Luke 12:57-13:5

Transcript

00:00:00:12 – 00:00:25:28
Clint Loveall
Hey, friend. Thanks for being with us on Wednesday. As we go mid-week here and as we finish the 12th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, it’s not an easy finish. Some difficult words that Luke leaves for us at the end of the chapter here, though, chapter and verse, as you probably know, we’re added later, but as we get to it, we get to some some difficult verses here.

00:00:25:28 – 00:00:49:03
Clint Loveall
So jump in where chapter 12, verse 57, where Jesus is saying, and why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? Thus, when you go with your accuser before a magistrate on the way, make an effort to settle the case, or you might be dragged before the judge and the judge would hand you over to the officer and the officer throw you in prison.

00:00:49:08 – 00:01:33:50
Clint Loveall
I tell you, you will not get out until you’ve paid the very last penny. So I think this is one of the places where it’s helpful whenever you encounter a passage that seems hard to understand, probably a good first line of reaction is to read the passage ahead of it and maybe look at the passage behind it. But I think in this case we see a pretty good example of how reading the passage before can help point us in a direction So Jesus has just in the passage before this, called the people out for being hypocrites they know about.

00:01:33:52 – 00:02:09:41
Clint Loveall
He tells them, You say this when you see a cloud, you say, this when it’s hot, but you don’t understand spiritual things. And now he he encourages them. He warns them to make things right with their accuser. And he’s speaking at least his his approach here is to do that in an earthly level. If you have someone who has a complaint against you, try to make it right with them before you get a judge involved and before you run the risk, because if you don’t make it right, you’re going to be penalized.

00:02:09:41 – 00:02:45:18
Clint Loveall
You’re going to have to pay the full price of whatever you’ve done wrong. And clearly, the image here or the idea behind this is it is an encouragement and a challenge and a warning to people that the same is true in our relationship with God. Make things right. Don’t be hypocrites. See the truth of Jesus Christ. Remember, we saw here a condemnation even earlier in this chapter of people who may actually know that Jesus is what he says, but turned their back on him.

00:02:45:23 – 00:03:03:36
Clint Loveall
And and here, the sort of culmination of all of these these texts are a warning to make things right before it’s too late. And it fits in with this larger context of so many of these passages. Michael. And actually, I think a case could be made ties them together pretty well.

00:03:03:41 – 00:03:26:11
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. So one of the aspects here, when we take a look at this closer client is this reality that Jesus is drawing, as he so often does from a context that the people would understand. And in many cases, Jesus’s parables remain as easy for us to access as they did the very day that he taught them the story.

00:03:26:11 – 00:03:54:23
Michael Gewecke
For instance, of the Good Samaritan, the idea of an individual who has been robbed, laying alongside the road, the idea of upstanding people walking by, we can understand this. Even people who aren’t necessarily agricultural, we can understand how scandalous it is for a sower to sow seed on gravel paths, on good soil and on rocky ground. And we can see how naturally it’s in the good soil where that seed grows.

00:03:54:23 – 00:04:18:01
Michael Gewecke
So in so many cases, Jesus’s teachings, they draw from things that even today we can relate to, we can appreciate they’re part of our own lives and experience and they resonate with us. Then you have things like this. You have a very secular, and by secular I don’t mean in somehow opposed to faith things or opposed to sacred things.

00:04:18:01 – 00:04:55:19
Michael Gewecke
I just mean simply the example of being dragged before a judge, then the officer, and then being thrown in prison up here. This is a very practical sort of day to day world kind of illustration in the context of Jesus talking about the people’s relationship with God. And remember, here Jesus is critiquing all hypocrites. He’s critiquing all of the people of Israel who have come to the scriptures, who have been looking for the gospel, and then they fail to see the gospel standing right in front of them, that that communal critique is the thing that is in mind before this text is.

00:04:55:19 – 00:05:40:40
Michael Gewecke
So here, this example here, those who have the best access to what is right as what we see in verse 57, then we have this idea who would be foolish enough to go take a case that’s not been thought through, who would be foolish enough to go press a case that ultimately you’re going to lose? Because when you go do that, you’re going to find yourself eventually thrown into prison, as we have at the end of 58 here, and that every last penny will be paid a very sobering kind of spiritual, a forewarning, really, of what happens when the people are unwilling, not humble enough, not courageous enough to see and admit what’s true, to

00:05:40:40 – 00:05:56:04
Michael Gewecke
confess when they’re wrong, that hip autocracy has a very dark. And if you follow it to the end. And I think that Jesus is illustrating that in a way that would have resonated deeply with the people there. And if we’re willing to lean into it a little bit, I think also has a lesson for us.

