Reading the News

Sermon Transcript

I think it was about December 2019 that my Dad first started expressing concern to me about what we then simply called “the coronavirus.” I know he watches a lot of news, so I figured this was just one more story among many. A couple months later a Chinese member of the church with family in China started to get more concerned as she was paying attention to the outbreak there. She asked me what I’d think of their Citygroup moving to virtual meetings. I told her that was fine, though I admit part of me felt like it was a bit overkill. In early March 2020, I was catching up with the manager of Elixr Coffee at 12th and Vine, and he told me we should all be wearing masks! I’m thinking, “man, what is with people?” Well, by the end of March 2020, guess what I was wearing? A mask. Why? I started hearing the tragic news stories–the ventilators running out in Italy, the non-stop sirens in New York, the 32-year-old-otherwise-healthy man who died of COVID in New Jersey, and whatever your opinion on the effectiveness of masking, I at least felt I better do something, or I might be in danger.

 

In the text on which we are focusing today, Jesus responds to a couple tragic news stories from his day, and concludes from them that we too must do something, or we will be in danger. We’re back into Luke’s Gospel after a couple weeks off, and we are in the section that focuses more on Jesus’ teaching than Jesus’ identity. Luke signaled that shift for us in chapter 9 when the voice from heaven said of Jesus: “This is my son, my chosen one; listen to him” (Luke 9:35). In that verse God himself answered the big question of the first 9 chapters: Who is Jesus? “My son, my chosen one.” And then he transitioned us to the next section of Luke by telling us what to do with him: Listen to him. So we’re going to listen to him respond to two news stories in which multiple people perish tragically, one that others bring up to him, and one that he brings up to them, and he wants us to learn from them that there is something we must do, or we will likewise perish. You must repent or else you will perish, because (1) repentance is necessary, and (2) repentance is urgent.

 

Repentance is necessary (1-5)

 

Our passage begins in the middle of a time when Jesus was teaching a large crowd numbering in the thousands that included his disciples, a time that began back in the first verse of chapter 12. He began his speech there by warning his disciples against hypocrisy, because, he said, a day was coming when everything hidden will be exposed. Most recently before our passage, at the end of chapter 12, Jesus spoke about his desire to bring justice to the earth, and how it was already happening as families divide over each individual’s response to Jesus. The final judgment has begun, and so he concluded in the passage just before this one that now is the time to be reconciled to God. 

 

Where we pick up in our text, some in the crowd responded to that by telling him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, which might seem random to bring up at first, but let me try to explain. The region of Galilee was the region in which Jesus grew up and engaged in public ministry, and the region many of the people in his crowd would have been from as well. Pontius Pilate, here just called Pilate, was the governor of Judea at the time, meaning he was an official of the Roman government, who had authority over the region of Judea that included Galilee and Jerusalem, the territory of the Jews. By saying Pilate mingled the blood of some Galileans with their sacrifices, they probably mean Pilate killed them while they were offering their sacrifices, thus mixing their blood with the blood of the sacrifices, though they don’t say why Pilate did so. He was known to disregard Jewish religious customs, and so apparently was undeterred from killing these Jews while they were offering their sacrifices. 

 

To those reporting the story, though, for Jews to die in this way suggested that they died under the judgment of God. They weren’t crazy for thinking that, either: There was precedent from earlier parts of the Bible for God using non-Jewish government leaders to bring judgment on his people. Furthermore, there’s something very defiling about the type of death they died. The Old Testament scriptures typically present long life in the land as evidence of God’s blessing, whereas a sudden death is often indicative of his curse. On top of that, there’s the fact that it happened while they were offering sacrifice to God. As Jesus had been talking about judgment, then, it seems these people in the crowd brought this story up as another example of God’s judgment in action.

 

Rather than affirming or denying such an interpretation of the story, though, Jesus redirects the conversation in such a way as to teach the crowd, and us, what we ought to learn from the story. He asks in verse 2, “Do you think 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.” We should always appreciate it when Jesus not only raises a question for our consideration, but gives us the right answer to the question. Did those Galileans die the horrendous death they died because they were worse sinners than all the other Galileans? His answer is clear: No. He doesn’t say, “No; they weren’t sinners”–he says, “No, they weren’t worse sinners than all the other Galileans.” Rather than being a commendation of the victims, Jesus’ statement is a condemnation of all Galileans. The conclusion for his audience? Since you are just as bad sinners as they, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

 

