24:01,720 get swept up, that you hope will get swept away into the net? 354 00:24:05,360 --> 00:24:09,200 Do you have those things in your life that you're longing for God 355 00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:11,320 to kind of sweep up and help sort you out? 356 00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:21,860 Man, I sure do. Maybe the more important 357 00:24:21,860 --> 00:24:26,220 question might be this. Is there anything that you're 358 00:24:26,220 --> 00:24:30,180 not quite ready to have swept up in the net of the Kingdom, 359 00:24:32,120 --> 00:24:35,000 Anything that you're hoping will just sort of find its way to the 360 00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:37,640 bottom and sort of Nestle in and maybe miss the net? 361 00:24:39,040 --> 00:24:40,760 Maybe the metaphor is going to break down a minute. 362 00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:45,000 But you, you get what I'm saying though, right? 363 00:24:46,280 --> 00:24:49,200 Sometimes there's a sense in which that we have this very 364 00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:54,120 clear cut of what we want to give to God, and then we have 365 00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:56,920 these other things that we're not quite ready to relinquish. 366 00:25:00,400 --> 00:25:03,520 So the people who are surrounding Jesus, asking about 367 00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:07,240 the Kingdom of God, would never have imagined that the Kingdom 368 00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:10,000 of God was something that would come for all of the little 369 00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:13,640 pieces of their lives and touchdown in the minutiae of 370 00:25:13,640 --> 00:25:17,720 their thoughts and desires and their emotions and their hopes. 371 00:25:18,040 --> 00:25:20,960 The way that they, you know, eat and drink and the way that they 372 00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:23,920 play or they don't play, and the way that they work, the way that 373 00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:27,160 they are intimate and with whom they are intimate with. 374 00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:31,720 They would never have imagined that the Kingdom of God would 375 00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:39,360 reach to such places. But the Kingdom is coming for 376 00:25:39,360 --> 00:25:48,240 everything and everywhere. And this language of totality, 377 00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:53,320 it stretches its way through the unfolding understanding of the 378 00:25:53,320 --> 00:25:57,000 Kingdom as the earliest communities are trying to make 379 00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:02,080 sense of how it is that their lives begin to feel as though 380 00:26:02,080 --> 00:26:03,800 they're being sifted by something. 381 00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:08,480 All throughout the letters of the New Testament, the apostle 382 00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:13,520 Paul and other writers are Speaking of the totality of the 383 00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:17,040 Kingdom of God. In Paul's first letter to the 384 00:26:17,040 --> 00:26:20,120 Corinthians, the church at Corinth, he writes this. 385 00:26:20,120 --> 00:26:27,920 He says Then comes the end when he delivers the Kingdom to God 386 00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:35,960 the Father, after destroying, destroying every rule and every 387 00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:40,520 authority and power. For he must reign until he has 388 00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:42,400 put all his enemies under his feet. 389 00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:47,360 The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for God has put all 390 00:26:47,360 --> 00:26:53,160 things in subjection under his feet, meaning Christ, that God 391 00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:58,000 may be all and all. And to the church in Ephesus he 392 00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:01,640 writes, he raised him from the dead, and seated him at his 393 00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:06,120 right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and 394 00:27:06,120 --> 00:27:09,840 authority, and power and dominion, and above every name 395 00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:12,680 that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to 396 00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:15,760 come. He put all things under His 397 00:27:15,760 --> 00:27:19,720 feet, and gave him as head over all things to the church, which 398 00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:22,520 is His body, the fullness of him who fills All in all. 399 00:27:24,520 --> 00:27:28,040 And pulling from Psalm chapter 8, you put all things under 400 00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:32,360 subjection under His feet. And now putting everything in 401 00:27:32,360 --> 00:27:36,240 subjection to Him, he left nothing outside of His control. 402 00:27:36,520 --> 00:27:41,160 At present the writer of Hebrews says we do not yet see 403 00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:43,560 everything that is being subjected to him. 404 00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:48,280 Don't miss that part. We can't quite see it. 405 00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:53,760 But perhaps the most encouraging of them all, therefore, God has 406 00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:58,400 highly exalted him Jesus, and bestowed on him the name that is 407 00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:02,920 above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should 408 00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:06,400 bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every 409 00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:09,200 tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. 