00:05:56:09 – 00:06:27:46
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think that, you know, again, if you try to follow the threads, I think it’s helpful. What what has Jesus been doing throughout this chapter? It’s been full of warnings, it’s been full of difficult sayings. And as it now moves toward culmination and I think it actually most Bible scholars would say, would offer the argument that it culminates in the next passage, which is the first few verses of Chapter 13, and perhaps they should have been included with Chapter 12.

00:06:27:46 – 00:06:59:18
Clint Loveall
But regardless, the thematic presentation here that Luke has been giving is Jesus warning people? Is Jesus criticizing a lack of faith, a lack of awareness of of those who try to use Jesus or ignore who Jesus is. And now we have here this call make things right when you know that there is the chance of punishment, make things right.

00:06:59:18 – 00:07:41:37
Clint Loveall
So there’s an urgency that these words add to this ongoing chapter. Then we move into these, I would say final words of this section. Many scholars divide the book of Luke into chunks, and most often that division happens here at verse five of Chapter 13. So as we read these words, kind of ending a section here at the very time there were some present who told him about Galilean, whose blood pilot had mingled with sacrifices, he asked them, Do you think because these Galilean suffered in this way, they were worse sinners than the other Galilean?

00:07:41:42 – 00:08:18:18
Clint Loveall
No, I tell you. But unless you repent, you will perish as they did. Or those 18 who were killed when the Tower of Siloam fell on them. Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you. But unless you repent, you will perish as they did. And so, not surprisingly, in the gospel, if you know the gospel, not surprisingly, that Jesus kind of ends on the high point of the idea of repentance, make things right with your opponent, who may in fact be the one who is your judge.

00:08:18:18 – 00:08:49:45
Clint Loveall
And when you see judge, you often think God. And then here this, I think, a helpful corrective. Michael we probably need to unpack a couple of parts of this text, but one of them is the idea here. We’ll start backwards. The idea of repentance, the idea that if you refuse to repent, you will be judged. If you refuse to repent, there will be suffering, there will be punishment.

00:08:49:49 – 00:09:22:57
Clint Loveall
It is repentance. In fact, this this section in my Bible here is called repent or perish. There is a sense in which repentance is the door that leads us away from that which we deserve and leads us to grace. And Jesus here uses a couple of examples from the world around him to say there are things that happen and then there are things that happen when you don’t repent and be conscious of those because they’re under your control.

00:09:23:02 – 00:09:40:21
Michael Gewecke
One of the aspects here, and I don’t want to diverge too far because I think you’re hitting Clint right on the point where we need to be. This is this is the through line. This is indeed the wrap up this happening here. I think Clint’s summarizing it. Well, I just want to take a small divergence to point something out that we might miss.

00:09:40:26 – 00:10:07:19
Michael Gewecke
When you read a text like this, lots of times we get turned off by these details, like in verse one galleons whose blood pilot had mingled with their sacrifices. That doesn’t ring a bell for us. Or this idea of those who the Tower of Siloam fell on in verse four. These are not events in our newspaper, but I really think it’s worth pausing for a moment and realizing that this is real life, that this is people.

00:10:07:19 – 00:10:34:12
Michael Gewecke
And that day the stuff talked about at the coffee shop and on Main Street that humans were then what humans are today. The things in the press. And Lord knows today, whenever you’re watching this video, humanity is filled with those moments of brokenness. And we have things that are being talked about the day that we’re recording this. There’s there’s great violence and wars and rumors of war in Israel itself right now.

00:10:34:12 – 00:10:59:43
Michael Gewecke
And the reality is what Jesus was referencing here is likely that some form of the Leon’s were known to be very zealous people. And so there’s likely some kind of revolt. Likely some people were killed as they were making their way forward for some religious sacrifices. That was big. And in the news here, those are young people are those people who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on.

00:10:59:43 – 00:11:23:53
Michael Gewecke
That was in people’s mind. And Jesus turns to these these really negative situations and he undercuts the argument that was being made by the Jewish leaders to say, this has nothing to do with whether these individuals had sinned or not. I mean, it makes it very clear I’m Jesus acid. Verse two were these galleons who suffered? Were they in some way worse sinners than the others?

