Dead Ends and Roundabouts

Luke 13:1-9

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Let's pray. Father. May your will be done, Jesus. May your word be proclaimed. Spirit, may your work be accomplished in us.
We pray. Amen. Well, we are about halfway through this Lenten journey. And if you guys remember, just a few weeks ago, we started this Lenten journey on the first Sunday of Lent where we looked at Jesus life in the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan and how he overcame the the power and temptation of Satan by being filled with the Holy Spirit and by the God's word. And this season, in this Lenten of this journey, this Lenten journey that we are walking with is always meant to go stride by stride alongside Jesus as he goes to the cross.
We too, bearing our cross, go with him to die to ourselves, to die and kill this old man flesh and to live by the power and life of the Holy Spirit. That's what this Lenten journey is. And that's where we began. Then last week we took a look at what happens when a check engine light comes on when it seeks to tell us to pull over, that there's a warning, that it's deterring our journey. But instead we learn from Jesus that we press on and trust in him as he leads us to our destination.
Well, today's the third Sunday of Lent. We have just a few more weeks until we arrive at our destination, which is Easter Resurrection Sunday. And what is it that we find ourselves in this week? Well, according to the Gospel lesson, we have found ourselves to have driven in the wrong direction. We have come to a dead end.
And now we find that the road that we are currently on is deadly and dangerous and dark. So what are we to do? How do we navigate this journey moving forward? I don't know if you guys have been paying attention very much, but there's a lot throughout our liturgy that we have began to discover that it speaks into this very week. Listen to the confession that we all partook of this morning.
Listen to how our sin has caused us to go in the wrong direction. This is what the confession liturgy says. We confess that we have strayed from you and turned aside from your way. We are misled by pride, for we see ourselves pure when we are stained and great when we are small. We have failed in love, neglected justice, and ignored your truth.
That's the confession of our sin. And that's where we find ourselves. We have, in this Lenten journey, probably already begun to take that steering wheel. Cause we're in the driver's seat. And we ventured off the path from following Jesus to the cross.
And this path has become dark and has led to a dead end. And because we've driven ourselves here, and because it's completely dark and deadly and dangerous, we can't find our way out. So what do we do? Well, Jesus gives us these warnings about doing this. And Jesus also gives us some solutions.
Look at the first five verses. And this. This is what happens when people begin to report all kinds of current affairs that are taking place in their day. Jesus is there teaching them. And as we have pulled off for this little rest area and this Lenten journey, this is what Jesus offers to us by way of some lessons for the road.
One, that the road is deadly. So Luke, chapter 13. Now, on the same occasion, there were some present who reported to Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Now, let me just break you and stop you here and understand what is going on. So it is apparent to everyone in the culture that Pilate has killed some Galileans who have gone to the temple to offer sacrifices on behalf of their sin.
And when they go and do this, Pilate, for whatever reason, because of his evil intentions and desires, has caused them to die. He has sprinkled their blood alongside the blood of their sacrifices. And people are reporting this to Jesus now because Jesus is very smart and he understands why they're reporting this to him. Jesus then interrupts their reporting and says, so do you suppose that these Galileans who died at the hands of an evil dictator when they offered sacrifice, do you suppose that their sins were greater than all the other Galileans who gathered that day or at other times to offer sacrifices to God? And Jesus says, no, these Galileans who met this fate by this evil dictator were not more sinful than all the rest of us, but they serve as an example to all of us that unless we repent of our sin and believe in in Jesus, then we too are going to suffer the same fate.
And then Jesus offers back another example. This time it's an accident. A tower in Siloam where the pool where the man born blind was told to go and wash a tower had fell on 18 people. And they met their death that way, by an accident. So.
So this is just an accident. This wasn't by the hand of some kind of evil dictator or some kind of evil that lurks in the world, but this is an accident happening. And so Jesus says, do you suppose that these were worse culprits, these 18 people, than all the other people in Jerusalem who didn't meet their death that day? Because of this accident. He says, no, no, they were an example.
That event serves as an example that unless you repent and believe, we all will find ourselves in the exact same situation. And here's the reality and the lesson for the road. That when you steer your life and you journey down a path, you're gonna find yourselves in dangerous and dark places and there's gonna be no hope or way out for you. You can't dig yourself out of this road. You can't turn around and drive yourself out of here.
