Local Rabbi Threatens Crowd
Using the tenth anniversary of September 11 as a backdrop, Tom Shrader works through Luke 13:1-5, where Jesus redirects questions about why disasters fall on certain people toward the universal need for repentance. He argues that God's sovereignty means He either causes or allows every calamity, and that no tragedy is a sign that its victims were greater sinners than anyone else. Drawing on Romans 8:28, Daniel 4, and personal recollections from 9/11, Shrader urges listeners not to waste suffering but to let it press them toward faith in Christ and an honest reckoning with their own mortality.
“God causes all things to work together for good means that He has to be powerful — all-powerful — and He must be all-knowing. God knows everything there is to know past, present, future about you, us, the world — everything — and He has the control to change it if He desires.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Scandalous
Recorded: 2011 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 54 min
Themes: repentance, suffering, tragedy, mortality, sovereignty, disaster, sin, faith, grieving loss, questioning god, survivor of tragedy, wrestling with doubt, new believer, seeking answers, facing death, spiritually complacent
Scripture: Luke 13:1-5, Daniel 4:34, James 1:14-15, James 4:13-16, Ecclesiastes 3, Romans 8:28, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Isaiah 6
Theological Themes: divine sovereignty, theodicy, repentance, soteriology, salvation, providence, romans 8:28, total depravity
Full Transcript
Introduction to a Scandalous Series
Open your Bibles to the gospel of Luke. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and the guys will bring you one. It's on page 567. We are starting a new five-week series called "Scandalous," on the tough sayings of Jesus. Anyone working their way through a Bible is going to know they will come to sections that are really difficult and will cause all sorts of consternation. This is one of those areas, and we are here today in the gospel of Luke, looking at the first five verses of chapter 13.
Let me read through them, and then we will come back and comment. "Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus said to them, 'Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.' Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the Tower of Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the other men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, unless you repent you will likewise perish."
Setting the Scene
Notice right away in verse 1 the phrase "on the same occasion." That gives us a connection to what came before. The chapter breaks and verse breaks were not in the original manuscripts — those were added later for ease of reference, to help us find specific passages of Scripture. So this is an occasion where Jesus has been speaking to a very large gathering, and He has been interrupted a couple of times. We don't know the exact structure of how the whole event was arranged, but at this point people come to Him and report something — they comment on an actual occurrence. Jesus then makes reference to another occurrence. We don't know the specific details of either event, but His original audience did.
By the way, that should be a lesson to those who teach: it is perfectly appropriate to connect with people around events they already understand. Jesus does exactly that here. He meets His listeners where they are, speaking into situations they know, and He does not sacrifice the message in order to do it. That is a great example of being both connected and substantive at the same time.
Connecting to September 11th
I cannot imagine something more irrelevant, on this particular Sunday — September 11th, 2011, the tenth anniversary — than not talking about 9/11. It is simply all over everything. When we sat down and put this series together, I came to the table and said, "Guys, 9/11, tenth anniversary Sunday." We recognized this passage was a perfect fit, because what Jesus is dealing with here is very much like what we faced on 9/11.
People were coming to Him with disasters all around them, and a whole pile of questions came with those disasters. The overriding question is: where was God? Where was God on 9/11? Where was God when Pilate slaughtered those Galileans? And then you begin to parse it further: did this happen to certain people because they were more guilty than others? I watched an interview with a woman who had been in the Pentagon with two co-workers. She said, "You two stay in this room and I'll go get coffee." She left. They were killed. Did they deserve it? Were they greater sinners than she was?
That is exactly the kind of question these people were bringing to Jesus. They were coming to Him and saying, "What about this?" And Jesus is essentially responding: what is your concern here — are you somehow supposing that these people were more deserving of what happened to them?
Tragedy, Judgment, and the Headlines Around Us
We see it all the time when disasters and hardship strike. Consider the headlines from any given day: an Illinois city touched by the September 11 events 800 miles away, Americans paying tribute, Obama laying a wreath at Shanksville, a memorial bomb at a U.S. base in Afghanistan, wildfires in Texas, Libyan fighters battling, a bomb in Afghanistan, Japan marking six months since the earthquake and tsunami. The sense of it is that calamity is all around us, everywhere we look.
Then we look at all of that, and sometimes someone like Pat Robertson sounds like an idiot trying to figure out whether a hurricane is God's judgment. Politicians like Michelle Bachmann get into what God is doing through a hurricane, calling it His judgment. But if you want to play that game, then why does God hit that city and not this one? Is that city worse? That is exactly what Jesus is responding to in this passage.
