Are you Spiritually Prepared?

I sat down this week and I started to go through the list of all the suggested sermons that you all and those in Nashville have given me, and in Jackson, over the last few months. They said, okay, which one's haven't I done? And the list was pretty long, and I started going through them and started figuring out, okay, this summer I want to cover these different subjects that people have brought up. And a couple questions, there were a couple questions about prophecy. And so I thought, okay, what have I covered in the 10 years I've been here? And what haven't I covered? And I started to go through, okay, I've covered a lot of things in 10 years, and there's a few things I haven't covered in detail. And then, as I was going back through, I went back to 2016, and there was a sermon I gave on prophecy that I've never covered since then. Now, I say I've never covered since then, you've heard bits and pieces of this in various sermons by me and others over the last 10 years, but not in the way I put it together at that point. So I thought, you know, I'm going to go back and I'm going to give that review that I did then of certain concepts that are in one of the great prophecies of the Bible, and that is the Olivet Prophecy. Now, I say that, and probably the first thing that comes to mind is, okay, Christ coming back. There's wars and rumors of wars. There's, you know, all these prophecies we can go to Revelation and show how they match up, but that's not what I'm going to go through. Let's go to Matthew 24.

And this is a little different way of looking at this. In fact, I'm not going to be covering certain details, but I am going to try to get a real overview of certain aspects of the Olivet Prophecy. When we go to the Olivet Prophecy, we have the signs of the times, the end of the age. There's a whole explanation of the Great Tribulation, the return of Jesus Christ. But chapter 24 and chapter 25, they were all given at the same time, both of those chapters.

And you know what's amazing when you go through 24 and 25?

Is that we don't cover much of it as a unit. When we come to Matthew 24, we're generally going through parts of Matthew 24, and we don't even go in to parts of it, and we don't even go in to Matthew 25. We cover those parts, and they're the big events, the events of the world, and what we should be looking for, and how there's going to be wars and rumors of wars, and disease epidemics, and earthquakes. And so we're always looking for those things. But that's not actually the majority of what's covered here. And so the rest of it we tend to cover in bits and pieces. And what I want to do today is I want to go through all those bits and pieces, and take a look at the overview of that. You know, if you look at Matthew 24, and it talks about the world, and then there's this remarkable statement, or set of statements, in verse 8, so let's go there, then these are the beginning of sorrows. We've talked many times about when we look at the world of what's happening in the world today, we may be in that time period. Now that time period, we're not sure how long it is, but the beginning of sorrows is the collapse of the world that leads up to the rise of the of the beast power. But he now switches subjects, and he zeros in on the church.

The majority of Matthew 24 and 25 is about the church. It's actually not about the world.

So we're going to look at that today. He says, then they will deliver you up to tribulation, and they will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. He's not talking about the world here. He's talking about those who follow God. And then many will be offended, and will betray one another, and will hate one another. He's talking about in the church.

And there will be many false prophets who will rise and see many. Now that's in the church and outside the church. So there's this great deception going on, but people in the church can be affected by it. Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. The love of God, the love of God's truth, the love of each other will grow cold within the church. But he who endures to the end shall be saved, and the gospel of the kingdom will be preached to all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. So here he switches this subject and says, okay, this is going to be a very hard time for those who follow God. In the context of the Matthew 24 and 25, he gives a series of parables. One of them is not technically a parable. We usually call it a parable, but he gives a series of stories, and they're all aimed, except one of them, at the church. They're telling the people that he's explaining this to, that live at that end time.

This is what you must look for, not just all these outside events. You must look at what's happening in your life, and it actually makes up the majority of this passage. So let's go to verse 32 now, and there's a parable. In the middle of all this, explaining what the world's going to be like, and you know, verse 36 he starts talking about, but you won't know exactly when this happens. You're going to be looking at all these trends and all these things, and he tells this parable. Verse 32. Now learn this parable. To his followers, he says, in all this study of the prophecy, learn this parable from the fig tree. When his branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So that you also, when you see all these things, know that is near and at the door. Assuredly I say to you, this generation will by no means pass till all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away. So this parable, he shifts, he says, now look, look for these things and understand these things. He gives this parable. Then he begins to give parables about specifically what you were to look for, not in the world, but in your relationship with God during this time period.

So let's go to verse 45. Remember, this is all part of the same passage. Who then is faithful and a wise servant whom his master made ruler over his household, who would give them food in due season? Okay, well what does this have to do with, you know, wars and rumors of wars and Christ coming on a white horse and the whole world singing? What does this have to do with this? Because we connect once again this to all kinds of other passages about these prophecies. But in the middle of this prophecy, he says, who is it that God is going to put over his household? Bless is the servant whom his master, when he comes, finds so doing.

