Be Ready Luke 12:35-48

The Gospel of Luke  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  38:43
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Have seat if you have your Bible going ahead and we're going to be in Luke, chapter 12, verse 35 through 48 Luke, chapter 12, verse 35 through 48 so over the past week or so, couple weeks, we've been getting information about this South Texas Blizzard we've got coming down, right? And I know that people have been getting ready, whether you're putting your little foam things over your your spigots outside, or you're getting blankets, or you're getting food, and I went to HEB yesterday, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be like, you know, the last time we were talking about this in Sunday school, the last freeze, bad freeze we had was in February of 2021, you remember that that was fun, wasn't it? I was telling them that was my first February here. We had moved here in September of 2020, and so our first February here, we were without electricity for like, four days, and it was, it was a good time of communal love and frustration from my family. As far as you know, we have all of us in a house, and we're all freezing cold. And that was when it was too cold, Duane and anyway and so. But we were, we saw that people were getting prepared for the freeze, you know, whether it be food or or preparing their house, getting everything, all weather ready. And that's one thing is like when we we know something's coming, we get prepared for it, right? We try to prepare as much as we can. Our cod always tells us that during the summer, we need to be prepared for rolling blackouts, and we have to get prepared for that. Make sure that you have a generator or whatnot, so it's being prepared. And one of the reasons that I bring that up is that this morning, what we're going to see is that Jesus is telling us to be prepared. One of my kids favorite games is hide and seek, right? And I love playing hide and seek, but I always like to be the one that hides, right? Because I can just go hide in the closet or where I'm not going to tell none of my kids are in Oh, Eden's in here. I don't want to tell all my good hiding spots. But the best thing about that for me as a parent is that that's some time alone, right? They're searching. But What? What? What happens whenever you're playing hide and seek, somebody's counting, right? And you're counting to a certain number, and then when you get to that number, you say, what? Ready or not, here I come, right? And that's kind of what, what this passage reminds me of is that Jesus is saying, Ready or not, here I come, that he's coming back, that he didn't just leave us alone, but that there's going to be a time when he's coming back. Now what I want to do is, I want to, I want us to understand this in a broader context of what has been happening in Luke's Gospel chapter 12, specifically, up to this point. So we began with at the beginning of Luke's Luke chapter 12. We began with him telling his his disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees right, to make sure that you're not living a hypocritical life. And then he transitions into this guy who stands up and says, Hey, Jesus, I want you to adjudicate my case, that my brother has stuff that I want right, that my inheritance hasn't been given rightfully to me, and I need you to do that. And he says, no, no, no, I'm not going to do that. That's not what I'm called here to do. Instead, I'm going to tell a parable about a guy who loved his stuff more than he loved God. And because he loved his stuff more than he loved God, he learned, in the end, that God is judge over everything, and that your life isn't about stuff, but your life is about living for the Lord. And if you think that your life is about stuff, then you're a foolish man, right? If you think that your life is about the things that you own, then you're foolish. And then last week, we looked at Jesus talking about that when we trust in our stuff, in the things of this world more than we trust in Him, then we have anxiety, and that we shouldn't have anxiety, because the father is loves to give good gifts to his children, right? And that the stuff on this earth is all going to pass away, but we need to have no anxiety over this world, because the Lord provides. And he provides for he gives two examples, right? He provides for the ravens, he provides for the wildflowers, the things that they eat, and the clothing that they wear anyway. And so then this morning, he He tells us to be prepared for His coming. So that's kind of the context. So what is Jesus doing there? Jesus saw that readiness for his return is what is the antidote to both greed and worry. When we're ready for Jesus to come back, then we we're not concerned about greed, having stuff and wanting more stuff, and we don't have the anxiety about the things of this world, because we know that we're going somewhere else. What's interesting about this, this idea of being ready or Jesus coming back, is there are some 260 chapters in the New Testament and Christ return is talked about no less than 318 times throughout all of those chapters. Statistically, that's one verse in every 25 verses. So one out of every 25 verses, Jesus is talking about His coming back, his his second advent, if you. Will. There are only three books in which this isn't talked about at all, and that is Galatians Second John