If God were going to strike down all the bad people, how many would be left? That is the problem. Why does calamity happen here and not there? Jesus is addressing that very question.
Pilate and the Galileans
Pilate was a bad man. He ruled from 26 to 36 A.D. and was known for wickedness, bribery, and viciousness. He was there to represent Rome, to keep peace, to suppress any uprising, and perhaps even to make pre-emptive examples out of people.
The event described in verse 1 appears to have taken place around Passover. Pilate typically resided at Caesarea by the ocean, but every Passover he was required to come to Jerusalem — about as welcome a change for him as it would be to swap a beach city for somewhere far less desirable. He did not necessarily want to be there, but he was there. The Galileans had a reputation as rabble-rousers who stirred people up, and it may be that something was actually brewing, or that Pilate was making a pre-emptive move. Whatever the cause, he went in and slaughtered these people, and the blood of the Galileans and the blood of the sacrifices were swept together. That detail suggests this likely occurred at or near the temple. We know that approximately 250,000 lambs were slaughtered at Passover — there was a great deal of blood flowing.
Jesus uses this occasion to say: wait a minute, you are trying to figure all of this out, trying to decide who was worse. And the reality is, this moment may demonstrate judgment, but it certainly demonstrates mercy — because you deserved what they got too. That is what Jesus is driving toward, which is why you see the same identical point repeated in verse 3 and again in verse 5.
The Tower of Siloam
Jesus then raises a second event. There was a tower — likely in the midst of a period of construction — that collapsed. Jesus asks: do you think the eighteen men who died in that collapse were worse than everyone else? Again, He is pushing a discussion about judgment and justice to the table.
He is saying, do not get distracted by the question of who deserved what. Instead, use these moments to examine your own life. Every time I conduct a memorial service, I make essentially the same point, regardless of whether I knew the person well or not. The point is this: do not waste the funeral. How could you waste a funeral? You waste it by failing to understand that what happened to that person is going to happen to you too.
It would be foolish to look at someone who became sick and died, or who met some calamity, and conclude they got what they deserved. Jesus is saying no — this is a reality for all of us. In every life, there will come a moment, whether at age 13 or 33 or 53 or 103, when we will die. He is saying: you need to be ready to die. You need to repent.
What Repentance Actually Means
Repentance means to turn. It is not a 360-degree turn, because that leaves you right where you started. It is a 180. It is a change in how you see yourself, how you see God, and how you see life. It is to begin to see things as God sees them.
In both of these occasions — the Galileans and the tower — Jesus is driving us home to that same reality. Do not waste the calamity. The way you waste it is by failing to understand that it has repercussions for you personally. Do not get absorbed in discussions about where God was on September 11. I can tell you where He was on September 11: the same place He was on September 10 and September 12 — on the throne, in charge.
Why did it happen? I do not think it is anti-intellectual or shallow to admit there are certain things I cannot fully know, explain, or understand. Why did she go get coffee and they stayed behind? I do not know. I cannot know all of that. It is not simply about judgment. What God is saying through these moments is: I want you to see patience in the midst of this. He is calling us to examine ourselves, not to audit others.
Doctrine in Uncertain Times
Doctrine is especially important — essential, I would say — in uncertain times. That is the overarching point under which I want to make three simple but important points. When times are difficult and uncertain, was 9-11 one of those? Sure it was. We sit here today and we haven't seen an attack on the country since then, but if you could rewind to 9-12, 9-13, 9-14, everybody was petrified that there was going to be another one sometime soon.
Are times uncertain now? I just had a discussion with somebody this morning about business, and I said I don't even know how you'd make a business deal today. I wouldn't even know how to evaluate — and this is what I did for a living — I don't know how you'd evaluate a piece of property and then go and buy a center. So you've got a guaranteed non-recourse or recourse lease from Borders. What good is that? I don't even know.
Let me be clear about something, because some of you are new and you just need to know: I'm the guy who believes every silver lining has a cloud, and I'm determined to find it. So if you want someone who will tell you everything is going to get better, I'm just not that person. You need to find another place.
Why We Chose This Passage
We chose this passage because it falls on a week when, no matter what you are doing — whether you have a football game, a picnic, you're watching TV, listening to the radio, reading a newspaper, or gathering news online — you cannot miss 9-11. And I think you can look at this passage and ask, what do I learn here?
