Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Luke 13:1-9 | Date: February 2, 2025 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

When Disaster Strikes

Luke chapter 13. We will not be looking into the Psalms today. We’ll take a break from that today to address something I think very contemporary, and you’ll see the topic of that as we read through the passage. Luke chapter 13, and I’ll read verses one through nine.

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, we turn today to look at a rather sobering portion from our Lord’s teaching, and we pray that you will open our eyes and our hearts to see it, to grasp it well, and through it, we pray that you’ll help every one of us here to see afresh the value of Jesus Christ. We pray in his name, amen.

I’ve titled the message, “When Disaster Strikes.” I had thought actually to address this subject from this passage last fall during the awful hurricanes that hit the South and just wide devastation of various kinds. But I didn’t. And then I thought, well, I’ll do that with the terrible fires in Los Angeles that have happened recently. Well, I thought, well, I’ll address it for that. And then since that decision, there have been the fires in North Carolina, places affected by the floods, affected by fires now as well. And then after that, of course, the airline disaster this week, and then the other plane crash here in Philadelphia. And I thought, well, this is a good occasion then to look at the passage where Jesus addresses just these kinds of things.

And our point here is to try to understand these things from a Christian point of view. How should we think about them? These things happen. What does God say about them? What does Jesus hear in this passage? How does he direct us to think about these things that happen? We want to interpret them in the right way. At some point, not just Christians, but people of the world as well, ask, what is God telling us in all of that? The assumption, of course, in all of that is that God is God over all things, God rules over all events, and so when it happens, whatever it is, God is saying something and we want to understand what he is up to in it.

Now, of course, there’ll be many people who will say right off from the start, God had nothing to do with this, that God is too good, God doesn’t do those kinds of things to people, he’s a good God, and God has nothing to do with this. That is not an option if we’re going to take the scripture seriously at all. The biblical teaching is very plain, that God is sovereign and working his will through all of the events that happen. He works according to the counsel of his own will in all that is. And in fact, there are specific claims if you think that the broad statements like Ephesians chapter one verse 11, he works all things according to the counsel of his own will—if you think those broad statements are too general, well then we have specific claims from scripture as well.

Let me highlight a few of them for you. Amos chapter three and verse six. Here the Lord says, “If there is calamity in the city, will not the Lord have done it?” Isaiah 45, verse 7, “I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create calamity. I, the Lord, do all these things.” A very interesting verse to keep in mind at these kinds of times is James chapter 4, verse 15, where the apostle James says, “If the Lord wills, we will live.” If the Lord wills, we will live. That is to say that every breath of air that we have, it is because the Lord has willed it. Psalm 68 verse 20, “From the Lord comes escapes from death.” Deuteronomy 32 verse 39, “Now see that I, even I, am he, and there is no God beside me. I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal.”

And even with regard to natural disasters, we have plenty of verses for that as well. Psalm 135, verse seven, I will sample it for us: “He,” that is the Lord, “causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth. He makes the lightning for the rain. He brings the wind out of his treasuries.” We have a song that we sing, a hymn in our hymn books that celebrates this. Isaac Watts’ hymn, “I Sing the Mighty Power of God”: “Tempest rise and storms arise and tempests blow by order from his throne.” That’s this teaching that God is sovereign over all of it. In fact, the Bible is so explicit about these kinds of statements that we might be left with the impression that God works immediately apart from second causes. Of course, we know he does work through second causes, but the Bible is emphatic on this point that through it all it is God himself working and accomplishing his will.

And one example of this, of course, is the life and the experience of Job in the Old Testament. We read there first off that Satan comes up against Job and he brings these calamities and these disasters against him. And after it all happens, Job then says in Job 1 verse 21, “The Lord gave and the Lord takes away.” And then chapter 2 and verse 10 affirms, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips nor charge God foolishly.” When he said, “The Lord gave, the Lord took away,” he was not misspeaking, even though Satan was behind it all as well.

Well, we have these two categories of evil that we speak of. There’s natural evil on the one hand: storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods. And then there’s moral evil: bad things that bad people do. Think 9-11. And what we find in the scripture is that God is sovereign over all of it. Natural evil, moral evil, he’s sovereign over all of it. Now he doesn’t stand behind moral evil in the same way that he stands behind moral good. It’s asymmetrical. He isn’t the immediate cause of the moral evil. He’s not responsible for it in the sense that he’s the one who did it. He works through people who, with evil hearts, will to do it. But yet, in it all, it is God who accomplishes his will.

