Luke 13:1-5
Amen. You may be seated. Please
turn in your copy of God’s word to Luke’s gospel. We begin chapter
13 today in our study of Luke. Our reading will be Luke chapter
13, verses one to five. You can find that in the pew
Bible on page 872. Jesus has been speaking to various
people in the crowd and in today’s passage, the crowd speaks back
to him and they remind him and the other hearers of a couple
of stories of tragedy. And while they have interpreted
these stories to mean one thing, that is that bad things happen
to those who are worse sinners than others. Jesus tells them
the real meaning behind these passages. And so to us today,
that lesson is also ours. Let us give our attention to
the word of the living God, beginning at verse one of chapter 13, Luke’s
gospel. There were some present at that
very time who told Jesus about the Galileans, whose blood Pilate
had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered them saying,
do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the
other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell
you, but unless you repent, you will also likewise perish. or
those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them,
do you think that they were worse offenders than all those others
who lived at Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you
repent, you will all likewise perish. Let’s look to our God
in prayer. Lord, sometimes we come to the
Bible, actually oftentimes, and we we judge it. We judge it with
our human expectations, our personal desires. We judge it with the
ways of the world. And that’s just what. these did
in this passage. They looked at the world and
they judged it from a human perspective. But we thank you that Jesus has
sought us and purchased us and changed us and given us his Holy
Spirit. We ask now that our eyes would
see the reality of the truth of the living God and how it
helps us interpret our experience in this world. So help us and
bless us. We pray in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Amen. I remember in grade school
going on various field trips. We would go maybe to the petting
zoo and get to touch this animal, that animal. We might go to the
farm and see how a cow is milked or how the pigs squealed and
wallowed in the mud and those sorts of things. As we got a
little older, we might go to the science center and see a
tarantula and see how electricity conducts itself and those sorts
of things. I think one of my greatest memories was getting
to go to the Burlington Fire Station when it was brand new.
Some of you may have worshipped at that site when First Presbyterian
Church was there, but when I was a kid the fire station was new
and they still let us slide down the fireman’s pole. And that
might have been the highlight of the second grade or so whenever
it was we went. I understand they’ve long since
quit doing that, but it was a great thrill to hang on to that pole.
I remember we weren’t heavy enough to make it open up the trap door.
They opened up the ceiling, and so a fireman down below had to
assist, but we got to slide down the pole. What a wonderful thing.
But I can also remember getting to visit the old Burlington jail.
Not the one where it presently is, but the one on Fisher Street
or wherever that was right by the side of the road. And they
stuck us all in the jail cell, and they slammed the door. Clink.
And you know they call that the scared straight program, right?
You don’t want to end up in jail. You don’t want to hear the clink
of the cell door. And so they take little kids
to the jail and show them how it locks and they can throw away
the key. You know, they don’t hang it
up like they do in Mayberry right by the thing where you just reach
out and get it. But you’re in there. You’re locked up. They
put you in handcuffs. Or maybe some of you remember
prom week in high school, you know, the whole don’t drink and
drive thing. And so they reenact a wreck out in front of the school
and make up a few folks with bloody, deadly wounds and that
sort of thing. Or I bet some of you can relate
to this, the 1980s Southern church culture. If you believe in Halloween
and rock and roll, you’re going to die, right? And so some of
you probably went to those 1980s youth group scare houses. where
instead of ghosting goblins, they showed you. what a unrighteous
life looked like. And the hope was to scare you
straight, right? To scare you into a spot where
you would never do anything to end up in jail. You would never
do anything to end up in handcuffs. And you would never listen to
rock and roll because that would for sure lead your car into the
top of a tree somewhere in a deserted place out in the county. And
so these scared straight programs were meant to instill a bit of
fear in you. Well, that’s a bit of what is
taking place in our passage today. It’s a scared straight program
in the Bible. There’s two events in our passage
that are known to the people in the area and in the time when
Jesus is ministering to the Galileans and to those on the way to Jerusalem,
where he will suffer and die for our sins. There’s memory
of the first event, Pilate’s slaughter of the Galileans in
the temple. There were these Galileans who
had made their way to Jerusalem. They made their way to sacrifice
to the Lord. They were making atonement for
their sins by offering sacrifices there at the temple. and Pilate,
a wicked man, a tyrant, one of the worst known of the Roman
governors who occupied the Holy Land at that time. For some maniacal
reason, he slaughtered a group of Galileans, and it says that
he mingled their blood with their sacrifices. And then there’s
a second event where a tower, which had been built in the city
of Jerusalem, the tower at Siloam, it was a tower that I believe
held fresh water for use in the city. And maybe the engineering
firm they consulted with didn’t give them the right mathematical
calculations. And that tower toppled over killing
18 people. And so you understand that in
their thinking, their interpretation of these events, as they retell
them to Jesus, It’s something like this. Bad things happen
to bad people. Bad things happen to sinners.
