Posted on 09/16/2001 10:01:11 AM PDT by Keyes For President
Luke 13:1-9
Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them-- do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish."
Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?' "'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.'" (NIV)
For those of us who belong to Him and trust in Jesus alone, we are secure that no matter what happens we are victorious.
For those of you who do not trust in Jesus alone, heed His warning, "unless you repent, you too will all perish." You can be right with God, but only through Jesus Christ. For more information, read the Bible.
As a nation, let us turn to God and ask that in His grace and mercy He will lead us to defeat the evil forces who want to destroy us. But unless we repent, we too will all perish!
So it's either pray to God or die???
Grace to you.
In the second example, the tower fell and killed the people due to presumeably an accident. Still Jesus asks if the victims were more guilty than the rest of Jeruselem. Again he answers, "I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish."
You see God is sovereign and nothing can happen if He doesn't allow it. Now God does not sin. But he does allow evil to occur. God can lift His hand of protection to punish those who sin against Him as well as to chastise and draw His people nearer to Him.
I'm sure there were Christians of all denominations, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, pagans, you name it, that went down in those towers, were buried beneath its debris. It's an insult to the lives and memories of those lost and those surviving in the wake of this crisis to apply this abtuse reference to this crime.
Sure there were all kinds of people who lost their lives in these recent attacks. That's the point. Unless Christians, Jews, Moslems, pagans, etc., turn to God, repent and trust in Jesus alone, they will all perish. There is no salvation apart from Jesus Christ. It is no insult to the people who died as victims in this attack because as the Scripture says, they were not any more guilty than the rest of us. What this passage does teach us it to thank God He spared us from this by His grace, and to cause us to turn from our sins and return to Him.
And, y'know what? Perhaps it was the farmer's fault that the fig tree wasn't bearing anything in the first place.
Perhaps. But still, it was the fig tree itself that was about to be cut down. We can't blame anyone but ourselves for our own sins and "not bearing fruit."
You do raise a good point though. Perhaps the farmer can be seen as the church, whose job it is to "fertilize" the tree. As believers, maybe we have not been doing a good enough job of "fertilizing" the nation which has led us into the condition we are in.
(I believe the fig tree here primarily refers to the nation of Israel during Jesus' time, but you could apply some of this to us today.)
As a nation, we should respond to the Tuesday 9/11/01 attack as a wake-up call and turn back to God and ask Him to lead us victory.
In Christ,
If you think that telling people to repent and turn to God is callous, and that pointing out that those who died in the attack were no more guilty of sin and were no worse than the rest of us is insensitive, then I also pray that God has mercy on your "sick, twisted soul."
In Christ,
2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
Repetance is only the first step..God orders us turn from our wicked ways
That is the condition for the healing
Each of us need to repent and turn !
The Pharasaical attitude prevalent then was that those people so struck must have been horrendous sinners, since such a fate had befallen them. Jesus made clear to those hypocrites that that just wasn't the case at all.
I don't really see Americans making that blanket assumtion, like the Jews of Jesus' day did.
About the only place I have seen that attitude in my own personal experienceis has been in 'religious' circles.
When my daughter died some years ago, there were actually Christians who insinuated to me that it must have happened because of some great sin in my life. I just told them to go read Job...then maybe they would understand that their puny human perspective on the big picture was vastly insufficient to be making such judgements.
Of course, that doesn't mean that I don't believe that all of us, individually and as a nation, need to be of a repentant heart. We do.
Yes you are absolutely correct that this is what Jesus was addressing here. Still, the fact is that Jesus used these examples, which so closely parallel what happened Tuesday, to declare that unless we repent we will all likewise perish.
The point is that we should all use the dastardly attack by the terrorists as a wake-up call to turn back to God both as individuals and as a nation. Of course God is not to blame for this evil, but he does allow things like this to occur to cause us to repent. We should all be thankful it was not us in those towers, because none of us are any better than any of them. We can truly say, "There but for the grace of God go I." Once we realize this, we will be inspired to repent of our own sins.
We must fight those who perpetrated this terror on us and we must win, by the grace of God. But as we ask God to bless us in this battle, let's dedicate ourselves to Him.
Amen! And we must all turn to Christ. All of us, Jew, Gentile, or Muslim, must trust only in Jesus Christ as there is no salvation apart from Him.
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