410 00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:16,680 To the glory of God the Father. Everything is being gathered up 411 00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:25,080 by the Kingdom, every knee, every tongue, everywhere in 412 00:28:25,080 --> 00:28:28,800 heaven, on earth, under the earth, beyond the earth. 413 00:28:33,120 --> 00:28:34,880 But it's not happening all at once. 414 00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:42,400 At present we do not see everything that God has under 415 00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:45,120 His reign. Are you guys tracking with me? 416 00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:52,200 Do you guys feel any part of this like the everything, the 417 00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:58,160 everywhere, but particularly the not all at once part man? 418 00:28:58,160 --> 00:29:05,040 That part is like, come on. The invitation that Jesus is 419 00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:10,560 extending to us in this parable is an invitation to trust that 420 00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:15,080 the long, slow, all-encompassing, indiscriminate 421 00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:18,400 work of God is going to gather up all of the things. 422 00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:21,200 All of the things that we see in the news. 423 00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:28,080 All the world leaders making their plans, all the ups and 424 00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:34,480 downs of the price of oil, the price of eggs, all the ways that 425 00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:37,520 those things are hitting us. All the all the different policy 426 00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:39,000 decisions that are being plotted. 427 00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:42,480 And most certainly all the bits and pieces of our lives and the 428 00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:44,960 ones that we love and the ones that don't love us. 429 00:29:45,040 --> 00:29:52,320 All of it is getting gathered up and the net of the Kingdom and 430 00:29:52,320 --> 00:29:58,920 the Kingdom itself is going to sort the good from the bad, the 431 00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:01,360 things of destruction from the things that give life. 432 00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:08,920 So the parable of the dragnet is often paired in kind of 433 00:30:08,920 --> 00:30:12,840 conversation and theological reflection with another parable 434 00:30:12,840 --> 00:30:18,000 from this same passage. They have the same idea, and I'm 435 00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:21,080 going to read this one. He says, by the way, this comes 436 00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:24,720 just a few sort of paragraphs before the dragnet 1. 437 00:30:25,120 --> 00:30:27,520 He says he put before them another parable. 438 00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:31,600 The Kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed 439 00:30:31,600 --> 00:30:36,680 good seed in his field, but while everybody was asleep, an 440 00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:40,840 enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. 441 00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:44,360 That'd, that'd be terrible, wouldn't it? 442 00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:49,720 And so when the plants came up and they bore grain, then the 443 00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:53,200 weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the 444 00:30:53,200 --> 00:30:55,600 householder came and said to him, Master, did you not sow 445 00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:59,960 good seed in your field? Where then did these weeds come 446 00:30:59,960 --> 00:31:03,640 from? Where Then he answered, and he 447 00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:06,440 says, an enemy has done this. And the, the servants, the 448 00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:10,840 slaves, they said to him, then do you want us to go and gather 449 00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:14,920 them, meaning the weeds? But he replied no, for in the 450 00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:17,960 gathering of the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with sin. 451 00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:22,560 Let both of them grow together until the harvest. 452 00:31:22,560 --> 00:31:25,640 And at the harvest time, I will tell the reapers, collect the 453 00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:28,680 weeds 1st and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather 454 00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:37,560 the wheat into my barn. Really, Jesus, you want us to 455 00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:48,520 live with all these weeds up in here in my life in the world. 456 00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:54,080 And the particular weed, you know, other translations, they 457 00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:55,880 draw this out more particularly in the Greek. 458 00:31:55,880 --> 00:32:00,000 But the particular weed that the enemy in this parable sows, 459 00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:05,040 those nasty enemies, most scholars identify as a weed 460 00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:08,920 called Darnell or sometimes called bearded Darnell or false 461 00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:14,360 wheat. So Darnell is almost 462 00:32:14,360 --> 00:32:19,000 indistinguishable from wheat in its early stages of growth. 463 00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:23,920 That'll preach a little bit, right? 464 00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:30,760 All kinds of things that are happening that people say are 465 00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:37,840 the Kingdom. They think it's the Kingdom, but 466 00:32:37,840 --> 00:32:45,120 it just might be false wheat. And before we go too judgy on 467 00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:48,400 the world, like the same is happening in our own lives. 