Unless You Repent | Sunday, October 11, 2026

Praise the Lord. Thank you, Anthony team. Good morning! It’s good to see you all. You can have a seat. I am so glad you guys are here this morning. You braved the San Diego hurricane. God is good. It will probably be 110 degrees this week, but the Lord is good.

It's a good reminder in that song connected to Peter's message in Acts 4, verse 12: "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby they must be saved." It's a good reminder.

We’re in the Gospel of Luke this morning. If you want to take out your Bibles, if you don’t have a Bible, you can raise your hand, and an usher will bring you one. We’ll be in Luke chapter 13 in a moment. But in Luke chapter 12, we have the setup, the context, which is always important. As I’ve said for many years, context is chief when you’re getting into the Scriptures. You need to understand what comes before and what comes after in a passage. You can’t just isolate a passage; it’s the fastest way to misunderstanding. The fastest way, it could be said, to heresy is to take a text out of its context.

In the context of this, we have Jesus’s words in Luke 12:56, which we looked at last week: "Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it that you do not discern the time?" A corresponding passage to this is Jesus’s conversation with his disciples in Matthew 16, where he says very much the same thing: "Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times."

How would you expect Jesus to say this to either his disciples or to the crowd? You would probably expect that someone or a group of people would come to him and say, "All right, Jesus, here’s something that’s happened that looks to us like a sign. How should we interpret it?" You say, "We don’t know how to discern the signs of the times." Well, here’s something that’s going on, and we want to try to discern what it means. We think it means something, so what does it mean?

That’s exactly what we’re going to see in Luke chapter 13 this morning. But before we actually read the text and get into it, I was thinking this last week about when this passage of Scripture, Luke 13:1-9, first came to my attention.

I actually remember exactly when this passage specifically came to my attention. It was one month and 25 years ago today that we had an event happen in our nation that, if you are over 30, you remember quite well: the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. When that shaking event happened to us as a nation, it immediately inspired tons of questions from people. What does this mean? Is this a sign?

I can tell you I was attending this church at that time, in my early 20s, and we had a midweek Bible study. It was the most attended midweek Bible study the Wednesday following September 11 of probably any midweek Bible study we've ever had. This room was completely packed with people asking very much that same question: Is this the sign? Every single one of us, as I said, if you're over 30, you remember that event. If you're younger than 30, you know about it through what people have told you or what you learned.

Every single year on September 11, my kids, who are all teenagers now, talk about what happened. My kids frequently come and ask questions, wanting to know what I remember from that day. We all remember that day. Now, I will say there's been tons of research done on memory, and our memories are not always great and perfect. We kind of pick up things from different places along the way, but the core of the memory is there. I remember the core memory. I was living at my parents' house at that time, and my mom came into my room and said, "You need to come and look what's on the TV." I came in right as the second plane hit the second building.

I was trying to process what I was seeing; I didn't understand all of it. We all watched with fixed gaze as the towers fell. On that day, nearly 3,000 people died, including 343 firefighters and 72 law enforcement officers who went in to try to rescue people. When you see something like that, you can't help but ask, "What does this mean? Is this a sign?"

It doesn't even need to be something grand at that scale for an entire nation; it can be particular to you. When something devastating happens in your life, you are inspired to ask that question: How should I interpret this? Should I interpret this? Should I ascribe some measure of value to this as an indication of something? Is it a sign? Like I said, this passage of scripture came to my attention that week. I know that it came to my mind for a reason.

I want to draw your attention to a significant event that occurred that week. At that time, I used to listen to a pastor named John Corson on his website every single day and every single week. Does anyone know that name, John Corson? My memory, though it may not serve us perfectly, recalls that the Sunday following 9/11, on September 16, 2001, Pastor John Corson taught a message on a specific passage. I listened to it the Monday after that event, and I wanted to fact-check my memory.

So, I sent an AI agent to John Corson's website last week with explicit instructions to find the message from September 16, 2001. It took two minutes, and then it sent me this exact message: "Found it. On Sunday, September 16, 2001, John Corson preached a time to repent from Luke 13:1-5," the same passage I am preaching on this Sunday. The AI knew that because I work with it quite frequently.