This is a subject that just goes on forever and we can take the rest of the time to talk about that as well. But the simple answer to that, if you’re questioning that—that God works even through evil and accomplishes his will, his holy will, through the evil acts of evil men—if there’s any question about that, all you have to do is look to the cross. Worst crime of history. And yet it was the cross that was foreordained from before the foundation of the world, and there through the hands of evil men, God accomplished his will in providing the salvation for his people.

I have a very good friend, a pastor friend, whose young son was injured and was taken to the hospital, and he was there in the hospital room with him. It was a rather serious injury. And he said while he’s there in the hospital room with his son, his aunt came in to visit as well, and I think it was his cousin with her that came. And they’re sympathizing, of course; it was kind of them to come. But somewhere in the conversation of it all, one of them remarked, “I just don’t understand why God would do this.” And then the other one remarked right away, “Oh, God didn’t have anything to do with this.” And my friend David said, “There I was, faced with two contrasting theological errors.” And I said, “I didn’t know which one to address first.” And he just let it go.

We don’t have the option on the one hand of saying that God does what is evil. He always does what is good. We don’t have the option, on the other hand, of saying God has nothing to do with the things that happen. So if God is not absent, what is he saying when disaster strikes? I’m sure many of you will remember after 9-11, Evangelist Pat Robertson famously or infamously said, whichever your point of view, that this was God’s judgment on America because of the blight of abortion. Was he wrong? Was he right? And whichever answer you give, is that the end of the matter or is there more to be said?

If tomorrow morning you wake up and read the news that 25 abortion clinics in a county had suddenly and mysteriously exploded in a gas explosion, or 25 strip clubs had been struck by lightning overnight, I imagine many of us would be pretty quick to conclude that this was God’s act of judgment. But what if tomorrow morning you wake up and find out in the news that 25 evangelical churches and their buildings were struck by lightning and exploded? Is that God’s judgment? What do you say?

And I bring all of that up because there have been many with regard to the fires in Los Angeles who have spoken up. I’ve seen it on Facebook and various places on the internet. “This is God’s judgment on that wicked city. This is God’s judgment on that wicked state.” Well, is it? How do you know? And is that all that can be said about it? Or is it more complicated than that? Because at the same time, you’ve got to account for all of those brothers and sisters in Christ who are affected by the same fire. Houses burned, some of them killed. I know of churches, both in the hurricanes last fall and the fires in Los Angeles area this month—churches who’ve been affected drastically, keeping lists of their families whose houses have been lost in the fire. Is this God’s judgment on them? How do you sort all of these things out?

Now it’s true and I want to admit that it is true that Hollywood and California itself do represent a particular kind of evil. They’re proud of that. They flaunt it. They seek to export it. They try to influence others; they’ll put up billboards in other states calling people who are in trouble getting an abortion, “Come here, we’ll do it.” And they pump it out in various kinds of ways. And I’ll be right up there to say that certainly California and Hollywood and Los Angeles certainly are worthy and deserving of judgment. In fact, you can go a little bit further than that and you can say, those fires certainly are not an expression of God’s mercy. And so it’s not at all difficult to conclude, well, that’s God’s judgment on an evil state and an evil city.

But Jesus’ remarks here in Luke chapter 13 ought to give us some pause before we draw those conclusions too tightly. Here Jesus brings to our attention two recent disasters. One was a moral evil, verses 1 to 3, and one is what we would call a natural evil, verses 4 and 5.

Moral Evil

Verses 1 to 3, we have this moral evil, this horrible public massacre sponsored by the government. Verse one: “There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” Now that expression, “mingled their blood with the sacrifices,” is probably to be understood as a metaphor. They didn’t actually mingle their blood together, but the idea is that these men were coming, they were bringing their sacrificial animals to the temple, and then came Pilate’s soldiers and they were slaughtered there at the temple, doubtless with their animals as well. The occasion was probably the Passover. Israel was known as a particularly kind of rebellious people and perhaps Pilate was wanting to put his boot on their neck and make sure that they knew that they were outgunned and that there’s no point in rebelling against him. And so he makes a big display of it and he sends his soldiers at this great holiday—one of the greatest, the most outstanding holidays in the public year of Israel. These men are slaughtered, Pilate trying to break their will.

