Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture Reading

Introduction

We considered last week in some detail the importance of the fact that Christ the Saviour had appeared in Israel, and He was calling all of his listeners to respond appropriately to who He was.

In one sense, Christ had been urging His hearers to carefully consider all that He had been doing and saying in their presence, and to respond appropriately in light of who He had clearly demonstrated himself to be… God’s chosen Messiah.

Last time we were in Luke, we considered the parable that Christ spoke concerning the importance of settling accounts with the judge before you reach the court.

If someone is taking you to court, because you are guilty of some crime, try to settle before you get before the judge.

He used this picture / parable within the context of the present times.

He had spoken to them about being able to interpret the physical conditions, like the weather patterns.

But his point was that they were failing to interpret the more important spiritual realities that were unfolding around them.

And So Christ followed that observation and “rebuke” up with the parable of the judge in order to emphasize the fact that a time was coming for judgment.

They would be brought before a judge.

It was essential that they do what was necessary, everything within their strength and power, to make things right with their adversary before they would be brought before the judge.

Our present passage fits well into that context, and has Luke recording for us some interactions between Jesus and certain members of the crowd that brought some devastating news to Jesus.

And this news was not merely news for the sake of news, but they were drawing conclusions from the events that had unfolded.

And Christ addresses these crowds particularly in light of the conclusions that they are drawing.

Notice the very clear link between the preceding passage and our present passage.... Luke begins with the words in verse 1, “Now there were some present at that time...”

In other words, Luke is making a direct connection from the previous account to this present discourse.

As we come to consider this text, notice firstly with me...

1.

The Need for Repentance (v.1-5)

In verse 1, we read of a particular group of people bringing this terrible account to Jesus…

Luke records in this verse some particular details on an event that we have no other information on apart from this passage of Scripture.

The account of Pilate mixing the blood of Galileans with the sacrifices being offered up is found nowhere else in the historical literature that we have available, and so this is really all the information we have on hand.

Keep in mind, however, that Luke is a phenomenal historian - and he is regarded as such by both Biblical scholars and secular scholars.

And so we can certainly take this account is an actual event in history.

What is clear from the description that Luke gives in terms of what was reported to JEsus is that this man Pilate, who was very well known for his exceeding rage and cruel behaviour, gave orders and instructions for a group of people who were offering up sacrifices to be put to death.

The victims of this act of rage by Pilate were Galileans.

Given that they were offering sacrifices on the altar, it is likely that these were Jewish people that lived in Galilee and had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, probably for one of the Jewish festivals, and were in the process of offering sacrifices when the order came for them to be put to death, evidenly in a gruesome manner.

It may have been that these were zealots, opposed to the Roman rule, which then led Pilate to act as he did.

But the fact is, and what is clear from this text before us, is that as they were put to death for whatever acts that had committed, their own blood flowed out and was mingled with the blood of the animals that were being sacrificed on the altar at that time.

The very thought of this is gruesome!

But it happened in front of other groups of people, and these people started to speculate about what possibly these Galileans must have done in order to have this treatment come their way.

What had these Galileans done in order to earn such disfavour from God Almighty that their own blood was sacrificed on the altar!?

That is the question!!

The people that were bringing this account to Jesus and talking to him about it were viewing this incidient not merely as a reflection of Pilates instability and callousness, or perhaps a kind of sad but typical eventuality of life in a fallen and sin-cursed world, but rather as an evidence that these people’s lives had been lost due to some grievious sin or guilt on their side.

They were viewing what had happened to these Galileans as an act of Divine disfavour.

They saw these Galileans as those who must have been far more evil than all others around them.

There are some important things that we need to consider in this regard.

Firstly, we must acknowledge and confess that sometimes these kinds of thoughts run through our own minds when we see evil, harm, or misfortune coming upon the lives of others.

We can tend to have these same ideas in our minds.

I will come in due course to looking at this in a more detailed manner from the Scriptures.

It is something that we must give further consideration to.

But before we do that, I want us to keep in mind that part of the reason that these people were bringing this report to Jesus was because of their own sense of self-righteousness.

This is really what Jesus had come into the world in order to address.

