Readings for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, Year A — exegesis on the Gospel, Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52, part 3

This is my final instalment on the Gospel reading for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity (Year A) for 2023, Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52.

Part 1 contains the Gospel reading and covers verses 31 through 33. Part 2 discusses verses 44 through 46.

This post examines verses 47 through 52. Readers might find it useful to acquaint themselves with the reading for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. That reading mentions hell at the Second Coming and so do today’s verses. Jesus spoke about hell twice in Matthew 13.

This is His first mention (emphases mine):

13:40 Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.

13:41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers,

13:42 and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

13:43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

This is His second:

13:49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous

13:50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

13:51 “Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.”

Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

Matthew Henry’s commentary states:

Note, Christ himself preached often of hell-torments, as the everlasting punishment of hypocrites; and it is good for us to be often reminded of this awakening, quickening truth.

John MacArthur says something even more striking:

Our Lord spoke very much and very often about hell.  He said many things about the abode of the damned, the wicked, the Christ rejecters …

It seems strange to us to hear words like that coming from the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ.  For we don’t associate the Lord Jesus Christ with hell, as often as we ought.  He said more about hell than he did about love.  He said more about hell than all the other biblical preachers combined.  And if we are to model our preaching after His, then hell is a major theme for us.

I did not hear anything about hell in the sermon on Sunday when this Gospel passage was read.

Let us look at this final parable in Matthew 13.

Jesus was explaining the situation of the kingdom of heaven as it was and as it will remain until His Second Coming in glory. God gave the Old Testament prophets that knowledge, but He did not give them insight into this long interregnum where Jesus rules in absentia. Jesus called this period ‘the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven’.

It is unfortunate that the Lectionary compilers left out two important verses from Matthew 13 that explain what He was saying. The KJV expresses verses 10 and 11 better than the NIV:

¹⁰ And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?

¹¹ He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind (verse 47).

Henry tells us that this great net, or dragnet, describes the world:

(1.) The world is a vast sea, and the children of men are things creeping innumerable, both small and great, in that sea, Ps 104 25. Men in their natural state are like the fishes of the sea that have no ruler over them, Hab 1 14. (2.) The preaching of the gospel is the casting of a net into this sea, to catch something out of it, for his glory who has the sovereignty of the sea. Ministers are fishers of men, employed in casting and drawing this net; and then they speed, when at Christ’s word they let down the net; otherwise, they toil and catch nothing. (3.) This net gathers of every kind, as large dragnets do. In the visible church there is a deal of trash and rubbish, dirt and weeds and vermin, as well as fish.

With that in mind, MacArthur puts this parable into context for us. He preached this sermon in 1982, by the way:

This is a parable in which our Lord warns about hell.  Now remember, in these parables the Lord is telling us what it will be like in this period of the world’s history, this form of His rule.  He is the King and He rules in the world.  And He is allowing, in this period of time, good and evil to grow together as we saw in the parable of the wheat and the tares … He’s tolerant of the good and evil through this period.  But in the end will come a judgment.  And that’s why this is the last parable. 

We have now swept through the parables that describe the nature of the kingdom, the power of the kingdom, the personal appropriation of the kingdom.  And now we come to the climax and the end and the judgment.  And it is a warning.  It is a fearful warning that in the end there will be an eternal separation of the damned from the redeemed. 

And the world, you see, is moving toward this.  Every human life is moving toward that inevitable hour.  Today, at least 5,282 people in the United States alone will die and enter eternity; most of them will go to hell.  And this final parable brings us up short with a sense of severe warning. 

MacArthur explains how dragnet fishing — from which trawling developed — works. Before that, he introduces the two more basic types of fishing:

Fishing in our Lord’s time was a common enterprise.  Fishing was a way of life.  Fishing for some of the disciples was their way of life, so they would understand very clearly of which He spoke.  Basically there were three ways to fish.  And these three ways are still being used in that country in the Lake of Gennesaret, the Sea of Galilee. 

First was with a line and hook which caught fishes one at a time … 

The second kind of fishing was a casting net.  Amphiblstron is the word in the Greek.  And it was a very special net.  It was a net that was like a large circle and on the outer perimeter of the circle were weights.  It was pulled together in the middle.  And there was a rope attached to the arm of the fishermen. 

