Key verse: "Unless you repent, you will all
perish."
Luke 13:3
Job's friends would have benefited from the reading today.
It's not just two-year-olds who ask the question, "WHY?" Built into
all of us is a strong desire to understand, especially when what we are
experiencing doesn't make sense.
Why did so and so get cancer? Why did my car break down,
especially when I don't have the money to pay for it? Why divorce? Why am I
suffering? We tend to think that if we are good Christians, walking in God's
will, bad things won't happen to us because, God has promised to protect us.
Right?
When the inevitable happens, we almost immediately look for
a cause. I must have sinned somehow. God must be displeased with me for some
reason. The whole book of Job is based on this type of thinking. Job has lost
everything and his, "friends," set about accusing him of every kind
of sin under the sun to break Job down and force him to confess, so that he can
save his life by getting right with God.
Evidently, Jesus' contemporaries had the same mind set.
Those Galileans who had their own blood mixed with their sacrifice,
contaminating it, must have done something really bad. The men who died in the
construction accident must have also been evil since they weren't blessed with
the privilege of dying in their own beds at an old age.
Jesus says to His audience, as God said in the book of Job,
"NO! They are no different than you, and if you do not repent, you too
will perish."
Death is the great equalizer. None of us will escape its
grasp. It is the natural consequence of our sinful nature. There is only one
way to triumph over this enemy of us all and that is through Jesus.
Again, as with the rich fool from yesterday; none of us know
our future. We may grow old, we may die young. We may have a peaceful end, we
may suffer intense misery, but death will meet us all in the end.
It's not our job to point a finger at anyone to affix blame to
them.
We are all guilty. The
understanding is that simple. We suffer because we live in a fallen, sinful
world. We are all equal in the guilt of sin. What we experience as individuals
may look different on the surface, but our end is the same, in the physical
world anyway. The only way out is to repent, to choose to give up a life of
sin, to claim Jesus as Lord of your life and hold on to His victory over death
itself. Then, with Him as Lord, no matter what you face in this life, He will
never leave you and at the point of death, He will take you to Himself to live
with Him in glory. Because of Him, you can face it all and be victorious in the
end. This doesn't mean that any particular circumstance is easy, but it does
mean that you are not alone.
Hymn: "Because He Lives"
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