Luke 13:1-5 - A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action
Some of this sermon may sound familiar to you, and there’s good reason for it. Much of what I’m about to say, I preached after September 11, 2001. I felt it was time to dust it off and say it again. A pastor friend of mine, Denn Guptill, says the most useful bit of information he ever got about preaching was this: If it’s not good enough to preach twice, it wasn’t good enough to preach once.
Turn with me to Luke 13:1-8. This is a story of people coming to Jesus and giving Him the news of the day. It was as if they wondered if Jesus knew about the stuff going on in the world. Some wonder that same thing today. They wonder if He knows what’s going, if He’s at all concerned with how life is turning out. They cry and plead and fuss, figuring that if God indeed does know, why doesn’t He care? Why isn’t He doing something?
Life is full of questions. Why does an executioner rub alcohol on the arm of a person about to have a lethal injection? Why do they call the time of the day when traffic moves the slowest “rush hour”? And why is freight moved by a boat called “cargo”, while freight moved on wheels “shipment”? There are no real good answers to these questions.
Ah, but these aren’t the questions that people really struggle with. No, it’s the biggie: “WHY?” Why is there evil? Why is there suffering? Why is God not doing anything about it all?
Now, we’ve looked at these issues before, but I feel they are worth re-visiting. I believe that the issue of WHY is the number-one intellectual reason why people don’t turn to God. There are others, yes, but I really believe people get hung up on this one more than any other. In our culture, where science and reasoning and rationale rule supreme, unanswered questions are very difficult. If people can’t get answers, then they throw out everything. Knowledge and information have their drawbacks.
But what really annoys others is the simple pat answers. Even well-respected Christians dare jump into regions where God remains silent. For example, Henry Blackaby, author of the life-changing book, Experiencing God, seems pretty confident that the Asian tsunami back in December was an act of divine judgement. He said in a pastors’ conference back in January that he didn’t fully appreciate the significance of the widespread destruction until he saw a map published by the Voice of the Martyrs depicting the most intense regions of Christian martyrdom worldwide.
He said he noticed that the tsunami hit many of those same regions. He told a workshop audience that most Christians don’t realize that 400,000 to 450,000 believers are killed annually for their faith, and that many regions of persecution shown the map "match to the T" the tsunami’s path of destruction.
But what about Thailand, which lost over 4800 people? It doesn’t persecute believers at all. Although the Thai church is hardly thriving, they are still allowed all rights and privileges as other religions too. So if the tsunami were a judgement of God on misbehaving nations, why would Thailand be swept up into that as well?
And then there’s India. Compassion International is a Christian program that exists to break the cycle of poverty for children. They provide food, shelter, clothing, education, healthcare and Christian training to poor kids around the world.
And I read that in India, more than 25 fathers of Compassion-assisted children were lost at sea. There was also one project in India that all the homes in the project - representing over 400 families - were swept away. I have a hard time believing that it was God’s will to cause all this death and destruction to happen.
If the simple truth of 1 Thess.5:9 is true, “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,” then who are these people to blindly wipe the whole thing with easy answers?
I don’t believe that the Asian tsunami had easy answers. Nor does the flooding in Louisiana and Mississippi, from which perhaps thousands of people will meet their Maker. In fact, the Bible doesn’t always answer the questions either. The Bible shows different reasons why bad things happen.
Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God.” I think it’s foolish to expose publicly what God intends as a secret. Job 1:8-12 says that horrible things may happen because of God letting Satan do them. But does that mean everything? Isaiah 10:6-7 says that sometimes God uses countries to punish other ones. But is it always the case? Is that the cause of every war? Irag? Afghanistan? 9-11? The War of 1812? The Civil War? The Revolutionary War?
John 9:1-3 describes a blind man, whose condition was not caused at all by sin, but by the fact that God wanted to get attention from it. John 16:33 says that bad things happen to Christians because we are following in Jesus’ steps. Romans 9:17-18 says that bad things happen because we live in a fallen sinful world that is also under a curse of sin. Ephesians 6:11-12 says that Satan attacks us, and so does 1 Peter 5:8.
