Lent: Jesus, the Gracious Gardener

Well, we are in week three of Lent.

So maybe you've been in churches that celebrate Lent and do different passages of scriptures to work their way through Lent.

Maybe it's a new idea for you.

Lent is simply the season of 40 days leading up to Good Friday and to Easter.

So our passage this morning is Luke chapter 13, beginning in verse 1.

Luke 13 · chapter mention

There were some present at that very time who told him, told Jesus about the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

And he answered them.

Do you think that 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.

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?

So, point number one is this.

We'll work our way through this passage.

Point number one is this every bad thing is not the result of us being bad people.

So we could say it a different way and just say, bad stuff doesn't only happen to bad people.

In the text, there's this implied question.

Were those people, like the ones that had bad stuff happen to them?

Like were they worse?

Like worse people?

Were they worse sinners than say, like me?

Right?

That's the question they're asking.

And then Jesus goes even further, and he mentions a whole different story.

He says, Oh yeah, like by the way, did you even know about the 18?

The tower fell on them?

Like, were they worse?

Right?

The people want to explain bad stuff by those people, not them, of course, but the other people where the bad stuff happens as being worse sinners.

Because then maybe, maybe, I'm better than them, and then maybe I can control what kind of good stuff and bad stuff happens in my life.

So the line of thinking just sort of works.

Bad things happen to bad people, or they did something bad, which at first sounds really wonderful.

Because it means that if you're good and hardworking and you don't smoke and you go to church and maybe even give money to church, like if you do all that, then you can control.

You can control, you're safe.

You can control whether bad stuff happens or not.

But oh, it also means we're judgmental.

Because it means that anybody who has something bad going on, you by default also believe they did something bad.

So it puts us in a position of automatically being judgmental rather than compassionate.

And all of it works.

All that works while life is good, and while the money flows, and while the health reports are good.

But as soon as the tornado hits like your neighborhood and not the other neighborhood, or cancer hits your house and not the next house, or the phone rings in your house at the time of day it shouldn't, and the news came on the other side is not what you wanted to hear, but the phone didn't ring at your friend's house.

Then all of a sudden, this idea of like perform and God will reward, all of a sudden, all of it just comes back and it bites you.

And Jesus in this passage just refuses to participate in this line of thinking.

He just almost doesn't even enter it.

He's just like, just quit looking at other people.

Just look at yourself.

Look at yourself.

Recognize we're all sinners.

We need to repent.

Right?

Like that's his starting point.

Just look at yourself.

Self-awareness.

And a life of repenting.

Point number two is this repentance is a sorrowful yet joyful turn into Jesus' sufficiency for us.

So that word repent in verse 3, the word repentance is the word metanoia, meaning a change of mind, entering a better course of life.

We've learned that before.

Here it is again.

Every time we come up on the word repent, we're gonna learn the same thing.

That's what it means.

It means a change of mind, a change of course.

So this past Sunday evening a week ago, I don't know if you remember, a week ago, big news broke.

It was in the evening, big news, Tom Brady.

I mean, this is a divisive issue, talking about a church divisive issue, right?

It's divisive in our family, Tom Brady's divisive.

44 years old, seven Super Bowls, unretires, right?

40 days in the wilderness, he could take no more.

And the guy we should feel bad about, as you've heard it in the news, you know the guy you should feel bad about, right?

Who paid five hundred and eighteen thousand dollars for his last touchdown ball?

Like it's not 500.

And this morning I read that Brady was like, hey, we'll, you know, me and Giselle, uh, we'll donate some money to your uh whatever charity you want us.

I'm like, how about$518,000?

There's the charity.

So I was just like the guy who probably bought the ball, I had a very firm reaction to this news.

I was what my course was set, and I I've been pro-Brady.

I I became anti-Brady on this one.

I was like, man, like like come on, like stick with the decision, and like it's okay to not be the center of attention for just a little bit.

Like it's okay, like just just just stick with it.

And then I read this very accurate, very accurate headline on Babylon B.

Very accurate.

Tom Brady realizes it's easier to be hit by a 300-pound lineman than to stay at home all day with young kids.

And then I understood, right?

I was converted back to being pro-Brady.

Like I repented.

I had a my course was set, I was anti-Brady, and then I thought, you know what, like that's funny, but that's actually true.

Like, that's true.

So now I like understood Brady.

I'm like, yeah, he had 40 days with that, and then he's thinking about the future, and he's like, you know what?

That other thing looks pretty good.