Interestingly, John's message that weekend was not originally intended to be on that passage. He was preparing to speak on another Old Testament passage, but he pivoted. This is often what happens with pastors when something of that scale occurs. You go through an analytical process in your mind, questioning whether you should pivot from your planned message. In this case, he felt it was significant enough to address the current events, so he deviated from the Old Testament to speak on this passage. When we read it in a moment, you'll see why he chose this particular text; there is some connective tissue, if you will.

Now, think about this for a moment. I used artificial intelligence in 2026 to find a sermon on a major headline that happened 25 years ago. It found it in two minutes. Today, the great headline in our culture is artificial intelligence. This has been the focus of my research for the last three years.

In September, while I was out of the country, I received numerous emails and text messages from people here at this church and from other pastors in different places asking me, "What do you think about this stuff in the news? Did anyone see the news about AI in September? It's going to come and kill you all. Everybody's going to die." There was a young man, Jake Jacob Coxin, who worked at Anthropic for a short period. He left and told everyone there was a 10% chance it could kill us all. This has left many people shaken by the potential of jobs disappearing and the possibility of conscious AI.

Huge discussion. In fact, that's been all of my research for this entire year. I'm doing research on consciousness studies right now. I'm supposed to write a really big paper on the biblical view of consciousness. It's due on December 15th, and I'm very behind, so you can pray for me at the moment.

I'm exploring how the biblical view of consciousness differs from the Silicon Valley view of consciousness. There are a whole bunch of people who work at OpenAI and Anthropic telling us that Claude and GPT are conscious and self-aware. We all know what that means, right? John Connor told us what was going to happen when the AI becomes conscious, and he gave us a date. We've already passed it, but anyway, then Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to show up, and we're toast, right? Yes, yes. I'll be back. Hasta la vista.

The forecasts of the end of the world have been going on for a very long time. It's interesting. There's an author, Nick Bostrom, who wrote a book in 2008 called "Superintelligence." It's funny that the White House decided to change the name of all this to superintelligence. I would recommend that the Trump administration read the book because it doesn't mean what they think it means. The whole book is about how superintelligence could basically destroy us all.

People are fearful, and as is always the case, fear drives clicks, views, and sales. The end of the world has always been good for business. The core company that is driving the fear narrative is about to IPO within the next several weeks, seeking a valuation of $2 trillion. Fear makes their valuation go high.

You need to recognize two major things. First, there's an economic reason that Dario Amodei, the head of Anthropic, is driving the fear narrative. He has equity in what is going to be the largest IPO in history. Second, there's an event happening on November 3rd called the midterm elections, and politicians see this as a great way to drive votes. You need to understand what's going on underneath the surface of all these things.

Fear does drive clicks, views, and sales, and it stirs in people questions about a big theological term called eschatology. If you're a Christian, you might have heard that word before. It's the study of the last things, the eschaton, the end times, things around the apocalypse, Revelation, Ezekiel, and all this sort of stuff. Christians know the word eschatology, and Christians, especially Protestants, are familiar with these concepts.

Christians in America have an eschatology. However, I want you to recognize that every person you know, whether they're Christian or not, has an eschatology. Everybody has a doom scenario in their head of the end of the world. For a very long period, from the 1950s until the end of the 1980s, the doom scenario was global thermal nuclear war. How many baby boomers here remember getting under your desk for duck and cover routines? Like that was going to save you in the blast. How many of you were afraid of global thermal nuclear war?

I am a product of the 80s and the 90s. You know what we were afraid of? Acid rain and the hole in the ozone. Can I get an amen for the acid rainers? And then there was the AIDS virus. All of our parents watched the news every night, and all we heard was about the AIDS virus. We were all scared to death, thinking we were going to die. Those fears came and went, and then what happened? Well, 9/11 happened, and man, was that a fearful event.

We have been trying to avert the apocalypse for many years to avoid global thermal nuclear war, and then it came to our shores in the form of a terrorist attack. We were kind of post-apocalyptic after that. I remember being in New York City within ten days after the attack. I even went looking for it in my closet yesterday and found a film capsule. Do you guys remember film capsules? I have a film capsule with the dust from Ground Zero in it. I still have it.

I remember the mood there at Ground Zero and the smell. It looked like the end of the world. When you see these things, you start to ask the question, "Is this the time?" That is the question underneath this whole passage. Jesus has said that we cannot discern the times. Then they came to Him and said, "Well, okay, we see these two events." They were going to bring two headlines to Him and ask, "How should we interpret this?"

