3.23.25 Luke 13:1–5 (EHV)
1 At that time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2 He answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered these things? 3 I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you will all perish too. 4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse sinners than all the people living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you will all perish too.”
When you read your Old Testament history, God made it pretty obvious at times when He didn’t like what someone was doing.
When Korah tried to lead a rebellion against Moses, the earth opened up and swallowed him and his followers alive.
When the Israelites started complaining in the desert, a bunch of poisonous snakes came out of the earth and were biting them left and right.
When the men of Sodom and Gomorrah were going to rape two angels, God sent fire from heaven to consume their cities.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was happening here. Fire from heaven? God no likee. Earth opens up to swallow you alive? Yeah, that’s not good. Even in the New Testament there was the example of Ananias and Sapphira who dropped dead on the spot for lying about how much they had given in the offering plate. Life would be easy to figure out if God worked that way all the time. Punch someone in the nose, lightning bolts fell from heaven. Treat your spouse right, win a thousand dollars at the casino.
What would be the consequences of God doing things that way? You’d be scared of doing anything wrong, and you might try a lot harder to do things right. Instant gratification and instant justice. The world would be a much better place to live in. So why doesn’t God do it that way? Because we’d all probably be damned.
How so? 1. When we were doing things “right,” we’d assume we are then we are the good people, that God must be happy with us. We’d be proud of what we have because we were living a good life. 2. We’d be terrified of doing anything wrong, scared to death of the lightning bolt. We’d live our lives in terror of God. Everything would revolve around the results. “What do I need to do to make sure I don’t have a tower land on me?” We’d be anything but free, constantly thinking about what Big Brother is going to do. We’d end up living our lives in a very shallow way, only thinking about the consequences and doing things for the consequences. (On top of that, most of us would probably also be angry at God for putting some of our own friends and family to death over things that we didn’t think were that offensive.)
Think about the modern day influencers. They go to the beach and bring along their photographer and outfits. They go to a restaurant and they pose while drinking their drinks or eating their food. But they aren’t there really to enjoy the sunshine or the sand. They are thinking about how they look while they are sitting on the beach or eating their food. It’s all about getting approval. Everything is about appearance.
You can approach your religious practice like that as well. You can turn it into a checkmark. I’m going to get released from membership for not attending. What should I do? I’ll attend once to let them know I still want to be a member. I’ll spend two minutes memorizing my Bible passage for class, and then forget about it once I’m done with my Catechism homework. Well that’s kind of hypocritical. Some see that and say, “Here’s what I’ll do instead to be a more genuine Christian. I’ll be a good neighbor. I’ll say my prayers at home and read the Bible on my own. I’ll be nice and giving to my co-workers. I don’t need to belong to a church. I’ll be my own church.” We simplify life down to the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you want them to do to you.” After all, it’s in the Sermon on the Mount. But how did Jesus end the Sermon? He went deeper than that. “Be perfect, as the Lord your God is perfect.”
In the context of this text, the people were trying to figure out why the tower fell on the people at Siloam. Why did God allow Pilate to slaughter the Jews and mix their blood with sacrifices? What did they do? It was the same question that Job’s friends tried to answer when Job was being attacked by Satan. “What did Job do wrong?” Job knew that he didn’t do anything to deserve what was happening to him, but he didn’t know why God was doing it either. He wanted an answer as well. What was God’s answer to Job? “You’ll get no answer. I’m God. I know what I’m doing. Live with it.”
Kind of harsh, right? But we need to hear that answer too. We are not God. He doesn’t owe us any answers. We live in a world that we broke through sin, and God is dealing with it perfectly. He’s chosen to deal with it by allowing evil to happen, letting bad people do bad things, but then using that hurt and pain to drive people to Him for comfort and forgiveness and strength. God has been dealing with the world this way from the beginning. 99% of the time He has chosen to let evil be evil. He has chosen not to have the earth open up and swallow the rebels or to have fire come from the sky when people really step out of line. He calls on us to trust that He knows what He’s doing. He shows us from the Bible how in the end, He does work things out for good. Job ends up with 9 more children. Jesus rises from the dead. Lazarus ends up in heaven at Abraham’s side after suffering as a poor man his entire life.
Mary Ann Leslie’s funeral was yesterday. Her husband died about ten years ago. Her house and car were flooded at Wixom Lake. She then ended up with cancer that couldn’t be treated. Her favorite Bible verse was from Psalm 46. As the mountains quake and nations are in uproar, God says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” How can we do that unless we trust that God is good, in spite of what we see going on in the world, and trust that He knows what He’s doing. A few months back a guy stopped into my office who was complaining about how bad our world was. He blamed God and said, “I could do better.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the hubris. Good luck with that.
So Jesus takes it a step further then “Be still” in today’s text. You see, there is a problem with the whole mindset of just trying to get by in life without getting zapped by God, so to speak . . . trying to find the secret code that will keep you under the radar of God’s wrath, the keep your head low type of mentality. It’s kind of like how we do it in our own society. Don’t speak out too loud against homosexuality or abortion, etc. Keep your head low. If you’re going to say something, say it behind the scenes. Don’t do anything to get the mob mad at you or have the government start investigating you for hate speech. That’s how these people were trying to get by with God. The bare minimum approach to religion. “What do I need to do to keep my membership here? I haven’t been here for a year? Ok. I’ll come once. Put my foot in the door. Is that good? I’ll give some offerings. Are you happy now?”