And so the lesson that they would teach to one another is if you’re
in sin, bad things will happen to you or bad things happen to
your neighbors. They must be in sin. Apply that
to today. Oh, you’ve got cancer. You must
have sinned. You got in a car wreck. You must
have sinned. You lost all your money in the
stock market. You must be a great sinner. And you see how the mindset,
the interpretation of these events could go on and on and on. And
Jesus seeks to correct them about a far worse problem. Now, there’s
this question, this problem of evil that comes up in our passage.
It comes up in our minds day by day as we see the events of
the world. Why do bad things happen to good people? Well,
first of all, we should understand there are no good people, right?
So that’s really a false question. Why do bad things happen to bad
people? It’s because we live in a sin filled world. Well,
then you could say, but I’ve been made righteous by Christ.
So why do bad things happen to bad people? But bad people have
been declared righteous in Christ. Again, we live in a sin filled
world. world. And so the premise, the
understanding of these people in Jesus Day, those killed were
worse sinners or worse offenders than the others, is an untrue
interpretation. It’s an untrue interpretation
of how God really works in this world. We could do a survey in
Jesus Day and say the Galileans, those whom the tower fell on,
these two groups of people, Were they were sinners? Survey would
say, yes, they were. Public opinion would say, yes,
they were. But is that good or bad theology?
Bad theology. The Bible says that all have
fallen sin and fallen short of the glory of God. We live in
a sin-filled world with its hurts, its pains, its curses. The rain
falls on the just and the unjust, but also the storms come in the
lives of those who are just and unjust. And we know that God
is going to make all things new someday. And we long for that
day. In fact, we pray often. Come,
Lord Jesus. But this was the common teaching
of the day. We just read in chapter four of Job, Eliphaz, the Temanite,
one of Job’s supposed friends or counselors. Job, for sure
you’ve done wrong. You’ve taught everybody everything.
You’ve been there when we’ve had our hardships. Now it’s our
turn to come to you. You need to fess up. You’ve done
something real bad, brother, to deserve all that has come
upon your house. That was a widely held view,
a popular view. But friends, if we don’t read
our Bibles and we don’t interpret the world through the lens of
the gospel, through the lens of creation and fall and redemption,
we’ll think just like these people in Jesus. day. But Jesus brings a different
message to them, doesn’t he? And it’s the scared straight
message, if you will, of this passage. And he says twice, unless
you repent, you also will likewise perish. I don’t know about you,
but I love to thank the Lord every day I wake up. I had a
neighbor years ago when I lived in Charlotte and as I took my
morning walk, he was often out on his morning walk. We lived
on a little small street and I would say good morning to him
and he would say good morning back and I’d inevitably say,
how you doing? And he says, I’m vertical. And he was always thankful
just to be alive. He was a man in his seventies
at the time, full of energy, full of life, but he was mindful
that he woke up. He did not take the day for granted.
He did not take the fact that he was alive and well, able to
eat, able to walk, able to exercise. He did not take that for granted
like so many of us so often do. But we give thanks to God. We give praise to God that he
cares for us. He takes care of us. Unless you
repent, Jesus says, you also will likewise perish. Think for
just a moment, if you will, about this pattern of creation, this
pattern of fall, this pattern of redemption that we find in
the Bible. How did God make the world? He made the world and
everything in it perfect. And it would have remained perfect
perpetually, eternally, if man had obeyed him and not sinned.