Well, verse one here, some report this event to Jesus. Maybe they were wondering if this miracle worker would do something in response. It seems that some, at least, were wondering what the event said about those who were killed. After all, they were killed. We weren’t. They are Galileans. Maybe there’s a little racial thing going on here, too. Those Galileans were slaughtered. We weren’t. Is this an example then of God’s justice being meted out, parceled out in proportion to sin? They were more sinful, therefore this happened to them? This is an act of God’s judgment?

Well, Jesus doesn’t answer them in ethnic terms at all, much less in terms of comparative sinfulness. He instead gives a broad warning, verse two: “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” So Jesus does not allow us to interpret that event in terms of comparative justice. Specifically says, “No.” Nor does he simply move the question, relegated off to the divine mysteries. “Well, God is sovereign. You never know why he does what he does.” That’s not how he answers either.

But neither does he allow us to think that those people who died were innocent. “I tell you, unless you repent, you’ll all likewise perish.” He allows the assumption to stand that those who were killed were not killed unjustly. So instead, Jesus directs us to see that in that disaster, we should see reflections of a greater disaster. Universal in scope, but a disaster that is intensely individual and personal. This disaster, Jesus tells us, serves as a warning sign to us and to others. It’s a foreshadowing of a greater judgment to come. You wonder if these were killed because they were more sinful. I tell you, it’s just a warning sign along the way of something that is coming your way as well. Just hasn’t happened yet.

So Jesus allows the assumption that those who died were not undeserving of it. Instead, this ought to point us to a greater disaster that’s coming down the road. Paul, the apostle, picks up on this in Romans chapter one when he tells us that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against the unrighteousness of men. The wrath of God is being revealed. How is the wrath of God being revealed? How do we see it? How do you see God’s wrath? Well, it’s not in his acts of kindness. It is in acts of judgment of some kind. And you have to conclude that Paul is talking about bad things that happen, whether it’s tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, or events like that are described here. And we see those kinds of things.

And you may ask—and in fact, I don’t know if it happens to you or not, but it frequently happens to me in the wake of some disaster. It happens to me probably because I’m a preacher and people want to ask the preacher the question, “Why does God do this?” Or sometimes, “Why does God allow this?” We never stop to consider that these disasters, as awful as they are, are just little pictures of a big picture. These are just tricklings of water out of the dam. One day that dam is going to burst in a conflagration of judgment. That’s Jesus’ answer. Well, to drive the point then, Jesus brings up a second illustration from recent events.

Natural Evil

This one is what we would categorize as natural evil. Verse 4: 18 people were killed when the Tower of Siloam fell on them. Now again, Jesus does not allow us to assume that these people who died when the tower fell on them were more guilty than others. But neither does he allow us to think that these people were innocent. Verse four: “Do you think that these were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?” And verse five gives the answer: “No, I tell you.” He’s explicit about that. And what he does is calls us to learn from it. Verse 5: “No, I tell you, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” That is, these disasters illustrate and foreshadow a greater judgment to come. They’re pictures of divine wrath against all who do not repent. And it’s a wrath that for the time being is being withheld.

Now this is a huge factor in answering the so-called problem of evil that is frequently brought up, one of the most frequent objections to Christianity: the so-called problem of evil. Why do bad things happen? And usually it’s phrased, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” A given calamity, Jesus tells us, is no proof of comparative sinfulness. He’s plain on that. But notice Jesus’ question. He doesn’t ask us simply, “Do you think these people were sinners?” What he asks is, “Do you think that these people were sinners more than others?” There’s the comparison thing going on. And so he assumes then in all of that, the sinfulness on all sides. But he specifically denies that those disasters are always meted out in relative proportion. In that sense, there is divine mystery. Yes, God is sovereign in dispensing temporal judgments. But never does God dispense judgments unjustly. Never does it fall on an innocent person. We all deserve to have a tower fall on us. That’s the assumption.

Now it’s important to see this, that Jesus assumes that these disasters are in that sense proof of human sinfulness. It’s the comparative sinfulness that he denies, but proof of sinfulness indeed. These were not necessarily worse sinners than others. And so we might be left to wonder, why does judgment fall here and not there? Why did God judge them and not them? But the question of why bad things happen is not left entirely to mystery. There’s this awful reality of human sinfulness. And that’s behind all of it. And Jesus implicitly then affirms: towers fall, but never on innocent people. The question is not, why do bad things happen to good people? Because in an ultimate sense, there are no good people. We might ask with a sense of wonder, why do so many good things happen to bad people? That’s a good question nobody asks. But this question that why do bad things happen to good people, it’s nonsense.

