New and Old People

The Reign of Heaven

We have now been studying Jesus’s parables for two months together. How to end a study on the parables? Certainly, Jesus told many more parables than we could hope to study in just two months. And there have been many parables that, while certainly deserving of our attention, we weren’t able to get to: the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Parable of the Mustard Seed, the Parable of the Lost Sheep, the list goes on. Jesus told many parables that deserve to be heard today. Yet, as we read in , while Jesus was teaching the crowds and his disciples parable after parable, he saved four very special parables for last. These four parables are what Jesus chose to end his teaching with, and it is to these four parables that we turn today:

“The reign of heaven is like a treasury hidden in the field, which a man finds then hides. Because of his joy he leaves and sells everything that he has and buys that field.

Furthermore, the reign of heaven is like a merchant seeking a good pearl. Now, finding a very precious pearl, he sold everything that he had and bought it.

Also, the reign of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea and gathering fish of every kind. When the net filled up, they pulled it up onto the shore, sat down, and collected

the good things into containers, but the bad things they threw outside. It will be like this in the end of the age: The angels will go out and separate the evil from the midst of the

righteous, and they will cast them into the fiery furnace. In that place will be wailing and grinding teeth.

Have you understood all these things?” They said to him, “Yes.” So he said to them, “Therefore, every scribe who becomes a disciple of the reign of heaven is like a master of the house,

who takes out from his treasury new things and old.

The Kingdom of heaven is at the heart of Jesus’s message. It was, after all, important enough to be the subject of Christ’s first sermon, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” In fact, most of Jesus’s parables in are entirely focused on the kingdom. But what is the kingdom? Why is it so important to Jesus?

You may notice that I actually didn’t read anything about the “kingdom”, but about the “reign”. That is because the phrase we normally translate as “kingdom of heaven”, βασιλεια των ουρανων, is really more about the action of God’s ruling rather than the place of his rule. So, when Jesus announces to the world, “the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near!”, we shouldn’t imagine a heavenly city floating down from the sky. We should instead imagine the King and Lord of the heavens coming down to take charge of this world. “The Kingdom of Heaven is near” means that God is on the throne, God’s heavenly angels are charging in and pushing out all the demonic forces that so long held this world in captivity, and it is no longer Satan who calls the shots, but the LORD.

And God’s rule is indeed as precious as any treasure or pearl! God is just, God is good. Under his rule the world is as it should be. A good ruler means a good world. This is why, Jesus tells us, the Reign of God is like a treasure hidden in a field, or a fine pearl. The Kingdom’s value is easy enough to grasp from these parables, but Jesus has more than just that in mind. And as we study these two stories, we might learn some surprising things about how God rules this world.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like...

The Reign of God is like a treasure hidden in a field. Apparently the overthrow of Satan did not make the headlines. God’s reign isn’t a massive monument that all the world can see. It is like a treasure, beautiful and valuable, that has been hidden away. The kingdom is something that has to be found. Surprisingly, in this parable, it is found by someone who wasn’t looking for it at all! The Kingdom of God sometimes comes upon us very suddenly, unexpectedly, before we even know what is happening. One moment we’re out in the field, we stumble over something, and discover that we’ve uncovered a great treasure!

Other times, however, the God’s rule is like a merchant who is looking for a pearl. “Seek and you will find,” Jesus tells us, and find the merchant did! But, he still had to look for it. It wasn’t a pearl mailed to his home from Amazon. He had to go out on a journey to find it.

These parables reveal a great mystery about God’s kingdom. Very often, we mistakenly believe that Satan still controls this world, and that demons run rampant unchecked. That is not the case, however! God, not Satan, is on the throne. The Angels, not the demons, patrol the city streets. The LORD is on the throne, and no one else can challenge his rule. On the Cross, Satan was soundly defeated, and now the demons tremble and flee at the name Jesus Christ.

