Sean C. Capparuccia
March 23, 2025 – sermon delivered at Trinity Methodist, Magnolia, NC
Gospel Lesson: Luke 13:1-9
When I first started preaching about 20 years ago, I was serving in an associate capacity in the church. I was in school and was enthralled with Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, A.W. Pink, George Whitfield and the like. These guys were preaching back when it was Ok to preach for an hour and bring the fullness of a passage to light. Anyway, I decided one Sunday to preach Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” I modernized the language some and shortened it down to an acceptable length, and I was pretty proud of it. Mind you, when Edwards preached it, hundreds came to Christ. When I preached it, a lady said to me, “We had enough of all that talk about Hell back in the ‘50s; we don’t need to hear it again.” I only found solace in God’s words through the prophet Isaiah, “My word will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire” (55:11). And that’s not just a word for preachers, but for all who share God’s word with someone: even if it seems to fall on deaf ears, if it’s true, it will not return to God empty.
In the previous chapter of Luke (12), Jesus had been homing in on a particular theme: to be ready. Have your spiritual bags packed because, like a thief in the night, we do not know the time of His coming. Now, on the same occasion – or during this same time, probably on His last trip to Jerusalem[1] – Jesus is addressed by a few who were in the crowd, who directed His attention to an incident that had perhaps recently happened. Pontius Pilate had some Galileans killed and mixed their blood with the blood of their sacrifices. This tragic event has no other source than in Luke’s Gospel, so it is impossible to know any details about it. But this we can infer: these people who relate the story were not so much concerned about the victims themselves as they were about the judgement poured out on them. Again, we don’t know who they were; they could have been Samaritans, who, in the Jewish mind were most certainly worse sinners; but it could have been simply because they were Galileans, who, among Jerusalem Jews, were generally thought of as being ruffians, with a seditious attitude towards authority, especially Roman authority. In other words, as Jesus had been telling them about God’s judgment in chapter 12, they make the insinuation that the judgement of God will be poured out on real sinners, like these Galileans.
Even so, we hear the rebuke in Jesus’ reply, “Do you think that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans, because this tragedy happened to them?”
Deep in tornado country, Kansas, there was a man whose house was picked up and deposited in fragments during one of those tornados. The local preacher, seeing the opportunity, told the distraught man, “Punishment for sin is inevitable.” “Oh really,” said the man, “and did you know that your house was blown away too?” “Well,” replied the preacher, “the Lord’s ways are beyond our understanding.”[2]
John Calvin comments, “….this disease is almost natural to us, to be too rigorous and severe in judging of others, and too much disposed to flatter our own faults.” We quickly condemn those who suffer some tragedy as if their sinfulness, their reprobation, deserved it. And at the same time, we find ourselves quite at ease with our own sins if the hand of God is not pressing hard on us as if God were quite pleased with us.[3]
I can say with certainty that I am guilty of this; I can say with 99.9% certainty that we are all guilty of this. It’s human nature. It’s somehow easier to see a loose shingle on your neighbor’s house than the rain gutters falling off of your own. We immediately recall the words of Jesus about removing the wooden plank from our own eye before addressing the shaving in our brother’s.
Perhaps further on this point is that it has always amused me how many graduating seniors plan to major in psychology or counseling when they go to college because they want to “help other people.” Psych 101 classes are always full; Psych 102 usually has room for a couple more. By the time the next Fall semester rolls around these kids have discovered that majoring in Psychology won’t fix their own problems and they switch to Business or pre-Med or something more fun, like music. I at least made it through Psych 201, Abnormal Psychology, before I figured out that I was more or less “normal.”
So, were those Galileans worse sinners than all other Galileans? In Jesus fashion, He turns it right back on them, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (vs. 3). Then He gives them another tragic event to think about. “Do you think that the 18 who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell were worse debtors than all the men who live in Jerusalem?” Now it’s a little closer to home. This happened to people just like them – good, upstanding, Law-abiding Jews from Jerusalem. ‘Were they worse than you?’ Jesus asks.
It is worthy of note to see that Jesus does not remove God’s will, permissive or directive, from the picture. Remember what Jesus said when He had a similar discussion with his disciples which we find in John 9. When Jesus healed the blind man, the disciples asked Him, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was neither this man nor his parents that sinned, but it was in order that the works of God might be displayed in him” (Jn 9:2-3). God was most certainly involved in the fact that he was born blind for it was by His sovereign will that it happened, but, as Jesus said, it was not as a punishment for sin, it was so that he could be healed. It was so “that the works of God might be displayed in him”!