Now, you remember the divine probation God told Adam and Eve,
you can eat of all the fruit of the trees of the garden except
one. Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
for in the day you eat of it, you will surely what? die. And so God threatened upon pain
of death that they eat freely but of that one tree. But we
know Satan entered the garden. He tempted Eve. She saw that
the fruit was a delight to her eyes. Adam, who was with her,
became tempted and they both ate. Their eyes were opened and
they brought upon all mankind because they were the first of
the human race. They brought futility. They brought
curses. They brought sin. And very soon
after Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, we see the contrast of the
wicked and the righteous. There was Cain and Abel and their
sacrifices. Cain offered the fruit of his
garden, but God was displeased and did not accept it. Abel offered
the life of one of his prized animals and God accepted it.
Cain became upset with his brother. He sought him and pursued him
and he killed his brother. And from then on, we see murder,
murder, murder in the world. And it continues to this day.
We may not murder each other and take life, but we murder
one another in our thoughts, our desires and in our words. And we can sure look at the news
headlines this day and see in many different manifestations
the curses of sin on this world and the futility that has come
upon us. for that sin. But in addition to creation and
fall, we must have hope. We must understand redemption
that Jesus has come into the world to make all things right
again. Now, things aren’t yet all right again. There’s a now
to our salvation and there’s a not yet to our salvation. And
we rejoice that we have come to faith in Jesus. We have received
forgiveness of sins. We’ve rested in him alone for
our salvation. We know that we are justified,
that God sees us as if we’ve never sinned and sees us as if
we’ve always obeyed. We still struggle with sin. We
still struggle with the world and what it offers. We still
struggle with Satan and his wicked temptations and his desire to
deceive, devour and destroy the church of the living God. But
we also understand that one day God will come crush the head
of the serpent and he will make all things new. And this bent,
broken, cursed creation full of hatred and violence and whatever
else has come because of sin will be no more. And God will
make all things new. We understand from the hope of
heaven that’s offered to us in the Bible, particularly the book
of Revelation, God will take away every tear. There will be
no more pain, no more sorrow, no more hatred, no more murder,
no more strife, and no more of all that we see in this world.
And so salvation is now, we’ve tasted it. We experience it,
but we long for its completion. We long for the full salvation
that is yet to come. And until it comes, we have glimpses
of salvation. We have down payments of this
great glory that is to be ours, and we can have hope. But bad
things will continue to happen to both the righteous and the
unrighteous. We’ll still go to the doctor
and receive a diagnosis we don’t like. Our new car just off the
lot, we’ll get a dent in it. A tree will fall on the roof.
Rain will come in the house. A lightning storm will zap all
of our Apple products. I’m painting a really terrible
picture, aren’t I? But life will happen. It’s why
we’re thankful for State Farm and Nationwide and whoever our
insurance carriers are. We reallocate our risk because
we know this is a fallen world and things will break. But we
still have hope in the glory of full salvation in Jesus when
he comes to make all things new. Let’s get to the warning here
if we can. Jesus issues twice a warning. He says to the people
who’ve told him these stories, you think this, you think that
bad things happen to people who are worse sinners. Well, that’s
what you think. Let me tell you what God thinks.
Jesus says twice, unless you repent, Unless you repent, you
also or you likewise will perish. And so in a sense, he is reminding
them of the frailty of life. He’s reminding them that in a
moment, whether you are righteous or unrighteous, sinful things,
bad things, cursed things that happen in this fallen world can
take away your life. The real question is, do you
know Jesus? Are you resting in him alone for your salvation?
Have you repented? Have you turned to God for salvation? Let’s think for just a moment
about repentance. I was telling the kids in Sunday
school a little bit earlier about repentance in a most basic way.
Think of it this way. You’re driving east on the interstate,
but you’re supposed to be going west. And so what do you need
to do? You need to repent or change
or turn. And go west instead of east,
because east is the wrong way and west is the right way, at
least in that situation. And so it’s like that in your
life. You are headed towards sin. You are headed towards hell
and eternity without Almighty God, unless you give thanks to
him and repent of your sins or change your mind and turn to
him. So repentance is going the wrong
way, stopping and changing direction and going the right way. In the
New Testament, it’s a word that literally means a change of mind.