So here is what I decided to do. I went back and pulled the message I gave on my first Sunday back after 9-11. When 9-11 hit, Susan and I had just left Washington. We were in Virginia and had plane tickets out of Dulles on 9-12.
I was there to speak, and we were at Appomattox — where Lee surrendered to Grant — when a park ranger told us we had to leave, that the United States was under attack. I said, "Pal, they're not going to hit Appomattox. We're in the middle of nowhere." But he made me leave the park before I ever got in to see the surrender site.
Stuck in Virginia
We listened to everything on the radio, and I learned something there: a picture is worth a thousand words. When we got to the hotel and turned on the TV, what we saw was very different from what we had listened to. We were stuck, faced with it all, and I got on the phone right away.
It was clear that all planes were grounded for the next three or four days. I tried Amtrak — that didn't work. And we had rented the last car available. We were staying at the Doubletree Pentagon.
In fact, on September 8th, Susan and I had been at the Washington Monument. From there you can see the White House, Congress, and the Lincoln Memorial. The pilots were practicing landing Marine One — the President's helicopter — and planes were coming out of Reagan National. I said to Susan, "I don't understand why bad guys don't take these planes and fly them into these buildings." It just seemed so obvious and easy to me. I said it to her again the next night. I said, "I don't understand why someone doesn't do this." So apparently I think like a terrorist.
Driving Back to Phoenix
I assumed renting a car in Washington would be easy. I went to Budget and got the last car they had. It was a Kia — about the size of that drum set. So now we were in Virginia with no hope of flying home.
I told Susan we were going to drive back to Phoenix. We stopped at a gas station and I asked the attendant where to find a map. He asked where we were going, and I said Phoenix. He said, "Right down here is Interstate 40. Make a right. When you get to Flagstaff, make a left." That saved me the $12.95 the map would have cost.
Some of you are old enough to remember the movie *The Right Stuff*. There is a scene where John Glenn is re-entering the atmosphere. That is what it was like for four days in that Kia driving back to Phoenix.
Coming Home
Along the way, I would talk to Neil and get reports on what people here wanted. All of our neighbors — the people in this congregation — wanted us to open the church so they could come and pray. The church was full.
So I thought I would go back and pull my PowerPoint from that day. I was struck by two things: how prophetic that message was, and how applicable it still is. Not just to 9-11, but to our everyday 9-11s.
September 11th was that moment where all of us stood back, caught our breath, and said, "Oh, wow." We had that experience in common. But in reality, you have your own personal 9-11s all the time. We are just not pulled into your world with you to share them — and even when we are, we often cannot truly understand the magnitude of what you are going through.
God Is Sovereign
This is not going to be good. Those of you that are out of work, making $75,000 a year, may get new jobs at $40,000. It's just the way it is. All the rules are off. Trust is gone. My concluding point from ten years ago was that everything is never going to be the same, and it hasn't been since.
In the midst of all of this, when everything around me is shaking, I need to remember that God is sovereign. Where was He on 9-11? The same place He was on 9-10 and 9-12. The same place He has always been and always will be — He is on the throne. He is sovereign.
Webster defines sovereign this way: above or superior to all others, supreme in power and rank and authority. He doesn't answer to anyone. There is no authority over Him. He doesn't ask you for permission or owe you an explanation. He is God. He does as He wills and as He chooses, and He is not subject to anyone. Everything, on the other hand, is under His control and authority.
R.C. Sproul has coined the phrase: there is no maverick molecule in the universe. There is no molecule floating around out there that could usurp His plan. God has His plan, and God's will will be done. He is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega. He is in control. He spoke this world into existence, and He sustains it.
Nebuchadnezzar's Lesson
In the Old Testament there is an interesting figure — Nebuchadnezzar, essentially king of the world. He has this moment where he has built his kingdom and is walking along the top of the wall that surrounds the city — a wall so thick they used to race chariots on it — humming his favorite song, "How Great I Art." At that moment, God strikes him, and he spends the next seven years wandering with the cattle, eating grass.
Autobiographically, he tells us what he was thinking at the end. It is in Daniel chapter 4, verse 34. He says: "But at the end of the period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my reason returned to me. And I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever, for His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation."
