I want to ask you a question. Is anybody in here really good at getting in trouble when they were a kid? I was a professional in trouble gitter. And it lasted all, I'm still getting in trouble.
I'm not going to lie to you this morning. And so when I was a little guy, I had a friend named T.W. Parker. And T.W.
was that kid who was really good at saying something out loud and having the adult or the teacher whoever shoot back to look at them. And he could like, time it perfectly. He started looking around too. He'd never get in trouble.
He would never get blamed for anything. I remember when I was a little bit older, and I realized my little sister, by that point at the time she was five or six years old. And I realized I could blame my sister. And sometimes it was legitimate.
I can get away with it. Sometimes I blamed her for stuff that was just stupid. I bit her one time, and she screamed. And my mom asked me why.
And I said, well, it's her fault. She wanted to know what it felt like a bit by a dinosaur. There's still an old one in Mill's picture with my sister. It's like a teeth marks right here in her arm.
And then I got into high school. And I got really good at getting in trouble. And my buddies and I that I hung out with, we would always get in trouble. And we had a code word from when we knew we were about to get in trouble for something.
And we were mischievous. And it was like not like the dumb, like the dumb, idiotic things, like high school kids. No, we were really intelligent with what we did to get in trouble. We were pranks.
We were trying to play pranks on people. And they got the point in time where we needed a code language to talk to each other about we're about to get in trouble. So who's going to take the blame for this? So whenever we're about to get in trouble, we were talking about Led Zeppins hit from Led Zeppin 4, stairway to heaven.
It's OK. We're about stairway in the turntable boys. We knew something was coming. And then when we were all together, so we could still figure this out in front of our teachers, whoever would start talking about an individual member of Led Zeppins contribution to their hit stairway to heaven, we'd the one who would take the blame for it.
OK, I'll play this out with boys. We got one dude who loves to get in trouble. Like he was almost like a game for him to take the blame and try to get out of it. OK, this is what boys work.
We're going to win our secrets now. OK, but blame, blame it. When you're a kid, it's funny. But the older we get, the less innocent blame becomes.
In fact, blame becomes really destructive when we get older. It becomes dangerous when we get older. It becomes very unhealthy when we get older. And we begin blaming people and blaming things.
We get into some pretty destructive cycles. To where ultimately what's going on is we end up dehumanizing people when we blame them. It gets really nasty and gnarly and turned on a very unholy behavior when we get into these cycles of blame. And so this morning we're going to talk about blame.
We're going to talk about judgment. We're going to talk about responsibility. It's these very grown up types of conversations. This is the last of Jesus' parables we're going to look at.
And the series, and it's about blame and responsibility, and the difference between them. What we're going to look at and what we're going to see and learn is this, is that we need to be responsibility takers, not blame throwers. Not people that are throwing blame off of them, but people who are looking inside of their hearts and seeing people where God is calling us and leading us to. So open your Bibles with me, Luke chapter 13.
And this is an awesome parable to read. It's a good parable if you're not familiar with Luke, because Luke does something. When I was in seminary, I get my master's degree. I had a professor that said one time that if you want to know why people killed Jesus, just read Luke.
And you'll see how much an instigator he is. And now he just pushed buttons and got immediately right to the point. And this story is an amazing one. This is an example of that.
So Luke chapter 13, we're going to start off and we're going to read verse six, seven, and eight. So it's on the screen behind me or you can read it in your Bibles or on your phones. This is what Luke tells us. When Jesus told this story, a man planted a fig tree in his garden came again and again to see if there was any fruit on it.
But he was always disappointed. And finally, he said to the gardener, I've waited three years and there hasn't been a single fig. Cut it down. It's just taking up space in the garden.
And the gardener answered, sir, give it one more chance. Leave it another year and I'll give it special attention. And plenty of fertilizer. If we get figs next year, fine, if not, then you can cut it down.
So Luke gives us a very specific story with a lot of details. And we see some stuff. We see this landowner who goes out and he plants this tree. And he has a hired gardener who is responsible for taking care of it.
And over three years, it never puts out any figs. And the landowner says, it's time to get rid of what's tossed it out. And the gardener makes this case. Let's keep it around a little bit more.
