"PREPARING FOR EASTER 2003"

9.00am and 10.30am Sunday 9 March 2003

Rev Des Botting

Reading: Luke 13:1-9

There are a number of practices that the church has observed for centuries that are not well understood by people today. One of these is called the Season of Lent. It begins six and a half weeks before Easter and runs for a period of 40 days from Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent which was March 5 this year, through to Palm Sunday on April 13. It is a practice that dates back to the Councils of Nicaea in 325AD. It may have originated with the prescribed fast of candidates for baptism, and the number 40 was suggested by the 40day fasts of Moses and Elijah in the Old Testament, and especially of Jesus Himself.

During the early centuries the observance of this fast was very strict. Only one meal a day, taken towards evening, was allowed, and red-meat, fish and in most places also eggs and dairy products were absolutely forbidden. Over the years, beginning from the 9^th century, the practice began to be considerably relaxed. In modern times Lent is normally observed as a time of penance and self-denial. This is why in a number of South American countries they hold big carnivals, notorious for their extravagance, in the days preceding Lent before this kind of activity is curtailed when the Season of Lent begins. We held mid-week services in preparation for Easter some years back. This year we are setting aside the Sunday evening service time to do this.

There is a need for the Church to reclaim Easter. It is THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT of the Christian Year. Its true significance is often not fully appreciated. It is not just a holiday weekend. The few times that I have been away on holiday over Easter, I felt that I had missed out on something very special and important, and was the poorer for it. We should also remember that the background to the word holiday is holy day, a day, or days, set apart from other days as a time dedicated to God. Over these next few weeks I would encourage you to attend these services. Their specific intention is to assist us in preparing ourselves for Easter, so that we can approach that time with a reverence and respect. What happened that weekend had cosmic significance. Eternal issues were at stake that affected the whole of creation. In a sense we will be standing on holy ground as we meditate on the amazing grace of God. My prayer is that this Easter will be a holy time for each one of you.

This mornings reading from Luke is a very appropriate one to begin our journey towards Easter 2003. The theme of the passage is repentance, the importance of turning back to God. It is divided into two sections. They are both intricately connected to each other, as the second section tells a story that Jesus uses to illustrate the point he is making in the first five verses. My text is from 2 Peter where it says,

This verse from 2 Peter echoes a theme that is found throughout the New Testament. It is found many times in the Gospel of Luke. Repentance is absolutely necessary to getting our lives right with God. That is, we need to have a change in heart and mind, which leads to a change in the way we live and act. Repentance involves a whole change of direction for our lives. For some it means a complete about turn, like it did for the Apostle Paul. One day he was hounding the followers of Jesus Christ, zealously persecuting the church. Three days later he is preaching about Jesus, and speaking unashamedly for Him. For others it may not be so dramatic. But for everyone it produces a radical way in which we both see and live our lives. Its a change of mind-set, a paradigm shift in the way we look at life and live it.

In Lukes gospel, the first reference to repentance is found in the opening verses when the angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah as he was burning incense in the temple in Jerusalem. Gabriel told Zechariah that God had heard his prayers, and that his wife, Elizabeth would have a son, whom they were to name John. Then Gabriel said,

"John will lead many people in Israel to turn back to the Lord their God."

Some years later, when John began his public ministry, Luke says,

In Marks Gospel at the beginning of His public ministry, Jesus message was exactly the same. He said,

"The time has come! Gods kingdom will soon be here. Turn back to God and believe the good news."

When the Pharisees and teachers of the Law of Moses complained to Jesus about his eating with tax collectors and other sinners, Jesus replied by saying,

As we will see a little further on in Luke, the theme of repentance is reiterated in the stories of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and that of the Two Sons. Jesus says there is great joy in heaven when even one person turns to God. That this is a message for the world is very clear when Jesus said to His disciples after His resurrection,

And this is exactly what the Apostles did, beginning with Peters message on the Day of Pentecost,

This is the basic message of the apostles throughout the Book of Acts.