The net was draped over the shoulder.  And as the fishermen came to the shore he threw the net, and had become, of course, so deft at it that it would go into its entire circular form.  And it would hit the water as a large circle and as it sunk toward the bottom it would capture in it, as the lead weights pulled down the edges, all the fish that were in that area. 

So the fisherman would watch until he saw the school of fish, and then he would spin that thing and it would open its full circle and capture the fish.  And then that cord attached to his wrist would be pulled tight and it would pull the net together until he had a sack and he would drag the net onto the shore full of the catch.  And that is the net our Lord used to speak of being fishers of men.  Throw out the net and catch men for Christ and pull them in. 

But that is not the net that is used here.  This is a completely different Greek term.  This term is a unique term.  It is the term sagn, and it has to do with what we’ll call a seine net, or a troll net.  It’s a very distinct term.  It speaks of a very, very large net. 

Now when I say very large, I mean very large.  Lenski, the commentator, says that some of these nets covered one-half mile of area, very large nets.  A net that could not be worked with the hand of a man.  How it was used is very simple to understand.  One end of this large net was attached to the shoreline.  The other end was attached to a boat. 

As the boat left the shore, it pulled the net into a form where the net was stretched between the boat out in the lake and the net hooked to the shore.  Then the boat would begin to move in a circle.  And as it moved in a circle, it would sweep into this massive net, all the life in front of the net. 

It would complete an entire circle, come all the way back to where it was attached, and would have gathered into that entire net all the life that was in the sea covered by that net.  Because the top of the net had floats, it floated on the surface of the water.  The bottom of the net had weights, it sunk to the bottom so that the net moved through the sea like a vertical wall capturing everything. 

Now, what our Lord wants us to understand in this net is basically two things.  One is the immense size of the net.  And two, is the fact that it brings in everything, a conglomerate inclusive catch.  Now, once this has happened and the boat has moved through the sea, and this great vertical wall has swept up everything, living and dead.

I have seen British fishing documentaries that show how trawling is done. Those nets really do pick up everything in immense quantities.

Jesus said that when the net was full, the fishermen drew it ashore, sat down and put the good fish into baskets but threw out the bad (verse 48).

Henry explains how the good and bad will be parted at our Lord’s Second Coming:

(4.) There is a time coming when this net will be full, and drawn to the shore; a set time when the gospel shall have fulfilled that for which it was sent, and we are sure it shall not return void, Isa 55 10, 11. The net is now filling; sometimes it fills faster than at other times, but still it fills, and will be drawn to shore, when the mystery of God shall be finished. (5.) When the net is full and drawn to the shore, there shall be a separation between the good and bad that were gathered in it. Hypocrites and true Christians shall then be parted; the good shall be gathered into vessels, as valuable, and therefore to be carefully kept, but the bad shall be cast away, as vile and unprofitable; and miserable is the condition of those who are cast away in that day. While the net is in the sea, it is not known what is in it, the fishermen themselves cannot distinguish; but they carefully draw it, and all that is in it, to the shore, for the sake of the good that is in it. Such is God’s care for the visible church, and such should ministers’ concern be for those under their charge, though they are mixed.

MacArthur continues with his description of what happens on the shoreline. Today, this takes place on the trawler:

Now, the central figure of the parable is a group of fishermen.  They’re on the shore in verse 48.  And lying there at the edge of the water is this recently drawn massive net.  And it is literally soaking and teeming with life, filled with the conglomerate of creatures taken from the water. 

And then begins a very slow, deliberate careful, patient, unhurried, accurate, knowledgeable, skillful process of sorting out the good from the bad.  They sat down.  It was something they did very carefully, very patiently.  Now this scene would be very common to the people to whom our Lord spoke, particularly the disciples. 

They would take the good and put it into some vessels, very often water-contained vessels, to keep the fish alive if they were to be transported.  If they were immediately to be used in some form, they could be put in another vessel.  The bad was just thrown away.

Jesus said that this will happen at the end of the age, meaning when this mystery period — not revealed to the Old Testament prophets — is over; angels will come out to separate the evil from the righteous (verse 49).

MacArthur says:

Now, the picture is very clear, isn’t it?  Let’s look secondly, at the principle, verse 49.  And here is our Lord’s own interpretation.  “So shall it be at the end of the age: the angels shall come forth and separate the wicked from among the righteous.”  We can stop at that point.