So open your Bibles to Luke chapter 13 if you have it, and stand with me. We'll put it on the screen as well, and let's read the opening verse. Luke says, "There were present at that season..." You might want to highlight or underline that word "season." It's important. There were present at that season some who told Jesus about the Galileans. Jesus was a Galilean from the region of Galilee, whose blood Pilate, that's Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, mingled with their sacrifices.

Sacrifices were a significant part of the Jewish tradition. Galilean Jews came to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices, and they were massacred by the government. Wow, that's newsworthy. They brought this headline to Jesus, and He answered them, "Do you suppose that those Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans?"

That's where our minds go when we see something bad happen to people. We think, "Well, they must have got what they deserve. They must be under God's judgment." Remember when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana? There were pastors in America saying, "It's God's judgment on them." Do you suppose that those who suffered were worse sinners than all the rest in Galilee? I tell you, no.

But here's the important part: unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Jesus continued with another example: "Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell." This was another news story, a headline. The towers fell in 2001. Why did John Corson reach for this passage? He asked, "Do you think they were worse sinners than all the other men who dwelt in Jerusalem?" I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you will also likewise perish.

He also spoke a parable: a certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of the vineyard, "Look, for three years I've come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. So cut it down. Why does it take up ground in my vineyard?"

But the vine dresser answered, "Sir, let it alone this year also. I will dig around its roots and fertilize it, and if it bears fruit, good. But if not, after that you can cut it down."

God, give us wisdom as we consider the signs of the times. As we reflect on the things that happen in our lives, whether individually or on a larger scale in our nation or in the world, help us to comprehend what You might be saying, if You are speaking at all. The Scriptures say, "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church."

We are gathered here this morning, and we pray that You, by Your Holy Spirit, would speak and give us ears to hear what You might say. How should we interpret these things? We ask this in Jesus' name. And all those that agreed said, "Amen."

You can be seated. I apologize beforehand; I have more notes on this message than I think I've had for any message in the last twenty years. I probably won't get through all of it, so I'm trying to edit on the fly as I go through. Maybe I don't need to.

Is this the time? Jesus said in Luke 12:56, "You don't know how to discern the times. You don't know how to discern the signs of the times." Now they say, "Well, here are two headlines. Is this the sign?" This is the question that shaking produces at scale when it happens to a nation or in your life personally. When you get the diagnosis, the pink slip, or go down the list, the shaking comes, and the question is, "All right, is this the time?" We put that definite article in front of "the time." It’s not just, "Is this time?" No, it’s "Is this the time?" What time? The time of the end? Am I going to die? That’s the question.

Notice the connective word between Luke 12:56, where Jesus says, "You don't know how to discern the signs of the times," and Luke 13:1, which states, "There were present at that time." The word "season" that I mentioned is the same Greek verb "chyros" used by Jesus in the previous passage. You don't know how to discern the chyros, the season. At that very chyros, at that very season, a group came to Him with a couple of headlines in the news. They stopped His message and asked, "How do we interpret this?"

The headlines are interesting. The first headline is a story about moral evil: Pontius Pilate killed a group of Jewish worshippers who were in Jerusalem. This is the only account of this event we have in historical record, but we take it as what it is—history by Luke. A group of Galilean worshippers had gone to Jerusalem with their sacrifices, and instead of offering their sacrifices, they were killed by the government while trying to worship. Well, that’s newsworthy. The chyron connected to chyros—the chyron on CNN in first-century Jerusalem—was showing that Pilate killed worshippers at the temple. News at 6. We have team coverage.

So that’s the first headline. The second headline is about an accident: a tower fell. In these two headlines are all the headlines you will ever read. All of the headlines of all the bad things that lead the news fall under the category of moral evil, which is humans doing evil things, or natural disasters.

Evil refers to the bad things happening in the world: fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes—just to name a few. Everything that you will encounter finds its place in these categories of moral and natural evil. This includes what evil people do and what simply happens in a broken, fallen world.

Now, a group of people comes to Jesus and asks, "What does this mean?" Jesus's disciples did the same thing at the beginning of Acts 1. They had just witnessed something horrendous: Jesus was crucified, buried, but then He rose again, and now He was with His disciples. They approached Him and asked, "Lord, will You at this time...?" The word "time" here is interesting. It is the word "Kronos" in Greek, which refers to a moment in time, as opposed to "Chyros," which signifies a season. They were asking, "Will You at this moment restore the kingdom? Is this the time, Jesus?"