One of the translations says, "when my senses returned to me" — when I began to think clearly, when I saw God for who He is, and me for who I am, and the world for what it is. At that moment, he blessed the Lord, praised the Lord, and worshiped Him. What struck him was that God's dominion, His rule, His authority, lasts forever.
It is the equivalent of that Isaiah moment, where Isaiah sees and hears the seraphim singing around the throne — "Holy, holy, holy" — and Isaiah says, "Woe to me, for I am undone." Because he begins to see God for who He really is, how He really is, what He really does. Not a caricature of this.
Don't Mistake Tolerance for Truth
That is why I say, in times of uncertainty, what you often see is somebody giving you their best guess at what God should do. All of these memorial services — the moment they try to get, quote, spiritual, they get goofy. That is what happened after 9-11. The big gathering was an ecumenical service at Yankee Stadium. Oprah presided, and they did everything but sacrifice a goat. They had Native Americans there, Buddhists there — everything — as though every faith is equally valid.
We live in a country that protects everybody's right to worship, but do not mistake that to mean every faith is true. They cannot all be true, because they are contradictory. God speaks to us through His Word.
We just spent thirteen weeks on doctrine, and in times of uncertainty I feel like I either need to understand God or I somehow need to rescue His reputation. I want to say, "Oh, God couldn't have stopped it" — but of course He could have stopped 9-11. He either caused it or allowed it, but He is not hung up on responsibility. What does He say to us? Who made the deaf? Who made the mute? Who made the blind? I did. I don't feel that I need to be able to explain it, and very importantly, God does not owe me an answer for this. He is God. You are not. He is sovereign. You are not.
A Foundation That Holds
What I want to get to is seeing the world, and God, and myself as He sees it — because then it becomes a foundation, a footing for what I believe. Then the 9-11s in my life don't blow me to and fro when they come. We can be surprised by planes flying into the Twin Towers — that specific event catches us off guard — but we should not be surprised when difficulties come.
You should not be surprised when you, or someone you love, or someone in your family finds a spot on an X-ray, or loses their job, or has a family member say goodbye, or faces relational difficulties. It is part of life. God is sovereign. God is in control. You do not need to move Him around in that moment or spare His reputation.
Everything Is Temporary
Here is the second point: doctrine is essential, especially in times of uncertainty. And these truths are so elementary — that is why, ten years later, they still fit. Everything is temporary.
Now this is one of those things that cognitively we all know, but we don't seem to accept or implement in our lives. I talk about my grandmother. I had four grandparents, and my grandmother on my dad's side was the weakest. She was always sick, very frail. We always thought she would die first. She lived to be around 94 — she turned out to be the toughest of them all. She was a little lady.
Finding Context in the Temporary
My brother told me the other day that my mom weighs about 88 or 89 pounds now. My grandmother was that size — very frail, really bad arthritis. They lived in a place called Melrose, Iowa, a town of about 250 to 300 people, in a dumpy little house. In that two-bedroom house, grandma and grandpa had one bedroom, and all six kids shared another bedroom upstairs. They stayed there until they went away to college or got married, all six of them, boys and girls.
It took me a while to understand her. I read a wonderful book years ago that really helped me understand my grandparents and that whole generation. When we would go and see her, she was always baking bread, always making something. That was her way — that was all she had. She was a really simple lady.
She listened to the Twins on the radio all the time. She loved wrestling on television to the day she died, convinced it was real. And she loved Bobby Knight. She would say, "Tommy, I feel so sorry for Bobby Knight — he just has that one red coat." I said, "Well, I think he'd be alright, Grandma."
Her morning man on the radio was Ronald Reagan. She listened to WHO in Des Moines, and back in — I think it was 1964 or 1968 — she said, "Dutch just got elected Governor of California. What do you think?" That was the first time I had ever heard Reagan called Dutch. We would go back and forth, trading barbs. She liked to spar with you.
The last time I saw her, I went in and she was very frail. I fired a couple of shots at her, and she had nothing to come back with.
The Future Self We Cannot Picture
I know I have made this point to you many times, but perhaps this will be the best version of it. When I left that moment and got in my car, I could picture the whole drive — leaving Sheridan, driving to Knoxville, then to Newton, then all the way back to Davenport. The whole way I kept going back and forth: I know that is my future, but I cannot see myself there.
