Episode 192: Why Does God Delay Judgement? | Tim Henderson+

Don't you love that we gave Brin that sweet uplifting passage and then we gave Will the hammer? Good job brother. So we are gonna be looking at the hammer this morning. We're gonna be in Luke 13 so stay there if you had your Bible open to the passage Will just read. We're gonna unpack just those first few paragraphs of Luke 13. And if you were paying attention you might have thought, yikes. It is a pretty rough text. There's a lot going on here.

By the way, it is fun to look out for the first time in eons to see Stan and Marilyn. We're so glad that you guys are here, Marilyn. Thanks for coming. Stan, I love you, miss you, glad that you're with us this morning. It's fun to see your face right there.

These first couple of paragraphs of Luke 13 are words from Jesus and as we unpack it, we're gonna see what it says and it's a heavy message. But as we do, I want you to keep in mind that Jesus loves you and that he gave himself for you. He adores you, he's placed you at the center of his life, he suffered unimaginable agonies for you and his heart towards you is endlessly kind. And that means that when he speaks words of warning as he does in our passage this morning, he does so for your good, he does so because he loves you.

And so as we hear it, let's just make a deal: let's hear what he says, let's receive it. There's some prickly things in this but let's be soft, let's receive it, let's weigh it, don't deflect it but take it as words from a friend who wants to rescue you from hurt and from harm. Okay? It's weighty stuff. You ready? Let's take a look.

The Common Belief Jesus Addresses

In this passage what Jesus is gonna do is he's gonna address a common belief in his culture and I think probably also in ours that if somebody suffers they probably deserved it. I don't know what it is they did but they probably did something awful to make this. There's this kind of karma assumption in life and Jesus is gonna address that and suggest an alternative approach.

The story breaks down into two halves—there's kind of two movements to it. The first part that we're gonna look at is actually kind of a double tap. So it's kind of one A and B and then two. We'll take one A first and we'll just walk through and make sure we understand what he's talking about.

In thirteen one, it says this: "There were some present at that very time who told him 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.'" — Luke 13:1-3

Here's what's going on. Some of the Jews, some of the people in the crowd approached Jesus and they reference a current event. We don't know anything about it other than just these couple of statements right here. We have no other kind of outside source. But something had happened that they all knew about—would have been in the news that week or that month. Something going on—there had been this group of Galileans who are offering sacrifices. That's what they're supposed to do. So they've gone to Jerusalem, they've gone to the temple, and they are killing sheep as an atonement for their sin. But something about that, whatever they're doing, they run afoul of Pilate. Pilate doesn't like it and so he kills them. So they are killing sheep, Pilate kills them and then either literally or figuratively—we're not exactly sure which—he mingles the blood of these sacrificers with the blood of the sacrifice and they die.

And the crowd brings this to Jesus: "Hey Jesus, did you read in the paper about this thing that happened?" And when they did, they thought they knew what it meant. And we get a read on what they think it means based on Jesus' response to them. Can you tell what they think that it means? They think that it probably means that these guys did something awful. Right? These guys probably deserved their suffering and if they didn't then it probably wouldn't have happened, right? Whatever bad thing is going on in your life, you probably deserved it. That's the perspective, that's the vantage point.

And that's why Jesus says here in verse two: "Do you think—hang on a second, what are you trying to say to me? Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No. No, I tell you, listen, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."

Jesus is stepping in and he's correcting their self-righteous condemnation of these sufferers. And then he offers a current event of his own. They raise up the whole question about the Galileans getting their blood mixed with by Pilate. And then he's like, let me tell you about another event. Maybe you read this on page two of the newspaper. There was this story and he says in verse four:

"What about those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and it killed them?" — Luke 13:4

Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who live in Jerusalem? No, I tell you. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. You hear it, it's the same song, second verse.

Apparently, again we know nothing about this except for this brief comment. But apparently some tower had collapsed and a bunch of people died. And that tragedy, it happened, not only are they dead, but now they're under suspicion. Because tragedy raises the presumption of guilt. Have you ever noticed that? That human tendency to see something bad happen to somebody and then you just kinda throw a little more scorn on them?

Do you remember when Jesus' own disciples had that same exact event in John nine where they see a man who was born blind and they ask a particular question? Do remember what did they ask?

Who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born? — John 9

That's the exact same thing. Like when I see you suffer I'm like well I don't know, you did something. And Jesus is rebuking that inclination. He says stop it, don't do that.