Jesus's answer frustrated them, and I think it frustrates many of us as well. He said, "It's not for you to know the Kronos, the moment times, or the Chyros seasons, which the Father has put under His own authority. That's not your business." Well, I certainly think it is.

In verse eight, He continues, "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth." What is Jesus saying to them? It is not for you to know the times and the seasons, which are the Father's concern. That is not your focus.

Point number one, if you're taking notes this morning, is that the answer to "when" is "go." Notice that Jesus does not indulge the curiosity surrounding timing. He redirects it every time. It is fascinating; if you study this in the Bible, you will see that every time someone comes to Him with this kind of question, asking, "Is this the time?" He redirects them from the "when" to the "work." He emphasizes that it is not for you to concern yourself with the "when." Instead, I want you to focus on the "work."

This is exactly what happens in Jesus's most prophetic discourse, known as the Olivet Discourse, found in Matthew 24 and 25. Jesus tells His disciples that the city of Jerusalem is going to be destroyed, a prophecy that was literally fulfilled under Titus the Roman in 70 AD, about 40 years after Jesus spoke it.

Jesus predicts the destruction of Jerusalem. His disciples come to him when he is seated on the Mount of Olives, which is the mountain across from the Temple Mount. There he is, probably looking at the Temple Mount, and his disciples approach him with a question. This moment is recorded in Matthew 24:3.

Now, as Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives, his disciples came to him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? We want to know the Kronos and the Kairos. When shall these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"

Jesus does not answer their curiosity by telling them what the sign is. Instead, he shares a whole bunch of things that are not the sign. It is really important to interpret this passage correctly because I have heard many pastors misinterpret it. He says, "These are not the sign."

Let me give you an example. In Matthew 24:6, he states, "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars." That must be the sign, right? No. He continues, "See that you are not troubled, for these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet." He talks about wars, tyranny, persecution, and pandemics. He mentions all these things and clearly states, "Those are not the sign."

His disciples insist, "We want the sign." He wraps it up by saying in Matthew 24:14, "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come." He emphasizes, "I don't want you to focus on the win. I want you to focus on the work. You're going to preach the gospel to the whole world. That's it. That's what I want you to be doing."

We are constantly focused on the win, but he says, "I want you to focus on the work." So, is it wrong to ask the question? No, it is human to ask the question. What does this mean? One of my favorite first-ever viral clips on the internet is the question, "What does it mean?" It is human, and Jesus invites us to discern the seasons. When you see these things happening, know that the kingdom is near, as stated in Luke 21:29-31.

We can read the seasons, but the question we bring to the Lord is, "Is this the time?" He always responds, "No, I don't want you to be spectators watching this. I want you to..."

Participate. You're so focused on the win. I want you to focus on the work.

And so we find ourselves inclined to become observers of all the times and the seasons. What has been referred to in the past as newspaper eschatologists, today I would call YouTube eschatologists. What is that? I just go on YouTube—not right now, maybe later—and you'll find thousands of videos on the end of the world. Whether it's from Christians or non-Christians, non-Christians have eschatologies too. They come in the form of climate change and AI. There's always a doomsday scenario that grips people's attention, and they ask, "Is this the sign of the end?"

This is exactly the posture that Jesus is about to dismantle in this passage. The way that he does it is remarkable because he says, "Well, you see these headlines. Do you think that that's an indication of God's judgment?" That's what they were saying. They were asking, "Are you asking if this is God's judgment?" I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will perish. That's the pivot.

Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than the Galileans elsewhere because they suffered these things? That's where every man's mind goes. Going back to some of the earliest human writings, the Book of Job is exactly that—one of the oldest books in antiquity. I tell you, no, not every catastrophe is a verdict on the victims. We live in a broken and fallen world that is filled with both moral evil and natural evil. Those things happen in this world.

When we are disturbed or perplexed by moral or natural evil, the desire underneath that is a desire for the future kingdom in which all of that is dealt with. But he says it twice: I tell you no. And twice he says, "But unless you repent, you will likewise perish."

