Accidents
Luke 13: 1 – 9; Acts 27
The phone rings in the middle of the night. A child is late coming home. Someone comes up to you and says, “I think you better sit down.” Someone comes into the store in which you’re shopping and have your hands full of merchandise and says, “We’ve got to go now…right now.” These are experiences that unnerve us. We have a nagging fear of tragic accidents. The possibilities of potential accidents are limitless:
• Our child is in a car accident.
• A motorcyclist hits some gravel and ends up laying his motorcycle down.
• A husband has a seizure at the top of the stairs and takes a brutal fall that causes massive injuries. (Or is pushed down the stairs depending on what you believe)
• A new teenaged driver loses control of his car and rolls it three times.
• A gun accidently goes off while someone is hunting or cleaning their gun.
• A drunk driver crosses lanes and drives head-on into another car.
• An entire town is almost completely wiped out by an F5 tornado.
Most of our fears are never realized. Fontaine sums them up maybe better than anyone when he says, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes – most of which never happened.” Do you know what I’ve come to believe? I believe that if we live in slavery to the fear of accidents that might happen; our life would be pretty limited in activity. We wouldn’t ride in cars because they account for 20% of all fatal accidents. We wouldn’t travel by air, train, or water, because that’s where 16% of all accidents take place. We couldn’t even stay at home because 17% of all accidents happen there, and I can speak with authority on that subject because I’m in that 17%. By just walking down the street we’re in danger because 14% of all accidents happen to pedestrians. About the only safe place we can go would be church, where only one one-thousandth of 1% of all fatal accidents occur. So try to spend time at church whenever you can!
Let’s begin the message today by acknowledging the obvious.
Accidents Happen:
Now I know that saying that and acknowledging that doesn’t make accidents any easier to deal with, but we might as well accept the fact that accidents will happen and have happened in our lives. That doesn’t take the pain out, and I’m not suggesting we casually blow them off by saying, “Well, that’s life. Que sera sera.” But the fact still stands that accidents happen.
Did you know that…
#1: Accidents Happen Throughout the Bible:
In 2 Samuel 18 Absalom was riding his mule, and when the mule went under the thick branches of a large oak tree, Absalom’s hair got caught in the tree. He was left hanging in midair, while the mule he was riding just kept on going.
In Luke 13:4 Jesus referred to 18 who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them.
In Acts 27 the apostle Paul and 275 other people were in a shipwreck on the Mediterranean Sea.
Acts 20 contains the story of Eutychus. He was attending a church service being held in a third-story room. Like many folks today, Eutychus fell asleep in church. The tragic part is Eutychus was sitting in the ledge of an open window. When he dozed off, he fell out of the window and plunged three stories to his death. He was in that one one-thousandth of 1%.
Poor Eutychus. He falls asleep on one of the greatest preachers in history, the apostle Paul; he falls from a window and dies; and it’s recorded in the Bible so that people can read about it 2,000 years later. What a legacy! Do you know how Eutychus got his name? You’d-of-cussed too if you’d have been killed by falling three stories from a window in church.
Now when Absalom got caught in the tree by his hair, when the tower of Siloam fell and killed 18 people, when Paul’s ship wrecked near the Island of Malta, and when Eutychus fell out of a window, we probably learn more by what isn’t said in those texts than we do by what is said.
• There’s no theological explanation given for these accidents.
• There’s no mention that the victims were being punished for anything.
They were accidents, just as the term implies. Accidents happen.
We’ve all had our fender benders. They happened so fast that we hardly knew what happened. Have you ever had to fill out an insurance form and write down in just a few words a summary of a traffic accident? I want to share with you some explanations that people gave in trying to summarize their accidents.
• “Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.”
• “I thought my window was down, but found that it was up when I put my hand through it.”
• “I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.”
• “A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.”
• “The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.”
• “I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment.”
• “In my attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.”
• “I had been driving my car for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.”
• “I was on my way to the doctor’s with rear end trouble when my universal joint gave way, causing me to have an accident.”
We’ve all had our little accidents. We all know accidents happen, but we wonder why they happen to “good” people. For example, Eutychus was in church. I mean, surely, God wouldn’t allow anything to happen to a guy in church! And why would God allow Paul to go through a shipwreck?
Jesus taught in Matthew 5:45 that the sun rises on the evil and the good, and rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous. In other words, accidents are no respecter of persons. Accidents happen.
Now, they can happen as a result of sin in a person’s life. If a person goes to a Memorial Day cookout and drinks until they’re 3 sheets in the wind and then tries to drive home after the cookout and crashes into a house, killing one of the occupants inside, their sin has had a direct correlation to the accident. However, in Luke 13, Jesus teaches that accidents are not necessarily a result of sin in our lives. Let’s look at that text more closely. In Luke 13:4 Jesus asks, “Those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them – do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?”
