Repentance, Mercy, and the Fig Tree: A Luke 13 Reflection

Luke chapter 13, today we're just going to look at a portion of this.

Luke 13 · chapter mention

We'll finish this passage that's in your bulletin, Lord willing, next Sunday morning.

But Luke 13, verse 1, it says, Now at that same time there were some present

Luke 13:1

who were reporting to him, that's to Jesus, about the Galileans whose blood

Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.

And Jesus answered and said to them, Do you think that these Galileans were

greater sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered these things?

I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Or do you think that those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them

were worse offenders? than all the men who live in Jerusalem.

I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

And he was telling this parable. A man had a fig tree which had been planted

in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and did not find any.

Verse seven, and he said to the vineyard keeper, behold, for three years I've

come seeking fruit on this fig tree without finding any.

Cut it down why does it

even use up the ground and he

answered and said to him let him alone sir for this year too until i dig around

it and put in manure and if it bears fruit next year fine but if not cut it

down let's pray for the god i thank you so much for your word today Father,

I pray that your Holy Spirit,

again, would move in our hearts today. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. So as we pick up today in the Gospel of Luke,

the theme of this sudden, unexpected approach of judgment just carries over

from chapter 12 into Jesus' teaching here in Luke chapter 13.

Luke 13 · chapter mention

And some people here, it says, were present, that were there,

informed Jesus, if you remember, if we just read about the Galileans whose blood

Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.

By the way, there's no certain record of this action of Pontius Pilate,

but the Roman governor of the providence of Judea in his history,

but the specific details of what happened here are not required to understand

what's happening in this passage.

And I want you to get this. Jesus has been talking about interpreting the times.

If you remember from the other week, he talks to me challenges about,

hey, you can tell when the storm's coming. You know, you can interpret the weather a little bit.

You can kind of forecast that, but you don't even understand.

You can't see the times coming with the ends coming or what's happening now before you.

And he talks to him about that, if you remember from the other week.

And it seems that some in the crowd here actually wondered if this outrageous

act of violence had a larger significance.

Because the Galileans, they were slaughtered. Their blood's mixed with the sacrifices

here. And the masses had high hopes here for Jesus, if you remember,

as a political and even military deliverer.

And it could well be, y'all, that they expected here that Jesus would do something

to avenge the dead or make a move to protect his fellow countrymen in the future, right?

But Jesus here, as we see in this passage, he takes an opportunity to do something

very important, y'all, to press home a spiritual principle.

When disaster strikes, we often derive comfort from some sort of explanation for why it occurred.

If we can explain, you know, in other words, why it happened,

then we can provide ourselves possibly with reasons why it will not happen to us.

And so perhaps these Galileans here in this passage died because they were,

what does he say here in verse 2, worse sinners than all the other Galileans.

Perhaps this was God's swift judgment, you know, just coming down on them.

Maybe Pilate's actions here were really a form of God's judgment against their evil.

Well, in verse 4, Jesus actually presents them with another example, doesn't he?

Remember that one? It says the death of 18 residents, y'all, on whom a tower fell.

Another incident here that was apparently well known to his hearers,

but has been lost to history.

You might even think today, maybe more relevant, a little bit closer today, 9-11.

Could have used that one, right? What else? Maybe the flood that just happened

not long ago in the Christian camp, right?

And again, Jesus questions them about the reason for the tragedy.

Were the victims more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?

And the question that Jesus asked here in this passage, Eastwood,

gets right to the heart of one of the greatest mysteries of human existence.

And we're going to see it right here on this next slide.

Why do bad things happen?

Why do bad things happen? Well, the Bible's answer to that question,

I want you to know, it's not simplistic, right?

But the book of Job represents an exploration of many potential reasons why

suffering might come to an individual's life.

But what's clear is we can't look at any one disaster or tragedy and just presume

to know God's larger purpose.

And that brings us to our first point here.

Sometimes God sends suffering in direct response to sin. We see that in scripture,

Psalm 32, verses three and four.