468 00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:52,280 There's all kinds of things in our own lives that we think, 469 00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:54,160 man, I, I think I got this licked. 470 00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:56,480 I think I got it down. I think I know what this Jesus 471 00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:59,240 thing is about. And we go along in our in our 472 00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:05,000 lives and then eventually we get to realize, I think I just been 473 00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:08,480 like looking at a bunch of weeds in my life. 474 00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:13,720 So Darnell is the most indistinguishable from wheat. 475 00:33:14,080 --> 00:33:16,360 And these early stages of growth, the shoots look the 476 00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:20,400 same, the blades look the same. You, you genuinely cannot tell 477 00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:23,160 the difference between the weeds and the wheat at a particular 478 00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:26,800 time until the heads form, at which point the wheat head is 479 00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:29,880 heavy and gold and it bends with the weight of the grain and the 480 00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:33,000 Darnell head is lighter and thinner and it stays upright. 481 00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:38,760 Jesus says, resist the urge. Stay with me here to sort 482 00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:43,960 everything all at once. Give the field some time, let 483 00:33:43,960 --> 00:33:47,640 the wheat mature, let the weeds show themselves to be the weeds. 484 00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:50,200 And in the end, it's not even your job to sort it out. 485 00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:56,240 Both the dragnet parable and the weeds among the wheat parable 486 00:33:56,240 --> 00:34:00,280 are both more or less saying that this time that we are in 487 00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:03,360 right now is going to come to an end and there are going to be a 488 00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:06,360 lot of things that need to get sorted out. 489 00:34:08,520 --> 00:34:12,679 And Jesus is using what theologians call apocalyptic 490 00:34:12,679 --> 00:34:15,840 language. It's this language that's rooted 491 00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:19,600 in the Hebrew Scriptures, prophets like Daniel and Isaiah 492 00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:22,120 and Jeremiah. The furnace of fire and the 493 00:34:22,120 --> 00:34:26,960 weeping and the gnashing of teeth are apocalyptic imagery. 494 00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:32,679 It's like a whole genre of a way of talking and thinking that 495 00:34:32,679 --> 00:34:34,960 honestly is completely lost on us. 496 00:34:35,719 --> 00:34:39,920 We have no way to sort of like really interpret what that kind 497 00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:42,840 of language is pointing towards. Like if you have teenagers, you 498 00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:46,320 know that there's a complete vocabulary that has emerged in 499 00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:48,679 the past decade where words have come to mean things and 500 00:34:48,679 --> 00:34:50,840 reference things that I have no idea what they mean. 501 00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:55,360 If you're over the age of 40, there is a different language 502 00:34:55,360 --> 00:34:57,760 happening at a register of the 20 somethings. 503 00:34:57,880 --> 00:34:59,400 Do you, you feel me a little bit. 504 00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:07,240 OK, apocalyptic language kind of works like this. 505 00:35:08,600 --> 00:35:11,760 It's the kind of a insider kind of language. 506 00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:16,360 Jesus is borrowing language from the prophets who used a kind of 507 00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:20,200 language to indicate that there are some extraordinary things 508 00:35:20,200 --> 00:35:21,800 that are going to take place someday. 509 00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:28,280 And many of us were taught to read these passages as literal 510 00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:31,280 furnaces of fire that are going to burn forever with the wicked 511 00:35:31,280 --> 00:35:34,760 inside of them. And I just need to say to you, I 512 00:35:34,760 --> 00:35:39,520 do not think that that is what these passages are saying, and I 513 00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:41,280 do not think that that's what's going to happen. 514 00:35:45,040 --> 00:35:49,120 So we can continue to talk about that part. 515 00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:56,560 Is there going to be a time of judgement where things are going 516 00:35:56,560 --> 00:36:00,160 to get sorted, where good is going to be named as good and 517 00:36:00,160 --> 00:36:02,160 evil is going to be named as evil? 518 00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:07,720 Absolutely, that is going to happen, and it's going to happen 519 00:36:07,720 --> 00:36:10,440 on a cosmic level. It's going to happen about 520 00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:15,200 global and historical events, and it's going to happen for my 521 00:36:15,200 --> 00:36:18,960 life and for your life. There is going to be a day, 522 00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:24,920 Friends, where we will stand before God, and God is going to 523 00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:30,280 separate the things inside of us that are good and holy and 524 00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:32,520 