Repenting

Where is God when bad things happen? Are people who die in calamities and atrocities just getting what they deserve? We either have had experiences or heard about bad things that happen, all the time. Not long ago we heard on the news that in New Zealand over forty Muslims were killed while they were worshiping. In other countries it was Christians. Were these victims of mass shooting being punished by God? What about when you or someone you know contacts a serious illness and if that where not bad enough the mounting bills that go along with it put finical strain on resources.

In our reading today Jesus taught the crowds that calamity can happen to anyone because all are human. Jesus cited two common instances about destruction. The first concerned some Galileans who were killed by Pilate while they were offering sacrifices. The second concerned 18 seemingly innocent bystanders in Siloam who were killed when a tower … fell on them. Jesus’ point was that being killed or not being killed is no measure of a person’s unrighteousness or righteousness. Anyone can be killed. Only God’s grace causes any to live. This point is brought out in verses 3 and 5—unless you repent, you too will all perish. Death is the common denominator for everyone. Only repentance can bring life.

To illustrate His point even more Jesus taught in a parable that if fruit does not show in one’s life, judgment will come.

What kind of fruit does God look for from me?

I assume He looks for the fruit of the Spirit in the life of the believer; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control (Galatians 5:22-23). It is both encouraging and troublesome to note that although the gardener in the story sought fruit from the tree, he did also give it, "special attention and plenty of fertilizer." I like receiving special attention from God, don’t you. To hear that the master Himself will give me special attention in helping me produce the fruit of the Spirit that He wants from me, is very comforting and encouraging.

The troublesome part is what else He gives the tree in order to produce fruit. He gave it, "plenty of fertilizer." I often feel that I have plenty of fertilizer in my life, and I don’t find that all too encouraging. After all, what did they use as fertilizer in Jesus’ day? The same thing they use today. Manure. Poop.

I guess it just goes to show that God literally uses poop to bring out the fruit. Maybe I need to redefine those times when I feel like I am surrounded by poop. Perhaps I need to recognize that it is specifically in those times that I am actually receiving special attention from God Himself. Could it be that God is actually using that poop to refine me and draw out fruit from my life? I have a tendency to reject the poop in my life. I don’t like the smell of it. I don’t like the situation. I don’t like being surrounded by poop! It doesn’t matter if it is yours, mine, or anyone else’s! But what if the poop around me is actually God’s means of giving me special attention and producing lasting fruit from me? Maybe God recognizes that in order to develop lasting fruit, one needs to be exposed to plenty of fertilizer.

The alternative to having manure or poop piled on to our lives is that unproductive, will be cut down and cast aside. One day God will cut off the unrepentant. God gives space to repent. The parable of the fig tree shows that God’s leniency will not last forever. There is a certain urgency to repentance.

We are, every one of us, living in the season of second chances, having been saved from the ax by Jesus’ desire to restore us to our best. Yes, you have been saved by faith in Jesus, but God is looking for fruitfulness in you. When we don’t bear fruit, a liberal helping of manure may be applied to your life, with the hope you will begin to bare fruit or increase the quality of your fruit.

We don’t talk about manure much these days. Manure is a word that is no longer trendy. We are much too sophisticated to use such down to earth language. Today, we would much rather label it as organic fertilizer, compost material or humus. Whatever we call it the fact remains that it stinks.

In Jesus’ day they just called it manure or dung. And it smelled bad. Most of their manure came from the waste material provided by their sheep, cows, chicken and horses. And while it may stink it provides the power (the nutrients) for things to get to the next level. It provides the means for things to experience abundant life. So, stinky manure was applied liberally to make things grow.

Like plants and trees, we have a lot of stinky stuff in our lives too. A lot of things that just don’t smell good. A lot of things that just goes splat in our lives. A lot of things that just get plopped into our little worlds.

Stinky things like cars that quit working and must be repaired. Basements and houses that get flooded. Children and grandchildren that get sick or get into serious trouble at school. Doctor’s reports that come back with disturbing news. Offices that begin to have that stinky smell of gossip and mal content. Finances that turn upside down and family members and friends that suddenly pass away.

None of us sign up for those things. None of us sign up for all the stinky stuff that can find its way in our lives. However, we all know that at times stinky things happen to us and before we know it our lives smell very much like a manure pile.

At times stinky stuff happens to us like it did for Joseph, by your family turning against you. Joseph went from smelling pretty good in that coat of many colors to smelling like a pile manure when his brothers sold him into slavery to the Midianites. Joseph knew what it meant when your life turns into a pile of manure.

At times it happens when those over you throw you into the stinky stuff. That is what happened to the Prophet Jeremiah. He was doing precisely what God wanted him to do. He was being God’s mouthpiece. He was doing his best to preach the truth to God’s people.

But those around him, the king and the officials in control did not care for his preaching and they threw him in a pit that was full of muddy and murky water. In a matter of hours, he found himself waist deep in filth and sludge. Jeremiah really was in the stinky stuff; emotionally, spiritually and physically.

The Bible tells us that in the Book of Ruth, Naomi and Ruth found themselves in the stinky stuff. There was no way that they planned on their husbands dying. They didn’t plan on coming back to Israel only to discover that they were going to have to live hand to mouth either.

Ruth didn’t plan on having to scrap by on her hands and knees picking up the scraps left behind by the harvesters. She didn’t plan to spend most of her time making sure her and Naomi had a roof over their heads and some food in their stomachs. It didn’t take Ruth nor Naomi very long to understand that life can bring a lot of stinky stuff.