More guilty of what? Sin. Jesus was asking, “Do you think those who were killed when the tower fell on them were more sinful than everybody else in town?” This was a very important question to raise because that was a common assumption. In that day they had people, just like we do today, who taught that all human suffering is connected to sin…it’s a punishment.
Were the 18 more guilty of sin? Jesus answers the question with an exclamation point. Look at verse 5, “I tell you, no!” He’s not denying that they were sinners. They were sinners just like everybody else in this world, but the tower falling on them and killing them wasn’t some kind of punishment for their sin. This was an accident. This is part of the fallout of living in a sinful, fallen world.
We have no definitive information about this tower that fell. We can only speculate. Maybe it fell because of poor construction. Maybe it fell because they had too many people in it. Maybe it was still under construction and something wasn’t braced correctly. Maybe it was old and had deteriorated until it finally collapsed.
Whatever the reason, Jesus’ point was that it wasn’t a punishment on those who died. If it had been a punishment for sin, everybody in Jerusalem would’ve died with them.
When an accident strikes, I know people who say, “God must be getting me for something. There must be something bad in my life or this wouldn’t have happened.” Well, we’ve all got some bad things in our lives. We’ve all made mistakes. But today, I’m talking about accidents: unforeseen, undersigned mishaps.
Accidents happen, and when they do, suddenly everything changes. That’s exactly what’s happened in our family. (Recount seizure, fall, injuries, 2nd seizure, Lauren clearing my airway, non-responsive and not breathing on my own all the way to the hospital, being put on a respirator to breathe for me, 3rd seizure in ED, determining the extent of my injuries, skull fracture, brain bleed, being in a coma for 3 days, 4 fractured vertebrae in my neck, multiple breaks in my face, severe infection that required the use of a catheter for several days, 2 surgeries to repair the injuries to my face, being diagnosed with Epilepsy, the long painful healing process.)
An accident like that changes many things for the lives of many people. Teresa, who already had more on her plate than she needed, had to make room for something else, and the something else was huge. At first she was faced with being at the hospital due to an injury her husband had sustained, and very quickly it turned into the possibility that her husband might not survive, or that he might have brain damage. Then when it became clear that I was going to survive, and wasn’t going to have anymore brain damage than I already have, the burden of having to be at my bedside until surgery, and after surgery came swooping in, not being able to shower, get quality rest, take care of Lauren, work as proficiently and efficiently as she normally does at her job. She went from wife, mother, and commercial real estate agent, to wife, mother, commercial real estate agent, nurse, appointment keeper, taxi, pharmacist, and a million other things that I could probably list. All of this in a split second due to an accident.
My daughter, Lauren, went from a typical 18 year old to crisis assessor, to crisis manager, to life saver, to house keeper, gopher, taxi, and support person. All in a split second due to an accident.
My parents have been deeply impacted. My extended family has been impacted. And you, my church family, have been deeply impacted and affected by my accident.
But I’ll tell you something, even though lots of things have changed, and we have this terrible accident in our memory, life went on for everybody. Now, don’t misunderstand me. Not for a second am I happy about this accident. But I am very thankful for some of the good things that have come in the aftermath of the accident.
So, accidents happen. And when they happen, we find out something vital about ourselves.
I also really believe that…
#2: Accidents Reveal Our Character:
One test of our faith is how we handle a crisis. Anybody can be a Christian when things are going great, when all of our prayers are being answered the way we ask them, when we’re in good health, when our income is rising. It’s easy to be a Christian in times like that, isn’t it? The test of our faith is when problems come…when accidents hit. Character isn’t made in a crisis, but it is revealed in a crisis. Accidents will demonstrate our character, not make our character. Our character is made in the day-to-day, mundane, trivial things of life…the routine. Character is revealed when our life encounters a shipwreck.
In Acts 27 Paul was being taken prisoner by ship to Rome. On the way, the 276 people on board found themselves in the midst of hurricane-force winds that drove them out on the sea for days. The storm they encountered was a “Northeaster”. We know this because the word in verse 15 used to describe this storm is the word Eurakulon, which combined the Greek word Euros, meaning “east wind”, and a Latin word Aquilo, meaning “north wind.” Thus a “Northeaster”. During this time of uncertainty, character was revealed. Let’s consider…
ð The Sailors’ Reaction:
The sailors’ reaction reminds us of some of our typical responses in the midst of a crisis. First, they quit trying to sail and just allowed the ship to drift. When a crisis hits, we sometimes feel that the best thing to do is just let the circumstances carry us wherever we end up. This isn’t the time to worry about our intended destination; the important thing is to just survive! We’ll regroup after the storm.
Next, the sailors started throwing everything they could get their hands on overboard. It was an attempt to lighten the load so that the ship would ride higher on the water during the storm. Sometimes in a crisis we realize that some of the things we had thought were important aren’t so important after all.
