Luke 13:5

THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD

‘Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.’

Luke 13:3; Luke 13:5

The murder of the Galilæans is an event of which we know nothing certain. The motives of those who told our Lord of the event we are left to conjecture. At any rate, they gave Him an opportunity of speaking to them about their own souls. He bade His informants look within, and think of their own state before God. He seems to say, ‘What though these Galilæans did die a sudden death? What is that to you? Consider your own ways. Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.’

I. People are much more ready to talk of the deaths of others than their own.—The death of the Galilæans, mentioned here, was probably a common subject of conversation in Jerusalem and all Judæa. It is just the same in the present day. A murder, a sudden death, a shipwreck, or a railway accident, will completely occupy the minds of a neighbourhood, and be in the mouth of every one you meet. And yet these very persons dislike talking of their own deaths and their own prospects in the world beyond the grave. Such is human nature in every age. In religion, men are ready to talk of anybody’s business rather than their own.

II. Our Lord lays down the universal necessity of repentance.—Twice He declares emphatically, ‘Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.’ The truth here asserted is one of the foundations of Christianity. If we have already repented in time past, let us go on repenting to the end of our lives. There will always be sins to confess and infirmities to deplore, so long as we are in the body. Let us repent more deeply, and humble ourselves more thoroughly, every year. Let every returning birthday find us hating sin more, and loving Christ more. He was a wise old saint who said, ‘I hope to carry my repentance to the very gate of heaven.’

Illustration

‘It is evident that our Lord’s informants were filled with the vulgar opinion that sudden deaths were special judgments, and that if a man died suddenly he must have committed some special sin. Our Lord bids them understand that this opinion was a mere baseless delusion. We have no right whatever to conclude that God is angry with a man because He removes him suddenly from the world. Ford gives a quotation from Perkins which deserves reading: “The common opinion is, that if a man die quietly, and go away like a lamb (which in some diseases, as consumption, any man may do), then he goes straight to heaven. But if the violence of the disease stirs up impatience, and causes frantic behaviour, then men use to say, ‘There is a judgment of God, serving either to discover a hypocrite or to plague a wicked man.’ But the truth is otherwise.—A man may die like a lamb, and yet go to hell; and one dying in exceeding torment and strange behaviour of body, may go to heaven.” ’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE GALILÆANS’ WARNINGS

Our Lord does not say, Those Galilæans were not sinners at all. Their sins had nothing to do with their death. Those on whom the tower fell were innocent men. We know nothing of the circumstances of either calamity.

I. The warning to the Jewish nation.—This we know, that our Lord warned the rest of the Jews that unless they repented they would all perish in the same way. And we know that that warning was fulfilled within forty years, so hideously and so awfully that the destruction of Jerusalem remains as one of the most terrible cases of wholesale ruin and horror recorded in history.

II. The warning to individuals.—These Galilæans were no worse than the other Galilæans; yet they were singled out as examples, as warnings, to the rest. Pestilences, conflagrations, accidents of any kind which destroy life wholesale, even earthquakes and storms, are instances of this law; warnings from God, judgments of God, in the very strictest sense; by which He tells men, in a voice awful enough to the few, but merciful and beneficent to the many, to be prudent and wise.

III. The warning to evil systems.—The more we read, in histories, of the fall of great dynasties, or of the ruin of whole classes or whole nations, the more we feel—however much we may acquiesce with the judgment as a whole—sympathy with the fallen. It is not the worst, but often the best specimens of a class or of a system who are swallowed up by the moral earthquake which has been accumulating its force, perhaps, for centuries. May not the reason be that God has wished to condemn, not the persons, but their systems? that He has punished them, not for their private, but for their public faults?

—Rev. F. D. Maurice.

Illustration

‘The folly and uncharitableness of mankind are in nothing more clearly seen than in their disposition to blame every one who is unfortunate, and to think themselves surely in the right as long as they are prosperous. “While he lived,” said the Psalmist of the worldly-minded, “he counted himself an happy man; and so long as thou doest well unto thyself men will speak good of thee.” On the other hand, let one be smitten with disease or poverty, he shall never want some to ascribe his sufferings to the intemperance of his youth, to his extravagance, carelessness, or vicious indulgences while he had money, or to the judgments of God on his covetousness and want of generosity. And yet every day’s experience proves, both in public and private life, that the wisest of us is deceived, and the best man disappointed in three out of four of his worldly hopes and expectations. The reason of this is, that the present life is a state of trial, and not of reward and punishment; and the use to be made of it is, that the afflicted learn patience, the prosperous godly fear, and all men charity and candour in judging of others.’