Paul Toh delivered this message on 3/10/09
Luke 13:1-9
Luke 13:3 “I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish”
This passage is about repentance. Repentance is a challenging issue and i am in no way worthy to be Jesus' voice for this message, but in this text Jesus does challenge us and call us to repentance.
May God help us to think about what repentance is and what Jesus is challenging us to repent about. May God open our hearts to the true repentance that is in living in Jesus' righteousness and holding on to his grace for salvation.
I. Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices
(explain the tragedy)
A. Why did they bring this event up to Jesus? What kind of response were they expecting from him? The passage does not say explicitly, but looking at Jesus’ response we can see their intent.
B. Jesus answered, “Do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?”
1. We see two themes in Jesus’ question here:
a. The people were curious about how Jesus explains suffering.
b. This shows how they explained sufferings and sin.
The people’s answer to his question would be yes. The people believed that these Galileans must have done something really bad to suffer this way.
And that there suffering was because they were worse sinners
This was a common belief in the past. They believed that the amount of suffering in your life directly correlated with the amount of sin.
2. Suffering is a great issue and has always been since the fall. Suffering can be a complicated, sensitive and difficult issue to deal with. Thousands of books have been written on the issue of pain, suffering and God.
C. But what does Jesus teach us about suffering? Jesus doesn’t tell us why they suffered this way, but he does tell us why they didn’t. His response is in verse 3
1. I tell you, No!
a. Doing more bad or more good does not directly correlate with the amount of suffering you will experience in life. God does not treat us as our sins deserve
From this self-centered point of view God is just a means to an end If we view suffering like this or blessings for that matter we will never be able to know our God of unconditional love.
i. do we still think this today?
I think so but its manifested in a different way. People still carry with themselves this sense of entitlement. In America it’s a popular notion to think I earned everything I have. Popular questions like why do bad things happen to good people arise from this idea of deservedness and human goodness or how does a good God allow suffering?
ii. Where does this comes from?
It comes from a misunderstanding of sin, which leads to a misunderstanding about suffering which leads to a misunderstanding about God. In terms of sin we always think of ourselves as better then we are. We don't understand suffering because we don't understand who we are and we don't understand God's mercy.
iii. Why this isn’t true?
this isn’t true because sin is what we do it is what we are:
The gospel teaches us clearly that no matter what we do we all fall short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23. And Isaiah teaches us that everything we do, even if we developed such high levels of self-control that we didn’t do things considered bad, our deeds are filthy rags in God’s sight. (Isaiah 64:6). Our motives and intent are laced with selfishness, even in our generosity. Jeremiah 17:9
iv. We all fall short. There is no relativity between good and bad before God. None of us ever has or ever will measure up to God. Sin is not what we do, but who we are.
There is no “these Galileans” and “those Galileans” we are all sinners. We can make comparisons all day between ourselves and others and from these draw all kinds of conclusions about who God is and who God is not.
And in the end what would it be? It would just be ourselves justifying why we are ok and shouldn’t have to change or why we are not getting what we think we deserve and how the suffering we are going through is unfair on God’s part.
It's us trying to defend our selves and our righteousness while rejecting Jesus' righteousness
v. So how do we deal with this?
2. Jesus doesn’t leave us here. He says, “But unless you repent, you too will perish”
a. This at first glance doesn’t seem to be very hopeful, but it is Jesus’ challenge to us. Jesus tells us we need to repent.
b. We need to pray to honestly see ourselves before God. To rid ourselves of this notion that we are self-sustaining self-righteous people.
As long as we look at sin and sufferings and God from our own perspective and with our relative comparison we will never understand God's mercy
This is Jesus’ challenge of repentance. It is a challenge to stand instead before God who is holy and to see that we fall short.
Repentance is…
1 John 4:10:
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
· Repentance is God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. Repentance is asking for God’s mercy to humble our hearts and live in Jesus’ righteousness.
· Usually when we hear someone tell us repent we have a tendency to despise them, but when Jesus tells us he didn’t just tell us, he went to the cross for us.
· We see this primary element of God’s mercy working in us and us being drawn to him.
Isaiah 52:5
“He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
In this last line we see repentance manifested in our lives. We first see Jesus who suffered in our place for what we deserved and then we see the fruit of repentance of Jesus’ grace healing our wounds inside. This is the redemption of our inner being to live as children of God
· Jesus death and his resurrection is our repentance. Our claim is not to our own goodness, but to Jesus’ who first loved us and who died for our sins. We pray for the Holy Spirit to bring this conviction to our hearts.
· This is repentance.