Jesus says, “No. It’s deeper than that.” He says it twice, doubling down on it. “But unless you repent, you will all perish too.” Notice the word that Jesus uses there? Perish. It’s different than just dying. He uses that word in verse 4 when the 18 were “killed.” Perish can mean a variety of things, but more often than not it means a complete ruination. For instance, in John 10:10 Jesus uses it to talk about what a thief comes to do. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” Someone comes into their house, all of their valuables are gone, the front door is kicked in, and the house is completely trashed and ransacked. In Matthew 10:28, Jesus uses the same word when He talks about what happens to the soul in hell. “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can DESTROY both soul and body in hell.” Here these people were worried about what they could do to keep a tower from falling on them, but they weren’t thinking about a worse fate of ending up in hell for eternity. That’s what they should have been thinking about.
The wages of sin is death. That’s bad enough. But it’s worse. God threatens an eternity in hell as well for all who sin and fall short of the glory of God. You’re permeated with sin through and through. You’re born in it. Thinking that life is a bare minimum of doing what has to be done to keep you from dying a sudden death isn’t the half of it. How can you escape the wrath of God? How can you meet the perfection that God demands so you don’t end up in hell? So you don’t “perish”? That should be the question.
And what is Jesus’ answer? Repent. What does that mean? It’s deeper than a simple five step program on how to be a good neighbor or how to read my Bible or how to pray. It’s what we confess almost every Sunday.
Holy God, gracious Father,
I am sinful by nature
and have sinned against you in my thoughts, words, and actions.
I have not loved you with my whole heart;
I have not loved others as I should.
I deserve your punishment both now and forever.
There’s no self improvement that will work. No lifestyle changes will ever change these facts. I am and will continue to fall short of what God demands until the day I die. God sees me from the inside out. He knows I fall short. For me to think that some people are better than others, that somebody does something to deserve an awful death and others don’t, it’s not really true. Look at it deeper than that. I deserve NOTHING from God, even as a Christian. I am no better than anyone else. God hates what I’ve done. I deserve nothing from Him but wrath. I deserve hell, and I don’t want to go there. I am here to plead for mercy, not to check a box on the attendance chart. I’m here because I need forgiveness. I need grace.
And that’s the essential part of repentance too. Who is telling the people to repent? Why is He telling them this? So that they turn to HIM for that forgiveness. So they don’t look to Him for the magic formula to keep from getting slaughtered by the government, but look to Him for SALVATION. Here’s a completely different theology than “you get what you deserve.” This theology is that Jesus got what you deserved on the cross, and through faith in Him, you get what He deserved.” That’s the second part of repentance, that we look to Jesus for forgiveness. So we continue . . .
But Jesus, my Savior, paid for my sins
with his innocent suffering and death.
Trusting in him, I pray: God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
And what do we hear at the end? “As a called servant of Christ, I forgive you your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Yes, we go back to our baptism, the deepest cleaning, washed in the blood of Christ. We go back to the Supper, the body and blood of Jesus, shed for me, entering me, for the forgiveness of sins. What a strange thing! God dying on the cross! It’s anything but random though. God planned it from eternity. Jesus was perished on the cross, and He came back to life to announce this salvation to us. This isn’t as simple as “Do unto others.” It’s deeper than that. I look to Him who did everything for me, free of charge, on the cross. Jesus is the deepest answer to our deepest need. He is the only remedy from perishing.
Imagine a group of people who went on a hike through the forest, but got lost along the way. They were starving to death. A rescue expedition was sent to try and find them, bringing water along. When they were found, they were given water to drink in plastic cups with plastic straws. But the people who were rescued said, “Why are you using plastic straws? These will ruin the environment.” As a rescuer you’d say, “What are you worried about the environment right now? Just drink the water!” Here the people were worried about towers falling down and Pilate slaughtering some Jews at a sacrifice of some sort, but they weren’t worried about their own souls' salvation! Jesus was trying to point them deeper.
You can worry about Ukraine, your finances, your health, all kinds of things in life. There is no remedy to it all. There will always be wars and rumors of wars. You could always die from some random thing, being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Manny, one of our members, was shooting pool with an old friend of his from work a week ago. On the way out of the bar his friend was suddenly and randomly shot in the stomach and murdered right next to Manny. What a shocking thing. How often does that happen in Bay City?!?
There is no way to figure it all out. That’s why you need to see the bigger picture, the deeper picture. How are you going to stand before a holy God when you die? It’s not just a matter of taking off some sandals and shielding your face. It’s about Jesus. Church attendance and membership isn’t just about attending or about membership. It’s about sinners receiving Jesus in the Word and sacrament. There’s a deeper thing here. Sinners need to be saved from hell and damnation. Jesus came to give us that remedy in His death and resurrection. Instead of trying to figure out all the “whys” to life here and now, think about the how of the there and then. Unless you too repent, you all will perish. But through faith in Jesus, you won’t. You won’t. He’s saved you from that, freely and fully. Keep clinging to Him for dear life. Amen.
