Lent 3 Luke 13:1-9
February 28, 2016
Language changes. Twenty five years old you wouldn’t find many of the words commonly used today. For instance, if you were around 25 years ago and someone at that time had told you they were working on a website and got an email from someone and they replied by sending them a text on their cell phone you would have had no idea what they were talking about. Today those are common words used in everyday language.
Some words change in meaning over time. About 350 years you might have told someone, “Please meet me at the town square, for I will prevent you.” If you told someone that today they would think you were saying two different things, but 350 years ago "prevent" meant "go ahead of", or as we might say it today, "I'll get there before you do".Today “prevent” means to stop something from happening.
And then there are those words that mean different things to different people, such as the word success. Most people today would spell success M-O-N-E-Y. The more money you have, the more successful you are. To others the word success is spelled P-O-P-U-L-A-R or H-E-A-L-T-H-Y But what does successmean to a Christian? Do we believe that the goal of life is to accumulate wealth, health, or fame, or is there something else? When we turn to God's Word we find that in God's eyes REAL SUCCESS IS SPELLED R-E-P-E-N-T-A-N-C-E.
- Without it life is an eternal failure
Just before these verses in Luke 13, Jesus had been teaching a large crowd of people, including his disciples. He was warning them about false teachers, encouraging them to face persecution, and warning them about greed, worry, and spiritual indifference. Throughout his message he hit hard on God’s judgment against sin.
Then some people came with gruesome news from Jerusalem. Under the hand of Pontius Pilate, several Jews from Jesus' homeland of Galilee had been slaughtered while worshiping in the temple. Ordinarily this wouldn't have been much of a surprise. Pilate was known for being notorious and ruthless during his 10years as governor of Judea.But the fact that he murdered these Jews while they were offering sacrifices in the Temple was alarming. What would Jesus say about it?
Jesus carried it even further. Not only are people brutally murdered by a blood-thirsty tyrant; sometimes people are killed by accidents. He reminded them of a current even in Jerusalem: 18 people were killed when a tower collapsed on them.
Jesus knew the question in their hearts. "Why? Why do such random acts of violence and death occur? There's no pattern for them, no way to predict who's next.” They concluded that God is behind it, punishing the wicked. Disasters and tragedies prove that they were more sinful than others. God must have been really angry with them to put them on his hit-list.
Job's friends reached the same conclusion when he was afflicted with boils from head to foot after losing everything he had: "Is not your wickedness great? Are not your sins endless? That is why snares are all around you, why sudden perils terrify you!"The humble, godly, childless couple, Elizabeth and Zechariah, sensed it in the whispers behind their backs before God blessed them with a son, John the Baptist. Jesus' own disciples once came upon a blind man and asked him, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" All had this in common: if you have dire circumstances in your life, it's a sign of God's displeasure. You are a failure. And since I am not experiencing such things, God must be pleased with me. I, therefore, am a success.
You and I sometimes fall into that trap of Satan, too. As long as it isn’t happening to us, we may feel that God is pleased with us and angry with others. We might even brush it off by saying they had it coming. But Jesus gave a very different explanation. It has nothing to do with the degree of sin. Even God-fearing men like Stephen and the Apostle James met terrible deaths, and it still happens today. Instead, every disaster, tragedy, misfortune, and accident is like an alarm clockto wake us up from a sound sleep to see the meaning of our life on earth. Each shocking and unpleasant event is a call from God to number our days and apply our hearts to wisdom- to repentant of our own sins – to turn from evil to righteousness. That's what the word "repent" means- to turn around. This life is God’s gift – the only time we have in which that change must occur. The successful person in God's eyes is the one who sees how serious his or her sin is and then turns to Jesus as his only escape from the punishment our sins deserve. Each tragedy or near-disaster we even face personally remind us that one day each of us will die, and death ends our time of grace. Unless a person enters the grave trusting in the Lord Jesus for forgiveness, the tragedy will be far, far more severe in hell. There is no such thing as a peaceful death for anyone who remains in their sin and turns away from Jesus.
This morning Jesus calls us to look around and see that all the painful consequences of life- from the smallest hurts and scrapes to the most tragic, shocking deaths- are the wide-spread results of sin, sin that we all have in equal measure. Why some people, whether they are Christians or not- experience worse situations in life more than others is a question God doesn't answer for us. But he has told us that every case is a patient wake-up call that says, "man is destined to face death once, and after that to face judgment." In patient love he sounds the alarm to repent- to see our sin and turn to Jesus for forgiveness day-by-day. Anything less and our life is nothing but a miserable failure.
- Now is the time to repent
A lot of people think that one of the greatest inventions next to the alarm clock is the snooze button. Just hit it when the alarm goes off and you have five or more minutes to sleep. It’s great. But if you keep on doing it, you’ll oversleep and get up too late. Too often we do the same thing when God sounds the alarm around us to repent. "Some other time," we think. I'd rather not face my sin and need of forgiveness right now. But when God sounds the alarm he's telling us that time is ticking away. The time for repentance is now, and we can't hit the snooze button forever.
Jesus used a parable to explain the urgency of our time on earth. The owner of a vineyard planted a fig tree in his garden and after a time expected to find fruit growing on it. Season after season he patiently inspected the branches, but each time he was disappointed to find nothing. The tree had everything going for it, but the fact that no fruit was growing told him that something was wrong with it. As he had every right to do, he ordered the man who tended his vineyard to remove that worthless tree. "For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this tree and haven't found any," he fumed. Why should it use up the soil?"
It was only because his employee came to the rescue that the tree was spared and given another chance. He begged the owner to extend the growing season. With deep devotion to that worthless piece of wood he pleaded, "Sir, leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down."
The owner of the vineyard is God, and the tree symbolized our life on earth. During the growing season, our time of grace, the Lord inspects our hearts and lives for signs of faith. In his kindness and mercy we have everything going for us, but on our own we can bear no fruit. We’re fit to be cut down by the axe of God's judgment and burned in the fires of hell. But Jesus has interceded for us and God has extended the growing season beyond what we deserve. Jesus went to Jerusalem and died on the cross to pay the penalty for our unfruitful years. Why? Because "God is not willing that any should perish, but that all come to repentance."Jesus continues to speak up for us before his Father in heaven, pleading that for his sake, he would give us all enough time to repent. Like the gardener he goes at his work with his whole heart. He breaks up the hard soil of our heart with God’s law and fertilizes and waters it with hislife-giving message forgiveness. He fully expects his efforts to produce fruits of repentance in our lives. He is urgent. Our time of grace has a limit.
Christians today can be tempted to think like the Jews did in Jesus’ day. Repentance is for those who are outside the church; they are the ones who really need it. But repentance is a way of life for a Christian, not just an initiation. The more we see our sin, the more we see our need for forgiveness. The more we hear what Jesus did to pay for our sins, the more we run to him for forgiveness. The more we know how much we need to hear his Word, the more we will hear it, study it, and ask him to help us live what he says. The more we realize how patient God is with us, the more we want to return our thanks to him.
God teaches us that real success is spelled R-E-P-E-N-T-A-N-C-E. It is a success because repentance is God’s work in our hearts through his Holy Spirit. That’s how Jesus gives us his success on cross and his success at the empty tomb. So as we leave with his blessing today, Jesus has spent time tilling and fertilizing our hearts with his Word to give us his success. He’s determined that it will bear fruit in our lives. In all the events we see and hear in our troubled world he’ll keep calling us back to him for a reality check on what’s most important in life. When he does, please don't hit the snooze button. Heed his alarms and live! Amen