But even after these valiant efforts to handle things on their own, the Bible says they gave up all hope of being saved. Ultimately, the sailors demonstrated their character. They had forgotten that God was in control, and even in a crisis, God has a plan.
Now let’s look at…
ð Paul’s Reaction:
Paul’s reaction was a 180-degree contrast to the reaction of the sailors. In the midst of the crisis Paul was calm, confident, and courageous. Nothing seemed to phase his rock-solid faith. His character emerged, I think, in at least three ways.
First, Paul planted himself on the rock.
One of the safest things to do when the storms of life blow is to anchor ourselves firmly to the Lord. A lot of times when people encounter a life-changing storm, they start to look for what they can change instead of looking at what needs to remain consistent. We don’t need more change, like a change in job, a change in location, or a change in scenery. We need stability. Paul stood on the rock of the Lord and said, “Keep your courage, men. I’ve got faith.”
Second, Paul remembered that God was with him.
In the midst of the storm Paul said in verse 23, “Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me”. Paul had discovered that the Lord was with him when things were going well in life, and he knew that God would be with him in the face of this tragic accident.
You and I may think or feel at times like God is a million miles away and that He can’t see us, but my friends He’s always with the Christian. He has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). Jesus said in Matthew 28:20, “And surely I am with you always.” In John 14: 16 & 17 He said, “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth.” Over and over the Bible says wherever we are, God is right there with us.
Third, Paul relied on the promises of God.
In Acts 27:25 Paul told the men, “So keep your courage, men, for I have faith in God that if will happen just as He told me.” Paul believed and remembered the promises of God.
In his book, A Future and a Hope, Lloyd Ogilvie writes of a trip to Scotland where he spent several weeks researching everything he could find on the subject of hope. He completed his research for the book, but hadn’t actually started to write it. Searching for ideas on how better to communicate the concept of hope to others, one rainy evening on the rugged northwestern coastline, Ogilvie went hiking to a favorite remote rock on the seashore. The closer he got, the faster he ran, jumping from boulder to boulder. One more jump was all he needed to reach the top.
Then, as he moved his left leg for that final jump, his right foot slipped. In this freak accident he skidded, fell between boulders, broke his leg in six places, badly damaged the knee and ligaments around it, and was knocked unconscious.
After regaining consciousness, he realized he was miles from anyone and hadn’t told anybody where he was going, so he wouldn’t be missed till morning. He knew, however, that he couldn’t live through the cold night if he stayed there. In excruciating pain, he started pulling himself back on his hands. He called out for help, but no one heard. Over rocks, through fields full of sheep dung, he made his way, cutting his hands all to pieces. When he reached a point where he couldn’t move another inch, this man who was going to write a book on hope recalled the promises of God. One in particular came to his mind that he had memorized from Jeremiah 29: 11 – 13, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call up Me and go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (NKJV).
He realized at that moment that the Lord didn’t just give hope, but that the Lord was his hope; the Lord was his future.
In time, he was found and began the long convalescence to being functional again. His life was changed forever. One slip on a rock had not only crushed his leg, it had smashed all of his plans. Yet he remembered the promises of God.
Character is revealed in times of crisis. I also believe that accidents are…
#3: An Opportunity for Further Personal Growth:
Accidents happen, and accidents reveal our character. But I also think that accidents provide an opportunity for personal growth that probably would never occur in any other way.
An accident has a way of helping us see for whom and for what we have been living. We’re able to gain a new perspective on life and discover some blind spots. Now, I don’t think we should pray for accidents to come just so we can experience further growth; but when they do come, if we don’t grow through them, they can destroy us.
There’s an old poem that closes with the line: “It’s not the gale, but the set of the sail, that determines which way you go.” In Luke 13, Jesus connected the accidental death of the eighteen killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them to a parable for the living. It’s almost as if Jesus was saying, “Yes, this accident happened to them, but what about you? Would you be prepared for such an accident?”
Then He told this parable. It’s in Luke 13: 6 – 9, “A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but didn’t find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘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.’”
This fig tree hadn’t been producing fruit for three years. The owner wanted to cut it down, but the gardener said, “Let me fertilize it and turn up the soil, and let’s give it one more shot. If it doesn’t produce fruit this next year, then we’ll cut it down.”
You see, the people to whom Jesus told this parable could just as easily have been taken in an accidental death as the eighteen were, but they were spared. What Jesus wanted to know was, “What were they going to do with the opportunity they had? Are there lessons they could learn from the death of eighteen people?”
We see in this parable that the message of Christianity is all about a 2nd chance. This fig tree was given another chance. And these people were being given a chance to turn to Jesus Christ. Jesus said in Luke 13:3, “Unless you repent, you too will all perish.” The message of the Christian faith is, “You need another chance. All people are sinners, but Jesus Christ died and paid the penalty in your place. If you’ll appropriate the blood of Jesus Christ as the penalty for your sin, you can have a 2nd chance.”