Okay, I wanna show you, this is gonna be a little bit punchier but I wanna show you a more recent and I think particularly egregious example of this. Do you guys remember, almost like a decade ago, ten or twelve years ago, there was that horrible earthquake in Haiti? And like, don't even know how many people died. I mean like, hundred thousand, a few hundred thousand, huge, huge death toll underneath the concrete rubble. It was the biggest news when it happened and even a decade later, I'm sure the Haitians are still literally and figuratively digging out of that rubble. It was really rough.

When it happened and all these people are just dead under piles of concrete, Pat Robertson saw fit to go on TV and offer this explanation. Here it is, it's thirty seconds. We'll just take a look at what he said.

Christie, something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not wanna talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third or whatever and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so the devil said, okay, it's a deal. And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor.

Does it make you wince? It should.

Okay. I think that's exactly what Jesus is talking about in Luke 13. Jesus is saying that is what we ought not do. Okay, now listen, I don't happen to have any idea if some or many or any or none of the Haitians made a pact with the devil. How do I know that, right? What I do know is that none of us are smart enough to look at a tragedy, a disaster and just discern the purposes of God. Tragedy befalls the righteous and the wicked alike, right? And while God does have his purposes, it is a presumptuous thing. And I would say it's a dangerous thing to sit safely in the comfort of our own homes while these sinners suffer various maladies. And Jesus is saying, don't do it. Do not sit back and presume to know the purposes of God.

Instead, Build a Different Instinct

Instead, he offers an alternative. Okay, here's what we are to do. He says he wants, it's like he wants us to build into this instinct. When we see tragedy in the world, instead of looking down our noses, there's something else we should do. And he says it twice. He said in verse three and verse five. Take a look.

Verse three, verse five — Luke 13:3, 13:5

What are we to do when tragedy befalls us, what should our instinct be? To repent.

Okay, here's how this works. Here's what he means by this. We repent. Tragedies should awaken us to examine our lives, to ask for mercy and to make a change. Did you catch it? Examine my life, not yours. Like I know why that terrible thing happened to you. I don't know anything about that. But what I could do is turn my look inward. Lord, I live in a sea of your grace. Where am I taking advantage of your kindness? Where am I thoughtless? Where am I comforting myself rather than seeking the needs of others? Can I do that? We should repent.

I don't know if you ever noticed this but there is in my life, maybe in yours, there's very often a gap between sin and judgment. There's this time period where I'll do something foolish or stupid or injurious or selfish that I know better and then nothing happens and I get away with it. Has this ever happened to you? And you get away with it. There is this gap, this time period and we do not live in a world in which as soon as you sin he's like smacked in the head. It didn't work that way. There is this window, there is this gap which is God's grace to you to repent. The judgment doesn't follow instantly.

There is this moment, this opportunity to come to your senses, to feel sad that you hurt someone, to realize that you are living in a little bubble of self justification and that bubble needs to pop. There's a window where the healthy part of shame can do its work. There's an unhealthy part of shame, but there's a healthy part too that can help me realize I don't like what I'm becoming, I don't like what I've done. That makes me humble, that makes me sorrowful. It's an opportunity to apologize, to make restitution, to make a change.

I've told you probably 150 times I went to JMU probably because I loved, loved, loved it. And I had a hall mate, his name was Steve. And Steve went to a military academy in high school and he had a four point O in high school. And he got to Madison and the boy was unleashed. Steve spent all of his time drinking beer and he was just constantly on the prowl.

I can remember him coming into my dorm room one evening, reaching into his shirt pocket, pulling out this little plastic package and flinging it onto my desk in disgust because his date had not gone as he had intended and he had no opportunity to open the package, right?

Steve's on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, his earliest class was 11 AM, and that gave him a good few hours in the morning to drink before class. One particular—it was like 10 o'clock in the morning, I remember this distinctly—it's 10 o'clock in the morning, he's got an hour until class, this precious sweet hour to allow his body to metabolize the beers that he'd already had that morning. You could also purpose that hour to grab a couple more beers before he headed off to class. Steve chose the latter.

All semester long, Steve just made a wreck of his life. And then the night before Christmas Eve—so Christmas Eve Eve—his mom got a letter letting her know that her four O son from high school had earned a point four O in his first and last semester at JMU and he needn't return, right? He had used that window, that period of time for repentance to just sin yet more. And Christmas Eve Eve, judgment day came and he was gone, right?

You guys, in this story Jesus is saying use the hour, use the window. There is a moment, there is this gracious invitation as you live in the space between your own sin and judgment to repent. Do not waste it looking down your nose at other people. When you see tragedy befall people around you and you smugly think, "Better than me"—you should think, "There but for the grace of God go I." You are not according to Jesus more righteous than they are. It should awaken you in awareness of your need, right?