relinquished and surrendered to Him. 525 00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:35,720 And that is the wheat. And there are a whole bunch of 526 00:36:35,720 --> 00:36:42,440 other things that God is going to say that is not good, and 527 00:36:42,440 --> 00:36:43,840 we're going to have to sort that out. 528 00:36:45,720 --> 00:36:48,960 So my reading of this parable and others like it is that what 529 00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:53,720 Jesus is trying to stir up for the people is an imagination to 530 00:36:53,720 --> 00:36:58,480 let the Creator of the world do the sorting and that we 531 00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:02,320 ourselves can rest. That everything and everywhere 532 00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:06,440 is going to get pulled up on the eschatological shore and God 533 00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:09,320 himself is going to sit there and sort out the good and the 534 00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:12,640 bad. Are you tracking with me here? 535 00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:21,400 OK, what is the Kingdom or what can be in the Kingdom, or who 536 00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:24,240 can be in or out or what the task of the Kingdom is or 537 00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:27,200 whether it's with that set of politics or that set of 538 00:37:27,200 --> 00:37:29,360 politics. There is this temptation that we 539 00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:32,920 have to do the sorting right now. 540 00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:38,560 And Jesus is saying that all of that dividing up that you think 541 00:37:38,560 --> 00:37:43,280 is your job is not actually how the Kingdom of God works. 542 00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:50,280 So the friends, this human tendency that we have is that we 543 00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:55,560 want to make judgements too soon about what goes in the net or to 544 00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:59,640 pull things out of the things in the field that you think are now 545 00:37:59,640 --> 00:38:01,840 weeds. But that job is for somebody 546 00:38:01,840 --> 00:38:07,960 else at some other time. And what it's meant to do is 547 00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:13,800 bring a little bit of relief to the pressure that you feel about 548 00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:17,560 the weeds among the wheat and about the bad fish among the 549 00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:23,240 good ones. Everything Everywhere, but not 550 00:38:23,240 --> 00:38:27,840 all at once. One of the greatest temptations 551 00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:30,720 of the modern world is to divide up our life into the things that 552 00:38:30,720 --> 00:38:34,080 we think are spiritual and the things in our life that we think 553 00:38:34,080 --> 00:38:36,080 should be categorized in some other way. 554 00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:40,120 There's an old story of soldiers in the day of Charlemagne 555 00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:44,760 holding their swords in their hands above the waters that they 556 00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:48,880 were being baptized in. I have no idea if that story is 557 00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:52,520 actually true, but it does make me wonder if there are things in 558 00:38:52,520 --> 00:38:56,080 my life that I cling to that I'm not ready to let go of and trust 559 00:38:56,080 --> 00:39:00,480 into the hands of God. You know, things that I've 560 00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:04,440 already sorted as not belonging to the Kingdom are not important 561 00:39:04,440 --> 00:39:06,760 enough to bring into the conversation with God. 562 00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:13,800 And so I just sort of wonder in closing, whether there is 563 00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:18,560 anything at all that you would sort of want to bring into the 564 00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:26,120 net and just say, you know, God, I know that you're coming for it 565 00:39:26,720 --> 00:39:31,400 anyway. Let's just get it done right 566 00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:36,360 now. Would you scoop it up in your 567 00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:40,360 net? Lord, the Kingdom of God is 568 00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:46,560 gently coming for everything, everywhere, and it's not going 569 00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:50,200 to get sorted all at once. You know that thing that really 570 00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:53,320 bothers you about the world or that unjust system that you're 571 00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:57,600 fighting or those people who are doing harm to your people, your 572 00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:01,520 loved ones? You know, keep fighting for 573 00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:03,200 justice. That's the Kingdom of God 574 00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:06,360 working in you. Someone has sown weeds among the 575 00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:08,760 wheat and the Kingdom of God is like a landowner that is 576 00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:11,920 responsible for the sorting of the weeds from the wheat. 577 00:40:14,800 --> 00:40:18,240 The same is about your life and about your spouse's life. 578 00:40:18,760 --> 00:40:22,520 You know the weeds that you think are growing in the lives 579 00:40:22,520 --> 00:40:28,520 of your adult children. Some of you, there's weeds and 580 00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:33,400 wheat growing together and you can trust your kids into the 581 00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:37,800 hands of God. There's a way of dealing with 582 00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:43,640 the weeds that theologian Robert Capon calls the right hand of 583 00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:45,880 power. The right hand of power or 584 00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:51,360 right-handed power is direct and it's obvious and it's coercive. 