As is always the case, this crowd came to Jesus like we often come to Jesus, pointing the finger at those people. "Are those people being judged over there?" they ask. He says, "Let's turn it from those people to this person." Our impulse is always to say, "It must be those people. They're really wicked." God says, "Let's not deal with them for a second. Let's talk about you. Where are you in this moment?" The finger pointed to the victims becomes point number two. But Jesus turns the focus back to us.

The finger we point at the headlines reflects back at us in a mirror, and He says, "Unless you repent." This brings up a significant discussion: What is repentance? It's an important topic, and there's a great message on it by a theologian named J. Edwin Orr. In fact, Enduring Word owns the website jededwinorr.com and manages the content there. Orr preached a message years ago called "The First Word of the Gospel," where he goes through the New Testament and shows that the first word of the gospel is "repent."

In Matthew 3, John the Baptist began to preach, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Similarly, in Matthew 4:17, Jesus began to preach, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Peter, during Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, preached repentance as well. Jesus stated in Luke 24:46-47 that "this gospel of repentance shall be preached in all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." Repent is the word that God gives.

So, what does this word mean? The Greek word for repentance is "metanoia," which is a compound word meaning to change your mind. This literal interpretation signifies a change of mind that causes a change of direction; it is a 180-degree turn. That is what it means to repent.

However, there is a problem. In the 4th century, a man named Jerome translated the Greek scriptures into Latin, creating what we call the Latin Vulgate. When he chose a Latin word to translate "repent," as in "repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," he selected the word "penitentia." This word sounds similar to the English "penitentiary." A penitentiary is a place where you are sent when you have committed a crime and are paying restitution with your time.

This change in terminology influenced Christian thinking on repentance for the next thousand years in an unfortunate way. It shifted the understanding of repentance from a change of direction—a 180-degree turn, where one acknowledges that they were going one way and, after God shakes everything up, decides to go another way—to penance. People began to think that they would go to a priest, perform penance, and pay restitution. Perhaps after death, they would go to a penitentiary where they would stay for a period of time to be purified. What is that called?

Purgatory is a false teaching that is not found in the Bible. However, it stems from a small word change made by Jerome. Jerome was an amazing figure, and I am not speaking negatively about him, but that particular word choice was poor. There were other issues as well, but that was a significant mistake.

In 1517, a German Catholic monk named Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King, began to make waves. Martin Luther was in Wittenberg, Germany, and he was a Catholic monk who started to read the Scriptures. He wrote what became known as the 95 Theses, which consisted of 95 statements that he nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. I have been there; my wife and I have seen the door. It was like the 15th or 16th-century equivalent of Reddit—he posted it on the door.

The first three statements addressed a critical misunderstanding: we have gotten repentance wrong. The initial statements that sparked the Protestant Reformation emphasized that repentance is not merely feeling bad or sorrowful. It is a complete 180-degree turn. Yes, there may be sorrow connected to it, as one realizes they were going the wrong way. The call is to repent and be converted so that sins may be blotted out, allowing times of refreshing to come in the presence of the Lord, as stated in Acts 3:19. Acts 26:20 also emphasizes that they should repent, turn to God, and perform works befitting of repentance.

In Luke 13, Jesus tells the disciples that He is not asking them to look at the headlines and feel sorrowful. Instead, He wants them to examine the headlines and ask themselves if they are going the wrong way and if they should repent and turn in the opposite direction. When the next shaking comes—and it will come, whether for you individually or for us nationally—the first question should not be, "What does this mean for them, for this culture, and for this nation?" Rather, it should be, "What is God speaking to me?" Every shaking is a summons.

What is being shaken? And why does God shake things up? This is so important. God shakes things up at scale, for a whole people or for us individually, to help us identify what we are trusting in and devoted to. The shaking exposes trust and devotion.

On 9/11, we were shaken. We had trust in the Atlantic and the Pacific. We were guarded, and we had trust in the over-the-horizon capabilities of the CIA and our military, believing we had the greatest military on the face of the planet. We have been the sole superpower since 1989. Then, out of nowhere, 19 hijackers came and took down the Twin Towers and hit the Pentagon in one day. We were shaken. Our trust in some trusted horses and some trusted chariots was shaken. Our devotion to these things as our safety, our savior, and our salvation was also shaken. This is purposeful. God says, "I want to shake you to expose whether that thing is worthy of your trust and devotion."

