About this sermon
Some told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, and Jesus warned that unless they repented they would all likewise perish. Tragedies and disasters do not single out worse sinners, and they call every hearer to repentance, which Luther called the whole life of the believer. The parable of the barren fig tree shows the Lord’s patience, and Psalm 130 points to the redemption and forgiveness found in Christ.
Sermon transcript
evening we’re going to be reading in a moment from Luke chapter 13 starting in verse 1. I was with you about six weeks ago, I think, and actually I’m picking up with the next verse. So hopefully your memory is good and remembering what it is that we were covering.
Back then it was the end of chapter 12, which was some may say a fiery chapter, a challenging message that Jesus had given to the people about him being the dividing line, about needing to side either with him or against him. And this brings us to a question, as we prepare to read, of what we do with a challenging message.
Is it something that we hear and think, I know somebody that needs to hear this? Is a challenging or convicting message one that we hear and we say, good, the culture really needs to hear this. Others need to hear this. My spouse, my children, my parents, they really need to hear this. Well, at the end, of chapter 13, the people have just heard this message and how are they going to respond? What are they thinking about? How is their heart responding to this message? And that is what we will see here in chapter 13. We’ll be reading from verses one to nine. But first, let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Would you pray with me?
Heavenly Father, Lord, we confess that this is your perfect, inerrant, infallible word. And Lord, we pray that as we confess that your Holy Spirit is the one who ultimately is the author of these words, inspiring your servant Luke to record them. We pray that that same Holy Spirit would be involved and intervene in the reading and the expositing of this word. We pray that the Spirit would be illuminating our hearts, illuminating our minds, that we might understand what you have for us here. Not only understanding it, but that we would love your word, that we’d react and repentance for the ways in which we do not match what this word tells us to do, and that you would impress it upon our souls so that we would not walk away unchanged, but that your word would accomplish that which you sent it for. And so we pray that you would do that this evening. And we pray this in the name of our covenant head, Jesus Christ. Amen. Luke chapter 13, verses one to nine, hear now the word of the Lord.
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, 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 all likewise perish. Or those 18 on whom the tower And Shalom fell and killed them. Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
And he told this parable, a man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vine dresser, look for three years now, I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground? And he answered him, Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then it should bear fruit next year well and good. But if not, you can cut it down. The grass withers and the flower fades, but this is the word of our Lord, endorsed forever. Amen.
After Jesus had chided the crowd in chapter 12 about not being able to read the sign of the times. The crowd starts bringing up some of these things from current events. They brought up, we know explicitly, this group of Galileans who had been killed by Pilate as they were supposedly, or it seems, in the temple. Perhaps another one that had been brought up was a tower that had fallen in this town of Shalom. He at least knew that it was on their mind. And so they started thinking through these things. And there may, in fact, be a connection there with the sign of the times and their thinking of these things. of these events.
In fact, they seem to be thinking after Jesus has delivered this fiery message about not seeing the sign of the times, the reaction actually seems to say, Amen. Other people, they can’t see the sign of the times, can they? Like when the tower fell on Shalom, like when the Galileans were killed by Pilate in the temple, they couldn’t see the current events. They couldn’t see the sign of the times.
That seems to be their reaction. Many commentators will at least say that that was at least one. way to take their words of why they reacted in such a way. They were reading, it wouldn’t be the CNN of their times or the Jerusalem Times, but they would have heard this by word of mouth. They would have heard this by those that were spreading the news.
And they would think, you know, all the signs that we were told about in the prophets and Daniel and Ezekiel, other people don’t know how to read those signs, huh, Jesus? Not like us. We know how to read the sign of the times. Now, have we ever been guilty of doing something like that? Hearing a challenging or fiery message and applying it to other people, thinking others need to hear it, others need to wake up. But in this section here, I think this is so instructional to us. How we sometimes can hear a challenging or fiery message and think that message is for other people. Outside of these walls, not in here, we have our reactions right, right?
And it makes you start to think about how they were viewing those events, how they were viewing those tragedies, because there’s a lot of ways that you could view some of those current events that they were looking at. We can have mixed reactions. I remember, and in fact, many of you are old enough to remember the events of September 11th and what your reactions were. There was great sadness over the loss of life. There was also this feeling of dread that seemed to hang over the tragedy. There also could be reactions of fear. Just remember in recent times, reading about the shootings that happened in schools in Florida, and a reaction of many people was fear, fear for their children, fear for their grandchildren in schools. And yet, there also was another seemingly universal reaction when tragedy occurs, and that’s blame, isn’t it?