David suffered, right? My bones are wasting away.

You know, I can't sleep. My tears are, you know, my portion,

right? Because of his sin.

And in other cases, as we see in the next point, he sends pain in order to reveal

himself to the person who is suffering.

Think about the blind man in John chapter nine.

You know, they were saying, hey, is this because of his sin or his parents sin?

Jesus said, no. So the glory of God may be revealed, right?

I mean, that was the whole purpose. And then sometimes, as we see in this next

point, he intends for difficulty to help prevent sin from taking root in someone's life.

Second Corinthians 12, 7, 1 Peter 4. Think about Paul, who was given the thorn

in the flesh, do you remember?

So that he wouldn't become conceited, right?

Wow. When we see suffering, though, in our lives or in the world around us,

we got to resist the urge to draw rapid or unfounded conclusions about God's purposes in all that.

And first of all, as we were talking about, let me just share this,

as we were talking about in Sunday school for these past weeks,

and on Wednesday night, we're doing a study that's called, How Can a Loving God?

And you just fill in the blank, let children die of cancer, whatever,

okay, you fill in the blank.

And we're sitting back and we're going all the way back to Genesis.

And we see that at the highest level, when we go back to the basics,

why is there death and suffering and sin in our world?

It's a hard question for us to actually spew out the answer,

even though we probably know.

Why is there death? Why do we die? I think this is important. Why do we die?

Because we sin, tells us that all the way back in Genesis.

That's why we die. That's why there's disease. That's why there's tragedy.

That's why there's all this, because we said, God, I want what I want.

I'm not going to follow and obey you.

In the words of Led Zeppelin, nobody's fault but mine.

It truly is. All this tragedy in the world, when we look around and we see it,

all the death and suffering and pain and things, sometimes we like to look at

God and we like to say, God, why did you let this happen? you're not a loving God.

You know why it's happening in our world?

It's my fault. It's your fault. We sinned against a holy God,

and we got exactly what we wanted.

But praise God, as we're going to see, we have hope because Jesus didn't lead it that way, y'all.

All the way back in Genesis 3, that solution came. You remember the seed that

was going to crush Satan's head, right?

And that promise was there, and Jesus came and lived the life we couldn't live.

I just got to say that quickly because he's the one that puts hope into life here.

He didn't want to leave us this way. He brings us salvation from all that.

But in the two specific cases here that Jesus raises in Luke 13,

he does in fact know the reason.

The answer to Jesus's questions about whether these tragedies were a response

to the sin of the victims is the same in both cases, right?

Look at it again. Luke 13 verses 3 and verse 5. I tell you, no.

Luke 13:3

It's not because they were worse sinners than anybody else. He said,

instead of hiding behind the pretense that these kind of things only happen

to the worst kind of people, Jesus actually warns them. He gives them a warning.

Unless what? Unless they repent, the same thing will happen to them.

Now, Jesus, obviously here, he's not saying to his hearers that they're going

to experience the exact same fate as those unfortunate people who were slaughtered

by Pilate or crushed under the tower.

But rather his point here, as we see in this next slide, rather seems to be

this, that the people who die suddenly, who died suddenly, never had a chance

to repent at the end of their lives.

Y'all, repentance involves both a change of heart and a change of life.

When somebody repents, they actually feel remorse for their sin,

and they turn toward God in a desire to obey him.

Wow, that repentance, that warning from Jesus, y'all, today,

God with us, Emmanuel, today, right before Christmas, letting us know, hey, you don't know.

This building can collapse on us this morning. You don't know.

Somebody might die in a car wreck on the way home. That's reality.

That's the world that we live in, y'all.

And unless you repent, you will also perish.

That's Jesus' message to all of us today. If these Galileans had not repented

of their sins, they would have faced God's judgment unprepared.

Those tragedies here were intended to lead Jesus' hearers to repentance.