And so I one I was headed one way and then turned around, head the other, right?

Repentance.

Change of course.

And I always think about priest and author Henri now and his imagery for repentance.

He describes repentance as being in a room.

You're in a room, and the door in front of you is locked from the outside.

And you go to try to open the door, and you can't.

You can't open it.

You try to force your way through it, and you can't.

You can't get out.

I mean, you are trying all your power, all your MacGyver tricks.

You are trying everything.

You can't get out of this room, and you are exhausted, and you are at the end of yourself.

And finally, you just you just fall to the floor.

And when you fall to the floor, finally you see that there's no wall behind you.

And now one's point is a life of enslavement always only has three walls.

But the way out is repentance.

The way out is to repent from the just brutal toil of self-justification, of being your own God, of being your own savior, trying to rebel enough into happiness.

The sentence about repentance that we repeat in our church all the time is a sentence spoken by a pastor and professor Jack Miller.

He said, repentance is our ongoing calling to collapse on Jesus.

Acknowledging our need and receiving his supply.

So it's not just like repent and you become a Christian, and then it's like repentance is a life of collapsing on Jesus.

And Tim Keller's article, All of Life is Repentance, he makes a distinguishment between religious repentance and gospel repentance.

I went back and read it this week and I pulled three kind of like summary points from the article I found insightful.

First one was this religious repentance is sorry for sin because we want to avoid pain.

So religious repentance is you feel pain because of what you did or what you thought.

Your only motive for getting out of this is just, I just want to avoid my own pain.

So that's incredibly self-centered.

It really doesn't even have anything to do with God.

But in the gospel, we know we're already forgiven in Christ, already righteous by Christ's righteousness.

We don't have to atone for ourselves.

We're called out of that amount of like navel gazing, our repentance, our repentance has part of honoring God.

That we want to honor God, be faithful.

The second point was religious repentance is motivated by fear of not being good enough for God.

Religious repentance is motivated by fear of not being good enough for God.

So religious repentance is just threatening, like you're living in a state of being threatened because you're not secure.

Because either your entire life or part of your faith is about how well you perform as to be righteous, rather than the sufficiency of the cross for your full supply, abundant forgiveness, abundant and sufficient righteousness, so you're already secure.

Alright?

So that's your starting point: full security, full forgiveness, full righteousness, completely safe.

That's your starting point.

Now you don't have to religiously repent because you're like in fear or threatened.

No, like we're coming more alive to the love of God while we repent.

And repentance is a life that we live about honoring God, and our lives are becoming more godly to honor Him even while we're not perfect.

So we'll cry more, but we'll laugh more.

We'll cry more, but we'll laugh more.

Keller writes this good few sentences kind of summarizing it.

Our hope is in Christ's righteousness.

Now there's that third point from the article.

Our hope is in Christ's righteousness, not our own.

So it is not so traumatic to admit our weaknesses and lapses.

In religion, we repent less and less often.

But the more accepted and loved in the gospel we feel, the more and more often we will be repenting.

And though, of course, there is always some bitterness in any repentance, in the gospel there is ultimately a sweetness.

This creates a radical new dynamic for personal growth.

So a repentant life is not just a fully sorrowful life.

Oh my gosh, what pastor's calling me in a repentant life.

No, it's just becoming more self-aware.

It's growing in awareness inside the kindness of God.

And when we become aware of a thought or motive or something that's unhealthy, it's ungodly, it's sinful, that you know in the kindness of God that you get to repentant.

And it can look like being in the car.

It can look like as you put your head on the pillow at night.

Maybe you have a morning routine, a morning practice of prayer and scripture reading.

We have a confessional time in church.

I don't know if you realize.

We do that every week.

You realize that?

That's what that's for.

It's for us to have a moment of repentance during our time of communion.

Perfect time.

Perfect time for us to use just that prayerful time to say, God, search me.

Make me more aware.

In your kindness, I want to repent.

Those prayers look something like, God, thank you that you already love me.

God, thank you, you already redeemed me.

You already declare me righteous in Jesus.

I'm just so tired of finding my worth and this or that.

I'm so tired of being judgmental.

I'm so tired of being angry.

I'm so tired of being a jerk.

I'm so tired of whatever.

Like, forgive me.

I repent.

Help me.

Thank you.

So it's no surprise after talking about repentance, Jesus sort of like segues over and he launches into a parable about growth.

Luke 13, verse 5.

Luke 13:5

Now I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

In the verse 6.

And he told this parable.