Jesus opens repentance to us when he went to the cross. This is the gospel.
We all have issues in our lives that we have to deal with, whether they be relational problems, financial problems, school-related, work related etc. its endless. But we need to see that the real problem behind it all is my heart, which is sinful, before my Holy God.
Through God’s mercy we need to step out of our self-centeredness, from the comparisons we make and from looking at everything from where we are.
Jesus challenges us to step into the Holy presence of God. What will we say in the presence of our Holy God? Here, all our excuses and justifications fall short, here all our selfishness and rottenness are laid bare and here we are stripped naked and put to shame. It is here that the only thing we have to hold on to is the blood of Jesus shed for our sins.
Jesus challenges to stand before the holy God and see that we fall short on all accounts, but that he loves us and gave his only son for us. He went to the cross for us. Let’s pray for humble hearts to bow before the cross and to live in his grace that changes our hearts and redeems our lives for His glory.
Let’s pray for God to convict us through the Holy Spirit of all the things in our own lives that are not pleasing to him. We are all fallen people, we all need God’s mercy to grow in repentance.
D. Or those 18 who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them – do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?’
1. Again Jesus brings in two themes slightly different: here it is guilt and death.
2. This incident in contrast to the other did not involve any ill intent by human will or decision. It was just a bad accident.
How can we explain random accidents? Life is fragile, in flash it can be gone.
3. But Jesus’ message is the same:
They were not more guilty than others living in Jerusalem
We are all guilty before God. There is no way around it
So we must repent and pray for God’s mercy to work in our hearts and lead us to claim Jesus’ salvation and righteousness.
Jesus is calling us to repentance. He is calling us to come to receive his grace and mercy in this life, while we still have it.
This call to repentance again came at the cost of him laying down his own life for us, so that we could find true life in his name
E. We will all perish
1. This is the consequence of not repenting
a. Jesus says, “Unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
Unless we receive Jesus’ grace we perish John 3:17
b. perish has a deeper meaning then just death here. Jesus challenges us to live in the eternal perspective of his coming kingdom.
Earlier in chapter 12 Jesus told his disciples, “But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has the power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you fear him.”
God is holy. We will perish one day and his words will be the last.
Let us pray for repentance. Let us pray to know Him through the Word of God, which speaks about Jesus who being in very nature God, became a man, who loves us and gave his life for us so that we could have life in him.
May God be with us to experience the mercy of his grace in the repentance that leads us to living and holding on to Jesus’ righteousness. No matter what sufferings or hardships we may go through in this life the Holy Spirit holds on to us as we hold to Jesus’ grace and promise that we will one day be with him in his kingdom.
II. Then he told this parable
A. A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any.
B. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard
i. For three years now I have been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any.
ii. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?
The owner of this vineyard was not happy. An investment that only consumes and does not give back is a waste. Any business man will tell you that an investment that remains stagnant or does not grow for three years should be terminated.
C. The man replied
1. Sir, leave it alone for one more year
i. I’ll dig around it
ii. and fertilize it
2. If it bears fruit next year, fine!
3. If not, then cut it down.
The caretaker of this vineyard has an interesting role. On the one hand we see that this tree is not bearing fruit. The caretaker seems to have a sense of responsibility. He understands that the trees growth is up to him as well. So he requests one more years time. He does his best to dig around it and fertilize, to give it the best resources in order that it might bear fruit. If it does fine, it will remain, if not it will be chopped down.
D. Jesus leaves the parable open at the end. Was this tree still fruitless after a year and cut down? Or did it bear fruit and remain in the vineyard?
What will we do? Will we continue to justify ourselves in our own eyes or will we see the fruitlessness of our ways and receive Jesus’ grace and be rooted in him who bears true and lasting fruit in our lives? This tree cannot bear fruit on its own that is pleasing to the vineyard owner, we cannot either. The tree needed the caretaker. Jesus in us bears the fruit of the spirit that glorifies God.
Will we justify ourselves, will we try to muster up all our human will and effort in an attempt to live in way we deem to be appropriate before God?
In life we will meet face to face with our depravity and with suffering and problems. In life we can deal with sin, with suffering, with difficult issues in many ways. We can play the blame game, make comparisons, debate about right and wrong and justify ourselves all day long. We can stomp our feet and yell at God and tell him how unfair he is, but in the end his Word and his standard, which alone is good, will stand. And his word will be the final one.
Jesus calls us to repent. He calls us to move away from this self-centered and self-justifying way of looking at life.
Let us pray for God’s mercy to receive repentance through the mercy and grace of Jesus who opened up repentance for us by going to the cross in our place.
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