At its most fundamental level, an idol is that which you trust and are devoted to. Are you saying that I may have idolized America? Yes, and it's shaken. Then, several years later, in 2008 and 2009, the global financial crisis occurred, and our trust in our financial institutions was shaken. The question is, is that worthy of your trust and your devotion?

Throughout this entire period, we have had 20 to 25 years of bad leaders. I don't care if they are on the right or the left or if they wear a red or blue tie. Do you really think they are the best we have to offer? Can anybody tell me yes, that is the best we have to offer in Sacramento or on Capitol Hill or wherever you want to look? Is that really the best we have to offer? I don't think so. But for a long time, we thought we could trust in these leaders.

What has the last 25 years shown us? Maybe not much. Our trust is shaken. As the Bible sees it, the Scriptures give us the ability to look behind the veil into the supernatural. The challenge for us is that we typically only see the natural because that's what we sense with our senses. This was the essence of the Enlightenment, which exposed something beyond the natural—something metaphysical, above the physical.

The Bible has been talking about this for literally millennia, but it feels like we are being brought back to it after the Dark Ages, and we are enlightened. There is something more to the universe than what we see. Yes, the book of Genesis indicates that this is not new revelation. The Bible provides insight into what is called the punishment of God, the judgment of God. This judgment typically comes in two ways.

One way is that God pulls back. Romans 1 states that He gives them over to their desires, essentially saying, "I’m going to let you do what you’re going to do," and you can see the outcome of that. The other way is that He moves into an area for judgment. A great example of this is found in Isaiah 19, where God moves upon Egypt for judgment. It says in Isaiah 19:1, "Behold, the Lord rides on a swift cloud and will come into Egypt."

What happens when God moves on a nation for judgment? The idols of Egypt will totter. When God moves upon a nation like Egypt for judgment, the things that they trust in and are devoted to are shaken. Isaiah 19 lists out all the shaking. They trusted in the Nile because it provided everything they needed for their economy. They relied on their position in the deserts for protection. They looked to their pharaohs and leaders for wisdom. They trusted in all these things, and ultimately, all those things come crumbling down.

When we examine this through the eyes of a Westerner in the 21st century, we might say, "These are just natural political challenges that people go through." However, through the eyes of the Bible, it indicates that God moves in and makes the things they trust in shake. Why does God make those things that they trust in shake? What is the purpose?

Of punishment? Purification and repentance. Let me read this to you. It's amazing. Isaiah 19:22 states, "The Lord will strike Egypt. He will strike and heal it, and they will, what's the word? They will repent. They will return to the Lord. He will be entreated, prayed to by them, and he will heal them." They will cry to the Lord because of their oppression, and He will send them a Savior and a mighty one to deliver them.

God moves to shake the things we trust in, exposing that those things are not worthy of our trust and devotion so that we will repent and turn to the only one who is worthy of our trust and devotion. The First Commandment says, "You shall have no other gods before me." When the things we trust in shake and are on the verge of collapse and failure, we get scared, don't we? Because those are the things we trust in. We devote ourselves to these things, and now they are being destabilized.

Hopefully, in the midst of that, when what we trusted in and devoted ourselves to is shaking and seems like it’s going to collapse, we realize that it is not worthy of our trust. The shaking exposes what we really trust in so that we might repent and put our trust in that which is worthy of our trust. We tend to non-spiritualize these things, saying, "Well, they're just natural. It's moral evil. It's natural evil." But maybe God is saying something. Maybe He is saying, "Wake up."

Pastor Garrett, two weeks ago, said we should pray this prayer: "God, shake and awaken us." That is a potent prayer to pray, and what a challenge because that's exactly what this is. Open our eyes.

If you look at what happened to Egypt in Isaiah 19 and all the indications of God's judgment, you see that all the things they trusted in were shaken, exposing that those idols were not worthy of their devotion. What has happened in our own nation? Just in my adulthood, September 11th shook our trust in our security and our position.

War shook our confidence in the strength and might of our nation and our military, and sometimes in the ethics of how we engage in war. The years 2008 and 2009 shook our confidence in our economy and in our money. Two decades or more of political division shook our trust in our leaders. The events of 2020 shook our trust in the experts and the medical establishment through a pandemic, and now AI is shaking something deeper for a lot of people.

Our work is a part of who we are because God made us to work. Did you know that ontologically speaking, at the very beginning, God made us in His image with a mandate to work? It's not a product of the fall; pain in working is a part of the fall. But working is ontological. God made you to work, so your actual being is connected to that. People find meaning in that. How many of you have found that you find meaning in the work that you do?