What is to blame? Who is to blame? Who was responsible for 9-11, whether it was Al-Qaeda or whether people were blaming the Bush administration or the Clinton administration or some conspiracy theory? That was where people’s mind wanted to go. That was their first reaction. Who to blame?
In our times of looking at the shootings, that was the first question everybody asked, right? Who was to blame? the shooter, the parents of the shooter, the NRA, this political group or that political group, culture, bad parenting, video games, everybody was asking who is to blame. We all become experts on everybody else’s sin when tragedy strikes, don’t we? I think about the time that Jesus was asked about the man born blind.
What did they ask? Did he sin? Or did his parents sin? Why is this man blind? Who is to blame? Whose fault is it? Inquiring minds want to know who is to blame. Whose sin is at the root of this consequence that we see here? And we draw a line from sin. to misery as cause and effect. When bad things happen, we seek someone to blame. We draw that line and that’s not entirely wrong. We confess, if we were to go a little bit further in our shorter catechism recitations, we would confess that why is there sin and misery in the world? It’s because of the sin of our first parents. We can’t actually draw a line from the sin of Adam to all the misery that comes later. Though there becomes some difficulty sometimes in drawing a line from one person’s sin to a tragedy that occurs to them.
Sometimes it’s pretty easy though, right? If you know somebody who’s ever gone out and fought for fun, that they’re going to hurt dogs, and they get bit and attacked by dogs, it’s pretty easy to draw the line there from sin to consequence, right? Somebody that you know that has abused substances, and when the substances abuse them back, it’s pretty easy to draw that line, that straight line from sin to suffering. But this passage seems to ask, is that true of every Can you draw the line, as it were, backwards? You see the tragedy and you draw it back to the person and their suffering.
Of course, there’s an entire book that you can read in which people are engaged in. This is a book of Job, right? Job’s friends are sitting there as they see that Job has lost his family, lost his fortune, lost his health. And Job’s friends have to conclude, well, we’re going to draw the line backwards. You must have done something, Job. What is it? You must know. What is it that you did? They keep hammering on him. You did something. What was it?
Now, here’s one thing that the friends of Job never did. They never drew the line from Job’s suffering to their own sin. Not saying that they caused the suffering of Job, at least in the past, they did, of course, when they were badgering him. But they never took that opportunity to go from Job’s suffering to be a time of reflection on their own sin, their own lack of love for neighbor, their own lack of devotion to God. No, they said, this is Job’s problem. This is Job’s application.
He has to learn something from this because the suffering happened to him. It’s a cause for him to reflect, not for me. But what does Jesus tell them to do? This suffering that happens to others that you’re bringing up, This is an occasion for you to draw a line from their suffering to your own reflection.
He asked them, do you think that the Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? Now, of course, the direct answer to do they believe that? The answer is yes, they do believe they were the worst sinners. They had to be worse sinners because that happened to them. Do you think that the people who suffered in the falling of the tower in Shalom, that they were worse sinners? Of course, they think that, but what does Jesus answer? No, that wasn’t why they suffered. And just today, we can start to do that, right?
You see a tragedy that happens elsewhere and you say, that’s because of New Yorkers, right? New Yorkers must be worse sinners than us. When the tragedies happen in Connecticut or Florida with school shootings, they say, well, their politics or their whatever, their sins, that must be why that happened to them. They’re worse sinners than us. They must be. But what does Jesus say? They are no worse sinners than you. Do you think that they are any more sinners than you? No. In fact, they’re just like you.
And Jesus in a sense is unveiling this not so well-veiled self-righteousness. When people see a tragedy far away and decide that it’s because those people over there, they just aren’t as good as us. That’s why they suffer because they deserve it. But of course we don’t. When we react in such a way, we display that we don’t really understand fully the mercy of God.
Instead of saying, they got what was coming to them, we should think, Jesus is prompting us to think, they got what I deserve. What would be coming to me if I got exactly what I deserved? But not only that, but also we don’t deserve the good things that we have right now.
That’s the other side of the coin, is to have a time of reflection that all that we have, our protection in this moment is a gift of God. This new day that we were given, this day to worship the Lord, we didn’t earn it. This is the day that the Lord has made, let us to rejoice in it. It’s a gift, the air that you breathe, the body that you occupy, that family, that house, that car, that opportunity or job, they are all grace. They’re not merit. That’s the two sides of the coin. Every day is an act of God’s grace and mercy. It is a point of reflection for us. Do we really believe that, that all of life is in a sense sitting on the lap of God’s grace and God’s mercy? It’s not our natural mentality. The natural man does not think that. I can prove that even within our own culture.