And so Jesus says, you’re all sinners, and therefore you are all liable to falling towers. And then the punchline. In fact, he says, a tower of the most awful kind is going to fall on you unless you repent. Rather than speculating whether these were worse sinners than those, you ought to be taking heed. You ought to understand this in terms of a warning. Those not affected by the disasters cannot assume that they are more innocent or that somehow they’re immune to judgment. In fact, a worse judgment than that is coming to all unless they repent. That’s what Jesus says.

Now at that point, we might ask then, why doesn’t God send judgment now on everyone? It’s a reasonable question to ask after what he has said. If everyone is guilty, then why doesn’t judgment fall now? Well, in verses 6 to 9, Jesus explains.

A Parable

He maintains the idea of immediately impending judgment, but he explains the delay with a parable. Verse six:

He told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I’ve come seeking fruit on this tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ He answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good. But if not, you can cut it down.'”

Well, Jesus, of course, is famous for his parables. This one’s pretty clear and simple just on the face of it. Landowner comes to check his vineyard. He looks at this one, this fig tree, and he looks at it and goes to get some fruit. There’s none there, and it should be. He says, “A third year in a row this has happened. It’s just taking up good soil. It’s a waste of space, a waste of the nutrients in the soil. Cut it down, dig it out, plant another one, we’ll start over.” And the vinedresser comes, the hired help comes and says to the owner, “Well, let me work on it one more year. Let me go to the barn and shovel up some of that stuff and put it here in the soil and work it in and water it and cultivate it and I think I can make it work.” And the landowner says, “Okay, one year, that’s it.”

And the meaning of the parable just lies on the surface of it. It has to do with God’s judgment on sinners. That’s the context of it all. And in fact, if you’d like to glance back, we’ve been led up to that in context in Luke chapter 12. We have warnings of sin and coming judgment because of sin. Luke chapter 12 verses 4 and 5: “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more they can do. But I’ll warn you whom to fear. Fear him who after he has killed has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.” Verse 35 of chapter 12, we have this discussion of readiness with regard to the return of Christ, and it says in verse 40, “You also must be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Implicit in that is this is the final day. The Son of Man will come, and there’s the time of judgment. Chapter 12, verses 54 and following, we have Jesus’ criticism of that generation. He tells them in these verses in so many words, you can read the signs and tell the weather a day ahead of time, but you can’t interpret today, and you don’t know, you don’t understand what this present time is telling you.

Now when we come to chapter 13, and particularly verses 6 and following, interpreters routinely point out here that this warning is obviously to Israel as a nation. We find plenty of those in the Gospels where Jesus confronts an ungodly nation, a nation whose religion had fallen into an externalism and a formality, a religion that rejected the Messiah when he came to them. And in fact, this imagery of the fig tree and all of that is taken up from Micah, the prophet Micah, chapter 7, where he speaks there of the unfruitfulness of Israel and the coming judgment on Israel because of it. Jesus speaks of that plenty elsewhere. In fact, in Matthew, chapter 24, in his Olivet Discourse, Jesus speaks of that, specifically warning Israel of a great destruction of judgment that is coming. AD 70, it comes, Israel is destroyed, Jerusalem is ransacked in the most intense kind of suffering that the world had seen. And that certainly is in view here in Luke chapter 13.

But what’s important not to miss is that in Luke 13 here, he’s not speaking simply of Israel as a nation. Jesus is pressing this in an individual way. You must repent. And if you do not repent, you will perish. So he’s looking at a rebellious people who have not, to use the figure, they’ve not borne fruit unto God. And he warns them, your time is about to run out. One year. We’ll cut it down.

Now, in this parable, verses six through nine, if the vineyard is Israel—and it is, obviously—then the owner of the vineyard, obviously, is God. He owns the vineyard, he owns Israel, it’s his people, he’s the one who made them. And again, this is imagery picked up from the Old Testament prophets. So if Israel, if the vineyard is Israel and the owner is God, who’s this vinedresser? He intercedes, he makes requests, or a stay of judgment—”Give them time, let me work on it.” Who is this vinedresser? Well, it’s often treated as just a near-relevant detail of the parable, and it may be that. In the early church, the early centuries of the church, interpreters more routinely interpreted the vinedresser to be Jesus.

