A Biblical Response to Tragedy

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the 13th chapter of the Gospel of Luke.
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This past week, as we all know, the world has been again reminded of the depth of man's depravity.
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We have also been reminded of the extent at which tragedy can reach our own backyard.
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And unfortunately, tragedy is nothing new.
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It is not only in our lifetime that there have been murders and accidents and horrific displays of the Earth's capacity for danger, including earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, and tsunamis.
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These things have been going on all down through the ages, and they will certainly continue.
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And I believe in my heart that these times, these moments, whether it is a man with evil in his heart doing evil to another man, or men, or people, or whether it's the Earth opening itself up, or the wind coming, or the rains coming, or the floods coming, I think any time where we are faced with something, where there is a grand scale loss, there tends to be within us a curiosity, a questioning.
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A questioning about mortality, a questioning about God's will, a questioning about the purpose of whatever it was.
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And I know that it brings questions in some of our congregation.
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I've received several text messages, as I've said earlier this week, in regards to the events in Orlando.
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And I've tried to provide a biblical response to these things, which are often very emotionally driven questions.
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So my lesson this evening, I've decided to go to Christ.
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The first book of the Bible I ever preached through was the Gospel of Luke.
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And so it holds a special place in my heart as a pastor.
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And when I first preached through the Gospel of Luke, I remember coming to this particular passage, and remember thinking, this passage answers so many questions, if we would just listen to what it's saying.
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And for me it answered so many questions regarding how we should respond to tragedy.
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I want to tell you, I am not tonight going to talk about Islam.
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I'm not going to talk about homosexuality.
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Those subjects are not on the docket.
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I have spent time talking about those.
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I'll get you the recordings if you want them.
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Tonight is about how we respond to tragedy.
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How do we respond as a church? And it can be this last tragedy, or you name one.
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I remember when Hurricane Katrina hit.
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And I remember so many people coming to me saying, it must have been those casinos that sent that hurricane their way.
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And I said, well what about the churches that were destroyed? Are we convinced so much that that's the way that this happened and why? How should we respond? Well let's read the text.
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Luke 13.
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There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
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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.
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Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them.
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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.
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May God add his blessing to the reading of his word.
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This is a situation where Jesus is having to deal with a highly practical question from people who come to him, and it doesn't tell us who they were.
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It doesn't say that it was the disciples that came to him.
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It doesn't say that it was the Pharisees wishing to fool him.
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It doesn't identify the audience.
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It simply says some present, if you notice there in verse 1, there were some present at that time who told him about the Galileans.
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We see in this story, this scenario with Jesus, two very different situations.
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And it's interesting how different they are.
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The first one is the temple tragedy.
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The temple tragedy.
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It says in verse 1, there were some present at that time who told him, that is Jesus, about the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
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Now, we know this.
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Pontius Pilate, this is the Pilate that it's talking about, was the governor at that time.
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He was the governor who would eventually put Jesus Christ to death, and he was an evil man.
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People oftentimes, I think, sort of get a soft spot for Pilate, because Pilate was the one not really willing to have the blood of Jesus on his hands.
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You'll remember.
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And in a way, there's a sense in which I think he sort of becomes in our minds, sort of like part the victim, because he's politically pressed into a situation.
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But what we have to understand is history tells us a lot about Pilate, a lot more about Pilate than we get just from the text of Scripture.
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The text of Scripture tells us what happens in regard to Jesus Christ, but history tells us a lot more.
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History tells us that he was reprimanded several times because there were so many uprisings under his leadership, because he was so oppressive.
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How many of you have heard of the Zealot Party? One of the followers of Jesus was known as what? Simon, the Zealot.
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Simon Zelotes, the Zealot.
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A Zealot was a Jewish nationalist, Israeli nationalist.
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He was a person who believed in the sovereign nation of Israel having authority and that they shouldn't be run by Rome.
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He was a patriot of his Jewish national heritage.