A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard.

And he came seeking fruit on it and found none.

And he said to the vine dresser, Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none.

Cut it down.

Why should it use up the ground?

And he answered him, Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure.

Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good.

But if not, you can cut it down.

Point number three is this Jesus is patient with you to create fruit in your life.

So the vineyard owner is God or the fig tree.

The gardener is Jesus.

And the owner says, Well, this tree's not producing fruit.

I might as well cut it down.

And this is where the gardener steps in.

Verses 8 and 9.

And Jesus says, No, no, no, no, no, no.

Oh, that beat up tree.

That beat up tree is having a hard time.

The one that's broken down at the end of themselves, it looks like maybe it's not gonna work out.

That one?

Yeah, like I know that tree.

I'm committed to that tree.

So you hand the tree, hand that tree over to me.

I'll take care of that tree.

And we just live in the surrender and stillness to Jesus, the gardener, who works in our hearts and our lives.

Beautiful imagery here.

A gardener digging around a tree, like mulching around, loosening up those dead roots to promote area for new growth.

Like we need that unearthing inside of us to still ourselves, to quiet ourselves in God's love, to allow the Holy Spirit to dig around in the unhealthy parts of our hearts, to unearth wounds and unearth motives, to unearth that like sin under the sin.

We need that.

We need the Holy Spirit to do that for the joy of more freedom, for the joy of for the joy of honoring God.

When I was a little boy, I planted a dogwood tree with my dad in our front yard underneath several pine trees.

Here's a picture.

We went back and found some pictures.

So there we are, just a little russ and a little sherry.

See, you didn't make the you didn't make that noise.

I mean, I like teed y'all up and nothing.

I mean, so and that's my dad, and um, you know, the dogwood that's right behind us, I'm pretty sure that was not the dogwood because I remember it being down kind of there's a zalea over to the left.

I remember it being just passed there over to the left.

And I was always really surprised by just how much it didn't grow.

Like I can remember that, like being a little boy and like planting it.

I'm like, let's let's let's do that, like let's go, let's do this, let's let's see you grow.

And um it did, like it just sat there a lot, um and just took a really long time to grow, and it did, but just took it was a really slow process.

Here's another picture of our yard I found, and that's a gift to y'all to see me.

Um, and also if you're 14, you know, and and you look something like that, just to know there's a future for you is good.

It's just a gift.

The point is the yard though.

Um, the point's the yard.

My dad worked in that yard uh just every day.

He was in that yard every day caring for it, just so patiently caring for that yard, pruning and mulching.

I was really curious what that yard looked like.

So I Googled this week, and here's what it looks like right now.

There's a picture of it.

Yeah, I that's exactly how I felt.

Right?

Somebody has stripped it, right?

Now, the people who live there are probably very nice people, right?

I don't know, you could live there.

I don't know, right?

Like you're like, that's my house.

They're probably, but you ain't a gardener.

You're not.

That's the one big difference, right?

We know it from the pictures.

From 35 years ago to right then, the difference is a gardener lived there.

There was a gardener.

My dad tended that yard.

He pruned carefully, he mulched like verse 8.

He unearthed around the base of plants and put down manure and fertilizer.

The point of this parable is not that you will be fruitless and you will be cut down and you should be in fear.

That is not the point of the parable.

It's also not that you're gonna always be flourishing or that your repentant practices will be perfect.

No, the point is about the gardener.

The point is that the owner never has a chance to cut you down.

That the owner never, never has a chance to disown you because you are his beloved, because of a gardener who's committed to you.

Because Jesus is committed to you.

Jesus' response to the owner was just a call for more grace.

Give me more time.

Give me more time.

I can work with him, I can work with her.

And in all the ways, our repentance is half-hearted.

Because it is, it always is.

The work of Jesus on the cross is always fully sufficient.

Our sin put upon him who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God.

The parable gives us exactly what we need to know.

Very simply, this is just like kind of three gospel waves washing over us.

Number one, accept the reality, you are not perfect.

Performancism is a trap, and you are a sinner in need of God's abundant grace.

Number two, live in astonishment of that grace and repentance of anything you become aware of.

And number three, trust there is a gardener who cares for you even when you're having a hard time.

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank you for Jesus, who loves us so wonderfully, and who defends us, and who nourishes us.

Help us to be so secure in Jesus and his forgiveness and righteousness to us that we might live more contemplative, more confessional, with increased repentance of collapsing on you in greater ways, because we are already your beloved and already secure.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.