Because the world itself is riddled with darkness, is riddled with death. And Jesus is teaching us that all these events that take place and happen all over the world, whether it be by the hands of others or whether it be by a sheer accident, that it doesn't matter who it happens to, but who it happens to, serves as an example for us that today is the day of grace and salvation. So repent and believe that just because you haven't found yourself engaged and confronted face to face with death yet, doesn't mean that you're not going to. So use this moment of grace for yourself. That an accident hasn't come to you yet as the opportunity to repent so that you could be saved.
So that when death comes crouching at your door, you can stare it in the face and say, death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting? To live is to live to Christ, to die is gain. It's a win win situation because you repent and believe and trust in Jesus Christ. See from since Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve invited sin and death to wreak havoc in all the world.
And this is where we need to get our understanding made right. There are many times where I'll go and visit a hospital. The hospital and people in particular situations. I listen to all our prayer requests. And what our prayer requests often have to do is somebody is has cancer, somebody has some kind of devastating thing taking place in their lives.
And we want to pray to God to save them. We want to pray to God to heal them. We want to pray to God to restore life back to them. But the reality still stands. We are living in a world where death is powerful and no one can overcome it themselves.
That we have to cry out to God, cause death is a mobster. His name's Tony the Shovel. And he wants to make sure that everybody goes slim swimming with the fishes. And when Tony shows up at your door and starts knocking, there's nothing you can do. Fear and anxiety start setting in.
And we feel that when we get those Words of you might have an incurable disease, or you might have cancer, or you know what? This is going on in your life. Or maybe somebody you know has experienced a horrific accident at work and. And they found their death. Who could save us from such a deadly life?
And oftentimes I hear, when I go to those hospitals and I find that people are like, why God? Why did you do this? Why have you allowed these things to happen to me? They blame God. All of a sudden, they all.
They get this understanding. They believe in God, but they believe in him wrongly, as if he is the one that invited sin and death into the world. But it's you and me. God says, it's not me, it's you. It's all of us.
We have invited sin and death into the world. But you know what God has done? God says, you've invited this. You've enslaved yourself to sin and death and you can't break its chains. But I have come to set the captors free.
Death knocks on your door. But do you know who knocks on the door of death and says, excuse me, you have no power over me. As a matter of fact, you are my dog and I will place you on a leash. And Jesus himself vanquishes death in his resurrection. And now the bars to which you are behind, that death holds you captive, he opens and breaks the bars.
He breaks your fetters. He unbinds you. And he can lead you out of darkness and out of death because he possesses the power. There's no better way, and don't take my word for it, but there's no better way to express this than the way the Psalms do in Psalm 107. Will you just listen to these words and let it give you the right theology about what to believe when bad things are happening in this world and seeing the world through the lens of Scripture.
That this is not our home, that this is a place of darkness, that this is a place that moves towards death. But there is one that moves you towards life. There is one who can deliver you from this death and deliver you to eternal life. Listen to the Psalm and make it your prayer. Make it your theology this morning.
Psalm 107, beginning with verse 10. There are those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death. All of us are there. We have driven us ourselves here, and we're at a dead end. Prisoners in misery and chains.
That's all of us. Because they had rebelled against the words of God and spurned the counsel of the Most High. We thought we can know and Be more wise than God himself. We got this God. We'll do it on our own.
Therefore he humbled their heart with labor. They stumbled and there was none to help. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble. He saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of the darkness and the shadow of death and broke their bands apart.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his loving kindness and for his wonders to the sons of men. For he has shattered the gates of bronze and cut bars of iron asunder. Fools, because of their rebellious way and because of their iniquities were afflicted. Their souls abhorred all kinds of food, and they drew near to the gates of death. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses.
He sent his word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his loving kindness and for his wonders to the sons of men. Let them also offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and tell of his works with joyful sacrifice. Singing it is such a good picture and exactly what the whole point of our Gospel lesson this morning when we come face to face with darkness, death and a dead end road that we have put ourselves in there, what do we do? Jesus, how do we understand the things that are unraveling in this world that are just wreaking havoc in our lives?
We all are faced with people and loved ones that are being devastated by all kinds of diseases and all kinds of destruction. We too are experiencing this at some level in our lives. Jesus, what do we do? What do we do? Is it because that the Baptist church, if these things happen to the Baptist church down the road, is because they're greater culprits than we are because it hasn't happened to us yet?
No. Jesus says it's not because there's greater sin in the world and so they're getting what they deserve. It's because all the world is riddled with sin and death and you can't save yourselves. Jesus said so the solution to finding yourself in a deep, dark and deadly and dangerous place is to turn around, is to repent. Is to cry out to Jesus and say, can you deliver me from this place that I've driven into?