Of course, Jesus doesn’t mean that unless you repent, Pilate will mingle your blood with your sacrifices. He doesn’t even necessarily mean that unless you repent, you will die a sudden, horrendous death. Experience teaches us that many who don’t repent die peacefully in their beds. But his words do clearly say that unless you repent, you will all likewise perish, i.e., perish in some similar way. What’s the similarity? The similarity is not between the way they died and the way you’ll die, but between the way they died and the way Jesus will bring judgment on sinners when he comes to judge the living and the dead. Recall that in verse 49 of chapter 12 he said that he came to cast fire on the earth, and it doesn’t feel good to have fire cast on you. Recall that in the passage just before that one, he said that the master who comes and finds the manager of his servants unfaithful will “cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaithful” (Luke 12:46). The judgment Jesus will bring on those who refuse to repent is a painful judgment.

 

And in case you might think that the Galileans were just uniquely bad sinners and that’s why Jesus warns them of such a judgment, Jesus moves on to an example from Jerusalem. In verse 14 he refers to a story that was apparently common knowledge to the crowd: Those eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam, a tower in Jerusalem, fell, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, again, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. In this case, the death is again sudden, only now it is not perpetrated by a human hand, but by what many today would call a “natural disaster.” The lesson, according to Jesus, is the same: Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

 

It’s always worth paying attention to repeated words when studying a passage of scripture. One of them in these first five verses is all: Do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam 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. Why is repentance necessary, then? Because all are sinners, and all will face judgment.

 

I mean, how can Jesus paint with such a broad brush? He says all the other Galileans were no better sinners than those whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices. He says all the other people dwelling in Jerusalem were no better offenders than those eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell. Remember earlier when Jesus was teaching on prayer, he talked about how fathers give good gifts to their children, and then he said–”If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children…” (Luke 11:13). He assumes everyone to whom he was speaking is evil! And here he says all the Galileans, all those dwelling in Jerusalem, all are sinners. And yet in saying these Jesus isn’t saying anything other than the testimony of the entire Bible. 

 

Before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah said, “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned, everyone, to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6). And after Jesus, the apostle Paul wrote “that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” There are some things in scripture that are hard to understand; this is not one of them. On the spectrum of clarity, this is on the clearest end of what scripture teaches: All humans, whether Galilean or living in Jerusalem, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, male or female, black, white, asian, latino, rich or poor, male or female, all humans are sinners.

 

To call humans sinners as Jesus does in verse 2 of our passage is to assert that since the first sin was committed, it has been in our very nature to sin. Jesus does not think humans are good people who sometimes slip up and do bad things. Jesus thinks humans are sinful people, who commit acts of sin precisely because they are sinners. G.K. Chesterton once said that the doctrine of human sinfulness was the one point of Christian doctrine that was empirically verifiable. God is invisible; we can’t observe him. Jesus is ascended into heaven; we can’t see him. But the evidence of human sinfulness is all around us. Parents, why didn’t you have to teach your kids to grab and take what they want, but you did have to teach them to share? Kids, why does it come naturally to you to serve your own interests, and why does it often feel like effort to look also to the interests of others? Adults, why is that still a struggle for us?

 

Don’t all of you in the room today find in you a sense that some things are right, and others are not, even if the only thing you think is wrong is when people try to impose their view of what is right and wrong on others? You feel that we ought not to be racist, but then don’t you find in yourself some impulse toward prejudice? You feel that we ought to be generous and care for the poor, but then don’t you find in yourself some impulse toward keeping as much of what you’ve earned as possible for yourself? You feel that people shouldn’t lie, but you know you’ve lied. What explains us? What explains both the sense that some things are wrong, and shouldn’t be done, and the fact that there is something in us that wants to do those very things? If we know what’s good, why don’t we always just want and do what’s good?

 

Because we are sinners, just like all the people dwelling in Galilee in Jesus’ day, just like all the people dwelling in Jerusalem in Jesus’ day, and just like all the people dwelling on earth today. Most today would admit that they aren’t perfect, but to admit that you’re a sinner, and even to agree with Jesus that you are no better than others are, as Jesus says here, that’s a bridge too far for the natural heart. It’s a work that only the Holy Spirit can do, to humble a sinner to the point that he or she can finally admit, “I am a sinner, and no better than any other sinner.” If you lack that conviction this morning, pray, and beg the Holy Spirit to give it to you.