Quite honestly, I think it insults God’s intelligence when we come up with definite one-line answers for hard things in our world. Jesus didn’t answer these questions in our passage today. Here’s what He did. In v1-2, people came with news that innocent people had suffered because of a person’s evil. Then, Jesus, knowing the story, elaborated on current events in v4, when innocent people died because of a natural disaster. You know, between people doing evil things to another, and natural disasters, that pretty much covers people’s questions about WHY.
And Jesus, typical of His wisdom and humor, turns it around and makes it useful advice. Jesus, first off, said that this life involves suffering. It’s a reality, and He doesn’t say why. It just does.
Then, He used these 2 instances of suffering to teach us what God is like. He speaks more about our response to it all than about evil itself. He says, “Even if these things happen, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do what you should do.” He says, “Life is not about knowledge, it’s about obedience.” He says, “The existence of evil in the world is not a good enough excuse for you to be evil.” That’s what He means when He says, “Repent.”
He says, “Yes, there’s evil and suffering. Be part of the solution, not the problem. Repent! Get rid of the evil in your life.” If God quotes Elvis at all, He’d say, “A little less conversation, a little more action.” Jesus didn’t answer the question of evil’s presence in the world. He simply said, “Well, instead of complaining about it, do something about it.” Instead of cursing the darkness, light a lamp.
So to us today, He would tell us to repent. To change our minds, literally. To be of a new mind. Even as believers, we need to repent of attitudes that God finds distasteful in His children.
In the context of this passage, we need to repent of our attitudes that people deserve what they get. We generally think that people will get what they deserve, and deserve what they get. But Jesus said “no” to this thinking.
Ecclesiastes 9:11 says, “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” You see, good things happen to those who don’t deserve it, and so do bad things. It’s not up to you to sit as judge and jury over other people, feeling smug when they get what you think they should. God does not always dish out judgement in this life. Stop being so self-satisfied with your lot.
We also need to repent of our attitudes that we need to be in everybody’s business. We don’t. Even if we are concerned about others, which we should be, that doesn’t mean we can always speak into their lives about what we think they should do. Frankly, in this passage, Jesus tells his listeners it’s none of their business if those other people were godly or not. Peter asked Jesus about John’s fate, and Jesus said it’s none of Peter’s business. I’m wondering if God is more concerned that we live to please him in everything, than He is in letting us know who’s saved and who isn’t. I’m not saying don’t love others. I’m saying, and so is Jesus, that it’s not really our business who’s saved and who isn’t.
We also need to repent of worrying about things we cannot control. This story flows from people wanting to be able to understand God’s ways. They didn’t, and they never would. Neither will we. We need to accept the fact that some things are out of our hands. Worrying about unchangeable things doesn’t add a day to our lives, Jesus said. You need to learn to commit those to God and let them go.
And lastly, we need repent of critical attitudes. It’s as if it’s our place to sit back to complain and gripe. The people who grumble the loudest actually do the least to help out. It was easy for Jesus’ listeners to intellectualize over the deal, but Jesus told them to do something. Don’t just think about it; do something. We look up at God and ask, “Why don’t you do something about the evil in the world?” And He looks back at us and asks the same thing. Next time you want to complain about the church, ask if you’re actually contributing, if you’re part of the solution. Do you pray? Do you tithe? Do you attend? Do you encourage?
You see, evil isn’t just out there – it’s in us too. Selfishness, greed, jealousy, lust, hatred, anger… that’s us. Jesus told us to be more concerned with the state of our hearts than the state of the world. If you’re concerned about grief, understand this: you can stop grieving the Holy Spirit inside you a lot easier than you can stop the grieving in the world. You can do a lot more good in the world if God first gets a hold of your heart. That’s where you need to start.