Jesus means for other people's tragedy to spawn something in you, to awaken you to your plight so that you would turn to him in humility and grace asking him, "Don't just delay the judgment, take it away. Drink it on my behalf. Be my place of protection and refuge and safety and hiding that I might find forgiveness and protection."

Guys, when we're more aware of other people's badness than our own, then we just don't realize how much we need his grace and therefore we don't avail ourselves of his grace. And he's trying to flip that around.

Okay, dig it. That's part one. Everybody doing okay? Okay, if you're doing a little bit too okay, you're like "I have examined my life and I find nothing wanting." Hang on because there's part two okay, and Jesus is going to raise the bar. So take a look at what he says here, okay. This little bit, he's going to take, I think, a kind of a surprising direction and you might—I hope perhaps—be a little less comfortable in about five minutes. Okay. But again, he loves you, he's kind, he's good, so listen up alright. Be soft.

The Parable of the Fig Tree

Verse six: "And then Jesus told this parable, A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and he found none. 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?' And he answered him, 'Sir, let it alone this year also until I dig around it and put on manure. And then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good. But if not, then you can cut it down.'"

Okay? There are some similarities here to what we just read. There's also some differences. Let's do the similarities first, okay? In both passages, in both the top half and this bottom half, there is this threat, there's this impending doom, okay. What is in the first stories—what's the threat? What is the ultimate warning that Jesus is pointing to here in those first two stories about the current events? They're gonna perish. They're gonna perish, okay.

Now perish is a word that the New Testament tends to use. In fact, this is the most common imagery used for the final judgment. You guys probably know it best in John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life — John 3:16

Paul says the same thing in slightly different language.

The wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 6:23

There is this threat of a final and irreversible death. Down in part two, what's the threat there? Jesus repeats it in verses seven and nine. What is it? Cut it down. So what happens to a tree when you cut it down? A tree is dead, alright.

In both situations, in both cases, there is a pending threat of death. It's heavy text, right? This is weighty stuff, okay? There's another similarity in both cases, namely that in both the judgment is delayed. Up top there's a window for repentance. There's this window of time where the judgment doesn't come immediately. And in part two, that's a little bit more explicit, right?

In part two, it's been three years, no fruit, no fruit, no fruit, cut the tree down. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. We're gonna do something, we're gonna nourish the tree, we're gonna fertilize the tree, we're gonna create this opportunity, something's gonna happen so that you get what you need, make sure you have every advantage to bear fruit, right? So we're gonna fertilize the tree.

Somebody came up to me after the first service and said it seems like when God really wants us to bear fruit, they just made an observation: isn't that interesting what God brings into our lives, right? If he needs to bring us to repentance, to make us be more fruitful, he brings something maybe perhaps unpleasant into our lives. But there's a delay. The vine dresser intervenes. He says hang on, hang on, give him another year. Let's delay the judgment one more year.

He answered him, "Sir, let it alone this year also until I dig around it and put on manure. And then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down." — Luke 13:8-9

Both stories are the same in that there's an impending judgment, but the judgment is delayed. But there's also some added information. There's a number of things that are added in the second story. Of the handful of things, what do you think? What's new? What gets added in part two?

Okay, a vine dresser—there's this other party that comes in and they're gonna intervene or advocate or help or do something, right? We need that. What else? Manure, okay, there's the action of like, okay, we're gonna create a more nourishing environment and better help you succeed. More resourcing is giving. How about this? There's a little more specificity. We don't know what the sin was here in the first couple stories. What is the obligation? What is the failing in the second part, in the fig tree story? Not producing fruit. Not producing fruit.

The Sin of Fruitlessness

That is different. The crime here is identified as fruitlessness. I find that very interesting and not a little bit intimidating. I wonder, how often are you thoughtful of your obligation to be fruitful? Not just that we avoid sins of commission, but that we're really mindful of our sins of omission. In particular, this one.

My guess is that we may not think about it very much. The sin of this tree, this fig tree, it's not that someone walked by and reached out a root and tripped somebody, okay? It wasn't overtly being a cruel tree. It was just fruitless. It was just sitting there being leafy but it wasn't popping out figs. And if a fig tree doesn't make figs, it gets cut down.

Again, I don't think we talk about this or think about this framework so much, but the Old and New Testaments both do a great deal. If you just go back and do a word study and ask for like fruit, fruitful, fruitfulness, unfruitful, you get a million hits. There's a lot. Here, I'll give you a quick survey of some of them.