There’s a lot that you could say about that parable.  There’s a lot you could do with it.  There are some interesting possibilities.  But the Lord is only interested in one element and that is the separating process that went on on the shore as a picture of the angelic separation in judgment.  That’s what He’s after. 

You see, all along in this era, as we’ve been learning, the good and the evil go together and God tolerates the evil.  But the time is coming when He will make a separation between those who know the King and are subjects of the King and know the Lord Jesus Christ, and those who do not. 

And that separation is inevitable and it is ultimate.  And little by little, imperceptibly and silently, that net moves through the sea of time drawing all men to the shores of eternity for that inevitable separation.  That is the principle.  The net draws in all kinds of fish.  It is indiscriminating in the sense that it just catches everything in its way. 

And so it is, it says in verse 47, “The kingdom of heaven is like that net.”  It moves silently through the sea of life, drawing men, almost without them knowing it, to the shore of eternity.  And by the time they awaken to what is happening it is too late.  They’re already there.  They are drawn to the separation. 

Now, this same truth was taught in the parable of the wheat and the tares, as you can go back to verse 41 and see.  “The Son of Man shall send His angels, and they’ll gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and them that do iniquity, and they shall be cast into a furnace of fire where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”  Same idea, but the Lord repeats it.  Now, the only spiritual thing that the Lord pinpoints in this parable is that last act of the fishermen.  Everything else passes without comment. 

And I think we ought to leave the rest without comment and just take what our Lord meant to teach.  When He spoke of the casting net, He used that in a positive way to speak to the disciples of catching men for Christ.  When He speaks of this dragnet, as it’s called, or this troll net, or seine net, or sagn net, He is talking about gathering men for judgment. 

Look at verse 49.  “So shall it be at the end of the age.”  When man’s day is over and Jesus returns to set up His glorious kingdom, then comes the judgment.  Now, this is not a…a technical, chronological, eschatological layout.  This is not trying to pinpoint every element of judgment, every time and place and are we talking about the great white throne, or the sheep and the goats, or the bema seat judgment or whatever. 

This is just a general statement that all in the world are caught ultimately in the net of judgment, to be separated in the end.  And you notice again, would you please, in verse 49, that the angels are the executioners?  The angels are the separators, just as we saw in verse 41, just as we see in Matthew 24; the angels come with the Lord to act out judgment …

Now some people have asked, “Why this parable is included if the basic idea of separation is even also included in the parable of the wheat and the tares?”  And the answer to that is several things.  Number one, it is repeated because the wheat and the tares emphasize particularly the co-existence.  This emphasizes only the separation.  It is repeated also because the Lord has a compassionate heart and He wants to add one more warning.

This is not the only time Jesus spoke of this judgement:

Just as we see in Matthew 25, just as we see repeatedly in Revelation, particularly chapter 14.  The angels are the agents of God’s judgment.  So while the kingdom may, for a while, tolerate good and evil growing together, the separation is moving closer and closer all the time.  Jesus spoke of this same thing, in Matthew chapter 25, when He said in verse 31, “The Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the holy angels with Him; then shall He sit on the throne of His glory.” 

And what will He do when He comes?  It says, “And before Him shall He gather all the nations and He shall separate one from another ”.  Separation.  “And He’ll say to them, on His right hand, ‘Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’  And He’ll say to them on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’”

And Jesus said, in John chapter 5, that “there’s coming a resurrection of all men.  Some to the resurrection of life and some to the resurrection of damnation.”  There will be a final separation, and eternal destiny will be determined for every soul that has ever lived on the face of the earth …

That’s typical of our Lord.  He warned about hell many times, many times, so concerned was He that men not go there.  Many times He said, “Watch, watch, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man comes.”  Many times He warned the people not to take lightly their sins because there would be the inevitability of the accounting that God would make. 

He talked about the days of Noah, that men would be living in ease and apparent prosperity, and happiness, going through the motions of life, and there would come horrifying judgment.  He warned again and again and again.  He told men that through His prophet, John the Baptist, that He would come with unquenchable fire to burn up those that were lost. 

He looked out at the world, in Matthew 9, and He saw a harvest moving toward judgment.  He was compassionate enough to see men on the way to damnation and call to them.  And so that’s why this is here.  It emphasizes the separation that is the end of this age, and it gives the Lord a chance to release that compassionate heart. 