From this we see that repentance is not something that is only necessary for the Jews. Our text says that God "wants everyone to turn from sin." Therefore,

1. Repentance is a UNIVERSAL requirement, for both Jews and Gentiles. No one is exempt from needing to do this. In this passage Jesus had just been told that Pilate had ordered the slaughter of some Galileans while they were offering sacrifices in the temple. There is no other historical reference to this event. It was commonly known that Nationalistic fervour ran high in that part of the country. In Acts, Gamaliel, when warning the Jewish leaders to be careful with what they did to the apostles for preaching about Jesus, speaks of an uprising led by Judas from Galilee. Very probably these Galileans were ruthlessly murdered because of their real or suspected connection with the Nationalistic movement, of which Galilee was the focus. This rough-handed way of dealing with insurrection was characteristic of the way Pilate governed. Edersheim, in writing of the life and times of Jesus, says, bribery and corruption, violence, persecutions, malicious insults, judicial murders without even the formality of a legal process, and cruelty, were characteristic of Pilates administration.

Jesus then says, "Do you think that these people were worse sinners than everyone else in Galilee just because of what happened to them." The Jews always connected sin with suffering. Suffering was the punishment for wrongdoing. The classic example of this is Job. His comforters, as they have been sarcastically called, accused him of having done wrong for him to be suffering the way he was. Eliphaz says, "No truly innocent person has ever died young. In my experience, only those who plant seeds of evil harvest trouble" Another example is when the disciples came across the man who had been blind from birth, and they asked Jesus, "Teacher, why was this man born blind? Was it because he or his parents sinned.?" It was a cruel and heart-breaking teaching. In some cases suffering can be directly attributed to wrongdoing, or through abuse of our bodies such as with some forms of lung cancer and alcoholism or drug addiction. But that is not always so. On this occasion Jesus says, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that Gods works might be revealed in him." The Book of Job very clearly shows that Jobs sufferings were not the result of sin, but rather of Gods being willing to let Satan test him. The kind of thinking that teaches that Christians shouldnt suffer, is still quite prevalent today. Later in the year we will address this subject in a sermon series on Modern Day Idolatries.

Reference is also made to 18 people being killed when a tower fell on them. This could well be referring to some people who were killed when Pilate ordered the building of an aqueduct into Jerusalem because the city needed a new and improved water supply. The problem was that Pilate used money given to the temple to finance its construction. The Jews thought that those who had been killed deserved their fate because it was Gods judgment on them for taking this money to do the work. The point that Jesus is making is that they were no worse than any other person in Jerusalem. Everyone who does not turn back to God will be killed, or perish. And to give stress to what He is saying, Jesus prefaces His words by saying, "you can be sure", both times He makes this point. Repentance is a universal requirement. The Bible says, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way." "All of us have sinned and fallen short of Gods glory." Therefore, all must turn back to God.

2. Repentance has a PAST and PRESENT dimension. This is brought out by the fact that Jesus uses two different tenses for the word repent in this passage. In verse 5 we find the aorist form of the verb repent, which speaks of a single decisive action. This is what happened with the Apostle Paul. The direction of his life was completely changed from the point of his conversion to God until the day of his death. Only days after his conversion, when he still was called Saul, it says in Acts,

"Everyone who heard Saul was amazed a said, Isnt this the man who caused so much trouble for those people in Jerusalem who worship in the name of Jesus? Didnt he come here to arrest and take them to the chief priests?"

From that moment on he lived for Jesus Christ. Before that encounter with Jesus Christ on the Damascus road, his Jewish heritage and roots had been very important to him. After he met Jesus he saw them in a completely different light. In one of his letters he wrote,

"But Christ has shown me that what I once thought was valuable in worthless." He goes on in that passage to say that all the things he used to boast about and thought were valuable he counted it all as garbage. All he wanted from that point onward was Christ, to know Him, to know the power that raised Him to life, and to suffer and die as He did. This is one aspect of repentance - a single, decisive action that changes forever the course and direction of a persons life.

The second tense that Jesus uses for the word repent in this passage is in verse 3. Here it is the present imperative tense. This highlights the fact that repentance needs to be the regular practice of renouncing sin in our lives. God may bring to mind an area of our lives, or something that we have done, which is dishonouring to Him, and is grieving His Holy Spirit. We may have been totally unaware of how God viewed this thing. Several of the letters to the churches in Revelation give examples of this. Gods Spirit pointed out to these churches where they were going wrong. To the church in Ephesus, which had abandoned their first love for God, He brought this message,

"Think about where you have fallen from, and then turn back and do as you did at the first. If you dont turn back, I will come and take away your lamp stand."