585 00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:53,440 Sometimes it can be actually really effective. 586 00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:58,640 It's the power of force and control and intervention with 587 00:40:58,640 --> 00:41:01,440 visible results. And it's the power that we 588 00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:03,960 instinctively understand and respect. 589 00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:06,960 And when we imagine God acting in the world, we almost always 590 00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:10,200 imagine God doing it with this sort of right-handed power. 591 00:41:10,200 --> 00:41:12,920 God fixing things. God punishing the wicked, God 592 00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:17,160 rewarding the righteous, God intervening dramatically to set 593 00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:21,120 things straight. Right-handed power is power of a 594 00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:25,960 king sitting on throne, positioning armies all around 595 00:41:26,440 --> 00:41:33,160 that's right-handed power and it's something that we want God 596 00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:35,840 to exert when we pray to God. God, would you just do 597 00:41:35,840 --> 00:41:38,240 something? You guys ever pray that in your 598 00:41:38,240 --> 00:41:43,520 life? Would you just do something, RIP 599 00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:45,640 out the weeds, you know, get out the bad fish? 600 00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:51,440 And Robert Capon's argument is that right-handed power is real, 601 00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:56,080 that God has it, he uses it, but it's not God's preferred mode of 602 00:41:56,080 --> 00:42:01,640 operation and it's emphatically not what the parables are about. 603 00:42:03,560 --> 00:42:06,880 What the parables are about is what Capon calls left-handed 604 00:42:06,880 --> 00:42:09,480 power. It's indirect. 605 00:42:09,680 --> 00:42:12,400 It's hidden. It's paradoxical. 606 00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:15,640 It seems to be a bit weak. It works through smallness and 607 00:42:15,640 --> 00:42:20,240 obscurity and death and loss and failure, and it looks to the 608 00:42:20,240 --> 00:42:24,920 world like defeat, but often looks like faithfulness. 609 00:42:27,080 --> 00:42:30,440 It's the power of a seed buried in the ground. 610 00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:33,120 It's the power of a wife praying for her husband. 611 00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:35,840 It's the power of parents praying for their kids. 612 00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:39,960 It's the power that looks like it's losing because somebody is 613 00:42:40,080 --> 00:42:46,320 dying in the process. And listen, I know enough about 614 00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:49,760 some of your stories to know that some of you are doing 615 00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:55,040 really faithful things that look like death. 616 00:42:57,880 --> 00:42:59,960 It's the power of yeast hidden and flour. 617 00:43:01,040 --> 00:43:03,160 It's the power of a man who sells everything and buries a 618 00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:08,680 treasure back in a field. It's the power of a shepherd who 619 00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:12,280 leaves 99 sheep to go after the 1, and ultimately the power of a 620 00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:15,400 God who dies on a cross and gives up the right to have 621 00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:18,960 everything sorted. Right now this is the story that 622 00:43:18,960 --> 00:43:26,200 we live in France. left-handed power does not look like power. 623 00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:29,200 It looks like weakness and foolishness and waste and 624 00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:31,240 failure. And it operates by going down, 625 00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:33,720 not by going up and to the right. 626 00:43:36,600 --> 00:43:40,840 And it achieves its purpose not by overwhelming opposition, but 627 00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:46,720 by undermining it from below. So come back to this story a 628 00:43:46,720 --> 00:43:50,280 little bit, this painting from Gloria Stein. 629 00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:54,360 One of the things I love about the story about the Stein art 630 00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:59,200 collection is that they bought art almost indiscriminately. 631 00:44:00,520 --> 00:44:03,880 They just kept buying it and storing it, and most of what 632 00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:07,160 they bought had already been rejected by other people. 633 00:44:09,720 --> 00:44:13,840 They prejudged the art the Society of France thought was 634 00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:16,800 good at the time. But the Steins just kept buying 635 00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:19,040 it, and they thought they knew wheat from the weeds. 636 00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:21,040 And it turns out that they were wrong. 637 00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:25,920 The paintings that the Steins bought for hundreds of dollars 638 00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:29,840 in dusty back alley galleries are now valued in the billions. 