FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY.
The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew to the shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.—Matt. 13, 47. 48.
The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew to the shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.—Matt. 13, 47. 48.
A number of our Lord's discourses were addressed to those who were engaged in agriculture. To such were uttered the parables of the sower, of the wicked husbandmen, of the mustard seed, and to-day's Gospel of the wheat and tares. Others of these discourses were spoken more immediately to His own disciples, the most of whom had been fishermen on the Lake of Galilee, and to them mightily appealed an illustration like that which we are about to consider. They had often experienced what our Lord so simply describes. They had gone forth in their boats to fish, and after they had drawn their nets to shore, they had made an examination of what they contained, and out of the meshes they had gathered the good into vessels, for sale or for use, and that which was worthless they had thrown away. A very simple figure setting forth a very affecting and awakening truth. May the Holy Ghost solemnize our minds and write some abiding impressions on all our hearts!
The subject divides itself into two parts. It shows us,I. The present mixed character of the churches;II. the future separation.
The Kingdom of Heaven, that is, the Church, is likened by our Lord to a net cast into the sea. The net spoken of is not the ordinary casting-net, but a seine, or hauling-net, which was sometimes half a mile in length, leaded below that it might drag the bottom of the sea, and kept above the water with large corks. A net of such dimensions will naturally enclose fish of all sizes and kinds, some bad and others good, some valuable and others worthless, some in the best condition, others out of season, dead,or putrid, and unfit for human food. And so it is with the net of the Gospel. It is a large, capacious draw-net; it is not merely let down into one stream or river, but it sweeps the ocean, the wide and open sea of the world, and its threads are so strong, so well knitted together that scarcely a single fish can escape. In other words, we have here a picture of the all-embracing Church of Christ, the preaching of the Gospel to every nation. But as the divine fishermen, the ministers of Christ, cast their net into this universal sea and enclose an abundance of human fishes, not all are of the same quality; it's a mixed and motley multitude. "In the visible Church there is a deal of trash and rubbish, refuse, and vermin, as well as fish," says an old commentator.
In this our own blessed country, where the Gospel is preached in nearly 2,000,000 sermons every year, and where churches and chapels rear their spires on the right hand and on the left, there are many professed Christians, and those who belong to the visible Church, but they are not alike. They were baptized in infancy, and many of them renewed their solemn covenant at God's altar in Confirmation. But there their religion ends. They never seek God's face in private prayer. They profane and desecrate God's holy day. They neglect God's sanctuary. They never read God's Word. They are daily supported by God's bounty, but they cherish no more gratitude to the Author of all their blessings than if they were sticks or stones. What are such baptized Christians in reality but vile refuse in the net. Others, again, are not so pronounced in their conduct; they do observe to some extent the proprieties of a religious life; they are seen now and then inside of God's house, and have their names enrolled upon the communicant or membership list of some church, send their children to Sunday-school, and withhold not at times a charitable hand. But, then, that is the whole of their religion. They do not believe in always running to church, in being so awfully sanctimonious; a person can be a Christian, read his Bible, and pray at home just as well.—That's the type of many. It is the form without the power. The virgin's lamp of profession is there, the oil of God's Spirit is not there, or very, very low. And, in addition to these various classes, there is a "remnant," as the Apostle calls it, in many places a very small remnant, "according to the election ofgrace." These are they, and some such are now hearing me who have received the truth for the love of it, and who have embraced the Gospel as it has embraced them. They belong not to them that are "good enough," and "if God accepts any one, He cannot pass them by," but being convinced by the Holy Ghost that they are poor, soul-sick sinners, they seek Christ's blood as their only remedy and Christ's righteousness as their only ground of acceptance, and flee to Christ's cross as their only hope, and seek to adorn this doctrine by a consistent and holy life and a diligent and conscientious attendance upon the Word and Sacraments.