So, then, we ask the most important question; the question that has caused myriad numbers of people to refuse to believe in God; the question that has granted comfort to myriads who do believe. Does God’s plan for you and me include evil? That in itself would make for a nice sermon series but probably not good as a minor plot in this one. So, I give it a passing reference. We acknowledge that God is sovereign over His creation; we acknowledge that “His thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways” (Is. 55:8); and Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us…” Again, in Isaiah, God says, “…I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not [yet] been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure” (Is. 46:9-10.) Throughout the Scriptures God for sure uses the evil inherent in man to accomplish His own good pleasure.
And what is that “pleasure”? What is God’s good and pleasing will? It is this: to draw you and me to Himself, to forgive our rebellion against Him, to make a way for that forgiveness through the death of Jesus Christ, and to bring us into His everlasting glory. It is His will to create in us a thirst for Him; a yearning for Him; to give us lips to praise Him; a soul that blesses Him; and hands that are continually lifted up in praise to Him (Psalm 63). That, my friends, is God’s will.
And though He accomplishes this monergistically, it is not without some responsibility on our part, and here is where the rubber meets the road.
In the Corinthian passage today, we read Paul’s treatment of some of Israel’s history. They came through the parted waters of the Red Sea; they ate the manna provided by God; they quenched their physical thirst with water drawn from a rock; they were given the wonderful Law. And yet still, many of them – “the greater part of them” Paul states, were worshipping a shiny metal cow. They were filled with lust and practiced all sorts of illicit sexual relations (do I need to elaborate?) They murmured, or grumbled, against the Lord and those He chose to lead these people, i.e., Moses.
And because of this, God allowed for most of them to never enter the Promised Land; because of fornication God sent a plague that wiped out 24,000 of them in one day (Num 25:1-9). You see, God had called to Himself a people who would be holy, a nation that would follow Him, and His plan would not be thwarted. And Paul goes on to say in verse 6 that “these things happened as examples for us, that we should not crave evil things as they craved them”; and in verse 11, “these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.” We are still in “the end of the ages,” we are in the Last Days now, even as Paul was in 60 A.D. It’s been a long Last Days! But the warning still holds; it is for us now, if not even more so.
And so, back to the Gospel, Jesus asked “Were those Galileans worse than these? Were these Jews in Siloam worse sinners than you? I tell you, No, but unless you repent you will all perish in the same way.”
A sad trend among what we may call the “liberal denominations” is a lack of preaching about repentance. Oh, they’ll talk about sin, usually as defined by themselves (or by social justice) and not by Scripture; they’ll talk about Jesus, good man that He was; they’ll talk about salvation, justification, sanctification; they’ll talk about love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and even self-control – things we strive for. But they do not talk about repentance. And yet that is the very key to salvation.
Do you feel sorry for your sins? You do this thing… whatever it is and you know it is sin; do you feel remorse? You can’t stop there, remorse is not repentance. Remorse is the Holy Spirit saying, “Now repent.” Repentance goes beyond saying, “I’m sorry.” Remorse does not change your life; Repentance is a changed life. It is turning away from the sin and toward righteousness. It is turning from death to life.[4]
One of the devices used by Satan is to make people think that it is easy to repent after sinning – or falling into sin. It’s like the saying, “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.” But repentance is not just asking forgiveness, either. Thomas Brooks, a Puritan writer from the 1600s, said, “Repentance is a mighty work, a difficult work, a work that is above our power… Repentance is a flower that does not grow in nature’s garden… Indeed, repentance is a grace from God.”[5] Our sin nature wants desperately to hold on to sin; it does not want to repent and so it can only be done through the grace of God.
**Allow me to digress for just a minute… I mentioned George Whitfield at the beginning. When we decided to stay at Rose Hill, and then Thurman’s gracious asking of me to preach here at times, I bought a book about the Welsh Revivals; those great revivals of which Whitfield was a part, as well as he was in the Great Awakening here in America. If you study true revivals, do you know where they start? They start with repentance. When God sees His people truly repenting, turning away from their sins, that’s when the Holy Spirit comes to revive. He doesn’t come because we schedule a meeting at 7:00 on the third Wednesday of the month. He comes because His people are ready to repent and He sweeps in like a mighty wind and makes it happen. Repentance; Revival; Reformation. Something to think about.