I've talked with people over the years who say, "I wish I had a job that had more meaning." They think that if they just had a pastoral job, that might do. Well, I hate to break it to you, but what happens when the machine comes along and can do your job? You trained for it, got an education for it, and worked for 15 years to gain experience. Now you've put yourself in the position of a manager of other people. What happens when your job can be done by tokens of a machine faster, cheaper, and more efficiently than you?

You might say, "Well, that can't happen." I have been working in this field at a high level for two years, and I can tell you it can happen, and it is frightening. Let me tell you what's coming: the biggest meaning crisis we've ever seen. I'm not a prophet, but I can read the sky and discern what's coming. This is a great opportunity for Christians whose hope is not in this world because you're going to have a lot of friends, co-workers, and neighbors whose entire lives are going to collapse when they realize, "Wait, you're telling me that that stupid thing called Claude or GPT does my job?"

Grockbot. Who comes up with these names? No, it's not conscious, and it will never be conscious. I have a lot to say about that, but it can do my job incredibly well. Listen, it drives my car all the time. I never drive anymore. People come to me and say, "Well, I have self-driving too. I got a Lexus with lane correction." No, it's not the same. I get in my car in the morning, and I...

Push a button that says "self-driving." It backs out of my garage, drives to the church, and parks. Then, I just get out of the car. It can do that with anything connected to a computer. It's going to cause the biggest meaning crisis we've ever seen. The shaking exposes the things we trust in so that we might repent and put our trust in the only thing that deserves our trust.

Point number three: whatever trembles when the ground moves is what you have been leaning on. That's heavy. This is hard for me, but it will be a confession that will challenge you. Most of us, myself included, live as practical atheists because we trust in our health, our intellect, our strength, or our abilities. Then something comes and shakes that, and we realize maybe we're not trusting in God in the way that we thought we were. Maybe we're trusting in all these things that are not worthy of our trust because good looks fade, strength fades, and intelligence fades.

I feel like every single year my ability to recall words that I once could easily remember just goes away. I find myself trying to think, "What was that word?" and I’ll spend like ten minutes trying to figure it out. Is anybody else there? It’s painful. I used to be really good at recall, and now all of a sudden it’s like, "What is that word? What is that word?" Then, like three hours later, it just hits me, "Oh, that’s the word! Oh, that’s what it was." No help then; it would have been helpful three hours ago.

The tragedy isn't the shaking; the tragedy is sleeping through it and missing the message. That’s what the book of Revelation predicts. When the shaking comes, Revelation 9:20 states, "But the rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues did not repent. They didn't wake up." The Bible frequently tells us to not be asleep but to be awake. People survived the shaking, but they kept worshiping the things that couldn't save them.

So, what is the right response when the shaking comes? The right response is not panic. It’s not doom scrolling. I was having a conversation with one of my kids a week ago, challenging him about his social media engagement. He said, "Well, you're on X all the time." I replied, "Well, here, let me show you my..."

Screen time. X wasn't even in the top 20. It was such a win for me in that moment because, yes, six months ago, I did spend too much time on X Twitter. But the last six months, that's not helpful to me, and I hardly spend any time on it. Praise be to God. It made me feel so much better.

Why? Let me just tell you something. Social media is a drug, and it's not a good one. It's affecting you and your outlook. If you spend more time on social media than you do in the Bible—which, let's be honest, the answer to that question is yes, we all do—then no wonder your outlook is fearful. If you think that the nightly news is some sort of important service that you need to feed into yourself, I want you to know it is a commercial endeavor; otherwise, there wouldn't be commercials. They're selling something, and it's not to you. They're selling you to advertisers. They say, "Here, come watch this thing." And what does it do to your stress level? I guarantee it increases your blood pressure and gets us all fearful. Is this the sign?

Jesus says, "I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will perish." Then He gives this curious story, as Jesus often does. We call them parables. Jesus tells the parable of a vineyard. A certain man had a fig tree planted in a vineyard.

Now, here's the interesting thing. For a Jewish listener in the first century, this metaphor meant something different to them than it does to us because they knew their Scriptures. In Isaiah chapter 5, God says, "The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel." So when they read "vineyard," they hear "the people of God." They had this beautiful example in the entire region of Samaria, what we call the West Bank today. If you go there, you will see 3,000-year-old terraces and rock walls built for the vineyards from Solomon's time.

