SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/7/2022 9:08 AM
My Worship Time Focus: “The Picture”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 13:47-48
Message of the verses: “47 "Again,
the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea, and gathering fish
of every kind; 48 and when it was filled, they drew it up on the beach; and they
sat down and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they
threw away.”
In this Spiritual Diary we are beginning to look at
the parable of the dragnet which speaks of judgment that will happen near the
end of the Kingdom of God.
This
activity that Jesus uses to illustrate God’s judgment on unbelievers was a
common one to His hearers. It was
especially familiar to those who lived near the Sea of Galilee, and it was most
especially understandable to those, including several of the disciples, the
ones who were fishermen.
The
following describes the three basic methods of fishing that were used during
this time of those who were fishing on the Sea of Galilee, and these are still
used today. The first one was using a
fishing line with a hook, and this caught one fish at a time. In Matthew 17:24-27 we see the story of Jesus
and some tax collectors asking Jesus if He paid a certain kind of tax. Jesus, not wanting to offend them sent Peter
out and told him to use a fishing line with a hook and the first fish that he
would catch had enough money in its mouth to pay the tax for He and Peter.
Now
the other two methods of fishing involved nets.
One of the nets was a small net that the fisherman would toss out into
the water which had small weights on it and as it sank down into the water the
fishermen would tighten up the line and any fish that were in it would be
caught. This kind of fishing took a lot
of experience to be able to cast the net and to catch fish in it.
Now
the third type of net was the sagene,
a very large dragnet, or seine, that required a team of fishermen to operate
and sometimes covered as much as a half square mile writes John MacArthur. He goes on “It was pulled into a giant circle
around the fish between two boats out in deep water or by one boat when working
from the shore. In the latter case, one
end of the net would be firmly moored onshore while the other was attached to
the boat, which would make a large circle out into the water and come back to
the starting place. Floats were attached
to the top of the net and weights to the bottom, forming a wall of net from the
surface to the bottom of the lake.”
Now
this type of net permitted nothing to escape, so all sorts of things besides
the desirable fish were caught in the net, and this net swept everything in its
path including weeds, objects dropped overboard from boats, and all manner of
sea life, including “fish of every kind.”
Whenever
the net was filled, it would take a large number of men several hours just to
drag “it on the beach.” Then “they sat
down, and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they threw away.” The good “fish” would be carried to a distant
market are the ones put into the containers which had water in them to keep
them alive, as those were to be sold nearby were actually put in dry
containers, which were usually baskets.
Now
we understand a little bit of how people fished during this time, but as stated
not much has changed from then to now with the exception of having larger
boats and using nets with motors on it to pull the catch into the boats.
5/7/2022 9:30 AM
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