But “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish in the same way.” Does that mean a tower will fall on your head or that some tyrant will slaughter you and mingle your blood with the blood of goats? No, it means that like them, you will die without a Savior and will spend eternity in hell.
Do you find comfort knowing that you are not as much of a sinner as other people you know? Well don’t! James says that if you break one Law, you are guilty of breaking them all. There’s no such thing in God’s view as a “worse sinner.” You’re either a sinner, or you are not a sinner. And we all know that we are all sinners, so that argument is lost. So then, you either have a Savior or you do not have a Savior who will take the punishment for your sins – whether they be few or many.
I had a revelation some years ago, it just hit me one afternoon and I truly felt that the Spirit was telling me this. I was writing a research paper on homosexuality and the church for a pastor friend of mine whose denomination was getting ready to go through the “big decision.” The Spirit – and I say the “Spirit” because there’s no other explanation – just came to me and said, “The reason why some Christians are tolerant of homosexuality is not because they truly believe it is ok; it is because they know it is an abominable sin, as Scripture says it is, and they can tolerate their own sins better by simply saying, ‘At least I’m not a homosexual.’” Isn’t that crazy? But there it is. A man dies and says, “Lord, have mercy on me, I’ve killed hundreds of people and stolen millions of dollars’ worth of property and molested and terrorized plus I stole a pack of gum when I was seven. But I sure wasn’t a homosexual, so let me in.” The world is full of sin and sometimes we find ourselves asking, “Oh Lord, how long? How long will you persist in allowing this sinfulness?”
And just to be clear, what is “sin”? Here’s a textbook definition: Sin is “the fundamental unbelief, distrust or rejection of God and the human displacement of God as the center of reality. In Adam, it is the separation and alienation from God as humanity; and as an individual, it is one’s purposeful disobedience to God’s will evidenced in concrete thought or act.”[6]
Another Puritan writer, Ralph Venning writes, “Whatever transgresses the law of God – in whole or in part – is therefore and therein a sin, whether it break an affirmative or a negative precept, i.e. whether it is the omission of good or the commission of evil.”[7]
The civilization we live in operates from a works-based righteousness worldview, and it permeates our whole lives. Even many Christians believe that God is going to weigh all of our bad against all of our good and judge us based on how the scale tilts. We tend to think of sin purely in terms of concrete acts, and as relative to other people or other, and worse, concrete acts, do we not? Yet that is just what Jesus taught against! The lustful thought is sin; the very attitude of hatred towards a brother or sister is sin.
One of my favorite theologians, Cornelius van Til, mentioned “practical atheism” in a lecture many years ago. That term struck me. In fact, it struck at the very heart of me because there have been times when I could be a practical atheist. Just as the term suggests, it is when a believer behaves, or maybe even thinks, in a way that, for all practical reasons, says “God doesn’t exist.” I think it’s more wishful thinking, really. When we do that which we ought not to do, or don’t do that which we ought, we are really kind of hoping that maybe, just maybe, there really isn’t a God who knows what I am or am not doing. But there is something else which goes beyond our wishful thinking, and that is the Holy Spirit, you know, the One “Who proceeds from the Father and the Son…” The Spirit confirms in the heart of every believer that there is a God, and yes, He does know what we think and do. We want to sometimes conveniently forget this truth which David puts forth in the Psalms (139):
Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Or where can I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there; If I make my bed in Sheol, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Thy hand will lead me and Thy right hand will lay hold of me.”[8]
Of course, David was giving us a reassuring thought – that no matter where we go, God is there; and inversely, there is nowhere we can go where God will not be. Yet there may be times when this is a dis-comforting thought. And, friends, when it becomes a dis-comforting thought, that is precisely when we need to check ourselves.
**********
Then Jesus began telling them this parable… Look back in your Bibles in Luke at vs. 6.
A certain man came looking for fruit on a fig tree which he had planted. For three years he had come to see if any fruit was being produced. And for three years, no fruit. “Cut it down,” he tells the vineyard-keeper.
