Luke 13:1-9 The Gift of Unfairness
Good morning! Please turn with me in your Bibles to Luke 13, that’s on page 872 in the pew Bibles.
Back in 2004, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book entitled, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.”
This is a thought or a question that people have been wrestling with from the beginning when things happen that are unpleasant, or difficult, or downright horrifying. I remember on 9/11 standing in my living room watching the news on my console tv and crying out, “God, what is happening? Why is this happening?”
At every turn and with every trial, whether it’s health, or financial, or relational, or whatever, we often ask the question, why? Why is this happening to me, or to them? Sometimes we cry foul when things happen, we say, it’s not fair. It’s not fair that this is happening! And you now what? We’re right.
In our passage this morning Jesus is confronted by some people that have similar questions, why did this terrible thing happen to these innocent people? Jesus’ response to them is potentially eternity altering, at least if we are willing to listen.
Let’s look at it together, Luke 13:1-9, page 872.
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 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? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
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. 7 And he said to the vinedresser, ‘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?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. 9 Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”
Let’s pray.
Now here we have another passage with an unhelpful heading stuck in the middle. These two paragraphs ought not be separated because the second half is an illustration of the point of the first half.
Somewhere along the line as Jesus was teaching somebody asked him about the Galileans that had been killed in the Temple at the hands of Pilate and his Roman soldiers. History doesn’t record anything about this event outside the Gospel of Luke. However, plenty has been written about Pilate’s cruelty as a ruler and his disdain for the Jewish people. Pilate was the Roman governor of Judea from 26-36AD under Emperor Tiberius and was the same Pilate that ordered and presided over Jesus’ crucifixion.
So something horrible happened to these Galileans that were in the Temple offering their sacrifices and people asked Jesus about it.
It was common thought in that day that when something bad happened to someone it was because they had done something to offend God. The disciples even thought this way when they questioned Jesus about a man that was born blind in John 9. They asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” and Jesus responded with the simple truth and the single point of this sermon, “Neither, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
This thinking is not uncommon even today, if you do good things, good things with happen to you, if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. This is not biblical, this is not true.
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 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? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
Who is worse, the Galileans who were murdered, or the ones who weren’t? Who is worse, those crushed by a falling tower, or those not crushed by a falling tower?
Jesus was confronting this same pervasive thought that bad things only happen to bad people. Well, the truth is, bad things do only happen to bad people, but… good things only happen to bad people too.
Why is that? Because there are no good people. As far as God’s righteous standard is concerned, the only true definition of what a good person looks like, no one is good, no one except Jesus.
In His wisdom, God the Father gave us the Ten Commandments to show us that we all fall short of His righteous standard and that we need a Savior to save us from the penalty of our disobedience.
We have all put something before God in our lives, we have all worshipped and served a created thing instead of God, we have all taken His Name in vain, we have all violated the Sabbath day, we have all dishonored our parents, we have all hated someone and thus murdered them in our hearts, we have all committed adultery in thought or in deed, we have all stolen something, we have all lied, we have all longed to have something that belongs to someone else.
The question is not, “why did that tower fall on those ‘innocent people?” The real question is, “why didn’t it fall on me?”
Jonathan Edwards once asked his congregation, “Give me one reason why God hasn’t destroyed you since you got up this morning?
There is only one reason: Grace.
Consider every moment that we live, every luxury that we enjoy, every blessing that we participate in, as a matter of receiving the grace of God. It represents God’s willingness to be patient with a race of people who have constantly and consistently rebelled against Him.
Matthew Henry wrote, “We all deserve to perish as much as they did, and had we been dealt with according to our sins, according to the iniquity of our holy things, our blood would have been long before this mingled with our sacrifices by the justice of God.”
The simple truth is, if life were fair, we’d all be dead.
God does not owe us the mercy that we receive, God is not obliged to show us mercy. He said Himself, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” If God owed us mercy it wouldn’t be a gift it would be a debt.
What we deserve is death. Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death…” When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden sin and death entered the world and we inherit sin and a sinful nature from them, as well as the curse that sin brings, death, not just the natural death of our bodies but eternal death.
And in the face of that punishment of death, whether it’s being murdered by Pilate, or crushed by a falling tower, Jesus offered a way out. In verses 3 and 5 Jesus gives us an escape.
I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
What we deserve is death for our sin. That is what it looks like when life is fair. When life is fair we get what we deserve, death.
It’s true that what we deserve is death but… Because God loves us, what we are offered is grace.
Romans 5:8 says, God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
And because Christ died for us He offers escape from the wrath to come if we repent.
Repentance means to change one’s way of life as the result of a complete change of thought and attitude with regard to sin and righteousness. Literally turning 180 degrees from the way we were headed, toward death, to the way that Jesus is leading, to eternal life.
The second half of our passage this morning is an illustration of God’s patience and grace as well as the work of Jesus Christ.
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. 7 And he said to the vinedresser, ‘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?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. 9 Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”
God the Father is the owner of the vineyard where He had a fig tree planted. The fig tree is mankind, and the vinedresser is Jesus.
Think of the careful labor of the Father to bring you to this place and time. Fig trees were not commonly planted in vineyards, He purposely planted us there. When He came to investigate with the right expectation that we should have borne fruit, He unhappily discovers that there wasn’t any. The fruit in this picture is faith.
Without that fruit, without figs, what good is a fig tree? If it won’t bear fruit in its season it’s a waste of resources. Something else could be planted there in that soil that will produce fruit, and that is what the owner of the vineyard was going to do until the vinedresser interceded for the fig tree.
The vinedresser says, give it one more year, let me cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it, give it what it needs to produce fruit. After that, if it grows fruit that’s great, but if not, then you can cut it down.
God extends His grace that we, the fig tree, would be made new with Jesus’ help.
But the truth is, that humanity is on the clock. God the Father extends His kindness to lead to repentance but He is not going to wait forever. When the time is up, if there is no fruit on your tree, you will be cut down.
And so the lesson for us, for all that are listening, is to repent now, turn to Jesus in faith now, use every challenge, every trial, as a reminder of the grace of God and as a reminder to continue to turn from your ways to Jesus’ way because the life of the Christian is a life of constant and continuous repentance.
Amen.
