February 27, 2016

God’s Calling!

3rd Sunday in Lent, 2/28/16
Luke 13:1-9

God’s Calling!
I. To remind you to live in daily repentance
II. While you still have

Answering the phone used to be a big thing. I’m old enough to remember the days when, as a child, I would literally run to answer the telephone. Receiving a phone call from someone you know was important. It was something to look forward to.

Not so anymore. That’s why caller ID, in my opinion, is one of the most useful technological advances. When my phone rings at home, the number and sometimes the name show up on my phone and on my TV. If it’s one of you calling me, I quickly pick it up. If I don’t recognize it, I let it go to voicemail. Same thing with my cell phone. I have all your numbers entered into my contacts so that when one of you calls me, I know who it is and I know to answer it. The rest I let go.

Our God whose love for you is boundless and eternal doesn’t make phone calls. He doesn’t send text messages or use Snapshot. And he’s certainly not going to knock on your front door. But he’s calling you. Did you hear it ring? Probably not.

But that’s exactly the message he was communicating to you and me and every person on this earth through the event on this day in the life of our Savior as Luke describes it.

God’s calling. He has something eternally important he wants to share with you and he doesn’t want to let this go until another day. God’s calling! Let’s see what he wants.

Part I.

I’m sure you agree that caller ID is a useful piece of technology. So are auto-alerts. Do you set them for yourself? Most of us do. We receive alerts that our prescriptions need to be refilled and, when they are, that they are ready for pick-up or have been shipped. We receive auto-alerts when our monthly bills are due and when they have been automatically paid. Virtually every important detail of our lives, and even too many of the unimportant details, are conveyed or can be conveyed to us by auto-alert.

Except one. At least I’ve never received one and I don’t know anyone who has. It’s the auto-alert to repent. I don’t get that reminder on the screen of my laptop or smart phone. I have never received a notice via the US postal service to get on my knees in the repentant position. I’ve never seen a goofy-looking character on a busy downtown street corner with a sign in his hand reminding me to repent.

I don’t need to. Neither do you. Because our loving God sends them to us every day via a different medium. There are two examples in this morning’s sermon text. Listen for them once again, “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.’”

We wish we had a little more information on this first incident. Apparently Pilate ordered Roman soldiers to enter the Temple in Jerusalem and randomly murder the Jews inside it. These Jews were offering their sacrifices to the Lord and the soldiers mixed their blood with that of the sacrificial animals. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated incident for Pilate. His rule was marked by such things and it’s one of the reasons Rome recalled him. Apparently the people with Jesus that day could only make sense of this senseless act by supposing these Jews were worse than average sinners and thus this happened to them. Jesus declares that simply wasn’t the case.

Then Jesus referred to another recent tragedy. The Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem was a gathering place for the Jews. It was located right along the wall of the city. Apparently a portion of that wall with its tower fell on some people and killed them. Again, the common Jew would try to make sense of this random act by assuming these people were guilty of some heinous sin. Jesus declared that they weren’t.

These things happened through no fault of their own. Like so many of the tragedies that happen, this was not bad karma evening the score. These things were not God’s way of punishing them. Especially in the case of the murders in the Temple, this would appear to have happened to good, honest, God-fearing people who were simply going about their business of worshipping the Lord as he wanted them to.

So why did these tragedies happen? They are part of living in a world that has gone terribly wrong, that is filled with violence and life-ending accidents. It’s been that way ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. This is a broken, sin-filled world we live in. And the sad truth is that our sins have only added to the sinfulness of this world.

God’s calling! Pick up the divine receiver and listen to your Lord Jesus, “Unless you repent, you too will all perish.” He states it twice for emphasis. Martin Luther wrote in the first of his 95 theses which started the Reformation of the Church that God wants the daily life of the Christian to be one of repentance. We sin daily, countless times. We need to repent daily. Don’t wait for the next tragedy to strike. You might be involved in it. Each and every tragedy in our world is God’s way of reminding you to repent every day.

God’s calling to remind you to live in daily repentance.

Do you realize how rare true repentance is in our world today? How often do you hear anyone truly come clean for what they’ve done? Instead, we hear lies, excuses, or rationalizations. In fact, before we can hear an honest confession, we may need to convince the person that sin actually exists. Modern psychology denies that it does. But no psychologist has the last word regarding sin or anything else. Our Lord and Savior does, and in his boundless love for us he calls for one and all to repent. That’s because sin never brings anything good. It only drags us further away from our God. Our God always wants to draw us closer to him and the first step in that relationship is realizing how desperately we need his forgiveness, the forgiveness Jesus won for us with his death on Calvary’s cross. Let every accident and tragedy in this life remind you how broken with sin this world is and how your own sins have contributed to it. And then flee again to Calvary. God’s calling and he wants you to meet him there every day.

Part II.

April 15. This year it falls on a Friday. Every tax payer knows that’s the deadline for filing income tax returns and while most tax payers will file well before the deadline, millions will wait until the very last hour. Some of that’s due to the fact that we don’t enjoy paying taxes. But a good bit of it is also due to the tendency to procrastinate.

If you miss the tax filing deadline, you’ll likely face a penalty, which will mean that more of your money will go to the government. If you miss the repentance deadline, you’re in danger of paying an eternal penalty.

When Jesus spoke these words of our text, the deadline for the Jewish nation was in sight. The sad truth of the matter was that they as a nation had rejected Jesus, the very One that God for centuries had promised to send them. In spite of the fact that Jesus was the fulfillment of all the Old Testament promises of the Savior, the Jews as a whole just weren’t willing to accept him. So they crucified him.

And they had precious little time left to get right with God. Fewer than 40 years after Jesus ascended into heaven, the Jews as a nation of people were no more. The Romans obliterated Jerusalem with its Temple.

Jesus wanted these Jews standing before him to know how close eternal destruction was. They still had a little time left. And so he tells them the following parable to plead with them to repent and produce the fruits of faith that their God was looking for. “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.’” Did you hear the loving heart of Jesus for each and every sinner? It’s in the words of the caretaker who pleads with the owner for just a little more time. Our God doesn’t want a single sinner to perish. He wants all to repent and to trust in Jesus for forgiveness and eternal life.

So don’t abuse the loving heart of Jesus. Give him what he’s looking for—a heart that repents of sin. God’s calling to remind you to live in daily repentance. Do it while you still have time.

In a sense I suppose I’m preaching to the choir this morning. You’re here in worship. You offered your Lord your heartfelt confession. But maybe I’m assuming too much. Was your confession from the heart, or was it simply mindless verbiage? Worse yet, are their times in your life when you make light of your sins, even finding comedy in them, boasting about them to others? That’s why our Lord’s words to us this morning are so important. Without an honest recognition of our sins, there’s no need for Jesus and his forgiveness. The loving heart of Jesus pleads for you to live each day in repentance. His deepest desire is for you to look daily to his cross for that forgiveness. God’s calling. Every day. Take that call. Your eternal life depends on it. Amen.