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And he believed his responsibility was to, by the sword, overthrow the leadership of Rome.
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The problem was there was not enough Zealots to take care of what was a worldwide, as it were, the known world at the time, Roman army.
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There was not enough to fight such a massive regime.
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But they tried.
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They tried to fight.
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They tried to fight for their national sovereignty.
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They tried to fight for their patriotism.
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They tried to fight for their country.
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And for that, we probably would be sort of right there saying, good job, stand for what's right kind of thing.
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But you have to understand how Pilate saw these people.
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Pilate saw these men as insurrectionists.
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Many of them went to the cross.
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But there was a time, according to this text, where something else happened.
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At this point in the history, and this is not written in any other history book.
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We don't get this in Josephus or anywhere else.
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This is simply a text of scripture.
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So everything I'm going to get is out of this one verse.
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It says, there were some present at the time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices.
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That's all we know.
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But here's the assumption that scholars make.
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And again, I know that sometimes it's dangerous to make an assumption.
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But when this is all we have, we have to at least conjecture certain things.
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It's likely that the Galileans mentioned here are Galilean Zealots.
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These are men who were enemies of the state, if you will.
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And when it talks about mingling their blood with the sacrifices, what it basically meant was that Pilate had found out where these guys were.
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And it just happened to be that it was in a place where there were sacrifices.
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And so what Pilate's men did is they went in and they took these men's life.
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And in a show of absolute hatred for them and their cause, they mixed their blood with the blood of the sacrifices so as to offend both.
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It was to show disdain and hatred for both.
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We're going to take your blood, mix it with the sacrifice's blood, neither one worth anything.
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To show you that we're the ultimate authority.
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So what we have is we have evil men perpetuating hatred and murder against men that we would say, would we say they're good, bad, or neutral? Well, we'd say they're Zealots.
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We'd say they're Patriots.
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But in a sense, we don't know them.
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We don't know enough.
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But we know that evil men perpetuated this act against men who they considered their enemies.
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So we'll just say evil men perpetuating attacks against their enemies.
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I only mention this part of it because oftentimes I think people look differently at evil men perpetuating acts against people and the world doing something like a hurricane or flood or whatever.
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We say, well, that's a tragedy and this over here is an act of terror or violence or whatever.
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Yes, there is a distinct difference because as far as we know, and we know for sure, the hurricane doesn't have a will.
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It goes on God's will.
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The flood doesn't have a will of its own.
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Water doesn't think.
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A man who goes and hurts people or commits evil against people doesn't think what he's doing and he knows what he's doing.
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So we make a distinction there.
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But the reason why I bring this up is because Jesus compares it to a natural event.
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Because if you look at verse 4, and this is what I'm going to switch to now, we've seen the temple tragedy, evil men committing crimes against their enemies.
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What is the next tragedy? Well, the next tragedy is the tower tragedy.
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The tower tragedy is really different.
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Because if you read verse 4, it says this, Jesus speaking, He said, or those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them.
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Now what do we know about that? Not much.
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We know where Siloam was.
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There was a pool in Siloam.
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This is where the blind man, you remember the blind man was near the pool there? This is the same place.
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And there was a tower.
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And we don't know what kind of tower it was.
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We don't know much about the situation at all.
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But we do know this, at some point the tower fell down.
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And it was right around this time in history because it was fresh enough on the people's minds where Jesus didn't have to say, hey, you remember the tower? He just said, about that tower, you know, it just happened.
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And Jesus was very specific.
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He said the tower fell and it killed 18 people.
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And Jesus compares these two.
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In fact, He gives the same answer to both.
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He looks at one and He says, okay, you've got a situation where evil men have done evil against their enemies and you've got a tragedy.
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You want to know, did those men deserve it? That's the question of the day.
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Go back to verse 1.
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There was some president at that very time who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifice.
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And He answered them, do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans? Stop right there.