The ax is already at the root of the trees and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. — Matthew 3

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. — Matthew 7

His father cuts off every branch in him that does not bear fruit. — John 15

During Holy Week, Jesus does this thing. It's so weird. The disciples don't know what to make of it and for two thousand years we haven't really known what to make of it either. He curses an actual fig tree. He goes, there's no fruit on the tree and he's like dead and the tree dies and the disciples are like what just happened? He lives out this parable before their very eyes.

In the book of Jude, this is the weirdest book maybe in the New Testament, you should read it, it's so weird.

Jude laments these false teachers and one of the things, one of the dozen things that he says about them is that they are fruitless trees in late autumn, uprooted, twice dead. Trees are supposed to produce fruit. And an apple tree that doesn't grow apples is wasting the land. Why should it use up the soil?

Listen, this is a hard lesson. This is Jesus. And he's saying some stuff that is heavy but it would be harder still to get to the end of the time window and be uprooted. And it is a gracious thing, is a kind thing that he tells us before the window closes.

So let me ask you, especially if you were feeling like after the first half you were feeling good about it, are you bearing fruit? Are you? Can you name someone or maybe many someones who know and love Jesus today because of your engagement in their life? Fig trees make figs. Orange trees make oranges. And if you were a tree, do you know what kind of tree you would be if you are in Christ? You are a Christian tree. You are a disciple tree. And do you know what disciple trees make? They make disciples. We make followers of Jesus. Do you?

You know what else we make? We make love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and the whole list, gentleness, self control. That's the fruit of the spirit. The spirit of God who is alive in you. If you are in Christ, the spirit is alive in you and your life should be manifesting love and joy and peace and patience and disciples. And in this story Jesus is saying that his people can sometimes be like fig trees that don't produce figs and this oughtn't be. We don't want to be a people that are just using up the ground and are in danger of being cut down. Strong language, isn't it?

So when you see tragedy in other people's lives, we are not to look down our noses at them as if we are more righteous than they, but rather we are to consider look inward and say, man, where am I out of whack? And repent. We are invited by Jesus to look into our own lives, observe our own fruitfulness. Am I helping others discover Christ, to grow in him, to flourish in him? Am I making disciples? Does my life manifest love, joy, peace, and patience? If not, it might be that you need to be fertilized. Likely, we all do.

Maybe this is that year of transformation and change where the spirit of God brings into your life the things that you need, the right inputs to facilitate fruitfulness. It may be that right now is the time—the time to make a change. Because that's what the window between sin and judgment is for. It's a time of repentance. It's a time of growth and change. Sometimes the father prunes branches. Sometimes he cuts down trees.

So ask yourself, has it been three years? Has the window drawn closed? Don't squander his grace, but engage with him. Engage in things that matter. And if we can help you, my goodness, it would be the joy and delight of so many people in this room—certainly the staff, your life group leader, maybe the person who's at your alpha table. We make disciples who make disciples, healthy disciples at that. So if you find you've been on the stands too long and it's time to take the field, come, come, come—there's room to play. And there would be nothing that would bring us more joy than to help you enter into a life of greater fruitfulness.

Maybe it means you lead a life group. Maybe you do something at Alpha. Maybe you're moving in love and zeal towards your own children to help them flourish and thrive. But what could be more fun than fulfilling the purpose for which God has called you? To be a fig tree that makes figs, a disciple that makes disciples.

And if any of this is painful to you and just cuts you to the quick, just remember, these are not my words. These are Jesus' words. And he adores you. He loves you. He gave himself for you. And he invites you into the great adventure of doing things that will literally matter in a billion years. That your life would be well spent. That we would go further up and further in to greater levels of fruitfulness.

Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. — Matthew 3:8

Let's repent quickly. Let's be a people that bear fruit eagerly and walk with the God who loves us. Shall we?

Invitation to Respond

I'd love to invite you. Come forward. This curved rail here is for you alone to process with the Lord whatever he puts on your mind. Straight rails are an opportunity for you if you wanna pray with somebody. Maybe this is a moment. Don't squelch it. If the spirit of God is saying, go, now come. Put a marker in the ground, then come. And let this be a time where you pivot into a deeper level of dependence on him, joy in him, fruitfulness in him because he loves you and wants to live his life through you.

Lord Jesus, we adore you because you are the magnificent one. You are the gracious one. You are the kind one.

Thank you for telling us ahead of time, for giving us eyes to see the window in which we dwell. Would you make us to be a people that are repentant, humble, soft, fruitful, that our lives would matter and echo in eternity.

Lord, we love you. Amen.