What is the best-selling book for when tragedy happens? What is the best-selling book on tragedy that people always want to read when something bad happens? What’s the name of it? When bad things happen to good people. Because if we experience the tragedy, well, that line becomes frayed, doesn’t it? It didn’t happen to us because we deserve it, right? If a tower falls on us, if we experience violence or misfortune, then we say, why do bad things happen to good people, good people like me? Why would this happen to me?
You know, on the other side of that, if you were to write a book about the experience of Christianity, of the Christian life, you could actually have the opposite title, right? When good things happen to bad people. That’s the experience of every Christian, right? When grace is given to bad, sinful people like us.
Why is the world, a world in which there are tragedies and a fallen world, Why would I feel thankful with nobody to be thankful to? That’s a mystery to those who do not know the one who is speaking here in this passage, the one who do not know truly who it is that is inviting reflection here. That’s the mystery. Not why do good bad things happen to good people, but why do good things happen to bad people?
The only answer can be God’s grace and God’s mercy. And if that’s true, There should be a certain response to that, to all of that grace and mercy. What’s the response? What’s the godly response? The response to that should be what Jesus says to do here, which is repent, literally turn.
We know this is turning from our sins, but it’s also turning from just looking at ourself, our self focus, to turn away from our unloving ways, to turn away from our selfish focus, to turn away from our self-righteousness that says that they are sinners and we are not.
They got what they deserve, but I deserve so much better. It’s to turn away from all of that to a mentality that says that life and salvation are all a gift, all unearned. We don’t deserve life and salvation. We merited the wages of sin, which is death, but what the free gift of God is eternal life. The occasion of tragedy should be an occasion for us to say, but for the grace of God.
And also to say, if all of our sin really deserves that, should I be messing with it? Should I be delighting in sin? Should I be devoting my life and my finances to it? Now, of course, there’s other reactions that we should have when tragedy strikes.
We’re also told in scripture to mourn with those who mourn, to bear one another’s burdens, to give water to the thirsty and food to the hungry. We are to have compassion on others. And yet it seems like all of that has root here in what Jesus is teaching, because we should do all of that from true sympathy, not from mere pity. And true sympathy is only possible if you realize you are the same as those who are suffering. We are not worse. They are not worse sinners than we are. You are a sinner too.
And therefore we act as one sinner who has received grace, giving to one another sinner that needs to know about the grace of God. But in acknowledging that you are a sinner, our Lord instructs us to take the opportunity to reflect on the nature of our life and to take the opportunity to repent of our sin in our lives.
And that’s the context of how this passage ends with verses six to nine. This analogy that Jesus uses of a fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit and what you do with it. A fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit. What do you do? with a fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit because actually all of these people right now are not bearing fruit. So what is going to happen?
Well, you have a couple of choices if you want to get fruit from a tree. You have a couple of choices in that matter. You can either cut it down and start with a different tree, or you can try to rehabilitate that tree. You can try to fertilize it, give it every opportunity, prune it.
This especially stood out to me because we moved to the area a little over four years ago. And in our yard, we had an apple tree and a pear tree. And we basically did both of those options. The apple tree, we gave up on. We cut it down. The pear tree, we put down fertilizer. We pruned it up. and basically told the tree, we’re going to give you one more year. And if you don’t repent, if you don’t give us some fruits, you’re going to end up like the apple tree.
Well, Jesus seems to be saying that to Israel here. This is your opportunity. Three years. Think about the length of Jesus’s ministry. Three years. You’re being given this opportunity now. to repent. You will be given special grace. You’ve been given the Lord himself, God and man in one, the Messiah walking around and giving you this instruction. How much more prompting do you need? And what you need to do is bear fruit. And what does that mean in Scripture when you see that? Well, I think of the words of John the Baptist in Matthew 3, right? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. You see that parallel, the crowd is given a little bit of patience, but not for no purpose.
Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3.9, the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise that some counts loneliness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any of you should perish, but that you should reach repentance. And here is why Jesus is saying this. He says, look, the ax is angled just right. And right now you should not be thinking, I wish so and so was here to hear this message, because this message is for you. This message is to you that you need to repent. Not just to point to others, you do. And this is a message even for us, as fellow believers.