The same could be said for other people we meet in the Bible like Job, David, Daniel, the 3 Hebrew Children and the Apostle Paul. None of them signed up for their “stinky mulch manure life moments”. I have a real good feeling this morning that none of us sign up for them either.

The reality is we all go through things in life that stink. We don’t like it and we don’t think that it is fair. We don’t always know why family or friends can cause so much trouble and be little stinkers. We don’t know why at times it smells like manure at the office, at work or at school. We don’t know why we get sick, why this person died, why this had to break down or why this bad thing had to happen. The fact is sometimes we cause the manure to fall into our lives, ourselves, and other times it is because someone else brought a ton of it to dump in our lives.

So, what do we do about it?

II. We can allow the manure, the stinky stuff to promote us

The Bible is full of stories that tell us that God uses the stinky stuff in our lives like we use mulch or manure in our yards, our flower beds and in our gardens. Manure may stink and for a while may be messy, but it also can make our tomatoes, our flowers and our grass reach their highest potential. Fertilizer can pave the way to things becoming greater than we ever could imagine or think.

Instead of being discouraged about the stinky stuff in our lives and complain the Bible tells us that the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY can take all that stinky stuff and makes something good. He can use it to make our lives bear abundant fruit.

Ruth knew her life had plenty of stinky stuff. She knew it because every day she had to wake up and break her back bending over and picking up the scraps that the harvesters left behind. Then she had to take the grain home, separate the chaff and grind up what was left until it became a type of flour. Then she could bake bread so that her and Naomi would have something to eat. It was stinking work from start to finish. All of this forced her to be around some very unpleasant people; labors who would if they got the chance would molest the widows and helpless women who were forced to pick up scraps.

And yet, the Bible says that each day for weeks on end that is what Ruth did. She got stinky. She worked with stinky. She smelled stinky. All because she wanted to survive, and she wanted her mother in law to survive.

But that stinky did not stop her. She used that stinky like the Apostle Paul would use the stinky in his life – to produce perseverance, character and hope.

Romans 5:3-5 New International Version (NIV)

3 … we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

The LORD GOD ALMIGHTY used that stinky stuff to promote Ruth. God used that stinky stuff to help her accomplish things she could have never accomplished on her own. God used that stinky stuff, those manure-like circumstances as fertilizer that helped her become the great grandmother of King David. God used that stinky stuff and made it possible for her to bloom.

Boaz would have never met Ruth had it not been for the stinky stuff. But when Boaz saw her, he did not see all the stinky. Instead, the LORD enabled him to see a woman whose beauty outshone all those around her. When Boaz saw Ruth, he did not see or smell the stinky, he saw a woman who knew how to love sacrificially. When Boaz saw Ruth, he did not see or smell the stinky, he saw a woman who was committed to her faith and to her family.

The Bible tells us that Ruth did not run away from her stinky. Instead, she allowed the stinky parts of her life to propel her to be the woman God wanted her to become. It was like she said –

“God, I know this stinky is to be like fertilizer in my life. All around me smells. I smell. But I also know that just because it stinks now doesn’t mean that it will stink forever. I am in your hands, Lord God Almighty. I believe in You. I believe that in just a little while I know that the stink will be gone and everything around me will be in bloom.”

If we look back over our lives deep enough, we will notice something amazing. We all want easy times. We all want things to go smoothly, smell nice and be successful. But, a lot of times, we don’t grow during those times. We enjoy them but we don’t grow richer and deeper.

So many times, we grow the most during our times of adversity. We grow when we find ourselves knee deep in the stinky. We grow when we find ourselves feeling like life has plopped us down in a big pile of life manure.

The Apostle Peter understood this reality. Listen to his words in 1 Peter 1:6 -7

1 Peter 1:6-7 New Living Translation (NLT)

1 Peter 1:6–7 ESV

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:6–7 ESV

The Apostle James knew this, listen to his words in James 1:2 – 4

James 1:2–4 ESV

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

If I hear those words correctly both Apostles are telling us in effect that if we go through the trials, through the testings – in other words the STINKY – if we go through all that stuff and hold ourselves up high – we stand fast and we allow God to work in our lives that in the end we will be more genuine, we will be more perfect and we will more like Jesus.

The next time a family member, a person over you or even someone who doesn’t like you does their best to push you into one of life’s manure pits – don’t get mad and try to get even. Don’t go around rehearsing your gripes and complaints. In your heart smile and say to yourself – “They are just being my fertilizer”.

God is going to use them and this situation to make me grow. God is going to use all of this stinky stuff to help me bear better, bigger, more wonderful fruit of the Holy Spirit. God is going to help me become the person that I need to become.

The Apostle Paul reminds us:

2 Corinthians 4:8-9 New International Version (NIV)

8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

Romans 8:38-39

38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This morning, no obstacle or enemy can stop us. Nothing – no matter how stinky it is can stop us from blooming and flourishing for the LORD. Whatever it is that is stinky in your life – let’s give that to God. And God can take all the stinky stuff and make it into fertilizer that will enable us to grow, mature and shine for Him today, tomorrow and for the rest of our lives. God can take all those things and help us grow deeper, richer in Him.

This morning, do you feel like at times that you are in the stinky stuff? That life is stinky? That nothing is going your way? That like this tree you are not growing and bearing the fruit you need to bear? That people have just been piling all kinds of stinky stuff on you?

It’s time to let God have all the stinky stuff. I don’t know how God does it, but He is able to take all the stinky stuff and turn it around so that it brings us strength, vitality – God is able to take all the stinky stuff and make it into fertilizer – Holy Spirit Fertilizer.

Related Media

Related Sermons