So he says, in the midst of all this, which we can be panicked over it, we can worry over it, we can be studying everything in great detail, and we're supposed to look for these things. Sometimes we can look, you know, many of you, if you've been around the church for a long enough time, we can look for so many details that sometimes we have the details wrong. We think we have everything in line, and it's not. So we keep looking, we keep looking. We don't stop looking, but we also have to understand we can make up things. I've seen, I remember a time many, many years ago, most of you aren't old enough to remember it, but we had a minister actually proclaim who the beast power was going to be.

I mean, the man himself. This man is going to be the beast. Of course, the man died.

Sort of blew that theory out, okay? So we understand we have to be real careful about how we piece together the pieces of the puzzle, but we always have to see those pieces of the puzzle. We have to look at the trends of what's happening. But then we also have to look at what is God doing and who is God saying those who are, like we just read, blessed is that servant whom his master when he comes finds so doing. This is what they will be doing. This is what we are to be doing in preparation, not just studying all the details, but what we are supposed to be doing. Verse 48, but if that evil servant says in his heart, wait a minute, he's talking about servants and the ones that are doing, and then he talks about some that aren't doing. And what we are going to find is a contrast throughout these parables between those who are doing and those who aren't doing that are considered the servants of God. So this is towards the church. This is a prophecy about the church, about the people who live at the end time, and those who are doing and those who aren't doing. So he has an evil servant here. This isn't a servant of Satan. This isn't one of the servants of the beast power. This is a servant of God, one of the people of God. But if that evil servant says in his heart, my master is delaying his coming, and he begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with the drunkards. So we have a description here of someone who begins to say, you know what, we've been saying Christ is coming back for thousands of years.

It's way off in the future, so I don't have to prepare for that. I just live my life now. But it doesn't matter when you live, by the way. You have to prepare yourself for the return of Jesus Christ. If you lived 100 years ago when you were following God, when you died, you better have been prepared for the return of Jesus Christ because that's your next waking moment is the resurrection. So the purpose of this life is to prepare to be in the Kingdom that Christ comes and establishes when he returns. And he says there is an evil servant who simply says, you know, we've been saying he's coming back for generation after generation after generation, and something happens to him. He begins to beat his fellow servants and eat and drink with the drunkards. There's two things here. This person knows the truth. This person becomes very self-righteous, and he began to beat his fellow servants. In other words, this person just mistreats all the fellow servants. If we're not careful, as we get closer to the end, the people of God will just beat each other more.

Mistreat each other more. Why would he warn us?

He says these are the ones that are going to be ready, and these are the ones who aren't. They beat each other. They mistreat each other, whether it's in their marriage, whether it's just fellow people in their congregation, whether it's other people of God. There's just this this constant mistreating of other people of God.

And two, they eat and drink with the drunkards. In other words, they compromise with the world around them. They just, it edges in on them, where their lifestyles don't appear to be, you know, against God. But on the fringe of their lifestyles, they're getting more and more and more like the world. More and more, we're partying is what it's all about. More and more that being rich and having lots of good things is what it's all about. Life is more about fun than it is about righteousness. That it just creeps in and creeps in until he says that's their actual lifestyles. They may seem to know, they may know the doctrines. You know, doctrine is important. Without doctrine, we're not going to follow God. But you can have a head knowledge of doctrine and not be converted. Or you can have a head knowledge of doctrine and live this lifestyle. And you can have a head knowledge of doctrine and use that as a hammer to beat all the other Christians, too.

So what he's saying here is, these people know what these people don't do because they feel no real compulsion than I am being prepared for the return of Jesus Christ. Because remember, it doesn't matter if he comes in the next 50 years or 100 years and all of us die. At that point, when you die, you have to be prepared for the return of Jesus Christ.

So there is this evil servant. In verse 50 he says, the master of that servant will come in a day when he is not looking for him at an hour that he is not aware of and will cut him in two and appoint him with his portion with the hypocrites and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. When you see weeping and gnashing of teeth, it's almost always the lake of fire.

He's not talking about the world who has not yet had their opportunity. He's talking about those who have. This is a judgment statement. You know, I always, when someone says, well Jesus never judged anybody, then you've never read the New Testament.

This is a warning of judgment on the people of God. It's a whole lot easier to give a sermon about Matthew 24 and then tie it into the four horsemen, you know, earthquakes, and give statistics of all these things. It's that's pretty fun stuff. This gets a little uncomfortable.

He's saying the church is being judged or prepared for judgment when Christ returns.

Now this isn't all negative, but it does give us a negative description, and when we do that, we can look at the positive description. So if you have, you know, your phone or your piece of paper in front of you, and your type of person likes to write down stuff, write this down, we're going to make two sort of charts here, and we're going to look at what is listed here as something we need to look at in ourselves and make sure we're not going in that direction.