See, the Bible says God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.  The Bible says that He is not willing that any should perish.  The Bible says that God our Savior will have all men to be saved.  Jesus wept over Jerusalem and said, “0h, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft I would have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her brood, but you would not.  You will not come unto Me,” He said pensively, “that you might have eternal life.  His heart of compassion is one that warns because He loves.

Now look again.  The kingdom of heaven is like a net, and you can see the vividness of this imagery.  That net moves through the world.  It is invisible to those around who can’t yet see it.  And if perchance it touches the back of a fish, the fish simply flits a little further ahead and enjoys the freedom he things is his permanently. 

And men live in this world imagining themselves to be free, moving about, fulfilling their own desires, going here and going there as they will, with little knowledge that the net comes closer and closer and closer.  People float about in the liberty of the wide deep sea of life, not knowing the invisible lines of judgment move closer and closer and closer.  And each time they are touched by it, they move a little further away.  And they’re touched again and they move a little further away. 

And, finally, they’ve moved one time and they’ve hit it on the other side because it’s moving toward the shore.  And then wildly the fish may dart for the sea only to be caught again in the same net, finally to be dragged into shore in the last throws of a flailing and flipping, enter into a silent death. 

And that’s how it is.  Men may not perceive the kingdom, they may not see God moving in the world, but He is moving.  And men very often when touched by the gospel of Jesus Christ, or threatened with the threat of judgment, dart into the freedom they think is ahead of them.  But sooner or later they run right back into the same net because there’s no freedom there.  And they are inexorably moving toward inevitable judgment.  All men are gathered in the net.  The kingdom will ultimately engulf them all.  And God with His angels will separate.

The angels will throw evildoers into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (verse 50). The traditional version I heard in my childhood had ‘wailing’ instead of ‘weeping’, and I do believe that ‘wailing’ is the better word.

Henry says:

Note, Everlasting misery and sorrow will certainly be the portion of those who live among sanctified ones, but themselves die unsanctified.

MacArthur says:

… the peril, the peril.  Verse 50, “And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”  Now that is a fearful verse.  And I confess to you that it affects me just as it affects anybody.  It is a horrifying, fearful verse. 

And if there’s any doctrine in the Bible that you wish were not there it is the doctrine of hell, but that does not eliminate it.  It is there.  And this is the heart of the matter.  Cast into the furnace of fire.  Those are terrifying words from our Lord.  And yet He spoke more of hell than anybody else. 

MacArthur explains why that was so:

I think that if Jesus hadn’t taught us about hell, we wouldn’t believe whoever did.  It had to be Him.  It is so inconceivable, it so causes us to be revulsed.  We cannot conceive of eternal damnation.  And it had to be our Lord who said this or we never would have been able to accept it.  It was His own special emphasis.  And He was a preacher of hell.  More than anything else, He threatened men with hell.  And if you don’t think He did then you haven’t been carefully noting His ministry.

Here are more examples:

… in Matthew 5:22.  He said, “Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.”  In verse 29 of chapter 5, “If your right eye offend you, pluck it out and cast it from you for it is profitable for you that one of your members should perish, and not your whole body should be cast into hell.” 

Verse 30, “If your right hand offend you, cut it off, throw it away, for it is profitable for you that one of your members should perish and not that your whole body should be cast into hell.”  In chapter 7, verse 27, He said, “And the rain descended and the flood came and the wind blew and beat on that house and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” 

And that’s an allusion to damnation as well.  In chapter 8 verse 12, “The sons of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  Chapter 11 in verse 20, “He began to upbraid the cities in which most of His mighty works were done because they repented not.”  And He says to them, “You will be brought down to hell.” 

Serious, serious words from our Lord.  The same thing is true in chapter 12.  He says in verse 36, “Every idle word that men shall speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment, for by thy words thou shalt be justified and by thy words thou shalt be damned,” or condemned.  He talks about a demon who leaves a man and then seven more come back in more wicked than himself, and the last state of that man is the first, even so shall it be unto this wicked generation. 

In chapter 18…and these are examples…it says, “Whosoever offends a little child who believes in Me, it would be better off if a millstone were hanged around his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”  And then He goes back into talking about being cast into everlasting fire, verse 8, into everlasting hell fire, verse 9, chapter 18. 

This was a constant part of what our Lord taught.  And you go into chapter 21, verse 43, “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation, bringing forth the fruits of it and whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken, but whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder.” 