Maybe you’re really struggling right now because you caused and accident. You wonder, “How can I ever forgive myself? How can I ever be forgiven?” Maybe it was unintentional, but you are dogged by guilt. You didn’t see the car coming as you pulled out. You had too much to drink. You fell asleep at the wheel. The brakes didn’t work when you applied them. You only took your eyes off the road for a second. The message of this parable is that Jesus wants to give you a 2nd chance. He can forgive you.
In the Old Testament God established “cities of refuge” where people who had accidentally killed somebody could go and be protected. This was a place of protection in case a person shoved somebody and unintentionally killed him. It was a place of safety for any kind of accidental death, so those who had accidentally killed someone could be protected from and avenger. It’s almost as if God was saying, “I know accidents happen. I’ll forgive you. I will provide a refuge of safety for you. Even if others don’t accept or forgive…I will.”
Since my accident I have received lots and lots of cards. One card had a giraffe on the cover. His head was way up in a tree, and he was talking with a bird. The cover said, “Jesus loves you!” On the inside it said, “And it never hurts to have friends in high places.” You know what? Jesus does love us, and He wants to us a 2nd chance.
While we learn through this parable that we can all have a 2nd chance, we also learn that there is a final chance. The tree would have its chance, but it eventually would be cut down. Jesus taught that we don’t know when we may have our final chance to get right with the Lord, but one day will be our last. Maybe the accident of another, or even your own, helps you realize how fragile life is and how close we all are from entering eternity. Jesus is saying, “Let me give you a 2nd chance.”
God can bring about good even in the face of accidents, in the face of loss of limbs, in the face of a coma, in the face of a nasty fall down a flight of stairs, in the face of paralysis. Joni Eareckson Tada experienced it on a day in 1967 when she dove from a little raft in the Chesapeake Bay. Her head struck a rock in the shallow waters, which she thought were deep. An athletic, coordinated, beautiful girl became a paralytic with no feeling from her neck down – as she remains to this day.
Can you imagine being paralyzed? How many activities would drastically change for you? Think of hearing words like, “I’m sorry. The surgery didn’t take. We’ve done all we can. You’ll never walk again.” I don’t think there’s a one of us who wouldn’t sink into a period of depression and disillusionment if that were us, at least for a while. And she did.
Yet Joni found that this horrible accident could be the beginning of new dreams and be something that could perpetuate a full life. Through her incredible commitment to Christ, she developed an art ministry of drawing with her teeth. She has a syndicated radio program and a vibrant writing ministry. She has single-handedly done more to make churches aware of the special needs of the handicapped than anyone in history. She found a future and a hope. I think her words can be a great comfort to everyone who has faced the futile feelings that an accident can bring. She writes:
“Have faith, Joni…one day it will all be better.” I can’t tell you how many times I heard words like those from sad-faced friends who clung to the guardrail of my hospital bed when I was first injured. “Have faith, Joni…faith will see you through to the end.” Boy that sounded morbid to me. I could never be comforted by words like those. They always left me with a feeling that nothing much was really going to change. My paralysis was still to be a prison, and faith – a kind of hopeful, wistful longing – was only a religious warm fuzzy to cheer me until a faraway, future day when everything would “make sense.”
If being a woman of great faith meant sitting around in my wheelchair longing for pie in the sky…I wanted no part of it. What a colossal misunderstanding. Faith, as the Bible defines it, is present-tense action. It’s taking God’s promises and acting on them today…
Somewhere along the line…I began to realize that faith means being sure of what we hope for…now. It means knowing something is real, this moment…even when you don’t see it. When I started living like this, I suddenly understood I could get a jump-start on heaven. I could start living for eternity today. I could have confidence that God had His busy fingers working on me moment by moment, even though I couldn’t see or feel them.
Great faith isn’t the ability to believe long and far into the misty future. It’s simply taking God at His word and taking the next step.”
Faith is how you and I will make it, too…faith that trusts God today. Accidents happen. We’ll find out our true character when they do, but it will also be a time that will present a great opportunity for personal growth. Faith is taking God at His word.
A minister was called to the home of a woman whose only son had been killed in a tragic accident. As the preacher came to the house, the distraught mother came running to confront him. “Where was your God when my son died?” she asked. Quietly the minister responded, “The same place He was when His own Son died.”
Folks, God knows all about pain. He experienced the pain of the cross so that we could have the ultimate victory over pain, sickness, suffering, and death. God can bring good, even out of suffering. God will be victorious in the end.
As Maltbie Babcock put it:
This is my Father’s world.
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the Ruler yet!
Will you take God at His word? Is He the ruler of your life? Would you like Him to be? Then what are you waiting for?