00:11:23:58 – 00:11:48:09
Michael Gewecke
No, they weren’t. That we can’t boil this down to a factor of whether or not you did better in keeping the law or not. That may be hard for us to resonate with if we don’t live with the same kind of cultural background as the Jews who in this day invested much of their lives, certainly most of their faith lives in the idea of keeping the law, keeping observance of the practices.

00:11:48:14 – 00:12:15:28
Michael Gewecke
But here’s the thing. At the end of this story, Jesus is saying, no, it’s not that their sinfulness caused this, but if you don’t repent, you will perish just as they did. The call is very clear that it doesn’t take a tower falling on you. It doesn’t take a pilot getting a hold of you. All it takes is you having an unwillingness to repent at the proclamation of the gospel, an unwillingness to change age.

00:12:15:41 – 00:12:35:58
Michael Gewecke
When you encounter Jesus in your life, that will be a turning point. That will be a moment, that will institute a kind of perishing that goes far beyond the accidents or the pain or the or the unexplainable horrible stuff of life. That is the choice you get to make. And Jesus is making that point. Clearly.

00:12:36:03 – 00:12:58:18
Clint Loveall
If you’ve been with us for a while, you know that Michael and I have promised you that we do our best when we leave the main path of the text to tell you that we’re doing that. And I think, Michael, we have to say that at its core, this is not a text about why bad things happened. This isn’t that lesson.

00:12:58:22 – 00:13:33:54
Clint Loveall
Having said that, though, there is a helpful corrective here because whenever we look at the tragedies of life, particularly that involve other people, there is a temptation to look upon them with judgment. Did they deserve it? Did they not deserve it? Is this somehow intended to punish them? Is this what’s happening here? And when we apply ourself to those questions, the warning here from Jesus is that it will often lead us away from our own spiritual awareness.

00:13:33:59 – 00:14:07:14
Clint Loveall
So for these people to look at the Galilean or those who were killed in the falling of the tower and ask questions philosophically about were they, oh, they must have been sinners, if that happened to them, did they deserve it? Did they not deserve it? Jesus is saying, look, that those judgments aren’t yours to make. He also, I think, is insinuating against the religion of his culture that there are things that simply happen that sometimes you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.

00:14:07:19 – 00:14:41:30
Clint Loveall
And that’s what it comes down to. And because we live in a world like that that is uncertain and sometimes dangerous, it is all the more important to tend to one’s spiritual health through the path of repentance. Then, on any given day, these kind of accidents could take one’s life and that is a sense of urgency to make sure that one is right with their judge, that one has tried to settle, that one has repented.

00:14:41:34 – 00:15:09:16
Clint Loveall
And so, again, hard language here, a hard lesson. But I find it fascinating that if we buy this idea of Luke being divided into sections and I do that this is where this section culminates with the idea of repentance that seems like a very Luke and a very Jesus way to end the section. And so I think there is a good word for us here, though.

00:15:09:16 – 00:15:12:49
Clint Loveall
It’s a that it’s a hard one and a difficult one to hear.

00:15:12:54 – 00:15:37:21
Michael Gewecke
One of the downsides of doing the study the way that we do it, where we don’t take very large chunks and we reflect on them together each time we do a study is that we maybe missed the whole context and it’s not been very long ago. I think maybe two videos from today you’d have to go look. But I’m just going back to Luke 12, verse 49 in this section.

00:15:37:21 – 00:15:56:22
Michael Gewecke
I remember us talking in that video clip where we were talking about, you know, don’t look at this idea of division within the household. Don’t look at that as permission to go out and create, create division, Don’t see division and hostility and say, well, I know I’m doing something right because everyone’s fighting me, that that’s not what was intended in the text.

00:15:56:36 – 00:16:19:27
Michael Gewecke
And we made the point of it then. But just literally a couple verses later, don’t make the mistake here that at the end of the day, the point Jesus lands on is not that we are going to learn whether we’re right or wrong by the stuff that happens to us. What we’re going to learn is whether or not we choose to repent.

00:16:19:31 – 00:16:43:21
Michael Gewecke
That is the thing that at all turns on. It’s whether or not you in your own spirit, are open to the humble task of seeing where you error confessing it and then turning to literally go into another direction. That’s the cost of discipleship. And that speaks today. That’s the cost for your discipleship and for my discipleship and our discipleship.