639 00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:35,040 Curators at the Met spent years tracking down the works from 640 00:44:35,040 --> 00:44:39,280 Stein's collection and the ones in the front room and the ones 641 00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:43,600 in the Salon de Refuge. And listen, don't miss this. 642 00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:48,520 Some of the rejected paintings, the ones that didn't even make 643 00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:53,040 Gertrude's wall, the ones that she thought had lost their 644 00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:57,120 luster and she relegated to the backroom, they turned out to be 645 00:44:57,120 --> 00:45:00,080 among the most important works of the 20th century. 646 00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:06,920 You do not know. The things that you have stopped 647 00:45:06,920 --> 00:45:13,000 paying attention to are some of the most prized and important 648 00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:15,320 things to the heart of God for your life. 649 00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:19,560 You do not have eyes to see, and neither do I. 650 00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:22,520 And this is the story that we live in. 651 00:45:26,120 --> 00:45:30,320 So nobody at the time knew which was which, which was going to be 652 00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:33,360 a bad painting, which was going to be a, a glorious painting, 653 00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:36,640 not even the times themselves. And the sorting had to take 654 00:45:36,640 --> 00:45:39,480 place over time, over a long process. 655 00:45:39,880 --> 00:45:43,000 And some of what was thought to be not so good in the end turned 656 00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:50,240 out to be priceless. So, friends, let me close with 657 00:45:50,240 --> 00:45:51,560 this. I know I'm a little long. 658 00:45:52,200 --> 00:45:57,560 There are things in our lives that have lost their shine and 659 00:45:57,560 --> 00:46:01,160 they do not feel like they are worthy of the front room salon 660 00:46:01,160 --> 00:46:05,240 of your life. It feels like, you know, 661 00:46:05,240 --> 00:46:08,880 whatever God could have done in this area of my life is probably 662 00:46:08,880 --> 00:46:10,560 not going to happen. I'm just going to store this 663 00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:12,200 thing away. I'm not going to think about it. 664 00:46:13,440 --> 00:46:17,640 Just let it run its course. You know, some of you that is 665 00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:22,480 your marriages, some of you that's your addictions, some of 666 00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:25,600 you, it's your longings that are unmet. 667 00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:29,760 And I'll just say I, I know that my wife would not mind me saying 668 00:46:29,760 --> 00:46:30,960 this. There have been seasons of our 669 00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:35,400 marriage that we were convinced we're certainly weeds. 670 00:46:37,720 --> 00:46:39,680 And it turns out it was wheat all along. 671 00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:46,840 It just took time. God was doing something in the 672 00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:48,800 midst of us laying down our life. 673 00:46:50,160 --> 00:46:52,280 I, I hope my wife will agree with me. 674 00:46:53,600 --> 00:46:54,240 Amen. Thank you. 675 00:46:54,240 --> 00:46:59,360 OK, I wasn't calling for an Amen, but I just just realizing, 676 00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:07,360 I thought that's what I think. But He's coming for everything. 677 00:47:08,360 --> 00:47:10,000 The Kingdom is at work everywhere. 678 00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:13,640 And when we come into the presence of God, remembering 679 00:47:13,640 --> 00:47:18,160 that it's not going to happen all at once, we can trust that 680 00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:19,760 God is the one that's going to sort it out. 681 00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:23,360 Invite the worship team to come back up. 682 00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:24,840 We're going to close with worship 683 00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:42,840 ministry, I just want to ask you to think if there's anything 684 00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:46,880 that you have kind of relegated to the backroom, anything that 685 00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:52,520 you're not aware that God is really touching in your life. 686 00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:56,080 Maybe some things that you've forgotten about that you would 687 00:47:56,080 --> 00:48:00,120 like to sort of bring back into your awareness and conversation 688 00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:01,800 with God. We would love to pray with you 689 00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:05,400 about that. I'm also, I just have a sense 690 00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:10,160 that there's some of you that the sort of like, is it really 691 00:48:10,160 --> 00:48:12,440 going to come for everything question. 692 00:48:13,080 --> 00:48:15,080 It just brings up a ton of grief for you. 693 00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:18,800 There are things that you've longed for the Kingdom to touch 694 00:48:18,800 --> 00:48:22,680 and it just hasn't touched yet. And I would just ask for you, if 695 00:48:22,680 --> 00:48:25,120 you're in that situation, if you're just bringing some grief, 696 00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:28,200 I would ask that you would bring that into the presence of God. 697 00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:30,680 We would love to pray for you and we would ask that the 698 00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:34,440 Kingdom of God will come today. And in your life, would you 699 00:48:34,440 --> 00:48:36,440 stand as we, as we head into worship? 700 00:48:36,800 --> 00:48:40,600 If you are in our prayer team, could we just have you come and 701 00:48:41,160 --> 00:48:42,840 make some space to pray for other people?