It is the same thing I encounter every year at summer camp with the junior high and high schoolers. Here are these boys who cannot get a date, and you are trying to convince them that one day they will get married — which excites them — and then you tell them they will not drive a Corvette, they will drive a minivan — which discourages them. Because they all think they are different from everybody else. But it is all the same. It is all the same.
Life Is a Vapor
Here is what I battle all the time in my own life, and I have to be very careful of this: there is a sense in which none of this stuff matters, and yet it is really important. The things going on in life — the buying, the selling, the trading — in one sense they do not matter, and yet at the same time they are very important. But they need context. All of this is temporary. All of this is passing away.
James chapter one says, "Come now, you say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such-and-such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes." This is all momentary. Life is like a vapor.
The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life — the whole world is passing away. Scripture talks about it from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes chapter three speaks of a season to live, a season to die, a time to laugh, a time to cry, a time to plant, a time to harvest. There is this pervasive temporariness woven through all of it.
Planning in Pencil
James does not say, therefore, withdraw from life. Verse 15 says instead, "Rather, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.' But as it is, you boast in your arrogance, and all such boasting is evil." Rather than acknowledge that life is like a vapor, we say we are going to go here, do this, do that — with a certainty that does not account for God.
He is not saying do not plan. There is a phrase I love that feels like my giant bumper sticker: we write our plans in pencil, but God has the eraser. I should plan. I should be prepared. I believe in financial planning. We plan sermon series here. We have a master plan for the campus. The passage is not saying do not plan — it is saying it is arrogant to make plans without understanding that God can change them at any point in time.
And if you are really committed to Him, you want Him to change them to align with His plan. It is distinctly possible that we could think and meet and pray and talk and develop a plan that is not His plan. He may want to do things that do not make any sense to us. We may look at our own lives and say, "This makes perfect sense — I am going to go here, I am going to do this," and God says no. There is going to be a 9/11 equivalent in your life.
We see it all the time. You can rewind and go back and find those moments in life where we had everything planned out, but it did not work the way we planned — and in the final analysis, it was better. God had a better plan.
God Works All Things Together for Good
Here is the third point: God works all things together for good. As you see the three of them on the screen, you might be thinking, "This is really basic, isn't it?" Yes, it is basic. It is really simple — and yet it is really profound. God works all things together for good. That flows directly from Romans chapter 8, verse 28.
As you look at that verse on the screen, you need to understand that we are prone to edit it. Often, in a smaller setting, when meeting with someone —
The Misuse of Romans 8:28
When working through Romans 8:28 with a small group, I'll often ask if anyone can quote it from memory. Almost always, people will begin with "all things work together for good." But when you start the verse there, you make it about you. You took a verse that is all about God and made it all about yourself.
Here is the other way we tend to misuse that verse. After 9/11, George W. Bush quoted Romans 8:28 to the nation, and he said, "All things work together for good," and stopped right there. But that verse does not say all things work together for good for all people in all places at all times. That is not a universal promise to every person who has ever lived. The full verse reads: "all things work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to His purpose" — in other words, to His people.
What the verse is actually saying is this: God causes all things to work together for good. God is in control. If I had a Bible with only this one verse in it, I could still conclude that God is both all-knowing and all-powerful. For Him to work all things together for good, He must be all-powerful, and He must know everything there is to know — past, present, and future — about you, about us, about the world, about everything.
That truth can be a source of either great comfort or something a little unsettling — maybe both. You hear it all the time: a husband or wife says, "I never would have married you if I had known that about you." God will never say that to you. He will never say, "I would never have chosen you to be My child if I had known that about you," because He already knows everything there is to know about you — everything you have ever thought, everything you have ever said.
Two Key Takeaways
There are two big points I want to carry forward as takeaways. The first is this: remember that God either caused or allowed whatever has happened. He is sovereign. He is God. You do not need to worry about protecting His reputation.
The second point is one that gets lost in moments like this: what was the eternal destination of those who died in the attacks? I want to look at three groups of people involved in 9/11 — the hijackers, the people in and around the towers, and the first responders.
What the Culture Believed
This is why I think cultural relevance matters. If you listened to the culture around you in the aftermath, it gave you a clear view of what people believed. I looked at three editorial cartoons that each addressed this question.
The first cartoon depicted a hijacker. A figure, presumably Satan, says, "You've reached your final destination," and the hijackers are looking at each other with obvious panic. The point of the cartoon is clear: the hijackers are in hell.