Let me give it special attention. Let me keep fertilizer on it. Let's see if it will make figs this next year, if not, then we can get rid of it. We see these three characters in the story.
We said this when we started this. When we read the parables, we need to start figuring out who the characters are. So this landowner is taking action. This gardener is taking responsibility.
Then we have this character, this fig tree. There's a character. And this job is production. And intent behind this parable is pretty clear.
Sometimes we read these passages and make it feel like, oh, OK. And we realize, OK, OK, we're not too like that. Well, this one is one that makes us breathe in deeply. We got to keep that breath in.
Like it's awkward, it's frustrating, it's complicated, and it's kind of the way I describe this parable reading all week long. It's like it digs underneath my ribcage a little bit. And it's intense, clear. There's nothing that much hidden in this.
The church fathers and mothers, people who lived 18, 1900 years ago, when they write about this parable, they talk about this is one of the most deliberate parables Jesus ever taught. And it's striking, and it's digging, and there's a purpose behind it that should make us feel awkward. But sometimes there's Sundays. And there's times and there's days when we have to have a conversation about judgment.
Because that's what this parable is about. It's about judgment. But the fact that this landowner who said, let's just get rid of this tree, because it's taking up space. It's tough to think about that.
But this story also takes place in the context of a much larger story. Jesus is preaching a sermon. There's actually a lot of parables that are inside of this. It's called, across a couple of chapters in Luke.
But it's a sermon that's all about hypocrisy. And he's in the middle of this sermon on hypocrisy. He's probably reaching the point to where he's about to finish things up, Luke's telling this narrative for a purpose. And he gets interrupted.
I want to read you the interruptions from Luke chapter 13. It's the first five verses. Read about this interruptions. It says, about that time Jesus was informed that Pilate had murdered some people from Galilee as they were offering sacrifices at the temple.
Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all of those from Galilee? Jesus asked, is that why they suffered? Not at all. And you will perish too unless you repent of your sins and turn to God.
And what about the 18 people who died when the tower and so low and fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? No. And I tell you again, unless you repent, you will perish too.
And then Jesus told us to worry. A man planned a fig tree in his garden and came again and again to see if there's any fruit on it. But he was always disappointed. And finally, he said, his gardener, I've waited three years.
And there hasn't been a single fig. Cut it down. It's just taking up space in the garden. And the gardener answered, sir, give it one more chance.
Leave it another year. And I'll give it special attention and plenty of fertilizer. And we can get figs next year fine. If not, then you can cut it down.
Remember, when you were a kid, you were getting in trouble and you tried to redirect the story to get out of trouble? That's exactly what these people are doing, right? There's a sermon on hypocrisy. Think about that.
Hypocrisy, when you say you're a one thing, but you're not. When you're saying there's out where actions exist, but they don't. The heart's just not there. The interactions are not there.
And so in the middle of it, they decide, let's try to change the subject. But Jesus knows their game. They changed the way. Hey, listen, hold on a second.
Hold on a second. No, Pilate, and he was the Roman governor of this province, of this area called Judea, that pretty much encapsulates about half of modern Israel. And Pilate assassinated 18 Galileans one day. And he said, hold on, but Pilate killed those 18 people.
And there's this viewpoint and this view in a way that they operated at this point in time 2,000 years ago that if bad things happened, you that meant that you were a bad person. They're worse than we are because they got killed. They got assassinated. And Jesus, no.
And then Jesus brings up, it's the pool is the low. And it's actually we find it in miracles and healings of Jesus. But there's a tower on top of the wall of Jerusalem. And it fell.
You make natural disaster. And it fell and people died. Jesus brings up. And he says, in the people who died in that accident, we're not worse often.
You were either. Everyone will be judged the same. Everyone's going to have to deal with this. Everyone is part of their personal life.
It's going to have to understand what judgment likes. That is a fact of life. Jesus knew their game. They were redirecting the attention off of themselves.
And he brought it back in, not just to them, but brought it back in the hearts of every single person. That when we direct away from Jesus, Jesus is going to bring that back because we've got to think about judgment. Jesus refocuses things. But this is where we've been holding that breath in.