Jesus says repent. That's the solution. But before we move on to this glorious encouragement that Jesus offers us and how we can get out of the situation, let me just again reiterate this idea that it is not God who is causing these bad things to happen. Bad things happen because you and I are sinful and rebellious and we've invited it in to rule and reign in this life. And Jesus came to save it, to redeem it, to to subdue it.
And he has done so on the cross and in his resurrection. And so these moments where the sun rises again on this beautiful day, the fact you're sitting there as your eyes are closing and giving itself to sleep, as you're breathing, as your heart is pumping, do you know you need to be paying more attention to that than all the dire things that are taking place in the world? If you were to get a toll, a death toll of all the deaths that are occurring right now in this moment, and you compare that to all the opportunities of life that God is allowing, you will find that there is more grace being given today than there are graves that are being dug.
And so your understanding of reality needs to be this. You are given more opportunities of grace to repent and believe than accidents and evil taking place over the world. Pay attention to these acts of grace that God opens his hands and satisfies and gives you opportunity. This is why the scriptures say to you, today is the day of salvation. Because tomorrow an accident can happen.
Because tomorrow evil might come knocking on your door toning the shovel, might show, show up and make you go swimming with the fishes. You don't know. And Jesus says, so repent today. God is loving and kind and he's giving you an opportunity of grace. And the only time you come running to him is opportunities for the grave.
Today he gives you grace. And that's what the psalmist was writing. They cried out to Jesus and God delivered them. He heard them and he healed them with his words. And they turned from mourning to dancing.
People who have experienced this grace and used this grace as an opportunity to repent and to believe in Jesus, don't just mumble through the songs of praising Jesus name. They shout them out, they worship, they come. And if I can just offer that, that's a great reason to come through those doors on a Sunday morning, whether it's raining, whether it's the sun shining. Because there's been many opportunities of grace poured out and shed for you to come to repent yet again and to live to Jesus Christ. It's a great day to say, jesus, you've saved me again.
This morning I woke up, my heart is beating and you have allowed it so. And I will use this moment of grace to speak of your loving kindness and of the opportunity that you afford me to be set free from this body of Death.
But not only have we found ourselves in a dangerous and deadly place, but we also find ourselves in the dark, and there's no way out that we can see. When you drive yourselves to this dead end, when you've ventured off the path that you were meant to take and you can't find your way back, how do I get back if you can't see? Have you ever been in a cave when all the lights go out? You can't see the hand in front of your face. It's a scary and sobering moment.
But what do you do when all other lights go out? Jesus says, turn around and you will see the only light there ever was in this world. Because Jesus is the light of the world, and he offers this parable as an encouragement to us. And he began telling this parable. A man had a fig tree which he had planted in the vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it, and he did not find any.
And he said to the vineyard keeper, behold, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree without finding any. Cut it down. Why does it even use up the ground? And the vineyard keeper, he answered and said to him, let it alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put fertilizer and put in fertilizer. And if it bears fruit this next year, fine.
If not, then cut it down. The road is dark and you can't find your way back in the right direction. Your efforts are fruitless. But praise be to Jesus that He is our light and can guide us in the right direction. But to steal the phrase from our culture, in order to get out of that dead end road, you're going to have to give Jesus the wheel.
I don't usually like to throw away those phrases. Sometimes they annoy me. But that is the most appropriate to say when you're in the dead end. When you've been taking this Lenten journey, I told you at the beginning, you can't travel it in your own strength. You can't be sitting in the driver's seat.
Because when you're sitting in the driver's seat, you. You always find yourself down the dark and lonely, dangerous road. See, we're following Jesus to the cross. Jesus has to be at the helm. Jesus has to be at the will.
He knows the way, he knows the truth, and he is the light. And if we're all going to venture with him in this Lenten journey, he has to be steering us in the direction, not ourselves. And that's what he tells us. We're stuck in this dead end. It's dark, we can't find our way out.
He says, turn around. And we turn around and we see him. He says, scoot over. And this is exactly what he tells his father. He says, dad, they're not producing fruit yet.
But I'm not done. We're not there yet. If you want to talk about a journey and a road trip, if you're taking any road trip with a kid, what's the number one question you will always be asked? That just drives you batty. Are we there yet?
And I always tell Bo, yeah, we're there. We just pulled in. And he's like, no, we're still driving. Exactly. Quit asking that question.
But that's the question. That's the question. We're at a dead end. Are we there yet? We're nowhere there.