You know that repentance is a lifelong endeavor. That was the first of Luther’s 95 theses, that when Jesus said repent, he meant for the entire life of a Christian to be one of repentance. It’s interesting, sometimes we’ll have conversations about conversion. But did you know that in the Bible, conversion and repentance are the same word? Conversion is just your first repentance.
And then the rest of your life are the repentances that follow. It’s the same word. It’s the same action that we keep doing throughout our lives. We keep needing to hear the message, repent, not to delight in the things that lead us away from our Lord.
Unless we look at our sins, rather than just looking at others, we will, if we don’t look at our own sins, we’re going to just start playing the blame game. They’re to blame. And then when you can’t find the blame there, where do you turn eventually, as you see with With Adam and Eve in the garden, where did their blame ultimately turn? To God, right? If you didn’t send the woman, this wouldn’t have happened. If you didn’t send the snake, this wouldn’t have happened. Obviously, this is your fault.
And that is where the relationship starts to break down, is that once we start blaming God for everything, rather than looking to ourselves. There’s a Christian counselor named Paul Tripp, who, when he counsels married couples, He says the number one problem in marriage failure is not that couples fall out of love, it’s that they fall out of repentance. So to the couple that always says it’s the other person’s fault and they can never see their own faults, eventually they will drift away because they always see their problems as somebody else needing to repent and not themselves. And with God, people don’t just backslide and neglect the faith because of something that God did, that he wronged in the relationship. No, we fall into backsliding when we fail to take seriously this command to repent.
This time of reflection, even when tragedy strikes to say, but for the grace of God, go I. What do I have in my own life that shows me that I deserve just that sort of fate too? And you know what else Jesus came to do, not only to give that message, but also as he’s showing with this parable, the manifest to show the patience of God. He is patient with them. Three years he’s been ministering and still more time he has given to them.
What we are, we are not. ones that have no time and no grace that’s given to us. No, we are the ones that are on the lap of God’s mercy and grace. And yet we find ourselves to be that child that, have you ever seen a child that is put onto their parents lap and they slap the face of God. Van Til would say that this is the picture of what we do. We sit on the lap of God’s grace and we slap him in the face. And yet, have you ever seen a parent that is patient with that child, gives him grace and instruction. This is God towards us. God’s patience is mercy.
But the one speaking these words in Luke 13 also came to suffer. He came to take those consequences of our sins in a fate that was worse than the tower falling in Shalom and a fate that was worse than the Galileans that fell by the sword. You know, we can draw another straight line from sin to suffering, but from our sin to Christ’s suffering. Then the axe is laid at the root of Jesse and the axe is laid at the root of the cross that Jesus will bear because Jesus we see is more willing to bear these miseries that we deserve than we are even to admit our guilt.
Why do bad things happen to good people? I think it was R.C. Sproul that said it only happened once and he volunteered. That is to say bad things happen to the only truly and perfectly good person in Christ that good things might happen to bad people like us.
When bad things happen, especially to others or in the news, don’t think that they are greater sinners than you. In fact, if you have been given the Holy Spirit, the worst sinner that you know is yourself. I’m the only one that knows all of the sins that I’ve committed. And even then I don’t know them as well as my Lord does.
I have a, I have a daily counter, but we are told even in Psalm 130 that God doesn’t count if we’re found in Christ by faith. I just want to end our time together by reading Psalm 130 here, and let this be our cry and our application as we are ending our time together. There we read, the psalmist say, out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord, O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy.
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchman for the morning, more than the watchman for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption, and he will redeem Israel. from all his iniquities. Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, Lord, change, change our hearts that we might acknowledge your graciousness, that we might acknowledge all the graces that you’ve given to us, and that we might also, when we see tragedy, not merely point the finger away, but use it as a reflection to say they were no worse sinners than I am. Oh, what amazing grace that causes us to stand, that is patient with us, that if you were to mark iniquities, oh Lord, who could stand. But Lord, we are thankful that in Jesus Christ, in the true Israel, that we have redemption. We have salvation and forgiveness, grace and mercy that’s been shown to us that we didn’t earn, but that he earned for us. Lord, we thank you for this. apply this truth to our lives. And this we pray in Jesus name. Amen. We’re going to sing a hymn. I don’t think it got printed near Bolton, but 421 is where we’ll go. This is the hymn, Rock of Ages. Cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from thy riven side, which flowed
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