and Third John. So every other book in the New Testament talks about Jesus's second coming. And I just have a couple of excerpts real quick that I want to read to you, John. Chapter 14, verse three, says this, if I go away to prepare a place for you. I will come again and take you to myself so that where I am you may also be. He also says, or Paul writes about in Philippians three, chapter 20 or chapter three, verse 20 and 21 he says, our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, He will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of His glorious body by the power that enables us or enables him, to subject everything to himself. Titus 213 says, while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. So this morning, I want us to ask a couple questions. One, are we ready for Jesus to come back? And two, do we actually believe he's coming back? I guess we want to flip those questions. Do we believe he's coming back? And are you ready for him to come back? Jesus came once to die for sinners, and the next time he's coming, he's going to come to judge the living and the dead. He's going to judge those who are in Him and those who are not in him. And that's what we're going to see in this, this text, so if you will, in verse, I'm going to read chapter 12, verse 35 through 40 of Luke. And it says this, be ready for service and have your lamps lit. You are to be like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks, he can they can open the door for him at once. Blessed will be the servants. The Master finds alert when he comes. Truly, I tell you, he will get ready, have them recline at the table and then come and serve them. If he comes in the middle of the night or even near Dawn and finds them alert. Blessed are those servants. But know this, if the homeowner had known what hour at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. You also be ready because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect Jesus. Begins in verse 35 in this translation, it says, Be ready for service. That is telling you the intent behind what Jesus says. But actually, in the Greek, it's a beautiful phrase, and it says, make sure that your loins are girded. What does that mean? This is why the the translators of the CSB go ahead and said, be ready for service. What does it mean to have your loins girded? If you remember back in Jesus's time, and even before, they didn't wear pants, like we wear pants where they wear they wore robes. And one of the things that be having your loins girded was basically, you would take the robes and you would put them in between your legs, and you'd like, you'd tie a belt around you, and this is so that you could run. Now, I've, I've only worn a dress once in my life.

That's a story for a different time. It was a play. Okay? I was it was a play. I wasn't like, ooh, let me try this on, but it was a play. And I remember wearing that dress, and for me, it felt pretty restricted, like I could if I wanted to run, I wouldn't be able to run. What what do you need to do if you're wearing a dress and you need to run, you need to hike it up, right, so that your legs have full now, I'm not going to run for you guys, but that's kind of the idea here. Is that in those robes you want to have em to where you're ready to go. In fact, this is an illusion. This having your loins girded is an illusion to the Exodus event in Exodus, chapter 12, verses 10 through 11, when the Lord is telling his Israelites, his people, that he is going to come, and they need to be prepared for him to come as the angel to deliver them from Egypt. And it says this in chapter 12 of Exodus, it says you must not leave any of it until morning, or have any part of it left out until morning, you must burn. It's talking about the sacrificial lamb. Here is how you must eat it. You must eat it dressed for travel, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You eat it in a hurry. It is the Lord's Passover. So when, when Jesus tells His disciples here, be ready for service, that's the kind of urgency that we need to have. We need to be ready to serve the Lord when He comes back, and not only to serve the Lord when He comes back, but like we need to continue to serve the Lord even before he comes back, but before we get there. I want us to think about this. We need to be ready for him to come back and keep your your lamps lit now as servants being ready for him to come back and having your. Or his lamp lit. Means what? That they're not just sitting on their hands waiting for him to come back, right? They are actually actively serving his household. They're still doing stuff as he as they are waiting for him to come, keeping the lamp slit. You know, we, we live in a lucky place where we have light switches, right? We can just turn the light on and we can turn the light off. But these guys, they didn't. They had to keep oil in the lamp. And in order to keep it burning, they had to make sure that the wicks were burning or weren't burning out. They need to make sure that the oil was still in there. And so they had to continue to do work. They had to keep focused on because they don't want the lamps to be lit or to run out of light. They want Jesus, the master, to come back and for his place to be prepared for them. And he says, it's like a wedding banquet. So for us, when we go to a wedding, they last, what? Depending on how you go, maybe a maybe a whole day. Maybe