And yet, this news apparently hasn’t reached very far. There are a great many people who haven’t heard about the Reign of heaven. It is like a treasure hidden, or a fine pearl that must be sought out. The gospel, the good news about our Lord Jesus the Christ, who ascended to heaven to reign at the right hand of the father, is a treasure indeed! But like all great treasures, it must be found in order to be enjoyed. The mysterious thing about God’s Kingdom, though, is in the way people find it. For some, that involves stumbling upon it very suddenly. Those are the people who didn’t even know they were looking for God, yet nevertheless found themselves caught up in his love. I was one of those people.

For others, however, that means seeking out the truth, going on a long journey, and finally finding that thing you were looking for. St. Augustine was one of these people. He was a student and then a teacher in a very prestigious school of philosophy. He sought out the mysteries of the universe, trying one religion and then another. He was a pagan, and then a follower of the heretical prophet Mani. When he finally heard St. Ambrose preach the gospel, however, he knew he’d found the pearl he had been looking for.

That is the beauty of God’s kingdom: anyone can find it. Whether we’re looking for it or not, whether we are a simple peasant working in the field, or a rich merchant on the hunt for treasure, the Kingdom of God is available to all.

Like so many treasures, however, God’s kingdom is costly. Once found, this treasure confronts us with a terrible decision. We can take hold of this treasure: but it will cost us everything. The field can be ours, the pearl can be ours, but in return we must sell all that we have. This is, no doubt, why Jesus warns his followers to “count the cost” of discipleship. Understanding this, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian martyr executed under Adolf Hitler, remarked, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”.

The problem with so many of us is that we want just a little bit of the kingdom. We want to sprinkle a little of the Kingdom on our lives just in case. We’re looking to ‘hedge our bets’. There is no hedging bets in the kingdom of God. It is all or nothing. When we discover the beauty of the Kingdom of God we are urged to abandon all that we thought was the focus of this life and focus entirely on what God is doing in the kingdom.

This isn’t a thing to be done out of anguish, however. The beauty and goodness of God’s kingdom is worth it. The treasure hidden in the field truly is worth more than all we’ve ever owned.

God and Fisherman: Eschatology and Evangelism

Which brings us to Jesus’s next point. We might ask, “If God is really ruling, then why is the world still the way it is? If this treasure is so valuable, why doesn’t it seem like it now?” To this, Jesus responds with the parable of the dragnet. The dragnet is very similar to the parable we talked about just a few weeks ago, the Parable of the Weeds among the Wheat. God, in his wisdom, has decided to put off judgement for a little while. Like a wise fisherman, he drags his net across the lake and captures everything within in. Only when it is full, only when the time is right for the harvest, does he draw it ashore and sort out the fish.

For the time being, we are caught up in the net with all the bad fish. This does not mean God is not in control, or that his kingdom is worthless. It only means that we will have to wait for God to sort out things in his own time.

And we can be sure that such a time will come, when the net is full, when the time is ripe for the harvest. The angels will come and pick out the evil from the midst of the good. This is a reminder that we don’t wait for God to zap us up into heaven. No, God will sort out this world. We await a resurrection, when God will give us new bodies that don’t perish, and when God and his angels will wipe out all the evil, pain, suffering, and wickedness from this world. It is the evil that will go away, not the good. The good will remain and enjoy a new heaven and new earth, uncorrupted by sin and death. There is no more precious treasure or pearl than this!

In the meantime, however, we wait in the dragnet as God gathers fish of every kind. Interestingly, the word Jesus uses hear for every kind of fish, usually means every kind of person! It could literally be translated as every tribe of fish, or every nation of fish, or even every ethnicity of fish. That is a rather odd thing for Jesus to say. Perhaps, then, Jesus intends for us to better understand a point he’s already hinted at in the previous two parables: the Kingdom of God is for everyone. God will not gather fish from only one part of the pond. He will not gather only the brim, he will also gather the catfish, the bass, even eels, snakes, turtles, gators, and the boot someone lost at the bottom of the lake 10 years ago! A dragnet has a tendency to pull up everything from the lake. Nothing is left out.