In fact in that sense y'all there's there's a variation

on the theme of chapter 12 if you remember jesus could come back y'all remember

we were saying that the other week studying he could come back at any moment

or you could die i could die at any second this is simply the reality of human

life i know some of y'all are saying brother jeff but right before christmas

man aren't we going to talk about jesus birth yeah we are hang on,

tragedies, y'all, remind us that we're not guaranteed tomorrow.

There's nothing to say, again, that the building that we're in today might not

collapse, bringing your life, my life, to an end where we stand before a holy

God to give an account to him.

And so, y'all, in light of that reality here, in Luke chapter 13,

Luke 13:3

verses 3 and 5, Jesus warns his hearers to repent.

Well, let's talk a little bit

here in this passage quickly about the fruitless fig tree this morning.

Anybody ever had fig trees? Or had, maybe my grandpa used to grow some fig trees.

Anybody had any fig trees?

Anybody like figs? Fig preserves, all that good stuff, yeah.

But in order to illustrate that the call to repentance here.

To illustrate this, Jesus actually tells a parable here in verses six through nine.

And the flow of that story is fairly easy to understand. And it begins with

that fig tree, as you know, growing in a vineyard.

That might seem odd, though, since we normally associate vineyards with what?

Grapes instead of figs. But the soil in a vineyard was suitable for figs,

and the fig trees were often used to actually help hold the grapevines off the ground.

And so the tree in question has not produced, if you notice in the passage,

any fruit in the first three years.

So the owner actually orders that it be cut down lest it continue to use up

perfectly good soil. Look at verses 6 and 7.

But what does the vine keep, the vine dresser, you could say?

He actually intercedes, doesn't he, on behalf of the tree.

He's asking for what? Another year. What is he going to do?

He wants to try to coax the fruit from it by loosening the soil around it,

fertilizing it well in verse 8.

But in the end, he actually concedes that if the tree continues to be unfruitful

through the following year, what should happen to it in verse 9 should be cut down.

And in his parable, Jesus is reiterating his warning from verses 3 and 5 to

the nation of Israel in general and to his hearers in particular here.

And that brings us to our first point here. Unless you repent,

you too will all perish. That's the message, right, so far.

The Old Testament actually used the image of a fig tree to represent Israel.

That's back in Joel 1, verse 7.

Joel 1:7

And we should read this parable, Eastwood, in that light.

The fig tree was actually given another year to produce fruit before it was cut down.

But the person who's sitting here reading this is left without much hope that

the extra time will result in any drastic change in that tree's fruitlessness.

In the same way, get this, the nation of Israel was in a season where God's

judgment had been delayed, but not indefinitely so.

And so Jesus actually here in this passage, he calls them, church,

to repent, to actually bear fruit, if you will, in the language of the parable,

before God sends his judgment on them.

And sadly, y'all, history tells us that this warning went largely unheeded by Jesus' hearers.

Because what happened in AD 70, do you remember?

Judgment did fall on Israel, like so many towers.

As the Romans swept in, Jerusalem was actually leveled, and the nation was largely destroyed.

But we should not allow the distance, y'all, of time and culture even to make

us miss the fact that Jesus' warning applies to us as well today at Eastwood

Baptist Church in Babonette, Alabama.

As we see in this next point, there's coming a day on which you will be called,

I will be called to give an account for the fruitlessness in your life.

And like those two examples that we read earlier, you or I may not get advanced

notice of when disaster is about to fall upon you.

Or to put it in terms of chapter 12, you may not get advanced notice of when

the master will return and evaluate your service to him.

Remember, he's coming like a thief in the night, right? And that might seem

like an unpleasant passage.

Like I mentioned earlier, we need to be talking about, you know,

warm and cozy things today.

That might seem unpleasant and perhaps even a repetitive one in light of Jesus's

teaching all the way back in chapter 12 there.

But while the examples, y'all, of the slaughter of the Galileans and the collapse

of that tower, they actually emphasize again, the suddenness of God's judgment.

