“Turn from your wicked ways: What does this mean for us?” 2 Chronicles 7:14, Luke 13:1-21 People today are largely staying away from church. According to the last population census in 2011 about 59% of people still believe in God but 80-90% of these are still not in church. Why not?

What is the Church’s message? As we, who do go to church perceive it, our message is… God loves you so much, He sent Jesus His Son, to die for your sins and mine so that we could know God and be with Him in life life and in heaven after death. God loves you and wants to know you so He has commissioned us to tell you. He also wants us to show you, so if you have a need, we will meet it, whether it is for feeding, help with finances, counsel, friendship, healing God loves everyone so we will welcome everyone. That seems to me a good message, but people are still staying away.

What is the Church’s message? So how do those outside the church perceive our message? You have to be good enough to come and I’m not good so I’m not coming. You’re not good enough so repent and then come You are a wretched sinner so come and be good and dull like us. We are hypocrites. We expect people to be good but we are no better than anyone else, and sometimes worse. Religion causes wars and if that is what your God is like, I don’t want to know him. There’s quite a difference isn’t there? Yet tax collectors, outcasts, prostitutes and those who lived under the curse of physical illness which was seen as God’s judgement flocked to Jesus. But they are not coming to South Molton Baptist Church! Are they so lost in wicked ways and unprepared to turn from them or ….are we the ones who need to turn from wicked ways of our own?

Luke 13:1-21 Read Luke 13:1-21 headed in the NIV ‘Repent or Perish’. Israel were God’s chosen people, but as the gospel spread it was among the Gentiles. Luke writes for a Gentile audience, which makes some of what follows, clearly a message to the Jews, rather intriguing.

Suffering does not mean someone who suffers is a greater sinner, nor is prosperity a reflection of someone’s ‘goodness’. Instead judgment awaits all sinners so repent. News comes to Jesus of a tragedy in Galilee (pictured left). Pilate had entered a synagogue and murdered Jews during their sacrifices, adding their bodies to the animal sacrifice. The Jews presumed that the Galileans had been killed because of some great sin they had committed. Jesus asks ‘Did they suffer because they were more sinful?’ v2 but in v3 emphatically answers no. His dispels their false belief that suffering comes to those who sin and that prosperity is a sign of a person’s goodness. Jesus challenges them that judgment is awaiting all sinners. Jerusalemites looked down on Galileans, but Jesus reminds them that they had known a tragedy of their own, the fall of the tower of Siloam, in which 18 Jews were killed. Jesus said they were not singled out because of sin, but that it was a warning that death could come suddenly and that people needed to be repent and be prepared to meet God. Both groups died, both unexpectedly and both in places of safety, where they would have felt secure (in God’s presence and by the garrisoned watchtower).

Stop being so concerned to find the sins of others Stop being so concerned to find the sins of others. Instead be concerned about your own sin and repent. Do you feel ‘safe’ in your faith? Jesus said “But unless you repent, you too will all likewise perish”. Jesus was telling them to stop worrying about the sins of others. Instead, they should, as a matter of urgency, worry about their own and turn from them. Then he told a parable….

What awaits the fruitless fig tree? The fig tree hasn’t produced a thing in three years. It was going to be cut down and burned because it was using up valuable ground and not producing any fruit. The fig tree was recognised as a picture of the nation of Israel. The Jews thought they were safe as God’s chosen people, but they had forgotten and failed to bear fruit in God’s purpose that they were a ‘light to the nations’ a means of blessing to all peoples. Time for them, as for the tree, was short, but the gardener pleads for another year to tend the tree, agreed by the owner of the vineyard, a sign of God’s patience and grace. We at SMBC are not being fruitful in bringing people to Christ, not living up to Jesus’ commission. God is merciful.

God gave George a picture. This is something like it God gave George a picture. This is something like it. I hope she will share the detail with you next week. The Spirit told her the tree was SMBC. Staying alive is not our function, fruit-bearing is. See John 15:16 Time is short. Change or rather, fruit is required. God has, like the gardener, not given up….not yet.

What happens when things don’t fulfil their purpose? These pictures from Chicken Run show the sad fate of Edwina, the white chicken in front of the clip on the clipboard, because, as you can see from the record, she has not been producing eggs.

The mercy of God God is patient with us, but time is short and a record is being kept.

Jesus rebukes the hypocrite! Jesus heals a woman bent double. Her response is to praise God as do many of the people around her, but not all of them…The heartless synagogue ruler doesn’t share her joy and berates the people for approving the work of healing on the Sabbath. Jesus calls him a HYPOCRITE. Why is he a hypocrite? he’s supposed to be the worship leader, and yet here he does his best to quash the people worshipping in a way that the synagogue rarely sees. Do you think the woman would have been killed if she had returned the following day seeking healing? Not without Jesus! It is likely that she was a regular attender but she hadn’t been healed. How could the ruler dare suggest that healing was available on the other six days? The greatest hypocrisy was that while this ruler was getting all uppity about Jesus healing a poor woman, everyone knew he broke the rules himself watering his donkeys and oxen on the Sabbath. Why were the Jewish leaders like this? They mistakenly held to the old and temporary Mosaic covenant, where obedience brought blessing and sin God’s curse. They had fortgotten the promise in Jer 31:31-33 of a new grace covenant. They saw themselves as right before God because of their good behaviour. They felt they deserved God’s blessing. As for salvation, they could do it themselves!

The man threw away the mustard seed….but it grew tall So Jesus told two more short parables: The NIV is unhelpful here so I will use the KJV. Israel the fruitless fig tree is about to be cut down. The man (note he was not described as a farmer, gardener or sower) ‘cast’ the seed into his garden. He threw it away. The fig tree has cast aside its responsibility, its salvation and the mustard tree has grown to a great size in its place.

The woman tried to hide the yeast in the dough…but it spread! In the second parable, the Kingdom of God is likened to a woman who ‘hides’ (NIV ‘mixes’) yeast in a large amount of dough…but instead of being hidden it spreads through the whole dough. The Jews never wanted to share their ‘light’ with the Gentiles. Remember, Jonah didn’t want God to forgive Nineveh and when Jesus preached his manifesto in Luke 4, reminding the Jews that Naaman, a Syrian had been healed of leprosy, while many Jewish lepers hadn’t. They took him out to throw him off a cliff. It was foolish of the woman to hide the yeast in flour and it was foolish of the Jews to hide the light they were given for the Gentiles.

Jesus teaches an urgency for repentance and evangelism! Although, we haven’t rejected Jesus as Saviour, have we fulfilled His commission to ‘Make disciples of all nations’ or have we hidden Him? God called and anointed me for South Molton, to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God. I want to apologise to God and to you, that I have allowed busyness, fear and shame to get in the way and haven’t fulfilled that calling. I need to put Jesus first and to attend to His call on my life. So what does God’s call to ‘Turn from our wicked ways’ mean for us today? The passage speaks of the urgency of repentance – gospel message. The second urgency is that we as Christians should be ready, waiting and watching for the coming of Christ, faithful to His call to ‘Go and make disciples’, not ‘hiding’ the light which is Christ in us, but calling people to be ready for His coming. Let your light shine.