Jesus says, this is the truth. You're not there yet. We're not at the cross. We're halfway. And you somehow figured a way to come into a dead end.
But I'm here, I'm going to drive you out. And this. Pay attention to the parable. For three years, which is the length of Jesus ministry, no fruit has been seen. But Jesus isn't done yet.
He says, father, wait. Let them alone. Let me take the wheel. Let me drive them to the cross. Let me shed my blood so that it can fertilize their ground.
Let me prune them with my righteousness and let them get another year. And this fourth year, this fourth year is lived by having the power and the ministry of Christ applied particularly to, particularly to our lives. We're not there yet. But Jesus says, I'm patient now. Let me work my work in you.
And a tree that wants to bear fruit repents and says, I'm going to stop rejecting this ministry of Christ and I want to start absorbing it so that by the end of next year, when the Father comes looking for fruit, you can be found bearing fruit because of the ministry and work of Jesus applied to you in your life. That's the parable. That's the parable is stop refusing Christ and start repenting from yourself and turning towards him so that you can begin to absorb him, so he could begin to lead you out of this dead end road, out of this dangerous road and give you the confidence to now walk with him, give you the power to now walk with him as he leads you out, as he steers you towards the end of putting that old man flesh who likes to cling to your leg as you just slowly, like follow Jesus put him to death. That's where it's going, death. Hey, Tony, the shovel.
You want somebody get this guy in the grave so that a new guy can be resurrected in Jesus Christ? That's the end game. That's where we're heading in this Lenten journey. And we can only go there if Jesus is taking the wheel and driving you the rest of the way. We're halfway through.
You're probably already feeling that. I don't know if I can keep on going this way or I don't wanna do this anymore. I've been fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, and when it comes by dinner time, I've been cranky. Melissa could testify to this. I've been cranky.
And I spent from three to five. Five on Friday was when I got to eat and I was so ready. I had done prepped the food pantry and again I was struggling because they had king size Milky Way bars that I was just like, oh, man, I would love to put those in my mouth. But I was like, I'm fasting. I got to get rid of these little selfish fleshly desires.
I'm struggling, I'm struggling, I'm struggling. And so what did I do? I Pinterest real quick how to make a Texas sheet cake, both chocolate and vanilla. And I spent two hours baking because at 5 o'clock I'm going to feast. That's what I did.
That's how I spent it. But you know what I didn't learn? That's me driving. That's how I deal with fasting. And Jesus says, you know what I forgot to do is in my fasting, I'm supposed to be praying more.
And I wasn't praying. I started baking. Had I been praying, I would have got through that and my soul would have been fed. And instead I got a stomachache that night from eating the Texas tea cake, both chocolate and vanilla, and leading my son Beau into making his belly his God. Now, I use that because I don't know what you're doing on this Lenten journey.
Maybe some of you are reading more scripture, maybe some of you are praying more. And those are great things to discipline your body and to move along with Christ. But we need to be ridding ourselves of other things, though. That's the whole purpose of Lent, is that we're giving up things. We're letting go of these sinful habits in our lives and embracing the spiritual habits that we need to do.
We're relenting ourselves of the sin that lives, and we're Living to the spirit of God, and we can't do it in our own strength.
You're never going to overcome the flesh that way. You have to let Jesus empower you, to provide you, to lead you out of this journey. And it begins. Jesus says with repentance, repentance is just turning around. All of us are walking away from God.
And he says, repent. Because when we repent, it's not that God was God. It seems like God's not there. Where are you, God? These bad things are happening.
And Jesus is saying, repent. Turn around. There he is right there. He takes you by the hand and says, now, let's go. And he steers you to the right direction.
That is repentance. It's not doing it in your own strength. It's repenting and surrendering to Jesus. Take the wheel. I want out of this place.
Is that good? Because I've came for that purpose and that reason. Follow me.
We're all in need of this fourth year ministry of Jesus applied to our life. We need to absorb all his work in our lives to grow in grace and a knowledge of who he is. And that's what the Lenten journey every year is going to be. Moving forward, we get to engage in this activity as a family together through the Lenten season to say, okay, here's another year, another season where we are going to absorb the fertilizer of Jesus blood so that we can produce fruit that the Father desires to see and have and feast upon in our lives. So that's where we are in the Lenten journey.
Get over yourself. Give yourself up, cry out to Jesus and let him get in the driver's seat and get you out of this dead end and onto the right path that leads to a victory over death. Repent and believe and trust in Him. Let's pray.