This aspect of repentance is often necessary when we set aside time to fast and pray. As we ask God to search our lives, He will bring to remembrance things that need to put right. This will involve a definite decision on our part to turn from whatever it is, and do whatever we have to, to put things right.

This lead naturally to a third aspect of repentance,

3. Repentance can be both an INDIVIDUAL and/or a CORPORATE Act. There are many examples of individual repentance in the Bible. One of the most well-known in the Old Testament is that of King David, after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of one of his army officers. Psalm 51, which begins with the words, "You are kind, God! Please have pity on me. You are always merciful! Please wipe away my sins," is Davids prayer for forgiveness. We will have no peace while there is unconfessed sin in our lives, but when we turn from what is wrong, confess our sin to God, he will forgive us and take our sins away.

But it is not only individuals that need to repent. Communities and nations, at times, need to do this, too. There were many occasions when Israel repented of their wrongdoing. The verse from Nehemiah in your outline is only one of the numerous times when we see that nation on its knees before God. Our own nation has done this when it publicly sought the forgiveness of the Maori people for the injustices done by our forbears in the 19^th century. There may well be need for nations to repent in the very complex situation the world finds itself in today, if there is ever to be a just peace on earth.

Churches also need to repent. Several of the churches written to in Revelation were required to do this. The Scripture in your outline is what the church at Sardis was required to do. Not so long ago, the Baptist Tabernacle here in Auckland held a number of meetings to repent of the acrimonious divisions that wracked their church back in the 1940s. It became a public scandal at the time, and the church had been gradually declining since then. Following these services that church has experienced steady growth.

This brings us to our final point, that

4. Repentance requires URGENCY. The story Jesus tells about the fig tree, illustrates the need of repentance It was especially directed at the leaders of the nation of Israel.

1. Gods intention is for us to be FRUITFUL. Whether we take it as applying to Israel, or to an individual follower of Jesus, the application is the same. God wants all who follow Him to show it in their lives. Jesus said in His last discourse with His disciples before His death,

"You did not choose me. I chose you and sent you out to produce fruit, the kind of fruit that will last." I believe we will always bear fruit when we daily submit ourselves to Gods Holy Spirit and seek to keep in step with Him, and when we diligently and humbly use the gifts He has given us in the service of others. Peter writes, "Do your best to improve your faith. You can do this by adding goodness, understanding, self-control, patience, devotion to God, concern for others, and love. If you keep growing in this way, it will show that what you know about the Lord Jesus Christ has made your lives useful and meaningful." Productive and effective is the way another translation puts this last phrase.

Jesus also said, "When you become fruitful disciples of mine, my Father will be honoured." Or as He said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Make your light shine, so that others will see the good that you do and will praise your Father in heaven." We bring glory to God by being all He made us to be.

2. We are given every ENCOURAGEMENT to be fruitful. God does what the gardener in the story was going to do. "Jesus said to his disciples: I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts away every branch that doesnt produce fruit. But he trims clean every branch that does produce fruit, so that it will produce even more fruit." We are given every chance to be fruitful for God and His kingdom. If we fail once, God will give us a second chance. Peter and Mark and Paul would all bear witness to that. God is infinitely kind and will provide every opportunity so that He might be honoured and praised because of our lives. Remember that our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. He is honoured when we are fruitful disciples of His.
3. Gods patience will not last INDEFINITELY. His patience is infinite, and, as our text says, the reason for that is "because He wants everyone to turn from sin and no one to be lost." This is why we are to "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near." This passage goes on to say, "Give up your crooked ways and your evil thoughts. Return to the Lord our God. He will be merciful and forgive your sins." There are moments in our lives when God calls us to turn from sin, to seek His forgiveness, and put our trust in His Son. For there will come a time when time will be no more. Our day of opportunity will be over. Note the words in our text, that God wants "no one to be lost." When we are away from God, we are lost. We belong with God. He made us. We have His stamp of ownership written all over us for we are made in His image and likeness. God is constantly seeking His lost sheep, like the shepherd who went out after the one that went astray. If you have not turned from sin, you are lost today. And unless you turn to God, you will perish. This is what Jesus is saying. Cant you sense Gods infinite love reaching out to you in these words. Please, come home to Him today.

The occasion for this teaching