Unless You Repent

Introduction:

These verses are filled with awesome implications about the way the world really is. It is not the way people think it is. We need to know & feel what is at stake. Unrepentant people are perishing. In our lesson tonight, we are going to focus on 4 key words in 13:3, 5. The four words are, “all,” “likewise,” “perish,” and “repent.”

I. All

A.     Unless you repent, you will ALL likewise perish.

1.     Implied that the slain Galileans must have done something really bad, for God to allow something so horrible to happen to them.

                                              a.     Extraordinary tragedy must signify extraordinary guilt.

B.     But yet, Jesus says, their sin was not extraordinarily horrible. 

1.     Their sin was just like everyone else’s sin.  Sin is sin.

2.     All of us are extremely sinful. Romans 3:23, 10.

C.     What should amaze us is not that some are taken in calamities, etc., but that we are spared by God and given another day to repent.

II. Likewise

A.     Unless you repent, you will all LIKEWISE perish.

B.     What does Jesus mean?

1.     Everyone has knowledge that they will die someday.

                                              a.     But many do not realize what that means.

                                              b.     Their end will be far more horrible than they could ever imagine.

2.     The Galileans who were killed, or the Jews killed by the falling tower were not expecting their deaths, and many today die w/o expecting it.

3.     Luke 17:27-30 - Only repentance can make a person ready to meet God.

III. Perish

A.     Unless you repent, you will all likewise PERISH.

B.     Here, “perish” refers to something beyond death – final judgment & eternal separation from God.

1.     John 3:16; 10:28 – perishing is what happens to you if you do not have eternal life.

2.     1 Corinthians 1:18, 15:18 – perishing is something that happens beyond the grave.

3.     Hebrews 9:27

4.     Jesus describes the judgment in Matthew 25:46.

5.     Perishing is the eternal punishment that people fall into when they die if they have not repented.

C.     This is not irrelevant. Luke 12:4-5

IV. Repent

A.     Unless you REPENT, you will all likewise perish.

B.     In Luke, there are three illustrations of repentance in the face of judgment.

1.     Luke 10:13-15; Luke 11:32; (Jonah 3:5, 7-9); Luke 16:29-31

C.     Repentance involves believing God.

1.     It is being “convinced” about the danger of impenitence – Luke 16:31

2.     It involves grief over past sins and present sinful tendencies.

                                              a.     This is the significance of sackcloth & ashes (Jonah 3:5; Luke 10:13)

3.     It involves turning from evil ways – Jonah 3:8

D.     The turning of repentance is a turning from trusting in other things to a trusting in God.

Conclusion:

A.     The most urgent issue is your own soul. If you don’t get right, you are going to perish.