These, my beloved, are some of the various classes of the mixed and motley multitude that are now being gathered into the net, the outward church, and yet it is sheer impossibility to distinguish between them. They are so closely mixed together; people may live in the same houses, walk together the same street, sit side by side in the same pew, listen to the same preacher, kneel at the same sacramental altar, and at last lie down, amid sacred ceremony, in the same burial plot, and yet may be inwardly utterly dissimilar, the one from the other, the one genuine, the other spurious; the one be finally saved, the other ultimately lost.—This is something which we cannot determine, which our natural, material eye cannot discern. But that is the teaching of our text,—there will come a time when this will be made manifest. As in the drag-net, first of every sort are gathered together in the same enclosure only for a little while, till the nets are drawn in to the shore, so in the spiritual net, the outward Church of Christ on earth, the opposite descriptions of mankind are equally enclosed, but only for a season, a brief season; they will presently be divided. Says our parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind; which, when it was full, they drew to the shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away." When the net shall be full, when the last saved of the number of God's elect shall be gathered in, the examination will be made, and the separation will take place. There is a time set in God's everlasting purposes,—we know not when, indeed, that time will be according to the measurement of our years, but we know that it will be when the Gospel shall have fulfilled that which it has been sent for; for, according to the Master-Fisher, it must not return void and empty, but full.And so the net is now filling, faster at some times than at others, all along continuing to be filled until it will be drawn to shore, the shore of eternity; and then will the dividing process take place.
From this parable, and from the corresponding one of the wheat and the tares, we see what a mistake we make if we expect to find anywhere a perfect Church upon earth. To expect the Church to be a community of perfect saints is to expect more than its divine Founder ever expected, according to the words of His own parables. There was a Balaam among the prophets of God, and Achan in the camp of Israel, a Judas numbered with the twelve apostles, an Ananias and Sapphira connected with the first little flock in Jerusalem. In the Corinthian, Galatian, and Ephesian Churches, planted and superintended by St. Paul, there arose bad ministers and disreputable private Christians. No wonder, then, that in our church and charges there should be found reprehensible and undesirable material, and no preaching, however powerful and faithful, no discipline, however strict and prudent, no watchfulness, however careful and ready, can ever make it otherwise. Even to the end of the world the goats will mingle with the sheep, the tares grow up with the wheat, whilst the nets are being filled, the bad fish will be gathered with the good. Perfection is not to be found this side of heaven.
The second error pointed out by this part of our subject is this, that we must not seek, by force or persecution, to get rid of whatwemay call putrid or unprofitable fish. Church discipline is, indeed, enjoined in the Scripture in regard to doctrine and in regard to practice. When Paul writes to Titus: "Rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith," and advises the Corinthians concerning the man guilty of incest, "Put away from among yourselves that wicked person,"—when a person has become manifest as an outspoken disbeliever or as an open transgressor of God's Law, flagrant in his morals, then it becomes incumbent upon a congregation to admonish, to discipline, for the saving of his soul, that person. Church discipline is not intended to cast away, but to bring back to proper belief and proper conduct, to save a person's soul, to keep him in the net, by removing his error and inducing him to live a decent life. However, if such a one obstinately persists in his wickedness,then it commends itself to every one that he can no longer be admitted to fellowship.
But it is not this quality of fish that our parable speaks about. In fact, such, to make it plainer, are no fish at all; they are vermin, lizards, or whatever species of reptile you wish to name them. A man that is outspoken in unbelief and profligate in his morals is not within the Gospel net. Christ in this parable is speaking of such people as wished to be recognized as Christians, confess themselves as spiritual and converted children of the Kingdom, and as long as they do that, we may have our serious doubts as to their sincerity; we may, as we see their faults and obliqueness of conduct, consider their Christianity of a rather dubious specimen or type—hypocritical is the common term. But it's not for us to read them out of the membership of the saints, much less dare the Church deny them access to the house of God, or resort to external force, police or military measures to enforce her teachings and persecute those who differ from her. Has that ever been done, you question? My dear hearers, the robes of the professing Church are red with the blood of saints, because it has failed to heed the parables of our consideration to-day. We think of a John Huss, a forerunner of the Reformation, taken to the stake at Constance, burned as an arch-heretic; of the Albigenses and Waldenses, persecuted, slaughtered by the so-called holy Christian Church, banished for no other cause but adherence to their Bibles. We call to our remembrance the scenes of the Inquisition, the horrible treatments and tortures, when Rome undertook to separate the bad from the good, and destroyed thousands of Christians better than herself, 18,000 in the Netherlands, 60,000 in France. We can still hear the bells tolling on that fatal day, August 24, 1572, called St. Bartholomew's Day, when the signal for a massacre was given that cost 30,000 Huguenots their lives in the streets of Paris. Time fails us to speak of England and Germany with their gruesome thirty years of religious war, of the countries where fanaticism, armed with the sword, wished to root out what it thought was tares, and cast away the bad fish; and let us mark that the Pope resides not only in Rome, but there are a multitude of little popes everywhere, judging and pronouncing on one another, with all the stringency and self-confidence of their colossal type in Rome, their anathemas, and who would, if they could, quickly and radically empty thenet. But, says the Savior, let them be gathered together until the day of separation.