Chapter 23 talks about hell repeatedly.  Chapter 24, chapter 25, Mark chapter 9, Luke chapter 6, Luke chapter 12, Luke chapter 16.  It just goes on and on.  Jesus told a whole story [Dives and Lazarus] about a man that died and went to hell, being in torment and screamed for someone to come with water and cool his tongue.

Now if you, then, are to evaluate what should be the emphasis of preaching, based on the example of Christ, it should be preaching on hell.  Our generation doesn’t do that.  It’s convicting that we say so little about hell. 

We see more about hell from cartoonists than we hear from clerics.

Over the past 50 or 60 years — certainly most of my lifetime — most Westerners have come to see hell as a recreational playground.

MacArthur recounts an interview with a punk musician from Los Angeles. In the early 1980s, punk was still very much alive and well in America’s largest city. Punk lasted far longer there than it did in its homeland, the United Kingdom. LA punk music is a big part of the soundtrack of the 1984 film Repo Man, a stroke of secular genius from the British director Alex Cox, who really tapped into contemporary Americana as well as sci-fi conspiracy tales. I’ve seen it a dozen times, many of those in the cinema, and can highly recommend it.

But I digress.

MacArthur tells us:

The other night I heard a teenage punk rocker being interviewed.  And the reporter said to her, “What are you looking forward to?  What is in the future for punk rock?”  She said, “Death.  I’m looking forward to death.”  He said, “Why?”  She said, “I want to go to hell.  Because hell will be fun.  I hope I go to hell.  I want to die so I can get to hell and have fun.” 

Hell will not be evening cocktails and a seven-course dinner. It will have no beauty. There will be no relief from its ugliness. There will not be friendships or relationships. It will be sheer torture, every millisecond for eternity. Eternity is impossible to comprehend, but it is something to bear in mind. Where do we want to spend the afterlife — forever?

Admittedly, we can only paint a mental image of hell from our Lord’s warnings in Matthew 13 and elsewhere as well as verses from other sources in the Bible.

MacArthur puts those passages together and gives us his portrait of hell. Hell-deniers, take note:

Number one, hell is a place of unrelieved torment.  It is a place of unrelieved torment.  It is a place of a horrible misery.  And the Bible defines it as darkness, outer darkness.  That is deep-pit darkness, darkness that’s way out from the light, impenetrable darkness, darkness that closes in.  And it is darkness without the hope of light forever.  Have you ever been in the darkness and longed for the daylight? 

Have you ever been in the darkness and longed for someone to turn a light on?  To be in that encroaching, encompassing, moving kind of darkness and know that for all the eons of eternity, you will never see light is how our Lord describes hell.  Unrelieved darkness forever, with no hope of the light, no hope of the dawn. 

And the Bible also says it is a fire.  Now, it is not a fire that we would know as fire, to burn something in this world.  But fire is God’s way of describing it because it is a tortuous, unrelieved kind of fire, more terrible than any fire that we would ever know.  But fire describes the torment of the damned; blackness describes the torment of the damned, no light, no light ever, ever.  No relief from the suffering, the agony and the pain, forever.  And there’s only two times in all of Scripture that we have any insight into how people respond to hell. 

The one is the Lord’s parable in Luke 16 where He says the man cried out in torment and said, “Cool my tongue for I’m tormented in this flame.”  And the other is that constant statement of our Lord, “There will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.”  The response to hell is not fun.  It is weeping.  That’s crying, wailing, screaming and grinding of teeth in pain.  That’s what the Bible says.  That’s hell.  It is a place of unrelieved torment. 

Secondly, it is a place of unrelieved torment for both body and soul, for both body and soul.  Soul being the inner part.  When a person dies, their soul goes out of the presence of God, into the torment of hell.  It may not be the full final lake of fire that comes after the judgment in the great white throne, for that needs a transcendent body to endure it. 

But it is a torment just as well as illustrated by the rich man who in hell was tormented.  When a person dies now, their soul descends into that torment.  In the future, there will be a resurrection of the bodies of the damned.  They will be given a transcendent body that will then go into a lake of fire.  It will be a body not like the body we have now.  It will be a very different one.  They will be resurrected just like we will, as Christians. 

We will be resurrected because this body could never live eternally in heaven, right?  We have to have a transcendent body, a glorified body, a different body, and so do the damned.  And they will be raised, John 5, they will be raised in new bodies for the single purpose of being punished forever in those bodies. 