you have a wedding for a whole day, then you have the party at night. You come back for them, their weddings lasted, who knows, an indefinite amount of time. Sometimes weeks. Could you imagine being at a wedding for weeks? I couldn't one day is plenty. Let me just tell you. So if you invite me to your wedding, one day is plenty. I don't need weeks. But they would never know, and they didn't have cell phones. The master couldn't call them up and say, Hey, I'm coming back. Right? So they had to just always be alert. They had to continue while the master was gone at the wedding banquet to make sure that the household was still running, that the oils was oil was still in the lamp that the the there they were ready for service, so that when he knocks on that door, when he knocks at The door, they're eagerly anticipating him coming back. They're eagerly waiting for him to to come. And they're opening that door. They hear that first Knock, and they're like, here we are, Master. We're ready for you to come back. And Jesus says, Blessed will be those servants. The Master finds the the master finds alert when he comes truly, I tell you, he will get ready and have them recline at the table. I want us to understand something that as they're sitting there and they're working and they're waiting, and they're continuing to keep their land slit, they are keeping to work. So I read a quote this week from it's an anonymous quote, but it talks about Paul, and Paul had a calendar that only had two days on it. This is what the quote says. Paul had a calendar that only had two days on it. Days on it today, and that day, he was living today and he was looking forward to that day. He wasn't concerned about the days in the future, not tomorrow. He wasn't worried about yesterday, but he was living today and he was looking forward to that day when Jesus comes back. And I think that that's something that when we have anxiety and when we are getting greedy like the foolish men that we see in the parables leading up to this, when we're living like that, we're not worried about today, we're worried about the future, and we're not worried about His Second Coming. We're worried about what's going to What's tomorrow going to look like, what's three days from now going to look like? What's two weeks going to be look like. But what we need to focus on is, what are we doing today to glorify the Lord? And what are we what are we longing for? We're longing for his return when he gets there. We want to be able to to be there when Jesus knocks on the door and he says, Man, it's so awesome that you guys continue to do the work while I was God, that you weren't sitting on your hands, just waiting for me to come back, but you were actually doing the work that I have called you to do. You were faithful in the stewardship of the life that I've given you. Isn't that the the hope that we all have is that one day Jesus looks at us and says, Well done, good and faithful servant, that you have done what I've called you to do, that you have lived a life that I've called you to live, that you are kind and loving and compassionate to the people around you that you are proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, to those who are lost, that's the hope that I have, that one day Jesus looks at me and says, You didn't waste time waiting. You were ready. While you're waiting, you were doing what I have called you to do. You were good servants. And he says, Blessed are those that he finds waiting, and then there's a reversal that happens here. Do you see that, that that when the master comes and the servants who have been doing the good work, he flips it, and he goes, I'm going to serve you now. I'm going to be a blessing to you. I'm going. He says, I'm going to make a dinner for you and I'm going to sit you up and you're no longer going to serve, but I'm going to serve you. And isn't that a beautiful picture of who Jesus is? I mean, in Mark chapter 10, verse 45 it says that the Son of Man came not to to serve himself, but to serve those who were far from him. That's a paraphrase of Josh's own making. But that's what it it says is that he is a servant at heart, and we as his disciples, as those who have loved him and been called according to His purpose, are to mirror him. So if the master comes and serves, then the servant should always be ready to serve as well. So how are we serving? How are we showing the world that Jesus Christ is good? I. So what does it mean for us to expectantly wait for the day that Jesus returns? It means that we work, we do what we call to do. What does that look like? That means that we take care of the poor and the needy. We provide for those who are hurting. We let those who are suffering cry on our shoulders. We go and we preach the gospel to those who are far from God. We also do good works. And I know that that's a hard thing for many of us to to to hear, because we've all been told that is by grace alone, through faith, alone, in Christ alone, that we are saved, and that is absolutely true. And at the same time, when God saves us, He saves us to do good works. So we should be going and doing good works. We should be going and showing God's goodness that we have received this grace from Christ, and out of a love and a devotion and a care for him and a gratitude to him, we go out and do good works. Being a Christian isn't simply saying, oh, you know, i i At VBS one year, walked down an aisle and the pastor prayed with me, or the children's director prayed with me, and then I got baptized, and now I'm a Christian, and there's nothing else to go with that. Being a follower of Jesus means that we are saved to do good works otherwise. Ephesians, chapter two, verse 10, says is that he saved us by His grace so that we can do the good works that he has called us to do. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. And I think that that's something that sometimes we miss out on. And so those good works look like helping the poor. Those good works look like being a compassionate person to others. It also looks like serving the church. It also looks like this, teaching your children and your grandchildren the beauty of Christ, proclaiming the gospel in their lives as well. Because for us, what happens is, if we're not expectantly waiting Jesus to come back. If we're not actually working while we're waiting and we're just waiting, it is so easy for us to become lazy and passive in our understanding of what God has called us to do, but Jesus says no, expectantly, wait, be there at the door, ready for me to come in,

sitting on our hands and being passive is not the life that God has called his his children to live in. We are to be the ones doing the work. Now, what happens to those faithful servants who are expectedly waiting and actively waiting on the Lord? They are blessed. Did you see that twice in those two verses, 37 and 38 Blessed are the servants, and they're blessed because Christ and they're blessed. And that blessing is that the master serves them. Those roles are reversed, and we get to be served by the Lord. And then in verses 34 or 39 and 40 we read this, but know this, if the homeowner had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also be ready, because the Son of Man is coming an hour that nobody expects. Now, I don't know if you ever played this game, but I had somebody ask me the other day. They said, Would you rather know the day that you were going to die or how you were going to die? They asked that question. And I was thinking about it, and I was like, I don't know. I don't want either one. That's too much. And I think that the reality is, is that we all know one thing, right? Well, we know a bunch of things, but one of the things we know is that we're all going to die. There's going to be a time where we take our last breath and we die. Isn't it a grace from the Lord that he doesn't tell us that day? He doesn't say on april 24 19 or, Oh, not 1920 25 you know you're going to die. It's a grace from the Lord. And I think that this is also a grace that He tells us that we don't know when he's coming back, that we don't know when he's coming back and and he says that he's going to be like a thief in the night when he comes back. And this is actually repeated over and over again in the scriptures. In fact, in in first, Thessalonians, five, two through four, it says, For you yourselves, know very well that the day that the Lord will come just like a thief in the night, or second, Peter, chapter 310, but the day of the Lord will come like a thief. Revelation, three, three, remember then what you have received and heard, keep it and repent. If you are not alert, I will come like a thief, and you have no idea at what hour I will come upon you, or Revelation, 615, or 1615, look, I am coming like a thief. I think it's interesting that Jesus has no qualms with aligning himself or defining himself as a thief, because a thief doesn't announce when they're coming. And I think it's a grace to us that Jesus doesn't tell us the day and the time that he's coming, that we are to work expectantly, because here's what would happen if we knew the day and the time that Jesus was coming. If he if he came before us and he said, I'm coming on this day at this time, we would work really hard that last week before he came, right but anytime up to that point, we'd be like, I can wait. There's always going to be another day, there's always going to be more time, there's always going to be more more for me to do it. And then that last couple days, this is like my kids there, they have rules at the house, and one of their things is that, in the mornings, on the weekends, before they can get on screens, they have to have all their contributions or their chores done before 830 so they get up at seven, and you know, when they start doing their contributions 815 right? They want to try to get them all done in that 15 minutes. They want to play around until that last little section of time, and I think that that's what we would be like if Jesus said I'm coming back. If he says I'm coming back next week, we'll work really hard this week, but I think it's a responsibility for us as believers to make sure that we're working all the time knowing that he's not coming back, knowing that he's going to show up at any time like nobody knows the day and time. And so I want to caution us. There are lots of people who want to predict when Jesus is coming back, but just as often as Jesus talks about His coming back, he also tells everybody he doesn't know you. You will never know when I'm coming back. You will never know. And so if somebody says, Hey, I was reading the scriptures and I found out the day and the time that Jesus is coming back, just go, I'm not listening to them. That's a wacko. Jesus said that we're not going to know that he's going