This imagery of fishing is no doubt meant to call to mind Jesus’s words to his disciples just a few chapters earlier in Matthew, “I will make you fishers of men.” And who could forget the story of Jesus at the close of John’s gospel, when he appeared on the shore of the sea. Some of the disciples went fishing, but didn’t have any luck. That is, until Jesus tells them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat and they caught so many fish they could barely haul it to shore (153 fish, to be exact).

God’s Kingdom is like a dragnet that catches all kinds of fish, and Jesus calls us to do as God does. If God catches all “nations” of fish, then we too should be fishing for fish of “every nation”. There is not discrimination in God’s kingdom. We don’t pick and choose who gets to hear the gospel, because Christ’s table is open for all. We people love to draw divisions among ourselves: Black and White, American and Chinese, Republican or Democrat, North or South, so on and so forth. But when Christ comes in final victory, there will be no “black”, “white”, “asian”, or “hispanic” fish. There will be good fish and bad fish. When Jesus comes in final victory there will be no “republican”, “democrat”, “capitalist”, or “socialist” fish. There will be good fish and bad fish.

What that means for us is that, if we want to be put among the good fish, we had better learn to get along with fish that don’t look like us, or come from the same tribe. Because at Christ’s table, people of every tribe, tongue, and nation will dine together as brother and sister. John tells us in :

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

God’s Kingdom is a great dragnet that does not discriminate on what kind of fish it gathers, and neither should we. Christ has commanded us to make disciples of all nations. We are to announce the good news of Jesus to Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic, to American, Chinese, Ethiopian, Indian, and French, to Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green Party, and Socialist, to all the fish in the pond, to all the people to the ends of the earth. Our Job is to fish, and we’ll let God do the sorting in his own time.

Things New and Old: Putting it all together

As Jesus closed his teaching in parables, he turned to his disciples and asked them, “Have you understood all these things?” They answered, “Yes.” And Jesus said, “Therefore every scribe who becomes a disciple of the reign of heaven is like a master of the house, who brings out from his treasury new things and old.”

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Christians are a new and old people. We read a new and old book. We worship a God who makes new the old. And we live in a new and old world. A world that still clings to the old ways of that serpent Satan, and nevertheless a world being made new by the blood of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Christians are a new and old people. When we discover the treasure of God’s kingdom, Jesus calls us to abandon everything of this world, and to focus solely on what God is doing. And, as it turns out, God has gone fishing. Fishing for people of every nation, tribe, and language. So Jesus calls us to go fishing too, for people of every nation, tribe, and language. So that they too might stumble upon this treasure hidden in the field. To share with them the beauty of the priceless pearl. To warn them that the dragnet is getting full, and will one day be drawn up onto the shore and the good and bad fish sorted out. To invite them to become a new and old people.

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New and old people who always remember the past. Who remember the serpent who brought sin into the world, but also to remember the mighty acts of God who called his people out of Egypt, who sent the prophets to lead people to truth, who sent his son into the world in order to die on a cross, to never forget the ministry of Jesus Christ.

New and old people who still continue in that ministry with the power of the same Spirit that dwelled in Christ. Who always look to the future and hold fast to hope that our God, our Lord Jesus Christ is coming, to sort out the good and the bad, and to make all things new again. Who have put off the old ways of sin and death and have put on the new self, created in the likeness of God through Jesus Christ.

We have been given the task of witnessing to the reality of the new age right in the midst of the old. We do that by the same Spirit that was in Jesus, the same Spirit that was on Moses and Abraham, and that hovered over the waters at the creation of the World.

We have found a priceless treasure, and we have been called to go fishing. So let us go out of this place as New and Old people, filled with the power of the Spirit of the Ancient of Days, and clinging to the future hope of new creation and new life.