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What's the assumption Jesus is making in His return question? The reason why you're asking me this is because you're asking me if this was the judgment of God.
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That is what you're asking.
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You're asking me, did these men fall to the hand of Pilate because they were under the judgment of God? Now, I only say that because there are times when God uses evil men to punish people.
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Do you realize that? If you don't realize that, go into the Old Testament and look how God used evil, wicked nations to punish Israel.
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Think about Babylon when they came in.
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Babylon came in and wiped them out.
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They took their people hostage.
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They took them into slavery or imprisonment.
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And they took them and made them their own.
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The story of Daniel, of course, there being taken and they tried to convert him mentally into becoming a Chaldean.
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Right? They tried to change his diet.
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They tried to change his mental attitude.
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They tried to change his religion.
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They tried to change all that.
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Tried to convert all their young, scrapping Israelite boys into young, scrapping Chaldean boys.
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But at the end of the day, what was the purpose in that? God was judging Israel for something that they had done.
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So we know God has used evil men in judging before.
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We know that it does happen.
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And so the assumption becomes, well, if something bad happens and we can point to something evil about these men or these people, then it must be the judgment of God.
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It must be God is the one who wanted this to be this way and this way is the way that He orchestrated because this is His judgment.
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So, let us just for a moment turn our attention to the question that Jesus answers.
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Did these Galileans die because they were worse than all the other Galileans? We've already said we don't know anything about them.
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We know they were probably zealots.
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And even that, there's an asterisk next to the probably.
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The text doesn't tell us that.
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We're assuming.
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But Jesus says, Were these men worse than all the rest of the men? What's the answer? It's in the text.
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And He answered them, Do you think they were worse because they suffered in this way? No.
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No.
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I tell you, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
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So Jesus begins with this one.
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He said, Okay, you had evil men.
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They attacked some men.
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Were those men who got attacked under the judgment of God? In this sense, was God using these men to punish these men? Jesus said, No.
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Even though that was the assumption of the people asking the question.
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That must be what happened.
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In the Old Testament, there was a man by the name of Job.
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Do you guys remember Job? Job is a very tragic story.
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Even though at the end, God blesses him with twice as much as he had and increases his blessings from more than what he had before.
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The beginning of the story, none of us would want to have to undergo the trials of Job.
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Job loses everything.
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By the decree of God, Job lost everything.
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In the midst of the plight of Job, he had three friends come to him.
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Each one with a different form of encouragement.
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I use that word somewhat loosely.
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One of them was named Eliphaz.
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And Eliphaz said this.
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He said in Job 4.7, he says, Remember, who was innocent that ever perished? Where were the upright ever cut off? That was Eliphaz's question to Job.
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When have the upright ever perished? When have the righteous ever been cut off? So what is his immediate statement to Job in that statement? You did something.
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You have brought this on yourself, Job.
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You are the cause of this.
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You are the one who made this happen.
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What is one thing we know about Job? His predicament was not predicated by his actions.
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Do we all agree with that? I mean, could you go back to Job 1? Doesn't it prove that here is a man who is living faithfully for God? God even uses him as an example of faithfulness.
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It says, take for instance my servant Job.
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God uses him as an example of faithfulness.
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And Satan says what? If you take away all his blessings, he will hate you.
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And God, in a demonstration of the fact that that would not happen, allowed for his blessings to be taken away.
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What did Job's wife say? Curse God and die.
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When it got bad.
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Even she wondered.
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Just curse God and die.
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You have been through enough.
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But Job did not curse God.
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He asked questions.
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And certainly when we go through trials and difficulties and hardships, we do have questions.
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And Job asked questions.
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What is the answer that God gives to Job, by the way? Read the book.
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It is not really an answer.
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God's answer at the end of Job is basically, I am God.
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Where were you when I was forming the world? Where were you when I was establishing the heavens? Who do you think you are? I am God.
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At the end of the day, God does not have to make sense to you.
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That is the hardest part.
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But that is the most comforting part of Reformed Theology for me.