The second cartoon depicted the first responders. The caption read, "A fitting reward for those who laid down their life for a friend," and the implication is that they have arrived in heaven — clouds, pearly gates, the whole picture. The third cartoon was drawn by a school-age child: the Statue of Liberty, the Twin Towers, a cloud, and people entering it, with a figure I presume to be Jesus receiving them.
There is a great deal of theology packed into those three cartoons. The question is whether it is right. The implied theology is this: the hijackers are in hell because of what they did; the rescuers are in heaven because they were heroes; and the people in the towers are in heaven simply because they were in the towers when it happened.
Is That Theology Correct?
I can only work from what was proclaimed — the hijackers refused to believe in Jesus, they did not believe in Jesus. Now, this is not a question of sincerity. With no pun intended, the people with the most skin in the game on 9/11 were these men. They were, in one sense, the most committed. They prepared carefully. They understood what they were doing. I cannot even fathom what their heart rate must have been as they took control of those planes, knowing they could not land them, and flew them into those buildings. If sincerity alone got a person to heaven, by that standard these men would qualify.
As for the rescuers, what we are crediting them with is one noble action at one moment in time. But my presumption — and I want to be clear I do not know this for certain — is that among those rescuers were people of many different faiths. So the question has to be asked: if an unbelieving fireman died on 9/11, is he in heaven? And if a person simply happened to be working at the World Trade Center that day — maybe a good person, there only because their company was located there — are they in heaven simply because they died in a horrific event? I do not think so.
What the Bible Actually Teaches
Here is what the Bible teaches, and it is straightforward. Romans chapter 3, verse 23: "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Every person who has ever lived.
The Universal Condition
Jesus' point back in Luke 13 is that we are all in the same condition. We are not better than the Galileans, and we are not better than the Jews who were killed in that catastrophic event. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. We all deserve death. Romans chapter 6, verse 23 puts it plainly: "For the wages of sin is death" — so we all sin, and what does that earn us? It earns us death — not just physical death, but spiritual death, separation from God. Yet the other side of that verse gives us this: "but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus."
You are all going to die. That is what Jesus says. Unless you repent, this will happen to you — you will face death too, judgment too. But it will not be some arbitrary judgment. It will be perfect judgment from God. And unless you respond, unless you believe, your destination is eternal separation from God.
How God Uses Catastrophe
One of the remarkable things about 9/11 is how God used it in so many different ways. I can be very cynical about the response — and I was. The churches were filled for about two weeks. It was a life-changing event for about two weeks. There was a woman in New York City who was interviewed, and she said, "It was amazing how people have changed. Today a man held a door for me." That tells you something — it is a commentary on what New York City was like before.
I thought it would be interesting for you to hear a simple story — not from someone who was at the towers, but from someone who was in law school when it happened, and the effect it had on her. We edited the clip down to about seven minutes from twenty, so it may feel a little choppy, but see if you don't get this. This is a pretty cool story. These are the things God does — the way He uses 9/11s and the 9/11s in your own life as well.
Kirsten's Story
My name is Kirsten Story, and I have been attending Redemption Gilbert for about five years. I was in the basement of the law school when a guy walked in and said there were planes that had flown into the World Trade Center, that the Pentagon had been hit, and that another plane was missing. After that it was a little chaotic, and the law school shut down.
I went home and did the worst thing anyone could have done — but everybody did it. I turned on the TV and started watching the news. The one image that really stuck with me and had a profound impact was a man — it was before the towers went down — who I imagine was somewhere above where the plane hit and had determined that things were not going to go very well for him. He was in a business suit, and the shot was basically of him having jumped. He was free-falling through space, his jacket flapping in the wind. To me it was a picture of extreme vulnerability and loss of hope — that circumstances had gotten so bad he felt compelled to jump, and he was just free-falling, with the bottom gone from underneath him and nothing around.
That vulnerability and loss of hope was so shocking to me, and that is kind of how I felt at the time. The bottom had come out from underneath me during a period when things were very hard. I was isolated from my family, who were across the continent, and isolated from my boyfriend, who was halfway across the continent. You could not call in or out from Boston for a significant part of the day because the cell phone towers were overloaded, so I was literally unable to contact anyone. I just felt so alone and vulnerable and afraid.
