Worthless Fish: Matthew 13:47-50

As Jesus begins to wrap up sharing a short series of parables about the Kingdom of heaven, He decides to share one more example. However, too often we focus on only the two preceding parables, and we stop before diving into the third one. Unfortunately, if we stop short of reading this third parable, we run the risk of misunderstanding where Jesus was going in what He was sharing with the disciples. While this third parable has some less than ideal details, and it is not all that appealing to think of you and I as fish, this parable is a fascinating conclusion to this set of parables Jesus shared while He was alone with the disciples.

Let’s dive into what this parable teaches, and unpack what we can learn from Jesus’ concluding illustration. Our parable is found in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 13, and we will be reading it from the Good News Translation. Jumping into Jesus’ sequence of parables in verse 47, Jesus starts another parable by saying:

⁴⁷ “Also, the Kingdom of heaven is like this. Some fishermen throw their net out in the lake and catch all kinds of fish. ⁴⁸ When the net is full, they pull it to shore and sit down to divide the fish: the good ones go into the buckets, the worthless ones are thrown away. ⁴⁹ It will be like this at the end of the age: the angels will go out and gather up the evil people from among the good ⁵⁰ and will throw them into the fiery furnace, where they will cry and gnash their teeth.

After reading this parable, I can easily see why many people would rather ignore its presence. This parable isn’t all that pleasant because Jesus explains and describes the fate of evil people. It is much nicer to focus on those who are welcomed in to God’s kingdom and to intentionally not think about those who will ultimately be lost.

However, it is worth paying attention to this parable, especially its challenging theme, because if we focus in on this parable and theme, we can catch the lessons aimed at helping us avoid the fate being described.

As I read Jesus’ words in this parable, one word stood out to me more than the rest. The word that jumped out at me was the word “worthless”. This is the way this translation describes the fish that are thrown away. When randomly looking at a few different translations, we find that worthless and bad are the most common descriptive words used to describe these fish.

While it might seem obvious to throw the worthless fish away, remember that this is a parable, and Jesus immediately explains this parable in no uncertain terms. The fish represent people and at the end of the age, angels will sort the good and evil people and those who are evil will be separated and cast into the fiery furnace.

This leads us to a question: What makes someone worthless in God’s eyes?

Our parable gives us a solid clue. The fish which are described as worthless represent people who are described as evil. So sin and evil actions make us worthless – or at least that is one logical conclusion we could draw from this. While it is true that sin does cheapen our worth, what Jesus ultimately did defied all of this logic.

When we as a race were bound up in sin, through our nature, our choices, our desires, and our hearts, Jesus came to give us a choice. Jesus did not have to come, but from before anyone else had even thought of you, the Godhead decided together that Jesus would come. This is illogical because Jesus died for a worthless, sin-filled race of created beings, and only because Jesus did this do we have worth in God’s eyes.

Through Jesus, the Godhead reattached worth into humanity, and because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, we have the choice of accepting Jesus’ gift of worth into our lives, or stay living worthlessly in sin. Sin does make us worthless, but Jesus came to remind us that our value is not in what we currently are, but in what God sees we can be. We are a race of sinners, but God sees us as His children!

Just like we are given value that we might not realize in the parable of the merchant that we looked at in our last episode, this parable teaches us that we have worth in God’s eyes when we are moving away from evil and growing towards Him. It isn’t pleasant to look at the fate of those who have chosen evil, but it is a reminder that our lives are a chance for us to decide whether we will be redeemed by Jesus, or whether we will prefer a life of worthless sin.

We have all been given the gift of life, and the most important decision we can make in this life is deciding to place our faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus. The decisions made in this life have eternal results.

In the past, some preachers and Christian leaders pressured people with a fear of hell approach to accepting the gospel. However, choosing Jesus because you are scared of burning is not the best reason to choose Christ.

The best reason to choose Jesus is because of what God has done for us through Jesus, and because you want a future life without any of the sin, pain, disease, death, and suffering in this life. Jesus is the way out of this life and the spiritual gate into a perfect sinless future life. While our lives with Jesus can begin today, as Christians, we know that the lives we are currently living are nothing when compared with the life God has planned to bless us with when Jesus returns!

We become more valuable than we realize when we place our faith, our hope, our trust, and our belief in Jesus, and when we turn away from sin, we become a fish that is worth saving for eternity!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, continue seeking God first and placing Him first in your life. Choose to keep making the intentional choice to place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Him each and every day, and also intentionally choose to grow towards God and away from sin.

Also, keep praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn firsthand what God wants to teach you through His Word. While learning from others is good, always take what others teach and compare it with what the Bible teaches, because the Bible has stood the test of time and it is the most reliable guide we have to help us live for God in a sinful world.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or deviate away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!