I realized recently that I love to skip the difficult texts and comment on familiar, cozy, easy ones and breeze over or skip the tough ones. Today I stumbled on Luke 13 and the first 9 verses are extremely difficult. I decided to try to understand and unpack the mysteries and meaning of this God inspired text and I must say that it is hard. But here is my best go at it.
Apparently a handful of people came up to Jesus to inform him of an event that took place. Pilate killed some Galileans. Unfortunately, history doesn't help us to understand this better because there is not a historical account of this, and honestly I think a lot of commentators are confused by this text also. But let us take a simple stupid approach to this. Pilate killed some Galileans, some people decided to tell Jesus for whatever reason, then Jesus responds. That is the sequence of events in this text. 1,2,3. Many people have tried to pontificate about why the group tells Jesus and about the motivation behind the slaughter... but I would rather focus on the important response of Jesus. I don't think the text gives us enough facts to speculate why Pilate acted the way he did and really there are several logical reasons that the group might have felt the need to tell Jesus, one of which is because they might think that if He is the Messiah then he should do something about a defilement of the temple (sacrifices would be made at the holy temple in Jerusalem). Who knows?
Here is how Jesus responds, "Do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, NO!" In other words do you think that these Galileans were deserving of this harsh experience that passed through God's sovereign hand? Did they do something that made them even worse sinners than everyone else? Did they invoke God's wrath worse than anyone else? ... NOPE. Crap happens to the good and the bad. But here is what you should learn. "Unless you repent, you too will all perish (verse 3)." Then Jesus points out another tragic event, a tower falling on people. Did they do something to provoke God to anger? No. No differently than anyone else. So you should repent or you will be like those people. Actually worse... if you don't repent then you will die a second death(Revelation 2:11). You will actually be under the wrath of God and perish eternally. What you should learn from tragic events is that life is fleeting and then you stand before God. If you are not in right standing with him than you will also perish! But, worse than just dying on earth your soul will be cast into a lake of fire. So, we should repent... Take time right now to kneel before God and cast your troubles at the foot of the cross. Repent from your ways. Turn from your ugly sin and seek the Author and Perfecter of your faith. Have a healthy time of confession. Lay your soul bare before God. Repent or you will perish. There is nothing sweeter than loosing the chains of sin through repentance and running headlong into the arms of Jesus!
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