 

Repentance is necessary because all are sinful, and repentance is necessary because all will be judged. Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. No sinner will get away with their sin indefinitely. Each individual will appear before God’s judgment seat, the judgment seat of the one who sees even the thoughts and intentions of your heart, the one who shows no partiality, who cannot be bribed, and who has left us without excuse. Unless you repent, then, your fate on that day will be like the fate of those who Pilate murdered with their sacrifices, and like those the tower of Siloam killed. 

 

And yet, that doesn’t have to be your fate, because repentance is possible! What is repentance? The Greek word itself refers to a change of mind, but the mind in the Bible refers to much more than your intellectual beliefs. I didn’t know the sun revolved around its own axis until my 8-year-old son told me earlier this week; I changed my mind about that, but not in such a way that anything significant in my life changed. The repentance the Bible describes, however, is more a change of mindset than a change of mind. It is a change from a mind set on sin to a mind set on Jesus (Rom 8:5-8). In his book The Doctrine of Repentance, 17th century theologian and pastor Thomas Watson identifies six biblical ingredients in true repentance: Sight of sin, sorrow for sin, confession of sin, shame for sin, hatred for sin, and turning from sin. The ingredients for bread are flour, water, and yeast–take one of these away, and you don’t have bread. The ingredients for repentance are sight, sorrow, confession, shame, hatred, and turning–take one of these away, and you don’t have repentance.

 

Let me try to briefly explain each. Sight of sin is essentially just recognizing that one is, in fact, a sinner. You can’t repent of what you don’t acknowledge to be there. Sight of sin means when you hear that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself, you recognize, “Man; I don’t do that.” The next ingredient in repentance is sorrow for sin. On the simplest level, this means you regret your sin; you wish you had not sinned. And when you really regret something you did, it causes sorrow, pain, grief, mourning, proportionate to the heinousness of the sin. Everyone knows what it is like to feel grief–you’ve probably grieved the loss of someone you love, or grieved the loss of some thing you love. Have you grieved your sin? A true sorrow for sin is different from sorrow for the consequences of sin; someone may regret doing something in the past because they feel the pain of the consequences, even if the only consequence is damage to their self-esteem. But sorrow for sin is sorrow that you committed the sin at all, simply because it is an offense to God, even if you’ve not yet experienced any negative consequences from it.

 

Then, naturally, the next ingredient if one both recognizes their sin and is sorry for it, is confession of sin. Confession of sin means verbally admitting that you sinned and getting rid of all attempts to excuse or minimize the sin. Rather, true confession extenuates the guilt of the sin and absolves God and others of all blame. “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment” the Psalmist said to God (Psalm 51:4). A good confession of sin is brief and specific. “God, I was angry.” “God, I got drunk.” “God, I lusted after that woman.” “God, I envied what you gave that other person.” “God, I lied.” A good confession of sin admits that I did it, I was wrong, and I had no good reason to do it. Watson points out that we can never exhaustively confess all our sins; many we aren’t even aware of. But when we do become aware of sin in our lives, a brief and specific confession is one ingredient in repentance. Such a confession should be directed first to God, then to anyone the sin was committed against, and even if committed against no one, it often helps our repentance to confess the sin to at least one or two trusted brothers or sisters in our church so they can pray for us, point us to Jesus, and encourage us toward future obedience.

 

The next ingredient is shame for sin. In our therapeutic age, shame gets a bad rap, and there is a legitimate concern there: It is not God’s will for his children to wallow in shame. He gives us a way to handle shame that dethrones it from the controlling place it can often occupy in peoples’ lives, but it should still have some place in the life of every sinner. So Ezra writes in Ezra 9:6, “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens.” We should be ashamed of what is shameful, and sin is shameful. When one is ashamed of their sin, they let go of their claims on what they deserve. So we’ll see in a few chapters the prodigal son returning to his father and saying, “I am not worthy to be called your son.” 

 

Then there is hatred for sin. I see not only that I should not do this sin, but I really personally hate it, oppose it, and wish to kill it. Sometimes we may confess a sin and say we want to be rid of it, but if we really had the choice to never do it again, we’d struggle to accept it. Some part of us still likes it, or especially what it gives us. Like if I had to give up my covetousness, it would mean also accepting that that house or job or bank account I covet is not mine, and being ok with that. Or if you had to give up your sexual sin, it may mean never feeling the same pleasure it brought you again. In C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, he tells the imaginary story of a ghost arriving on the outskirts of heaven with a small red lizard sitting on his shoulder that represents sinful desire, and that constantly whispers tempting words in his ear. When an angel approaches and asks if he would like him to silence the lizard, he says yes. But when the angel tells him that to silence the lizard he will kill the lizard, the ghost starts to get a bit squeamish. He wanted the lizard to be less bothersome; he didn’t want it dead, and isn’t that how we often are toward our sin? But true repentance means we want it dead, gone, and out of our lives.