That’s what the Bible says, tormented forever.  They have to have a body to fit that eternal torment.  And that’s why Jesus in Matthew 10:28 said, “Fear not them that can destroy the body, but fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”  You see, hell is soul and body. 

Some people think it’s just bad memories.  No, it isn’t just bad memories.  It isn’t just the inner thinking processes; it is that body as well.  Transcendent, eternal bodies, greater than anything we have on this earth, are going to be given to the damned so that they can suffer in those bodies forever.  And that’s the only reason that they’ll have those bodies. 

With the present body, man couldn’t endure hell.  You…the body that we have now would be consumed in a moment.  So as God fits the redeemed with new bodies for heaven, He fits the damned with new bodies for hell.  We know a little about that from two things the Lord said. 

He said, first of all, the worm dieth not.  Now what did He mean by that?  When a body goes into the grave, into decay, worms descend into that body.  And they begin to consume that body, and the worms will die when the food is gone.  So once the body is consumed, the worms die.  But in hell, the worms never die because the body, though it is continually being consumed, is never consumed.  So the worm never dies. 

In other words, the Lord was saying the unrelieved torment of body goes on and on.  And it says, also, the fire is not quenched.  Now a fire always goes out when the fuel is gone.  But the fuel will never be gone.  Though the burning goes on, the fuel is never consumed.  And so you have unrelieved torment of body and soul.

And that brings me to the third thought.  You have in hell a place of relieved torment of body and soul in varying degrees, in varying degrees.  In other words, for some people, hell will be worse than others.  For all who are there, it will be horrible.  It will be ultimate suffering. 

There will be no relief for that, but there will be even more severe degrees of suffering for some.  It says in Hebrews 10, “Of how much more severe punishment shall they be thought worthy who have trodden underfoot the Son of God and counted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing.”  People who have stepped on Jesus Christ, who have rejected his cross, will know a greater hell than those who have not. 

There will be degrees, just as there will be degrees of reward in heaven.  We saw that, also, I think, in Matthew chapter 11, when it said, “It will be more tolerable for Sodom than for you.”  In other words, it’s only relative.  It isn’t going to be tolerable for anyone, but it will appear to be more tolerable for them than for you because of what you have experienced. 

You had Jesus Christ in your city, they didn’t.  You rejected Him with more light; therefore, hell will be more severe for you.  And then you have, of course, that incredible parable in Luke 12 where the Lord says, “To the servant who knew and didn’t do right, many stripes.  To the servant who didn’t know and didn’t do right, a few stripes.”  So hell will be unrelieved torment of body in soul in varying degrees …

And fourthly, hell is a place of unrelieved torment for body and soul in varying degrees endlessly, endlessly.  The worm never dies, the fire never goes out, the light never breaks, the sweet relief of death never comes.  Endlessly.  The only reason or the only way in which we in this life can even make it through trials and pain and suffering and disease is because we believe there will be an end to it. 

But they won’t have that.  You can imagine the resultant insanity that will come.  And you say, “Are you sure it’s everlasting?”  It’s just as everlasting as heaven is because in the same verse, the Lord used the same terms.  Matthew 25:46, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment, the righteous into everlasting life.”  Whatever everlasting life is in terms of its length, so is everlasting punishment.  That’s hell.

God never prepared it for people.  He prepared it for the devil and his angels.  But people choose to go there.  Inconceivable misery.  Some people have been in this kind of torment in their souls waiting for that body for thousands of years, and they’re no closer to the end then they were when they began.  No wonder Jesus had to teach this doctrine. 

You say, “Well, how do you avoid hell?”  You avoid hell only by the receiving of Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.  If you don’t appropriate the kingdom, you see, if you don’t take the treasure, if you don’t purchase the pearl of great price, there’s no way out.

After Jesus told all of His parables about the kingdom of heaven, He asked the disciples if they understood what He had said; they answered in the affirmative (verse 51).

MacArthur explains:

Literally, the verb “understood” is “put it together.” 

Have you put all this together?  Have you got this all put together in your minds that this form of the kingdom has good and evil going together?  That the good is going to continue to permeate, continue to grow, continue to influence?  That in order to be a part of the kingdom you have to purchase by giving all you have for all Christ is? 