to come so nobody is ever going to know. In fact, I think that the not knowing should spur us on and encourage us to do the work. Even more, I was reading the story about this old preacher. His name was McShane. His was his last name, and somebody came up to him and says, or he came up to somebody, he says, Do you think that the Lord is coming tonight? And the preachers would quietly respond, no. Then McShane would counter with a quote from the text, the Son of Man will come in an hour. You do not expect him see. It was a trick question and a bit unfair, because to say that this day, out of the three quarters of a million since the resurrection is the day that we're not quite sure he's going to come back is, is saying that maybe he's coming back. So do you expect him to come back today? No, well, then you should expect him to come back today. Do you expect him to come next week? No, well, I expect him to come back next week, right? We should always be worrying, not worrying. We should always be anticipating his coming. We should always be focused on his coming. But he's going to come when nobody expects it, not the TV networks, not the world leaders, not most of the people who sit in our pews. We're not going to expect when he comes back, and that's a good thing. It's a grace of Jesus to not tell us when he's coming back, because right now, today is the day that we get to work today is the day we get to hope, and the day when he does come back and in that make sure that we're working for the Lord. We're doing the things that he's called called us to do. Now, in the next section of the scripture that we're going to look at this morning, I want us to know that Jesus tell us we should anticipate, and we should long for the day he's coming back, and then he's going to give us a couple parables about coming back, and when he comes back, he's going to he's going to come in contact with two different kinds of people, the foolish people and the faithful people. But first we're going to look at the faithful people. This is what it says in verses 41 through 44 Lord Peter asked, Are you telling us this parable. Are you telling this parable to us or to everyone? The Lord said, Who then is the faithful and sensible manager? His master will put in charge of his household servants and give them their allotted food for the proper time. Blessed is the servant whom the master finds doing his job when he comes truly, I tell you he will put him in charge of all his possessions. So what we see here is that Jesus, when we are faithful to Jesus, when we're doing the work that Jesus has called us to do, and we're waiting with him with anticipation and urgency, then we will be faithful and we will be rewarded. Now the question that's often asked in this text is, who is the faithful steward that Jesus is talking about, because Peter even asks him, hey, Lord, are you talking about us? Are you talking about everybody? And then Jesus, in His natural Jesus way, doesn't actually answer Peter's question. He just continues telling what he needs to tell. And so there were three, three levels to this. I guess we could talk about the surface level, it's all people. And the reason why I say it's all people is because everybody has been given stewardship over something right. God has poured out His common grace. That means everybody give it, gets it, believers and unbelievers. Everybody gets his common grace, and he has been gracious to us to receive that right. And we are all stewards, and we can either be faithful stewards, we can be unfaithful stewards. So that's the surface level that he's talking about everybody. Secondly, it could be just talking about disciples in general, right? And what that means is that all followers of Jesus are stewards, and that He's going to judge us either faithful or unfaithful in what He has given us. And then, thirdly, it could be specifically talking about church. Leaders and the faithfulness that they have, because their stewardship is over a home. And so I think that it's all a combination of all three. I think that the reality is, is that all of us have been given different levels of stewardship. God has given us different levels of stewardship. For me, the the stewardship of the church is a weighty thing, right? And I'm going to be held more responsible, because God has given me a a position to be more responsible in. But the the question that really asked we need to ask is, how are we stewarding the gifts that God has given us? Every single one of you, whether you know it or not, has been given a gift from God, and God expects us to steward it well. And what kind of gifts has God given us? Well, he's given us a life breath in our lungs. How are we living? Are we treating our life like it has value? Are we seeing it as something to discard? He's given us family. Are we loving our family and leading our family and pointing our family towards Christ, or are we having resentment in our family, hatred towards our family, anger towards our family. He's given us money, whether it be a lot or a little bit, you're responsible for what He has granted you, and everything that we have from the big things, the homes that we live in, the cars that we drive, the jobs that we have, to the little things, the breath in our lungs, the people in our lives, whatever it may be, everything is a gift from God, and God is watching, especially those of us who claim to be believers, he's watching and saying, Are you stewarding what I have given you well, how are you doing what I have called and created you to do? Are you doing it well, or are you wasting it away? Are you a faithful steward, or are you an unfaithful steward? I think about this, one of the the best examples of stewardship in the scriptures, I think, is Joseph in Genesis, Chapter 48 through, or in the end of Genesis, Joseph, regardless of what was going on in his life, was always faithful to God. If