It's been kind of weird, kind of awkward, kind of tough for a while. Right? We can exhale now. There's a fig tree.
Oh, goes back to this fig tree. Parables are amazing because there's so many details inside the parables of what's going on. The fig tree. So fig tree show up a bunch in scripture.
I love that song that Rich and Lindsay, we just finished Mounting. It captures a metaphor that's all about scripture, a mountain, about mountains, about places where we meet with God or we change with God. And I tell people all the time, if you see a mountain, then you're reading about it, buckle your seat belts. And you can think bigs about it.
It's about to happen. The fig tree is another one of those metaphors. This fig tree is a symbol of eternal peace and prosperity in the nation of Israel. Like the $100 word for this idea is that s-catalogical reality.
This is not like creepy weird end of the world. Like Johnny Cash God's going to cut you down stuff. This is like eternal blessing of God. This fig tree symbolizes the prophecies of the eternal reign of God.
It involves every person having fig trees and olive branches and vineyards. Because these are three things that take a long time to cultivate. And if they're alive and they're thriving, they're prospering, that means nobody's coming like burned to the place down in recent history. And if someone living 2,000, 2,500, 3,000 years ago, the idea of somebody coming and burning everything down is legitimate reality.
This fig tree also, it provides tremendous shade. They grow fast. It takes them a little bit of time to produce fruit, but they grow fast. And so they're providing you shade after a year.
And this is an area in a land without that much shade. People need shade. You want shade. That shade is protecting.
It's encapsulating. It's relieving. Fig trees also, after a couple of years, begin producing fruit. Josephus was a historian who lived about 2,000 years ago in Israel at the time.
He bragged the fig trees in Judea would produce for 10 months a year. Imagine what it's like to know that you have a food source for 10 months a year. Now, we know what that's like to be a grocery store. We're not an agricultural economy.
It's also plagued by locusts and all sorts of wild, woolly things. And people come and burn everything down every few years and provide a food source for 10 months. And it grows really, really well in rocky soil without much water. This fig tree is a symbol for eternal rest and care by God.
That fig tree lets us breathe out deeply because we realize that it's telling us something about this story. This fig tree is a symbol for God's people. So by Jesus telling the story, after people try to redirect and throw their attention off themselves, we're not work centers, they're work centers. It's almost as though Jesus saying, you want to talk about sin?
Let's talk about sin. Let's talk about sin in a way that we can all identify and think and grow through. Jesus telling these people, you claim to be extremely righteous, but you're not producing any fruit. That if you're righteous, you're going to be producing fruit.
If you're following God, you're going to be producing fruit. The production hints at the problem. If the production is not happening, there's an issue of the heart. And that's what Jesus wants to talk about.
He wants to talk about the heart with these people. He says, listen, you have time to make things right with yourself. We can't get into a cycle of blame and of judgment. We have to understand what responsibility it looks like.
And by being responsibility takers, we own up to who we are and honest ourselves. And we're just throwing blame that we're casting off on other people. See, blame and responsibility, they actually live together on the same spectrum. They're both actions of the same issue.
But when we're consistently throwing blame and blaming other people, we're not talking about self-blame. It's a psychological reality that is there and is real. There's people in this room that know a lot more about it than I am. And we're not going to talk about that idea of self-blame.
This is the outward blame that we direct to other people. Think about this. That when we're blammers, we're always negative. We're projecting this off on other people, other situations, other issues that we're not going to touch.
They're not our fault. That's not our responsibility. Go deal with it. The thing is, though, when we're consistently blaming and projecting this off of ourselves, we become unaware of ourselves.
We're unaware of what our own issues, where our own problems are. Unaware of the places where we need healing. And here's the thing, if we're unaware of ourself long enough, we're sooner or later going to lose complete side of ourselves. We're not going to know who we are.
And if we don't know who we are, we don't know anything. We completely lose ourselves. If we move over in the spectrum, they'll talk about responsibility. The responsibility is proactive.
To be responsible means that we have to be in a conscious state of humility, because we know who we are. That we have to be in a conscious state of openness and awareness. We are not only aware of other people, but we're aware of ourselves and how our own actions affect other people, and how our own negative actions can affect other people. We take ownership of ourselves.