And by whom, to continue the parable, will the separation be made? Not by the fishermen, the ministers; for they are liable to make great and fatal mistakes. Ministers cannot see people's hearts. They may often think, "These are God's elect," when God says, "I know them not," and the reverse. No, my brethren, ministers will be sifted like the rest, themselves be classed either with the wicked or the just, and, strange as it may sound, those who have cast the nets, may themselves be cast away. God will, therefore, according to the parable, employ brighter agents for this important work. "The angels," it says, "shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just." The same is told in the parable of the tares. "The reapers are the angels"; and they will do their work with perfect accuracy. They will make no mistakes. The angel that passed over the houses in Egypt committed no error. Every house on whose door-posts was the blood he spared, while in every house where the blood was not seen he left a first-born dead. So, in the separation on the final day, these celestial reapers will see at a glance who have been justified by the Lord and sanctified by the Spirit, and who have not. Not one will escape their discerning eye. Oh! what a separation that will be. There will be no haste, no precipitation; all will be calm and judicial. The angels will "sit down," as the term is, to denote the calm inquiry and the patient investigation of each member of the visible Church; and the good they will then gather into vessels, into the mansions above; but the bad will they cast away into a furnace of fire, where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Methinks that these concluding words of our Lord are the most terrible that can be anywhere found, and yet, withal, they are the words of a loving Savior, graciously telling us beforehand what the result of the final separation will be. Well may we heed for our instruction the solemn appeal: "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear."
There only remains now for me, to rivet these lessons upon your minds, two further remarks: First, be not offended; secondly, be not deceived. Too often do we hear the remark, "There are too many hypocrites in the Church, I don't care to associate with such people." You are right, my dear friend; but such a clear-sighted person as you are will certainly not judgea Christian Church by the faulty character of some of its members. Have you remained unmarried because some people have proved failures in marriage? Or do you keep your children from being educated because some educated people are great rascals? Is this the fault of marriage or education? And will you contend that the Word of God and the water of Holy Baptism make those who hear and receive it hypocrites and spiritual counterfeits? What hollowness of reasoning! You would not spurn the gold because it is embedded in quartz, or discard the diamond because it lies buried in sand, or refuse the daylight because there is a spot on the sun. You know too well that a cause must be judged by its principles, its teachings, and not by the faults and failures of its adherents. And so when the question arises as to your connection with the Church of Christ, it is for you to consider the principles and doctrine of that, and act accordingly.
Again, be not deceived. We are all of us, in a sense, in the net; and in the net are to be found of every kind, good and bad. Which are we? Christ tells us thatmany—not a few—many at the last day, will cry to Him, saying, "Lord, we have heard Thy ministers preach, and by them Thou hast taught us in our churches;" but He will say: "Depart from me; I never knew you." Do you, then, belong among the good?i. e., those who have their souls appareled in the garments of Christ's goodness? In other words, are you a sincere and simple believer in Christ Jesus? Then shall you be cast into the vessels. May God grant us a favorable judgment when the drag-net of the Gospel is drawn to the everlasting shore! Amen.