 

Which means, finally, that we turn from it. To apologize for sins we plan to keep committing is not repentance, and God is not fooled by it. How many today profess themselves to be Christians while planning to continue in sin, and justify it with phrases like, “Nobody’s perfect.” That is true; nobody’s perfect, all are sinners, as we have seen, but some do repent, and repentance means exerting conscious effort, in dependence on the Spirit of God, to no longer sin, but to walk in all the ways of obedience. A Christian sometimes loses in the battle against sin, but a Christian battles against sin. What Jesus is showing us here is that the difference at the final judgment will not be between those who were righteous in themselves, and those who were sinners. It will be between those sinners who repented, and those who did not. Which are you today?

 

Perhaps you say, “I took care of that years ago when I prayed the sinner’s prayer or when I got baptized,” but remember that Jesus’ disciples were in this crowd too, and he still said that all there that day would perish if they did not repent. There is such a thing as initial repentance, the first time someone repents of their sins and trusts in Jesus for salvation, whereby they become a Christian and are declared righteous in God’s sight. But Jesus did not intend for that to be the only time we repent. The Christian life is one of ongoing repentance, where we continue to recognize the sin that remains in us, grieve it, confess it, feel shame for it, hate it, and turn from it. I confess that having been a Christian for 18 years now, I find that from time to time I subtly start to think that I’m getting beyond my need for repentance. The heinous or more observable sins that characterized my pre-conversion life and my early years as a Christian are mostly in the past now, but texts like this one should remind me and all of us here that as long as we are in this life, we never get beyond repentance. Just this week I was reminded that ingratitude, refusing to give thanks to God and say with the Psalmist that he has dealt bountifully with me, is sin from which I still see a need for repentance.

 

Others of you here today may still be caught in more observable sin. You may say you want to be free of it, but have you considered the possibility that the reason you are not free of it is because you have never really repented? I fear some of you here today profess to be Christians and simply are not, because you have never repented. You hear me speak of sorrow for sin, confession of sin, shame for sin, hatred of sin, and know nothing of it. Others of you have truly repented in the past, you are Christians justified in God’s sight, but you’re caught in a transgression because one or more of these ingredients are lacking. Try to bake bread with mostly yeast and very little wheat, and you won’t get an edible loaf. What passes for repentance in the minds of many is only the recognition of sin, but without sorrow, shame, or hatred of the sin, and with only the most perfunctory of confessions: “Yeah I know I should do better.” “Yeah I slipped up.” Where repentance is small, change also will be small.

 

You must repent or else you will perish because repentance is necessary, and repentance is necessary because we are all sinners, and we will all face judgment. That judgment is not far away, either, and therefore the second reason you must repent, or else you will perish, is because repentance is urgent.

 

Repentance is urgent (6-9)

 

Jesus followed his teaching here with a parable of a man with a fig tree planted in his vineyard. Fig trees were a common accompaniment to vineyards at the time, but when this man came seeking figs from his tree, he found none. He told the vinedresser this had been going on for three years now, and so he ordered him to cut it down. It’s taking up space in the vineyard, it’s using nutrients from the soil, and it’s bearing no fruit. The vinedresser, however, intercedes for the fig tree. He’s got something he still wants to try–he’s going to dig around it and add some more manure for fertilizer. He asks for another year to see how that goes, and then if it still doesn’t bear fruit, the owner will cut it down.

 

There is an earlier history in the Bible that Jesus is drawing on here of God referring to Israel as his vineyard (Isaiah 5:1-7), and even as his fig tree (Jer 8:13). Speaking to his audience, what both Galileans and those dwelling in Jerusalem had in common is that they were Israelites. God redeemed the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt so that they might bear the fruit of righteousness, but God’s repeated charge even before Jesus’ coming is that when he comes looking for that fruit, he finds none. And now once again, as Jesus looks out on Galilee and Jerusalem, he still finds that all are sinners. So Jesus is the vinedresser sent by God the Father to execute judgment, but we see here that Jesus is also the vinedresser who intercedes for his people with the Father.