The Sermon on Isaiah
That Sunday I went to church with my landlady. The sermon was on Isaiah's commission, and the point the pastor made was that Isaiah's commission — that great vision of the Lord, the angels, the "holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty" — occurred in the year that King Uzziah died. His point was that sometimes the Lord will take away our security in order to reveal Himself and to move us forward. We should ask: the Lord is now revealing Himself to us — how do we move forward?
The Morning Everything Became Real
Shortly after that, in the fall, I got up one morning and did some reading as usual. I was alone in my room, probably the only person awake at that hour. I finished my reading, looked down, and it was like — and this is the cheesiest thing, but this is how it went — for the first time I was really seeing it. God just opened my eyes, and all of a sudden I realized that it was all true for the very first time.
It was a fall day — it must have been sometime in October — a beautiful fall day in Boston. The weather was cool but sunny, the leaves were turning, and there might have been a breeze. It was a gorgeous day. And to me, the beauty of that day was a further demonstration of how wonderful God was as our Creator. But I was not with Him. I was separated from Him because of my sin, and the whole day felt painful and gray and dark — as beautiful as it was — because I was so acutely aware of this God from whom I was completely separate.
The Phone Call
I made it through the day, came home that night, and called my boyfriend. I told him I had been reading the Bible he gave me every morning. He said, "Yeah, that's great. I'm so proud of you, babe — so good." And I said, "Thanks. I have come to the conclusion that all of this is true." I remember there was silence on the other end of the line, so I felt compelled to push the conversation further. I said, "Let me go a step further and say — if all of this is true, then there are certain things in here that are true. For instance —"
God's Plan Breaking Through
"Am I a sinner?" He said yes. I said, "Well, then my sin separates me from God, correct?" He said yes. So I said, "Am I going to go to hell?" There was dead silence on the other end of the line, because he probably didn't want to tell his girlfriend that she was going to go to hell. I kept going and said, "By hell, I mean I'm going to be separate from God for all eternity. Is that what that means? Because I don't want that." He said, "Well, yeah, but I think you're missing something here."
He basically went back and re-explained to me God's plan for salvation — how God sent His only begotten Son so that we could have eternal life with Him, and that Christ's finished work on the cross was so that sinners could be reconciled to God. I had heard it so many times. I heard it in church when I was younger, and I'm sure he had said it to me many times before, and I had heard it from other Christians I knew. But that was the first time it made sense, and the first time I felt like I really had access to it.
I think he was very intentional in making it clear that I would have nothing in order and be completely alone — completely alienated from everyone — so that it was just him and me, and that he was going to do this work. I'm really grateful for that. That's what God does.
Don't Waste Your Personal 9/11
That is where I want to go today — not just the big 9/11, but your individual 9/11s. God causes or allows everything in your life, and He does it for a reason. To those of us who don't know Christ, like the people we just studied in Luke chapter 13, don't waste whatever that is — that tragedy. Don't waste it and miss the point.
Even if somehow you can plan and connive and conceive your way out of some difficulty, there's another one coming right behind it, and behind that, and if you beat all of them, ultimately you die. And then you face perfect judgment. So I'm very aware of the fact that there are people who are with us every week who have never come to the point of putting their faith and trust in Christ and developing and growing a relationship with Him.
You may have been much like Kirsten — having been to church and heard about it, perhaps even having been to church and therefore thought you were a Christian, but the reality is you never were. So this might be a day for that. For others of you, you are in the midst of pain and suffering. We receive it every week in prayer requests and notes that come in through the office about the 9/11s that are in your life, and we are here to be servants and shepherds alongside you.
An Invitation to Come Forward
We started this practice about a year ago, and gradually it has become part of the culture. After every service, there will be men and women at the front of the room who are here to meet with you. You may want to talk about coming to Christ and what it means to be a believer, or it may be to talk about some difficulty or challenge in your life, or you simply want someone to pray with you. They are here for that.
Paul is going to come and lead us in our time of communion, and we are going to praise God through song. If you are in the conference center, Paul will be over there in a minute and will close your service there. In both places, there are men and women at the front of the room who are here to serve you and to be with you. Please take advantage of that.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for today. Thank You for the 9/11s and the tragedies — not because they are fun or easy, but because they are real and they are difficult, and yet it is in the midst of them that You so often teach us. God, we pray that You would open our eyes to see this truth: that in the middle of our pain, we won't let the pain overwhelm us and debilitate us and paralyze us, but that You will take our pain and hardship and push us to You. God, we want You to do what You need to do to make us Your kids. We pray in Christ's name, amen.