I suspect they may be onto something with all of that, and if so, there’s another illustration of that later in Luke’s gospel when we come to the passion narratives. We find Jesus on the cross, and his first words from the cross—do you remember what it was? “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” On that word, “forgive”—a word that’s used in all kinds of contexts. It means to let go, let it go, let it go. We find it in Matthew chapter three, where John the Baptist is refusing to baptize Jesus. He’s protesting and Jesus says, “Let it be for now.” Same word, same word. In Matthew chapter four, we have the Mount of Temptation, where the devil comes and tempts Jesus three times, and then it says the devil left him. Same word, left him. When it’s in context of sin, explicitly, obviously, to let it go means to forgive. But you’ve got to figure from the context what it means.

And I suspect that in Luke’s gospel, chapter 23, when we find Jesus on the cross, when he says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” I think he is saying that exactly. That let them go. Let it go. This is the most awful crime of history. And if ever judgment should have fallen, it should have been then and at that moment. And if ever that nation should have been destroyed for what they did, it should have been at that moment. And there Jesus is interceding. Let it go. Let it go for now. Their actions are deserving of divine judgment. But he’s dying in the place of sinners. He’s making satisfaction for sin, for sinners who are yet to come. And he says, hold back.

Well, in any case, the delay of judgment in this parable is obviously this age of grace, this age of gospel opportunity. And the point that Jesus makes here is simply do not, do not presume on God’s patience. In verses one to five, we have recent events, and Jesus tells us we ought to understand from that the universal need of repentance. And then in verses six through nine, we have this parable stressing the point that the opportunity for repentance is not long. There’s a sense of urgency. God is amazingly patient, but not forever. This day of grace will come to an end.

You think that these people who died, died because they were more sinful? Jesus says your sense of security is ill-founded. Your own judgment is just a matter of time. In a word, Jesus is pressing a doctrine of conversion. If you do not turn away from your sin, Jesus says, you will be condemned. Today is your day of opportunity, but unless you repent, every day that you breathe is a delay of judgment that certainly will come.

These people in verse one, slaughtered by Pilate’s soldiers—they might have escaped if someone had only told them that it was going to happen. If only someone had warned them. These people in verse four were tragically killed when this tower fell on them—they might have escaped if someone had only warned them. Jesus says, here is your warning. Divine judgment will come. The only way of escape is repentance from your sin and running for safety to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Of course, in Luke’s gospel, the whole narrative is running toward the climax at the end, what we call the passion narratives, then the resurrection of Jesus. And there we find Jesus taking the place of sinners, dying in their place, making satisfaction to God for their sin. Jesus standing in place of the sinner, bearing the judgment that God is going to bring against those people. But he stands in their place and takes the judgment for them. And God raises him from the dead. And he leads his people into freedom.

And then we find in Luke chapter 24—that’s Luke 23, and then we find in Luke 24—where Jesus speaks, the risen Jesus speaks to his disciples who are confused by all that had happened and they’re just trying to put it all together. And you remember he says, “Thus it is written, that the Christ must suffer these things and then at forgiveness of sins that repentance for the forgiveness of sins may be proclaimed in his name to all the nations.” And that then is how Jesus says we should read these headlines. Every disaster that you see is more serious than meets the eye. It isn’t about them. It’s about us, all of us. A day of awful judgment is coming, and in this day of gospel opportunity, God is offering terms of peace. Repent, turn to Christ, and you can be saved.

You might have thought that because you have not lived a particularly scandalous life that you’re safe. That’s exactly the situation of these people. “It happened to them, not us. They’re the worst sinners.” You may have thought that because you haven’t lived a particularly scandalous life that you’re safe. These people that Jesus warns were just like that and still he says to them, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Young people, children, listen up. You’ve got to hear this. Don’t think that because your parents have taught you the things of God and that you’ve been brought to church all of your life that somehow you’re safe. Sin is a very individual thing. Your sin is your sin and your judgment will be yours. And what you need is the same thing that your mom and dad need, is to repent of your sin and turn to Jesus Christ and be safe.

So we are right to assume that God is saying something to us in these recent disasters. What he’s saying is, be warned, worse disaster than this is coming if you do not repent. And this is the value of Jesus Christ. This is the very reason for the gospel. And this is the urgency of today. Look to Jesus Christ and be saved while you still may.