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Because at the end of the day, God does not have to make sense to me.
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I do not have to figure him out.
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Because he is God.
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One of the worst things that we can do is think that we can figure everything out about God.
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But people try it.
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But I like to think about Job in regard to this situation.
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Because the same attitude that these people had who went to Jesus.
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Hey, Jesus, Pilate killed some folks.
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And he did it pretty bad.
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And it was really harsh.
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I mean, he mixed their blood with sacrifice.
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It was a mess.
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And Jesus' response, do you think they are worse than you? Do you think they deserve that more than you do? That is a powerful question.
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That is a powerful question.
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When we look upon someone else who has experienced a tragedy.
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And we say, yeah, they deserve that.
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What do you think you deserve? If God gave you what you deserve? That is Jesus' question.
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Are they worse than you? Think about the blind man in John 9.
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We talked about him earlier.
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The pool there at Siloam.
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The blind man.
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What did the disciples ask Jesus about his blindness? It is John 9.2.
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If you want to write that down.
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John 9.2.
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And his disciples asked him.
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Asked Jesus.
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Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents? That he was born blind.
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What was the assumption? Somebody did this to him.
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Somebody did something to bring God's judgment on this man.
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Otherwise he would not be blind.
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We have that.
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We have people who think that way.
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They see you go through something.
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They see you with a sickness, an illness.
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Some form of difficulty in your life.
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And they will say you did something.
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You did something.
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You deserve it.
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You must have.
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Because God is good at comeuppance.
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And this is your comeuppance.
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So the basic deduction in Jesus' day.
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The wicked suffer God's judgment.
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God judges in the form of tragedy.
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If you experience tragedy, you are under God's judgment.
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That was the three-fold deduction.
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The wicked suffer judgment from God.
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Tragedy is judgment.
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If you have a tragedy, you are wicked.
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That was sort of the A equals B, B equals C syllogism.
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It was very simple.
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But Jesus' response is.
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It needs to get our attention.
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Because he says.
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No.
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No.
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That is not right.
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I tell you unless you repent.
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You will all likewise perish.
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And he says the same thing about the tower.
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He says the same thing about the temple that he does about the tower.
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He says you look at these things.
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And you use these as reminders of one simple thing.
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Unless you repent.
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Your fate will be as bad or worse.
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And though you may live to 80 years in this life.
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You may live to 85 years in this life.
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You may live to 90 years.
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You may become an octogenarian.
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That is 80.
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How do you do the 100? You may live to 100.
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And yet, unless you repent.
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You will meet an end that is so much worse than this.
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So what does Jesus teach us in these passages? I have two major points that I want to draw from this text.
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The first one.
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It is very simple.
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And neither one of these are ultra profound by the way.
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I did not come with philosophy.
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I just came with the text of scripture.
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It is very simple.
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But these are the two things that I see in this text.
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It is very simple.
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Number one.
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Not every tragedy is the result of someone's overt sin.
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Not every tragedy is the result of someone's overt sin.
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And let me tell you why I tell you this.
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It is not just about what has happened this week.
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You need to know this.
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Because there is going to be people who suffer tragedy.
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And they are going to come to you.
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And they are going to say, what did I do to deserve this? Because the assumption of most people is that they are getting their comeuppance.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Exactly.
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That is what we have to be able to tell people.
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We live in a world that is full of sin.
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And it is full of decay.
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And it is full of dangers.
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All is a result of sin.
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All tragedy is a result of sin.
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But all tragedy is not a result of the individual who is suffering the tragedy's sin.
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I hope that made sense.
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It is kind of a long sentence.
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All tragedy is the result of sin.
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Because all tragedy is the result of the fault.
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But it is not a result of the individual's sin necessarily.
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I often get asked, if people who are facing tragedy, was it because of their gross sin? Did that hurricane hit because of that city's sin? Did that tsunami hit? I remember when the tsunami hit.