And that brings us to this next point.

The parable of the fig tree reminds us, y'all, that God is more patient with

us than we have a right to expect.

Aren't you grateful that God is patient with you? I am so glad he's patient with me.

Every man, woman, and child on earth deserves God's judgment against his or her sin.

The fact, y'all, that life continues day after day means that God is extraordinarily

merciful and he's gracious.

He's patient with everyone, giving us time to repent.

So we're like that fig tree after the owner's first visit.

The standards of God's holiness and justice, you know, find the fruit of our lives lacking.

And the question for us, as we see here in this next point, will the mercy and

patience of God actually lead me and you to repentance?

Because by the way, let me just say this, that's the whole reason Jesus was born into this world.

Truly God, truly man. That's why he became one of us, y'all,

Emmanuel, God with us, so he can make a way for us to be forgiven,

for us to be made right, for us to repent.

And if you miss that today, if I miss that today, you've missed the Christmas story.

You've missed the whole purpose of his coming.

The call to repentance, as we see in the next slide, is both bad news and good news, isn't it?

Because on the one hand, as we say to start with, the bad news,

repentance involves an admission of guilt on our part, as we see in this first point.

Right? Who likes to admit you're guilty?

I mean, we like to sign on the seafood place here, not guilty, right?

But yeah, so many times that's our default setting, isn't it?

That's the bad news. We have to humble ourselves under God's mighty hand and say, Lord, I'm guilty.

I'm a sinner. I need to change my ways through the power of your spirit, Lord.

I'm guilty. And so many times today, that's one of the seven things God hates is pride, right?

We have this pride we can't admit when we sin.

We have to shake our fist at God and blame everybody else, right? We can't just repent.

It involves, you know, what it involves? It involves actually saying the same

thing about your life that God says about it.

That you are a tree without all the fruit that you should have.

Even though you deserve to have a tower fall on your head because of your sins, church, and I do too.

That is the opposite of the way that most of us feel about our lives, isn't it?

We normally feel what? We deserve better than any kind of suffering, right?

You know, we want to get those gold stars, right?

We deserve better. But as we see on the slide, the next point,

repentance involves realizing that God does not owe you anything except judgment on your sin.

I didn't hear an amen, but that's true.

So let it be. That's what amen means, by the way.

So let it be, because that is truth. That's God's word. God doesn't owe us anything except judgment.

But thank God he gives us hope in Jesus.

He gives us a way. We'll talk about that again in a moment. But here in Luke

13, Jesus is actually saying, in effect, Eastwood, when you hear about people

being killed by a pilot or by falling towers,

let that lead you to repentance.

Don't look at them and think, hey, they must have been the worst kind of sinners.

Instead, think this, because of my sin, I deserve a fate worse than that.

Is that tough for us to say today? Can you say that? Because of your sin,

I deserve a fate worse than that.

And let that thought lead you and I to repentance for our sins.

But the good news, like I said, of repentance, as we see here in this next point,

is that, guess what, church? God is merciful.

He is patient and willing to forgive. Amen?

Willing to forgive us, y'all. Jesus paid it all, Eastwood.

All to him we owe. We have an opportunity today to experience that Emmanuel,

God with us, born of a virgin, just stepping

into this fallen world that we chose

we chose death but he came to

bring life and die for our

sin in our place living the life we couldn't live in jesus parable though here

the tree deserves to be destroyed it's using up resources but it's not producing

any fruit in verse seven and when the vine dresser here actually intercedes

for it he asks for a reprieve doesn't he?

Don't miss this, an opportunity for the tree to become fruitful.

But notice he doesn't argue here in this passage for the tree's worthiness, does he?

The vine dresser here, you don't see anywhere, he doesn't suggest to the owner

that his standards are just too

high or that there really is fruit present when there obviously is not.

Instead, what does the vine dresser do. He pleads for what?

Patience and an opportunity for the tree to amend its ways, so to speak.

