Last month we looked at an example from the Scriptures of confession and repentance on a national level. The Assyrians repented at the preaching of Jonah and God relented of the disaster he was going to bring upon them. So, what happens to those nations that do not repent? God brings his just wrath upon them in the form of a "sword, pestilence, and famine," to repeat a theme from the book of Jeremiah.
An incident occurred during Jesus' ministry that raised the question of who is in need of repentance. Some people told Jesus about a group of Galileans who were slaughtered by the Romans when they went up to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices. Jesus responds with these words: "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way" (Luke 13:2)? Jesus directly confronts the idea that "bad things only happen to bad people." The Jews who told Jesus about this incident assumed that the Galileans Pilate had killed must have been some really bad sinners. Why else would they have faced such a gruesome end? Jesus provides the answer to his own question and warns them of their end. "No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." They should not consider others who suffer such a fate as being worse sinners than themselves and the same fate awaits them if they do not repent. They must reckon with their own sin if they are to escape the judgment of the sword that is coming.
Jesus follows this up with another question regarding those who recently died by what we would call a freak accident (13:4). A tower collapsed and took the lives of eighteen people. Those who died were not worse offenders than others in Jerusalem and so they stand as a warning to those who will not repent. They will be crushed under the stones when the city is torn down.
In a typical prophetic fashion, these two examples foreshadow the judgment that awaits the covenant nation for their failure to repent in response to the King and his kingdom. Jesus makes it clearer as he gets closer to Jerusalem. "The days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation" (Luke 19:43-44). Jesus is speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem that took place in 70 AD when the Romans besieged the city.
Siege warfare has to be one of the most gruesome forms of war. Surround a city, cut off the supplies of food and water, bomb or catapult boulders incessantly, and just wait it out until the people starve and are too weak to fight. During World War II, the Nazis besieged Leningrad for three years and nearly one-third of the city's population of three million died from either starvation, disease, or bombings. Jesus graciously warned the Jews of what would happen, but they refused to repent. It was because of their hard and impenitent hearts that they were storing up wrath for themselves on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment would be revealed (Romans 2:5).
God's judgment can take another form and that will be the subject of next month's article. Stay tuned and continue entrusting yourself to him who judges justly and to him who bore the judgment for our sins.
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