When Isaiah says, "The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel," and he tells this great story in Isaiah chapter 5, "And the fig tree is in the midst of it," it's not an abnormal thing to them. They know God; Jesus is speaking to us. We're the vineyard, and there is a fruitful tree—or supposed to be a fruitful tree—in the midst of it: the fig tree. The fig tree is planted there. And why do we plant fruit trees? For what? Fruit.

So the owner of the vineyard comes to the vine dresser and he says, "Hey..."

Listen. This fig tree has been here for years. I've been waiting for fruit for three years. According to the Levitical law, it's probably six years old at this time. He's waiting for fruit, but no fruit has come from it. He says, "There's no fruit. It's unfruitful. It's taking up ground. Cut it down. Let's plant something that brings fruit."

The vine dresser responds, "Hey, give me just one more year to try and see if we can make it fruitful." There's a message here: He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. I've come three years looking for fruit. I've been patient, but the patience is not endless. In the Scriptures, cutting down is always equated to judgment. It's going to be cut down and cast into the fire. That's what you do with something you cut down—it's judgment.

So, the owner of the vineyard, who is the Lord, says to the vine dresser, "Cut it down. Throw it into the fire because I want fruit." What kind of fruit does He want? John the Baptist answers the question for us in Luke 3. He says, "Bear fruits worthy of repentance." That's the fruit I'm looking for because the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Those are John the Baptist's words. Everything has connections.

The owner says, "Cut it down. What more could I have done for my fig tree?" But the vine dresser replies, "Sir, Lord, give me one more year. Here's what I'm going to do." The vine dresser has a plan, and this plan is really interesting. He says, "I'm going to dig around the roots because it's unfruitful, and then I'm going to fertilize it."

In the original language, it says, "I'm going to dung it." What does that mean? I'm going to pour poop on it. Let me ask you a question: Your life was not bearing the fruit of repentance. So, what did God do? He said, "I don't want to cut you down and throw you into the fire. Here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to dig up the roots."

Has anyone ever had their roots dug up in their life, where it felt like things were destabilized, and then God threw a whole bunch of poop into the situation? A lot of your stories about how you came to Christ involve the roots being exposed, everything getting destabilized, and a lot of poop showing up in your life. Am I wrong? Andy Stanley, a Bible teacher out in Atlanta, had a great...

Years ago, he said, "You need to pay attention to the knots in your life and the lives of those around you. When things are not going well, when your business is not doing well, when you are not where you thought you would be at this stage of life, when your marriage is not doing well, and when your kids are not doing well, take note. When the roots have been exposed and there's a lot of poop there, it's not going well. God might be saying something. He's trying to produce fruit, and so he's making it uncomfortable so that you might repent.

He is so patient. The Lord is not slack concerning His promises, as some count slackness, but He is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should be cast into the fire or perish, but that they would all come to repentance. Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads to repentance? His patience is His mercy.

Point number four: God's delay is not His absence; it is His mercy. So discern the time. The crowd wanted Jesus to read the headlines about what they said regarding all those people out there. Jesus said, "No, let's not do that. What about you? Because there is a day coming. Behold, now is the acceptable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation."

We want to know about the Kairos and the Kronos, and God says, "No, today. Today is the day of salvation." Point number five: every sum, every shaking is a summons, not a schedule. So he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church. That's us. It's time, Peter says, Kronos, for judgment to begin at the house of God.

God, open our eyes. Help us to see. Would you stand with me as we close in prayer? Lord, I thank you for this shaking series of messages throughout Luke 12 and 13. I pray that you'd...

Help us to not look at them for what they might say to all the people in Washington, or the people in Sacramento, or the people in our neighborhood. Lord, what might it be that Your Spirit is saying to us? Is there something in my life that I'm trusting in and devoted to that is not worthy of my trust and devotion, that has become an idol? I pray, God, that You'd help me to recognize it and to repent—not just to feel bad about it, but to turn away from it.

And God, that we would turn to You, and in You we would find love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. May that fruit begin to grow in our lives, that it would be evident, and that You, as the owner of the vineyard, would see it and rejoice in it. We ask this in Jesus' name.

And now may the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May He lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.