That's a picture, Eastwood, of God's great love and his great patience for us.

There is nothing in a sinner that deserves forgiveness.

God would be well within the bounds of justice had he destroyed any sinner.

But in his own great mercy, guess what?

God often withholds his judgment, and he allows time for repentance.

Remember, the apostles actually made this same connection between the delay

of God's judgment and our need to repent. Do you remember that?

Decades after Jesus actually told this parable that we read about this morning

in Luke 13 of the fruitless tree,

Peter actually reflected on the reason why Jesus had not returned from heaven

to judge the world and to bring his people to heaven. He said this, listen to this verse.

He said, the Lord is not slow in keeping his promises, have some have understood slowness.

Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish,

but everyone to come to repentance.

That's in 2 Peter 3, 9. And the Apostle Paul church could ask people who trusted

in their own goodness, as we see in this last slide, Do you show contempt for

the riches of his kindness,

forbearance, and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

Romans 2.4. Y'all, that's the question today.

We're talking about, hey, we're up on Christmas, right? We're talking about Emmanuel, God with us.

He's given us a chance. He's made the way. He's made a way for us to be made right with God.

We just got to humble ourselves and respond to this, y'all.

Are we going to do that? I mean, you can look at this in the sense of salvation,

but also anything, really.

When we hold on to sin in our life or when we do something, maybe a brother

or sister calls out in our life or challenges us, y'all.

Are we going to show contempt for the riches of God's kindness or are we going to actually repent?

Because this kindness is meant to lead you and I to repentance,

not to shake our fist at God and become angry at God and everybody else. It's to repent.

And y'all, this is the greatest Christmas. You want to know how to have the

greatest Christmas you've ever had? That's to be right with Jesus.

And when you're right with Jesus, you're right with all your fellow men.

Y'all, that's the greatest Christmas. That's the greatest Christmas your home

could have. To realize today, you know what?

I'm going to die one day because of my choices.

Not because just Adam sinned, right? I mean, we talked about this in Sunday

school. We can blame Adam and say, hey, man, I didn't sin. He did it.

Why should I have to deal with this?

But yet we have also done it.

Exact same thing. We have that sin nature, y'all. We've chosen our own way.

Again, nobody's fault but mine, but Jesus made a way by becoming a baby,

coming to this earth, living the life. Like I said, you couldn't live, I couldn't live.

And he took the punishment for us that we all deserve on the cross.

We just respond like it says here, Jesus is saying to us all today, repent.

Unless you repent, you will perish.

Jesus has provided on the cross, this tree of life where you can be made right

with God, you can have all your sins forgiven.

All you got to do is to humble yourself and repent.

Let God's kindness lead you to repentance.

That's the challenge today. That's the challenge.

And you know what? Then you can truly, this week, when you celebrate the birth

of Christ and him coming into this fallen, dark world, you can truly celebrate

those lights on the tree He's saying, you know what? He is the light of the world.

He does bring hope in my family, in my life, in my marriage,

in my finances, everywhere. He brings the hope.

Brings us salvation. And as you look at that Christmas tree,

you remember the tree on which Jesus died, and he shed his life's blood for us.

Every one of us have the opportunity today to repent.

And I can't say it better than Jesus, y'all. Unless you repent,

you will all likewise perish.

Let's pray. Father God, we thank you so much for your word today.

I thank you for the truth. Lord, I thank you that you tell us the truth.

And God, I thank you for not leaving us, not leaving us alone.

Lord, for loving us so much that you stepped out of eternity into time and you

became a baby, fully God, fully man, truly God, truly man.

I thank you for that, Lord. I pray today, Lord, all of us today, we would repent.

We put our faith and trust in you, but Lord, we'd also repent of any sin in our life today.

Make sure we're right with you, Lord.

God, we don't know when you're coming back. We don't know when our life will

end, but we know it will unless you come back first.

I pray you'd help us today to grab that hope, to grab that joy to the world.

The Lord is come in Jesus' name.