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Was it over in India? Indonesia? And I remember afterwards.
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People actually, you know, that was because of all of the idolatry and Hinduism.
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And I said, if they got that, what has America got coming for us? Because we don't have Hinduism.
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We have iPhone.
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But we have gods that people worship.
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You get what I'm saying? I mean, if you look at them and say, look at what they got and they got what they deserve, what more do we deserve? And you know what the saddest thing is? I find that people want me to say yes.
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People come and they say, do you think that was because of that person's sin or that city's sin or those men's sin or those women's sin? You think, do people want me to say yes? They want me to affirm.
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There's a guy out in Arizona.
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He came out on the news just to tell everybody he was happy that all those people were dead.
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Pastor of a church.
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And I say pastor in air quotes.
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I know him.
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He is no godly man at all.
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But he made it his point to say that he's happy they're all dead.
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I would have been much more happy had they all come to Christ.
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And what if it would have happened in a church? Could have just as easily.
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Would he be so brazen? Probably he would.
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Because he would say they don't use the King James Bible, so they deserved it.
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By the way, he's the same guy who would say that.
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He would say you're all going to hell because you have the wrong Bible in your hand.
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Except for you.
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I'm just saying.
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There are people out there who want me to say they want me to condemn people.
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They want me to say, yes, this is why this happened.
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I can't tell you what happened.
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I can tell you God's not out of control.
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I can tell you he's still sovereign even in the storm.
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God's still in control of everything that's going on.
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That I can tell you.
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And I can tell you he wasn't taken by surprise.
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And I can tell you he has a purpose in all things.
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So we need to understand not every tragedy comes as a result of overt sin.
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Jesus shows us very clearly in this passage that when somebody asks us that question, we can answer with a no.
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Do you think that this was because of X, Y, or Z? No, not necessarily.
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I don't know that.
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I don't have that information.
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I can't tell you the mind of God.
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And the people who say they speak for God in regard to the things that are not known by us are being presumptuous.
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The second thing.
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The first is not every tragedy comes as a result of overt sin.
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That's simple enough.
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The second thing is the ultimate tragedy comes to those who do not repent.
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Which is worse? A man who dies rejecting the gospel in a situation where he's in a club dancing and somebody puts a gun on him.
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Or the person who sits in church for 40 years, hears the gospel every Sunday, and yet still hasn't repented of a sin.
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You're not banking heaven time by being here.
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Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
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That's what Jesus is saying.
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Before you go and mark the judgment of God against another individual, ask yourself.
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Have I come to Christ through repentance and faith? And if I haven't, do I understand that my fate is just as worse, just as bad if not worse than theirs? You see, the point of tragedy, folks, is that it points us to the gospel.
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Every time we see someone experience a tragedy, it should make us cling tighter and tighter to the cross.
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And more willing to reach people with the gospel.
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Every one of you have people in your families that are not saved.
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Unless they repent, they will all likewise perish.
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Do you sit and say, God, I'm glad that's not me? Or do you say, you know what, without the gospel, I'd be right there with them.
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But by the grace of God, there go I.
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The only reason why you love Jesus is because of the grace of God.
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If you love him, it's the only reason.
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It's not because you're better inherently or naturally.
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You love Jesus because he loved you first.
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So the reminder of tragedy, and this is my thesis statement for the evening.
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When we ask, we wonder about the response.
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What should the response to tragedy be from a biblical perspective? Repentance and calling people to repentance.
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Because that's what Jesus did.
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Jesus, what do you think about those people that died? I think if you think you're better than them, you need to repent.
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And I think you need to realize, unless you repent, you'll be worse off even than they.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for the call to repentance.
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Thank you for the opportunity to really dig into what Jesus had to say about tragedy.
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And Lord, I know there's so much about this whole ordeal that we have not covered.
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I pray, though, that we've covered the most important part.
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That this event has reminded us of the necessity of repentance.
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And calling others to repent and trust Christ.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.