 

He came to cast fire on the earth, but he hasn’t cast it yet, because he still has one more work to do. The vinedresser tried digging and putting on manure in hope that it would lead to fruit, but Jesus came to seek and save the lost, to call sinners to repentance, and to give them new life, so that they might finally bear fruit. We went over the ingredients of repentance, but this is the evidence of repentance: Is there fruit? John the Baptist told those coming to him in Luke 3:8 to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” To say you are repentant is one thing; to make different choices, to change patterns of behavior, to begin to display love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self control, is another. Jesus came that his people, though sinful in themselves, might be transformed to bear that kind of fruit.

 

But in order to give that kind of life to sinners, he would first have to die for sinners. Think about this: Why is it that sinners who repent do not perish like those whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, or like those eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell? They’re just as sinful, and it’s not like repentance makes you less guilty; one of the basic ingredients of repentance is an acknowledgement of guilt! If a kid colors on the walls, and then admits he did it, no matter how sorry he is, the marker’s still on the walls! As the great hymn says, “Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone.”

 

On top of that, when you consider all the ingredients of repentance, you probably already sense that even your repentance falls short of perfect repentance! Have you really been as sorry for your sin as you ought to be; do you hate it as much as you ought to? I know I don’t. As some of the older theologians have said, even our repentance needs repentance! Repentance saves us from judgment not by its own merits; repentance saves us from judgment only because in repentance we turn from sin to Jesus, the one who offered himself on the cross as our substitute, to pay for our sins, and who rose from the dead to life that will never perish. We are free to acknowledge our sin because we know he paid for it! We can grieve our sin because we know on the other side of that grief there is the comfort of forgiveness! We can confess our sin because we know God’s promise that if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to purify us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). We can be ashamed of our sin because we know we can take our shame right to Jesus, and he will cover it. We can hate our sin because of what it did to Jesus, and because we know it’s all loss anyway compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. And by the power of his Spirit at work in us, we can turn from our sin.

 

And so in God’s mercy, his judgment is now delayed to leave time for all to repentant. But it will not be delayed indefinitely. The vinedresser here gets the fig tree one more year, which emphasizes the shortness of the available time to repent bear fruit before the owner comes and cuts down any tree that does not. Don’t presume on his patience. It is appointed for you too to die once, and after that comes judgment (Heb 9:27). Those whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices didn’t know that was the day they would face judgment. Those eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell didn’t know that was the day they would face judgment. For us it could be the building we sit in on any given Sunday. 

 

We frequently hear news of similar tragedies today, in fact, and let this be one way you receive such news: “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” In 2005 Pastor John Piper was interviewed by NPR after a tsunami killed over 200,000 people in southeast Asia. The interviewer asked him what he said to his congregation about it, and this text was one of the ones he mentioned. Here’s what he said about it: “Jesus says, ‘Look, the amazing thing is not that that tower fell on eighteen human beings, all of whom are sinners, but that it didn’t fall on you.’ This is my basic response. When I hear of a calamity like this, my deepest interpretation is God is calling John Piper to repent. God is breaking my heart. God is pointing out my sin. God is telling me, be amazed you weren’t under the wave. That’s the first emotional response you should have, is that you are breathing at this very moment. And so my biggest interpretation is, God is calling the world to repent.” Indeed, he is.

 

Beyond international headlines of calamity, there are the smaller calamities in our lives, families, church, and city, and they matter in their own right. But what Jesus is doing here is pulling back the curtain and showing us the most urgent, existential reality every human must face. Jesus says yes I know about what Pilate did and yes I know about the tower and yes I know about the tsunami and yes I know about what’s going on in your life, but look, here’s the thing you really have to be thinking about: There is a real God, a real, invisible, spiritual being, who made you and made everything else, you really have sinned against him, you really will face his judgment, and if on that day all you have to offer him is your professed goodness and excuses, you will perish eternally. But out of love for you, out of sheer mercy, this God has provided me, Jesus, as a mediator for you, so that if you would just repent, if you would just admit that you’re a sinner, turn from your sin, and give yourself to me, you will be forgiven, reconciled to God, and given life that will never perish.

 

So you see, this is the urgent thing. And if this is resolved, if you are repenting and resting upon Jesus alone for salvation, do you see what peace that could bring into your life? You can give up all the pretending, all the posturing, all the work convincing yourself that you’re good and just admit that you’re a sinner, while also rejoicing that you’ve been saved from the judgment your sin deserves! Now you don’t have to fear the tower falling on you, or even the murderous ruler! What a wonder it should be to every Christian that not only has the tower not fallen on us, but the wrath of God never will! Let us rejoice in this, brothers and sisters, and let us persevere in repentance to the end, for unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.