00:16:43:31 – 00:17:19:28
Michael Gewecke
It’s bigger than just us as individuals. That’s what it means to be church. It’s why we seek to do this work together. But that said, it was also the cost that day. And for the earliest Christians who received this text, it was a reminder to them that they too were called to repent, that they too were called to in the face of hostility, in the face of adversity, in the face of things that were, quite frankly, often unexplainable and just simply horrible situation, that all that was asked of them is to turn and repent, to follow.

00:17:19:28 – 00:17:41:45
Michael Gewecke
And if they were willing to do that, then this is a word of hope. You know, sometimes we get wrapped up in Scripture has hard words. Jesus certainly has hard teachings, not trying to take away from that. But but I am suggesting that if a Christian can read this in context of the whole message of what Jesus is teaching here, this does function in the Christian community in a helpful way.

00:17:41:45 – 00:17:56:13
Michael Gewecke
It helps remind us of our human fragility. It helps remind us you’re not perfect, you’re not eternal. It’s only the grace of God who holds us in eternity. And repentance is an essential part of the Christian life when we know that.

00:17:56:18 – 00:18:21:04
Clint Loveall
And certainly you should always be careful to try and build a theology on a single verse or a single passage. And I would tell you, you should not build a theology of why things happen based on these verses. Having said that, I also think we should not miss Jesus answer to his own question. Do you think the Galilean were worse?

00:18:21:09 – 00:18:48:36
Clint Loveall
Do you think those who were killed by the tower were worse? No. I tell you that Jesus clearly answers in this case. That is a that is an that would be an error. To assess this situation that way would be wrong. Now, is that true? In every situation you could find other Bible passages that indicate a different kind of thing.

00:18:48:41 – 00:19:21:11
Clint Loveall
But Jesus says as pertains to these situations, I tell you, no, that’s not why they happened. That’s not the result. That wasn’t the what’s happening. That’s not the back story or the hidden reality here. And that matters because it does mean that we have to be very careful when we look at tragedies in life and try to ascribe meaning and direction and try to say with confidence what God has or hasn’t done in them.

00:19:21:16 – 00:19:56:11
Clint Loveall
We should, as Christian people, do that very humbly, very cautiously, maybe even refrain from that in some cases. And people have been hurt by that kind of language in the past. And I think that it bears pointing out here that Jesus in in these situations says, no, that is exactly not what happened. And so that that at least gives us the knowledge that the question is more complex than it might seem on the surface.

00:19:56:22 – 00:20:23:12
Michael Gewecke
And maybe a pastoral word towards that. If you feel like if you feel like the situations in your life feel targeted, if you if you feel like the adversity that you’re facing is connected to a fault or error that’s happened to you, there’s obviously a reality of consequence when we do one thing and another thing happens because of that, that’s one thing.

00:20:23:16 – 00:20:47:36
Michael Gewecke
But I’ve had pastoral conversations where people today connect this very same thing that Jesus is addressing. You know, my life was hard. I did these things and now I’m paying the price for that as those words have been said. And if that’s how you feel, I think it’s worth knowing you’re not alone. That doesn’t make you unique amongst this cohort of humanity.

00:20:47:36 – 00:21:08:40
Michael Gewecke
We all have doubts. We all have struggles, especially difficult seasons. But here this that it’s the call to repentance that Jesus expects that something deeply within our ability, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, by the grace of Christ, you are able to respond to Jesus. And that’s what He asks. He doesn’t ask for you to change the past.

00:21:08:40 – 00:21:35:11
Michael Gewecke
He doesn’t ask for you to be a different person than what you were. And so if you find yourself in a circumstance in which you you’re bow down and you’ve connected that to something in the past, maybe this is an opportunity for you to give that up. Maybe that’s a way you can let go. Maybe that’s a thing that you can give yourself permission to hear what Jesus has to say to you here, which is repent, repent and turn, follow me.

00:21:35:20 – 00:21:43:18
Michael Gewecke
And that’s all that he asks. And and sometimes maybe that’s the first step that we need to take to find our way out of that valley.

00:21:43:22 – 00:21:53:57
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think that’s well-said, said Michael. The Scriptures are far more interested in moving forward than they are looking backward, and I think this points us in that direction.

00:21:54:01 – 00:22:07:06
Michael Gewecke
We’re glad that you’re with us, certainly as we come to this sort of signpost and turning point. I hope it’s been helpful. Certainly gives a very you relate if you found it’s meaningful so others find it and we will see you tomorrow as we continue on the study. Thanks for being with us.