you don't know the story, Joseph was a, was the the 11th son of his parents. Oh, my goodness, I forgot their names. It's okay. He was the 11th son, and he was also the most loved son of his mother, and because of that, he was or in his father, and because of that, he was hated by the rest of his brothers, and so what his the rest of his brothers did is they look at Joseph, and they go, Joseph, you're annoying, and so I want to get rid of you. And so they sell him into slavery. And while he's sold into slavery, he becomes he ends up getting sold in Egypt. He ends up getting thrown in jail. But all this time, the Lord is blessing him, and the Lord is blessing him because he's faithful, because he's using the gifts that God has given him for good. And it ends up that Joseph becomes the the second most in charge of all of Egypt, and through His faithfulness to God, he's able to provide for Egypt and provide for his family anyway, it's a great story at the end of Genesis, but I think about this, it didn't matter what circumstances it was in. It didn't matter how little or how much Joseph had. Joseph was a good steward with it all. He was a faithful servant to the Lord because he understood who granted him all these things. It wasn't Joseph's intellect, it wasn't Joseph's own desires. It was the Lord who had granted him the ability to be a good steward, whether he was in prison or he was sitting at the right hand of Pharaoh, he was being faithful. And so we look at our lives and we say, you know, God, am I being faithful? Because this is a self examination thing. Am I being faithful for what you have given me? Am I being faithful with the family that you've given me. Am I being faithful with the money that you've given me, or am I squandering it all away? Because I don't recognize that it's all a gift. That's what a steward is. As a manager, everything you have is to be managed, not it's not your own. It belongs to somebody else, and Jesus is saying the faithful managers are the managers that get blessed. And then he has some harsh words for the unfaithful managers. Verse 45 says this, But if that servant says in his heart, My master is delaying in his coming, and he starts to beat the female and the male servants and to eat and drink and get drunk, that servant's master will come on a day when he does not expect him, and at an hour that he does not know, and he will cut him into pieces and assign him the place with the unfaithful. And that servant who knew his master's will and didn't prepare himself or do it will be severely beaten, but the one who did not. Know and did what deserve punishment will receive a light beating from everyone who has been given much, much will be required, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even much more will be expected. We see here that there are, there's a couple of different, actually three different servants in this passage, but I want to focus on the first one for just a minute, and this is the unfaithful user and abuser as a servant. And what does he do? He beats the slaves, the other servants, because he does not believe that his master is coming back. If we don't believe that Jesus is coming back, then it's so easy for us to become like this abuser who is using people for our own personal gain. And what happens when Jesus comes back to that user and abuser? Well, we see that this user and abuser is a mirror image of the rich fool back a couple parables ago. Did you see that that what does he do? He eats and he drinks and he bees. He's Mary. Rather than doing and being faithful to the work that God has called him to, he's just living a life of hedonism, doing whatever he wants to do. And because he doesn't believe that the master is coming back anytime soon, he just continues to live a life of debauchery. This is a warning for us, and even Peter in second, Peter, chapter three, says this, above all, beware of this. Scoffers will come in the last day, scoffing and following their own evil desires, saying, Where is His coming that he has promised ever since our ancestor, ancestors fell asleep, all things continue as they have since the beginning of creation. So there is a, there is a an issue that we might fall into that same category, saying, Well, Jesus hasn't come back in the last 2000 years. I'm just going to eat, drink and be married, sex, drugs and rock and roll. This is what my life is going to be like. I'm going to live my life for others. I don't care who I harm. I don't care who I step on. I don't care what kind of unfaithfulness I have towards God. He promised he'd come back, and he hasn't come back yet. So I'm just going to live my best life now, doing my own thing now, and because of that, Jesus is going to come back and he's going to look at you and He's going to judge you. You judge you harshly, because you knew that he said he was coming back, and yet you didn't care. You would rather live your life this way, doing