God is the Judge. God is the One with the plan. It is His ways that are beyond our understanding; beyond our comprehension. It is His sovereign rule of the universe of which we are a part. If God deems it necessary to remove a fig-tree, He can remove it; He will remove it. Though sometimes it is, it is not always an act of judgement on His part; it is not always a matter of punishment; it can be an act of mercy. We know that God has taken good and godly people from this earth who seemed to be in the prime of doing good things. Why? Well, sometimes we are granted to know, oftentimes we are not. Sometimes, the tornado does hit the house of the kindest person in town. Why? We will find out eventually. Sometimes, a seemingly perfect and innocent child is taken from our families. Why? In due time, we will know.
It is easy to blame Satan for the bad things and praise God for the good things but in doing so we give Satan way too much power. Satan may cause the earthquake, but God is always the decisive cause of who perishes and who survives. If this were not true, then our God is impotent and not worthy of worship and praise. But we do know this, and that is that God does all things for the good of those who love Him (Rom 8:28; I Cor. 2:9). In everything that we may view as tragic with our worldly eyes, there is a truth that God uses these things to draw us closer to Himself whether it is natural disasters, man-made accidents, even sickness. J.C. Ryle writes, “If sickness in a wicked world can help to make [us] think of God and our souls, then sickness confers benefits on [all of us.] We have no right to murmur at sickness; we ought rather to thank God for it. It is a testimony to His power and rule.”[9]
The fig tree in Jesus’ parable was planted in the vineyard. A fig tree planted in a vineyard is always a symbol for Israel in the Bible. God had chosen Israel to be His nation, as we talked about earlier. And remember that Jesus is talking to Jews here. Israel is the unproductive tree taking up room, using up soil, and producing no fruit. A new paradigm is about to begin. God is getting ready to bring other trees into His vineyard. As Jesus is making His final trip to Jerusalem He tells them this parable. Perhaps the three years are the three years He has been teaching the Good News. For three years He has come to check for the fruit of repentance in Israel, and it is not to be found. But the vineyard-keeper asks for just one more year. Allegorically speaking, we are in that final year – the Last Days.
Jesus is inviting us all to view any tragedy as a warning; a warning to check ourselves; an invitation to take inventory of our faith and to ask
“What is the sin in my life?
“What am I holding on to that God demands I let go of?
“What is keeping me from bearing fruit and being productive as a witness to Christ?”
It is as if Jesus is asking, “How long will you persist in your sin?” “Like a thief in the night, your judgement will come; repent, or you will likewise perish.”
Paul minces no words when he says, “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (I Cor. 10:12). There is no sin to which you or I are invulnerable. Yet, the promise holds for all who are truly in Christ: there is no temptation to sin that all have not experienced in some form or another, but God is faithful and will not allow any of His children to be tempted beyond what they are able but will provide a way of escape with the temptation that they will be able to endure it (vs.13).
God provides the means, the ways, the grace, the forgiveness; He provides everything. Christ is the vineyard-keeper and as Jesus said, “I will dig around it; I will fertilize it.” All you have to do is call upon Him. And yet how often do we fail to do that very thing? It’s not easy, I’ll admit.
Brothers and Sisters, I urge you, as I urge myself – let us urge each other then as Trinty Methodist Church – to commit to praying for each other that we will live lives of true repentance and witness to our Lord’s marvelous saving grace. ~Amen
Let us pray:
Lord, God, Creator and Sustainer of all this, we thank You for Your Word, given to us for instruction, correction, and comfort. We thank You that there is no power of evil, not even Satan himself, who can exercise any power over Your good and perfect will. That nothing can happen that has not first come across your Heavenly desk is a comfort to all who believe in You. You give life, You take life; You establish churches, You close church doors; You put us on the sidelines for a time, and You revive us again. May we all live lives acknowledging Your divine right and will to do with us as You please.
In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.
[1] Hendricksen.
[2] Charles R. Swindoll, Swindoll’s Ultimate Book of Illustrations & Quotes (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998),
242.
[3] John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries Vol. XVI, Book 2, 151-152.
[4] Joel Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 530.
[5] Thomas Brooks, quoted in Beeke and Jones, A Puritan Theology (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 198.
[6] Stanley Grenz, ed., et. al., Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downer’s Grove, Ill: IVP, 1999), “sin.”
[7] Ralph Venning, The Sinfulness of Sin (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1669,2012), 25.
[8] Psalm 139:7-10, NASB.
[9] J. C. Ryle, Does God Use Sickness?, reprint (Pensacola: Chapel Library), tract. See also John Piper, Disaster, Sovereignty, and Mercy (Chapel Library).
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