Have you put it all together?  And do you see that it’s going to go along like this with good and evil until the end and then comes a final separation?  Do you have it?  “And they said unto Him, Yes, Lord.”  We understand it.  We understand it.  And I believe He accepted the correctness of their affirmative answer, otherwise He couldn’t have said what He did in verse 52. 

Jesus, acknowledging their answer, concluded by saying that every scribe — see how He gives them an elevated status of a proper scribe, not those who worked with the Pharisees — trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old (verse 52).

In the simplest terms, remember going to your grandparents’ homes at holiday time or for a special occasion and wondering what traditions would be observed and what pleasant, new surprise they might show the family. Remember how delightful an experience it was?

Henry says:

In bringing forth, things new and old do best together; old truths, but new methods and expressions, especially new affections.

MacArthur gives us the Greek from the manuscript and contrasts the disciple scribes from the Jewish establishment scribes:

And so, this is what He says, “Then here’s what you’re like – ” verse 52 – “every grammeteus – ” that’s a word that we translate scribe, but it means a learner, a teacher, an interpreter of the law, the Old Testament – “every trained teacher is instructed – ” and that’s from the verb mathteu, is discipled – “concerning the kingdom of heaven.” 

Now, He’s discipled them concerning the kingdom, so He’s talking about them.  “Every one of you, prepared, trained learners, have been discipled in the things of the kingdom of heaven.  You’re trained now; you’re prepared now.”  That…that’s what He’s saying. 

In fact, you could translate it, “You are now discipled, biblical scholars and teachers.”  That’s what a scribe was, really.  He was a student, an interpreter, a transmitter of Scripture, he was known as a theologian, a lawyer and a teacher and preacher.  They were members of the Sanhedrin.  They were acknowledged authorities on the Old Testament and tradition.  They were called Rabbi.  They were influential. 

And He’s saying, “I’ve done the same to you, just like the Jews do with their scribes, I’ve discipled you, I’ve made you into discipled, biblical scholars and teachers.  And now, here’s what you’re like – ” verse 52 – “You’re like a man who is the head of a house who brings out of his storehouse things new and old.”

What does that mean?  The Lord says, “Now I’ve discipled you, I’ve trained you, I’ve prepared you, I’ve nurtured you so that you could be the laborers to go into the harvest and warn men.  And now you are like a man who is the head of his house.”  And the man who was the head of his house has a storehouse and out of that storehouse he dispensed to people their needs.

They needed a certain kind of food, they needed a certain kind of clothing, they needed a certain kind of care, whatever it was they needed, he dispensed.  And he was wise enough to dispense the new and the old.  So he didn’t always give out the new so that the old ultimately became useless. 

It’s kind of like the leftovers, you know.  Once a week you’re going to get them, because if you don’t get them they’re going to get thrown away ultimately.  And the wise head of a household dispenses the old with the new in balance, being a steward of everything that he possesses.  And the Lord says, “This is what you’re like.  Now you have a storehouse and that storehouse is filled with old and new.”

Ultimately, through these parables, Jesus revealed to His disciples the mystery of the interregnum period, before the time when peace truly will reign — peace with God through His Son. That was more than the scribes of the day knew — and more than the prophets of the Old Testament knew. Now all of our Lord’s disciples had to do was proclaim this revelation:

They were one up on the scribes.  All the scribes had was the old stuff, the old stuff, the old stuff. 

But He says, “You’re the householder who has the old and the new and in perfect balance.  God called you, and trained you, and prepared you to spread it out.”  That’s an interesting verb that’s used there, it says the man who is a head of a house brings forth.  It literally means to fling out, or to scatter abroad. 

In other words, you’ve got all this treasure now, fling it out.  It talks about liberality and richness.  There’s a lot there.  Now that you’ve been discipled and now that you are trained biblical scholars and teachers, fling it out.  Give them the Old and the New in perfect balance, that which God said in the past and that which is new in the form of the kingdom. 

Now, do you see what He’s saying to them?  This all comes out of chapter 9 verse 38; men are on the way to hell.  Now I want you to see how the kingdom is going to be.  Good and evil, but ultimately it’s going to end in a separation.  And now you know this, now dispense it, proclaim it. 

And, once they received the Holy Spirit on that first Pentecost, what a proclamation that was, eventually spreading around the globe — from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe and beyond.

I hope everyone reading this will think carefully about the glories of the kingdom to come and the deeply unwelcome prospect of hell.

End of series