whatever you want, however you want. The punishment is going to be that you're going to be cut off from the goodness of God. You're going to be cast with the unfaithful because you actually didn't have faith. You were lazy, you treated people monstrously. You were unfaithful. You were whatever it is, and Jesus is going to cut you off and say you were never a faithful servant. Jesus also tells us about a servant who was what does it say? Says that a servant knew his master's will and didn't prepare himself or do it and he will be severely beaten. So there's one who's an abuser, there's one who is ignorant or has knowledge but is negligent, and then there's another servant who is ignorant and negligent. I don't want to any of us to fall into that category. The servant that knew his master's will and didn't prepare himself will be severely beaten, but that still is an unfaithful servant, and that unfaithful servant will not receive the kingdom. The unfaithful servant, the one who isn't doing the will of the father right now is going to receive condemnation for eternity the unfaithful servant, whether you are an abuser, whether you are just negligent, or whether you are one who just doesn't know about Jesus, all will be cast into eternity without Jesus. That's a harsh truth for us to wrestle with, that there are going to be people who have never heard the name of Jesus, who die and are separated from him, and that's what gives us the urgency to go and tell him people about him, like we we're okay with the one who's an abuser being cut off. We're okay with the one who didn't live for Christ, who knew about Christ being cut off. But for us, we need to know that there are people out there, in our families and in our workplaces and in our neighborhoods who don't know Jesus, and we should go tell them about this good news that He's given us. Now the reality is, is that none of us will ever be able to live completely faithfully. Some of us at sometimes will be unfaithful servants. Some of us at sometimes will be negligent in what Jesus has called us to do. And this is why we need the most faithful servant. You know, who that most faithful servant is? Jesus, Christ. He did what we could not do. He lived a faithful life. Is a faithful servant that covers our serve, our unfaithfulness. We sang those songs earlier that Christ died so that we could have a relationship with Jesus, with the Lord. Christ died so that we can our robes could be washed white. Christ died in bled so that we could become sons and daughters of the high king. He is the perfect and faithful servant who was faithful every single time, and because of him, because of his life, because of his death, because of his burial, because of his resurrection. We can look, be looked at one day and and God will say, Well done, my good and faithful servants. Here's what I want to leave you with, Jesus is coming back, and you will either be counted as faithful or unfaithful. Those are the only two categories. There is no third category. Nobody gets a free pass. Nobody gets a free lunch. You are either faithful to Christ or you are unfaithful. Where are you today? Are you ready for Jesus to come back? Are you ready? Have you been prepared? Have you given your life to Jesus? Are you living and walking in the truth of who he is? Or are you just simply coasting through life, hoping that one day God will look at you and be like, that's okay. You did. Alright. That's not That's not the system that God works on. The only way we get to be in heaven, to be with the Lord is through the faith and trust in Jesus Christ. That's the only way. So where are you today? Have you given your life to Jesus? Are you prepared for His coming? Are you just sending back going, Oh, I don't care about all this stuff. All this stuff sounds so not American. All this stuff sounds so not about or for me, because I know that there's probably some of you in here saying that, but I want to tell you that the Lord sees you, the Lord knows you. The Lord is going to either call you faithful or unfaithful, and it's based upon what you did with the faithful servant, Jesus Christ. Let's pray, Father. I pray that our hearts and our minds and our souls are ready for the return of Christ.

I pray that we continue to that you continue to poke and you prod at our souls, drawing us to yourself. I pray that if there's anybody in here who doesn't know you, Lord, that they would get prepared, that they would come and believe in Jesus, that they would come and see the goodness on full display. I know there's a lot of brokenness. I know there's a lot of sinfulness. I know there's a lot of hurting people in this world, but I also know this there is a God who sees us, a God who knows us, a God who loves us, God who sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins so that we may be reconciled to Him. Thank you for your love, thank you for your grace and Your mercy. Thank you for pointing out where we fall short. And I pray Lord that we just continue to be prepared for Jesus is coming for those of us who know you and love you, I pray that we would continue to do the work of the ministry. We continue to put one foot in front of the other, and just continue to do good works in the name of Christ. Thank you for who you are. Thank you for what you've done, prayer, all this in Jesus name. Amen. Go ahead and stand up.

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