And Christ had come to the Jewish people, and he was confronting them as the Jewish people, those who claimed to know God, about their own sin and need for repentance.

The problem in this instance was a sense of pride and self-righteousness.

That was most extremely evidenced by the Pharisees and the other religious leaders of the day.

They certainly saw themselves as holy and righteous, and were very proud of their righteous lives.

But even the people from the crowd were now in some measure comparing themselves to those that had perished in this event, and were feeling quite vindicated and glad that they had not perished, and thus thought themselves to be okay.

They were jumping to wrong conclusions.

They were failing to recognise their own need for the Gospel.

They were thus in danger of this judgment before the judge, if they did not respond appropriately.

And so Jesus responds to their thinking.

Immediately Jesus perceived that this was their manner of thinking in their hearts, and he confronts them on this.

Do you think that they were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because of this that happened?

This is a question we need to ask ourselves.

I’ve heard people in my life, those who profess to be Christians, suggesting that because of some bad happening to a person or to their business, or something to that effect, that they are worse people.

God is judging them.

But notice Jesus’ response over here.

Jesus responds with an emphatic no!!

His point is simple.

The blood of these Galileans that was spilled was most certainly not spilled in this way because they were in some way more evil than others.

The reasoning and the motivation behind this kind of sad situation was not because God was bringing His judgment on them for sin.

What Jesus is countering in terms of their thinking (within this particular context) is the fact that the extent of the pain / severity of the punishment that came upon them necessarily was linked to the extent of their own sinfulness.

That was the thinking, and that is what Jesus contradicts.

It’s very important that we see this… that Jesus was really confronting an issue of pride in their own hearts.

He was immediately confronting what he knew to be a self-righteous disposition within them.

As Jewish people, they ought to have known this to be the case.

They would have been familiar with that man named Job, that was recorded for them in their Scriptures.

He was a righteous man in the eyes of God, and yet he was very severely afflicted in his life.

This had nothing to do with his lack of rigteousness, but was in fact on account of his righteousness that he endured that suffering.

But this crowd was not paying attention to that.

They were seeking to justify themselves through a comparison with others.

As they do this, Jesus immediately uses this as an opportunity to call those very people to repentance.

He essentially says to them, you think that you’re okay?

Simply by comparing yourselves with others, whose situation you’re actually misunderstanding?

No, says Christ.... “Unless you repent, you too will all perish...”

When Christ says here that “you too will all perish,” some have thought that to refer to a specific event where a similar kind of destruction would come upon them.

Some have thought that this may refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD.

But that’s not the point of what Jesus is saying in this case.

He’s simply making the argument that unless each person repents of their own sin before God, they too will perish.

God’s judgment will come upon them.

Keep in mind the preceding text from Luke’s Gospel.

With this in mind, Jesus now points their attention to another incident that had unfolded in order to re-emphasize the point that he’s making.

Christ now brings another example by referring to the tower of Siloam that had collapsed on a certain number of people.

Siloam was a place that was within walled city of Jerusalem.

There was a pool in Siloam.

Recall from John 9 that there was a man born blind, and JEsus told this man to go and wash in the pool of Siloam in order to have his sight restored, which then happened.

And so this was the place.

A place in Jerusalem with a pool, or some kind of bath, and a tower that stood there at that place.

In Nehemiah, when Nehemiah was repairing the walls of Jerusalem, we read....

So this is the place where this happened.

But the tower that had been built them had collapsed at a particular point in time, and 18 people had died in the collapse of this tower.

I really appreciate the realness of this example.

This was a real life event… probably that had happened quite recently within the lives of these very people.

This was an event that as Christ mentioned it, would have touched a sensitive spot within them as they called to their minds the destruction and devastation.

Something like if you mention 9/11 to people who have very vivid memories of that event of September 11th… even for us who only viewed the events through TV....

But Jesus makes the same point about those who had died in that tower collapsing.

If the question had arisen in their minds at all… were they guilty of something extreme, something particular?

Jesus was now telling them that they were jumping to the wrong conclusions.

In fact, Jesus makes it explicitly clear that they are incorrect in their thinking in the next verse.