When we take ownership of ourselves, we can function as our true self. That's what it means to take responsibility and not cast off and throw blame. Because if anything, with all the parables, not just this parable, with all the parables, they're talking about its personal responsibility. They're talking about Jesus saying, listen, the kingdom of God is right here for you.
All you need to do is to turn and to recognize and to choose to live into repentance. You know what repentance means? Repentance doesn't mean taking blame or saying, I'm sorry, you're admitting that you're wrong. Repentance, the literal word means to turn, to turn on that spectrum away from blame and into responsibility.
To turn away from the things that we know are hurtful towards us and to turn towards the things that can heal us. To turn away from the things that are destructive and to turn towards the things that are redemptive. I truly honestly believe this because from the depths of my soul think that Jesus is going to offer us a better way to live and we're going to be significantly more fulfilled by following him than we would be by following ourselves. Repentance means to turn, to turn towards the kingdom.
The gardener says that he's going to keep fertilizer on this fig tree. Here's the thing, repentance is the fertilizer in our own life. Repentance is that thing that will move us forward. And all repentance means is just to turn towards Jesus and say, listen, I don't got this figured out.
I talk to you all the time, I miss it and screw up, but I know it, and I'm glad I know it. I'm going to keep fertilizer. And then the last part of the story that helps us breathe so much deeply, it's always, it's in these details and the parables and all week long I was present, jeez, we got to figure out what to close this thing. We got to land this airplane because it's been gnarly.
So I do not go back to the details, go to the details, go to the details. Here's the thing, y'all, it's the environment. I found our mission is great environment for people to experience a God big and all for all their needs. The environment, this whole story is in a garden.
Let's open our minds up and think back in this the word of scripture. Where did God first encounter men and women in a garden? We read Revelation 21 and 22, we read the eternal Jerusalem, that $100 word I talked about this morning, eschatological reality. What is the environment in Revelation 21 and 22?
It's in a garden. In fact, our word for paradise that we use in English every day is cognitive ancestor is a Persian word for a walled garden. That's what paradise means. Think about a garden.
There's a big difference in having a patch of wild tomatoes and having a garden, right? OK? I remember when I was in Kentucky, some might throw some tomatoes in the side of it and every year they'd be tomato plants would just pop up. And some years they'd be great, some years they'd be horrible.
You couldn't count those tomatoes if you weren't eating tomatoes. If you ever garden before, my grandfather had a three acre garden. I was like, when's the difference in a garden? I don't know because he didn't quite teach me.
The gardens are intentional. They're planted. They're cultivated. They're planned out.
They're a place of intense growth. They're cared for. God has planted us in a garden, in the place where he says, I want you to grow to your fullest capability and your capacity. And I'm going to do every single thing I can.
That make that happen. I'm not going to be a wild tomato inside a framed up cedar box. I'm going to give you a gardener. He's going to take care of you.
All you need to do is to turn into looking to focus. So inside of paradise, a man planted a fig tree. We asked ourselves, and he still worries, who are we in these stories? Friends, we're the fig tree.
Inside of paradise, a man planted a fig tree. And it grew strong and beautiful. It was not producing any fruit. And this gardener says, let me come take care of it.
Let me heap fertilizer upon it. And then let's wait and see what it produces. Friends, Jesus has been heaping fertilizer on our lives since longer than we can imagine. The work has already been done for us.
The way that we activate is by simply looking towards him each day and realizing the power of turning and making those intentional decisions. We've been put in paradise and have been put here to thrive and here and now. Jesus, help us to see who you are and who you have been to us. Help us to see those places in our life where you have fertilized us, where you have given us what we need.
Where you have sustained us, where you've taken care of us. For in the times when we're doing well, you have harvested. And the people around us have harvested those fruits. For the times where we need more of you, you have taken care of us.
You have pruned us, you've picked the bugs off. You've built fertilizer around us. Lord, help us to see that, to experience it so we can know where you are and know how we need to experience and feel and engage with you more. But then help us always to go and do out for the sake of mission.
Lord, we want to know more of you. And you know me, pray. Amen.