This particular parable is a parable about judgment.  It is a parable about hell.  And the keynote of the parable is found in verse 50, the furnace of fire, where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Our Lord spoke very much and very often about hell.  He said many things about the abode of the damned, the wicked, the Christ rejecters. 

But of all of the startling, terrifying things that Jesus ever said, perhaps the most startling was when He said to the Jewish leaders, “How can ye escape the damnation of hell?” in Matthew 23:33.  “How can ye escape the damnation of hell?”

It seems strange to us to hear words like that coming from the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ.  For we don’t associate the Lord Jesus Christ with hell, as often as we ought.  He said more about hell than he did about love.  He said more about hell than all the other biblical preachers combined.  And if we are to model our preaching after His, then hell is a major theme for us.

The other night I heard a teenage punk rocker being interviewed.  And the reporter said to her, “What are you looking forward to?  What is in the future for punk rock?”  She said, “Death.  I’m looking forward to death.”  He said, “Why?”  She said, “I want to go to hell.  Because hell will be fun.  I hope I go to hell.  I want to die so I cat get to hell and have fun.” 

What deception.  Hell is not fun.  One writer said, “There is no way to describe hell, nothing on earth can compare with it.  No living person has any real idea of it.  No madman in wildest flights of insanity ever beheld its horror.  No man in delirium ever pictured a place so utterly terrible as this. 

“No nightmare racing across a fevered mind ever produced a terror to match the mildest hell.  No murder scene with splashed blood and oozing wound ever suggested a revulsion that could touch the borderlands of hell.  Let the most gifted writer exhaust his skill in describing this roaring cavern of unending flame and he would not even brush in fancy the nearest edge of hell.”  End quote.

This is a parable in which our Lord warns about hell.  Now remember, in these parables the Lord is telling us what it will be like in this period of the world’s history, this form of His rule.  He is the King and He rules in the world.  And He is allowing, in this period of time, good and evil to grow together as we saw in the parable of the wheat and the tares.  He’s…He’s tolerant of the good and evil through this period.  But in the end will come a judgment.  And that’s why this is the last parable.