Date : Third Sunday in Lent, March 7, 2010

Text : Luke 13:1-9

Title : Repent, lest you perish

[Jesus said,] ". . . unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."

Pat Robertson does Christianity no good when he makes bold pronouncements like this, and as he made after Hurricane Katrina nailed New Orleans, claiming that it was because New Orleans is such a den of iniquity that God sent the hurricane as punishment for their sin.

If Christians don’t read their Bibles closely enough, it would be easy to be as confused as Robertson. But, when we take the entire Word of God as a whole, the confusion evaporates, as we begin with today’s Epistle. The Holy Spirit has Paul cite a time, in Old Testament Israel, when twenty-three thousand were struck down because of a sin. You might be familiar with this event. It was when Moses was slow in coming down from the mountain, so the Israelites had Aaron make the Golden Calf, and Israel worshiped it as if it were God.

You know of other times that God punished sins. When King David committed adultery, God punished him with the death of the child. When Moses disobeyed in getting the water from the rock, God didn’t allow him to go into the Promised Land. And, the one that set the punishment-ball rolling, when Adam and Eve sinned, God repaid them with death.

How were God’s people to view these events? Again, from First Corinthians: "Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did."

These sin-and-punishment events were examples for all believers, that we might learn from them. The lesson is not simply that if you sin you will be zapped. The lesson is for one’s entire life. And, God had given that lesson to Israel, way before Paul ever wrote a word, which takes us back to today’s Old Testament lesson.

Ezekiel, more than five-hundred years before Christ, has God urging Israel because they were doing just what Paul was warning not to do: they were desiring and living evil lives. Now, God had a specific punishment for the whole nation, which had gone over to evil, but it wasn’t the earthly punishment that God wanted the people to fear as much as it was the spiritual truth behind the earthly reality.

From Ezekiel, listen to the Lord, "If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul."

There is a lot there, so let’s concentrate on the point, which is in the last phrase: "but you will have delivered your soul." God is not concerned about earthly punishment; he’s teaching about eternal punishment. It’s true, at times He used earthly punishment as a teacher, but earthly punishment is Tinker Toys compared with spiritual punishment.

By the Lord Jesus’ day, the people were as confused as Pat Robertson, so the Lord corrected them. That takes us to the Gospel lesson. Apparently, Pontius Pilate had punished some Galileans by mingling Jewish and Gentile blood, and the Jews connected the dots that it was a punishment directly from God. Again, when a tower had fallen, killing eighteen Jews, the Jews thought it was because those eighteen had been worse sinners than others.

To both events, Jesus told them they were mistaken. However, these do provide marvelous examples that everyone is a sinner, and everyone is going to die. No one gets to choose the day of his death. Some might have their lives taken from them, as those on whom the tower fell, and some might experience horrific acts, as when Pilate desecrated the sacrifice.

Guess what, kids: that’s life. That’s the life of sinful people. Get used to it.

So, what to do? The Lord Jesus tells us, just as He told Israel, through the prophet Ezekiel: "But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."

When Jesus uses the word perish, He is using it as you know it in John 3:16, ". . . that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." In this word perish, the Lord is not concerned about mere physical death; He is talking about damnation to hell.

Here’s the deal. You are going to sin. You are a sinner. Your parents were sinners and, just as you inherited your physical body from them, you inherited your spiritual body from them.

So, you’re going to sin. What do you do about it? As one who believes that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners—of whom you even believe you are the worst of the bunch, because you are so bothered by your sinfulness—you will do two things.

First, your Lord tells you to repent. The word repent means to turn your mind around. I always portray repentance like this: God is this way, and sin is that way. When you are sinning, you are putting God behind you, and sin is the object of your affection. When you repent, you turn your mind away from your sin and back toward God.

Repenting is never an attitude of, "I’ll confess to God that I blew it, but, oh boy, I can’t wait to get out there and do it, all over again." That is not repentance. That is making a fool of Jesus Christ. If that is going to be your attitude, Jesus has wasted His time on you.

The second thing the Lord is looking for from you is the bearing of good fruit. When you are sinning, you can’t be bearing good fruit. When you are gossiping, you can’t be speaking well of anyone. When you are drunk, you can’t do chores for your family. When you are wasting your money on lottery tickets or at a casino, you wind up shooing the lady away from your front door when she comes calling from the American Cancer Society because you don’t have enough cash on hand.

In the Epistle, the Lord warns you to "take heed lest you fall." This warning comes in the spot where everyone asks the pastor, "What does it mean that God won’t let us be tempted or tested beyond what we can bear?" The Holy Spirit promises that God will be faithful to you, but that doesn’t mean you can keep putting yourself into harm’s way.

Take heed lest you fall. Mind your business. Know what the Lord detests and what the Lord loves. Be a good-fruit bearer. This is what God made you to be. He did not make you to be a person who makes plenty of money so you can blow it on selfish pleasures. While it is true that God does not directly condemn plenty of the activities that you enjoy, just because He doesn’t, does not mean that you should be partaking of them.

Your sinful nature craves to be pampered, to be humored, to be pleased. But, your sinful nature is always working to put God in the rearview mirror. Your sinful nature wants to be in the spot of the First Commandment: You shall have no other gods before ME!

Praise God that, sin as you will because you are a sinner, He will not zap you with a specific punishment. Indeed, you already know that to be true, as you can boast of a history of sinning that, by all appearances, you have completely gotten away with.

Also, praise God that He keeps working with you. In the parable, Jesus said about the tree that was not bearing fruit, "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."

There’s the final warning: Jesus is cultivating you. Bear fruit. He is not obliged to cultivate you, forever.

And, there’s the final blessing: Jesus is cultivating you. Jesus is faithful. Jesus does not desire the eternal perishing of a single soul. So, He keeps on cultivating.

He draws on His own holy death and miraculous resurrection. He gives you His Word that by His wounds you have been healed. He joined you to His death and raised you in His resurrection when He baptized you into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He fertilizes that faith in the eating and drinking of the Holy Communion of His living flesh and blood.

Pat Robertson is wrong. God does not zap individuals or groups for their sins. For the sake of the world, He zapped His Son with the punishment that all sin deserves.

You, dear children of God, live under the eternal protection of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Live, dear children of God—live under the eternal protection of Jesus Christ. Amen.