We often think in terms of feelings today, don’t we? We think of
even religion now in terms of feelings. But the Bible is a
brainy book. Theology is a vent of the brain. And so we have to repent with
some things in mind. And the first thing that must
come to our mind is God is God. God is the judge. His law is
perfect. His ways are right. And if we
are going away from God, we’re going the wrong way, sinning.
or transgressing his law or not measuring up to his holy standard.
And we must stop and realize that he is a God of justice and
a God who will punish sin. And like the book of Hebrews
says, it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of an
angry God. And we must realize the mercy
of God offered to us in Christ Jesus. We must understand that
Jesus offers salvation. Most Sunday nights, we hear a
prayer from one of our elders, and it goes something like this.
We thank you, God, for our salvation in Christ, full, rich, and free. And every time I hear that prayer,
I’m so thankful to be reminded of the basics. God’s salvation
is full. He saves you from every sin.
It is rich. He gives you the hope of glory. Every bit of the riches of heaven
is given to you. Remember when the prodigal son
came home, he wasn’t put in the back house or the outhouse or
the basement. He was given his room back, sandals
on his feet, a robe to wear, a ring on his finger and a fattened
calf. And that is how the Lord receives
us when we return to him from sin. Our salvation is full. It
is rich. But friends, it’s also free.
There is not a thing you can do to be saved. You can’t cry
enough tears. You can’t say enough words of
repentance. You can’t, on your bloody knees,
crawl up enough steps on the Basilica of Rome or whatever
the traditions of the past may be. You cannot do anything except
come to Jesus and drink freely of the living water which he
offers. And so repentance unto life.
is a change of mind. We have a sight, we have a sense
of the sinfulness of our sin and the justice God will exact
upon us for our sin. And we apprehend, we understand,
we comprehend the mercy of God offered us in Christ Jesus. And we say to God, I am a sinner
in need of your grace. And I come begging. I come presuming
on your grace. And God forgives us. He gives
us his grace. But friends, repentance doesn’t
stop there. That’s a repentance unto life. That’s leaving the
way of death and coming into the path of life. And we do that
when we become a Christian. We repent for the first time
and are received by God in his grace. But Martin Luther said
it so well. The Christian life is a life
of ongoing repentance. And what does he mean by that?
What do the scriptures mean when they teach the same thing that
Martin Luther was explaining during the time of the Reformation?
The Christian continues to understand that he is a sinner. Yes, a justified
sinner. Martin Luther also said something
else famous, which we know and remember and love. We are at
the same time justified, but also at the same time sinners.
God has pardoned all our sins and accepted us as righteous.
We still sin. We have the remaining flesh,
the sinfulness that’s still in us. And so we sin, we fall short
of God’s glory. We love the world more than the
word. We follow Satan and not Christ at times. And we come
repenting. And so Martin Luther explained
that our life should be a life of repentance before God. We
read his word. We see where we fall short and
we just come right back to him and say, Lord, I’ve sinned. Forgive
me. Cleanse me. Wash me. It’s what King David
did so well in Psalm 32. Did you notice the progression
in Psalm 32? He comes dark. He comes sad. He comes weary and heavy laden
with this sin. He confesses it before God. He
gets it all out. His bones no longer ache. His
mouth is no longer dried up because of the effects of sin in his
life. And as he realizes more and more God’s grace and his
love, he then begins to say, and I’ll teach others the Christian
way. I’ll teach others the way. And
I love that last verse that we sang of Psalm 32. I’ll have joy
because of the forgiveness of Almighty God. Dear friends, Jesus’
message is really what this world needs to hear today, isn’t it?
We live in a sin-filled, cursed world where we hate each other,
we hurt each other, we are so full of wickedness and unrighteousness,
and we need to repent of our sin before God and love our neighbors
and serve one another in the bonds of the holiness which God
requires of us, his children. We need to hear this great message
of King Jesus. Unless you repent, unless you
repent, you too will likewise perish. Let’s look to our God
in prayer. Lord, may your word, which clearly
defines who you are and who we are, may it put in each of our
minds and hearts today a desire to love you and to serve you
and to walk with you. and to quit our wicked ways,
to stop our evil pathways and to walk in the way of righteousness,
to plant our feet, our families by streams of living water, where
we can be blessed by you and a light to this great world.
Hear us and help us as we make our prayer in the strong name
of Jesus. Amen.