The parables which our Lord is telling us today of the dragnet are about the kingdom
of heaven. And so these parables are about the end of the world when we will be judged and
will be deemed either worthy or unworthy to enter the kingdom of heaven.
And yet elsewhere in the gospel our Lord says that the kingdom of God is within us
because it actually begins here on earth but will not be fulfilled and perfected until we get to
heaven. And so when our Lord tells the parables of the kingdom of heaven,
the parable of the wheat and the tares, for example, or today the parable of the dragnet,
we are reminded that while the kingdom of God begins now, it's not perfect.
And that we are called as we live the life of grace in the presence of Christ our King
to suffer the same lot that he did and to live in this world
without experiencing the perfection of God's kingdom. We suffer. We experience contradiction.
We find ourselves unfulfilled and not perfectly happy. And we know that to achieve the perfection
of God's kingdom, we have to follow the path that our King has followed. And that path leads
to Jerusalem. And it's in the midst of his suffering and his sacrificial love,
that the kingdom of God is perfected. And
the victory, as we know, has already been won.
This is why we have the book of Revelation because the victory of the book of Revelation is about
the end of the world. And it's about how those who are just will be rewarded. And even in this life
they have the power to experience God, its power to be perfected, until we get to heaven.
We live in the light of that hope, and we live in the presence of that power. That power.
is now, but that power makes us strong to live the sacrificial love of Christ.
And so at the end of time, there will be a separation. God will take the good and place
them at his right hand in heaven, and he will cast the wicked into the darkness. And as he says over
and over again, there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. And if we have understood
these things, as the Lord has said, then we are instructed in the kingdom of God and are like the
head of the household who brings from his storeroom both the old and the new. And his
first point of reference when he says the old and the new is to refer to the prophets of the
Old Testament and all of the signs from the Old Testament, which pointed towards
the kingdom of God. And so God will cast the wicked into the darkness. And as he says over
and over again, there will be a separation. God will cast the wicked into the darkness. And as the
coming of a Messiah who would be a suffering servant and who would enter into his kingdom
through the contradiction of the cross. And he's saying that those who have understood these things
have been wise enough to recognize the signs and to see their fulfillment in him and to recognize
him for who he was. He's saying this, of course, before he died on the cross. And even those who
were saying, yes, we understand, really didn't understand, because in the end, they were
and they, in a sense, rejected the prophets and what our Lord had promised would come to pass.
They rejected the idea that we would have to live in this world in the state of contradiction.
They were expecting him to deliver them from the Romans and from contradiction. But our Lord
himself became the contradiction. He became the sign of contradiction by a suffering and death
on the cross. So the first point of reference when our Lord says, talks about,
being a scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven and being able to pull out from the storehouse
things that are both old and new, is the recognition of the signs and their fulfillment,
especially in the sign of the cross. But the second reference, I think, is where our Lord
reminds us that we have much to learn. And to a large extent, in this world of suffering and
contradiction, where we live with the world of suffering and contradiction, we have much to learn.
with the wicked and very often ourselves are the wicked who are a source of sorrow for
other people it's a matter of learning from our mistakes learning from the times that we have
rejected the cross where we have compromised with sin where though we have professed the faith we
have really acted like pagans it's a matter of learning from the old and entering into the new
we need to have the past as a reminder so that we might point our minds and our hearts towards
towards the future which holds for us something more terrible than anything that we could
experience in this life and that is the searing judgment of God who desires to be merciful who
desires our salvation who wants us to find life and yet who will who will put us who puts us to
the test at this moment
and who in the end will be the judge who either rewards us for the good we have done
or punishes us for our wickedness and so let us be educated instructed in the kingdom of heaven
and be able to pull out of our storehouse those things which are both new and old especially the
new which is the mercy of God and his power to endure all things for love of him
who once anointed us with life whereas we are intended to be set free from sin and
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In what doth your wisdom change me?
Will there ever stand annocence for you?
Will there ever be Ga156?
Will there be a new me?
Thank you for watching.