Then we'll look at the opposite. So what is being said here? Well, first of all, they obviously have a lack of vision of Christ's return.

They just have a lack of vision of that. It's, oh, that's some time in the future.

You know, I don't think about that much. One of the reasons we don't like to think about it much is because there's a lot of bad things that have to happen first. And we shouldn't spend our whole life zeroed in on nothing but bad things. That's not what Christianity is either. But in this case, he's saying there are those who would simply ignore the concept of his Second Coming.

They have a lack of dedication to the work of God, a lack of dedication to the work of God.

Also notice they are conflict orientated. They are constantly in conflict. There's no peace between them and others. There's no peace in their families. There's no peace in their relationship with church members. There's no peace with the relationship with people at work. There's no peace. They're in conflict constantly. They are conflict-driven people.

So, they lack a vision of Christ's return. They lack their dedication to God. And they're conflict-oriented. And the last thing is they have an absolute compromising attitude with sin. All they may not be committing adultery, but you could be very unfaithful to your husband or wife and not commit adultery. They may not be, you know, a stubble-down drunk, but they abuse alcohol a lot. There's way too much alcohol use in their lives. They're always on this fringe of, you know, getting as close to it as possible. And it says that they eat and drink with the drunkards. In other words, they live lifestyles. They're outside what Christians are supposed to live. Now, let's look at the good traits, okay? There's the positive part of this. And I said, wow, that's pretty negative. Okay, the positive part of this, it gives us what we need to be working on. First of all, we have a strong vision of Christ's return. It is something we think about. It's something we desire so that we're not just always overwhelmed with all the bad things that have to happen before He returns. We look at the good things that happen when He returns. Isn't that the vision that the Feast of Tabernacles gives us? Every time we go to the Feast of Tabernacles, we're supposed to come back with a vision of what it's going to be like when Christ returns.

They are dedicated to the work of God, so they have a dedication.

So now we have something to be positively trying to do in our lives. Keep that vision of Christ's return and be dedicated to the work that God's doing, specifically in our lives.

We cooperate with other people. We live lifestyles where we try to cooperate. It doesn't mean we don't have conflict, but we're not conflict-oriented people. All of you know people that are in conflict all the time, so you don't want to talk to them more than four minutes because there's going to be some kind of conflict going on. They're just conflict-driven. And when we are so internally distraught, broken, that we're in conflict all the time, it means we're not at right with God.

There's time for conflict, but it shouldn't be our lifestyle.

So we look to find ways to make peace. And they were sensitive to recognize and avoid sin. We become very sensitive to sin, what we allow in our minds.

So, you have a parable. Now, we could spend the whole sermon on that parable, but I want to go through the overview of all these parables that are in the sermon on the Mount. And keep this list, because at the end we're going to have a list that gives us a very positive direction that we should be going in. So, chapter 25, still part of the same presentation. Very famous parable. This one, we talk about quite a bit. You've heard entire sermons on it.

Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now, five of them were wise and five were foolish. Now, there's been all kinds of attempts to make this complicated. No, Jesus comes back to marry the bride. These are bridesmaids.

Therefore, this isn't the church. Or it's, you know, some subgroup of the church. No, you know, don't try to mix your metaphors too much. These are all virgins.

In other words, and we look through the scripture, spiritually a virgin is one called of God. Okay, they're called out of the world. So, yes, they're bridesmaids. You know, either you have a strange explanation, okay, there's a bunch of them, and some of them are within, some of them aren't so, we'll just call it polygamy. I mean, you just have all kinds of problems here.

So, he uses a very specific thing. Okay, we'll just call them bridesmaids, and they're waiting to go in to the wedding. So, that's all. This isn't that complicated. It's not supposed to have a secret meaning.

He's making a point. These are people invited. It's like they're not all women either, you know, but they're bridesmaids. These are the people called by God to be there when Christ returns, which is the subject of the entire sermon that He's giving. Now, five of them are wise, and five are foolish. That's the point, that at the time when Christ comes back, there will be in the people who He is called those people who are spiritually wise, and people who are spiritually foolish. But this is pretty strong stuff, right? It's pretty harsh stuff, and He's not talking about the world. He says, those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the wise took oil on their vessels with their lamps.

Now, there's two different interpretations of that. The Greek can be a little vague. I'll talk about that in a minute. But we just get the what's happening here. It's nighttime. Now, Christ said, I'm going to come at a time when you don't think I'm going to come. Bridegrooms don't show up for the wedding in the middle of the night, because weddings don't happen in the middle of the night.

So the point here is, this is going to be a time when these people aren't completely ready, but there's wise and they're foolish. And when the time comes, there'll be two different responses from the people of God to what's happening. And while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. So it feels like, oh, it just keeps going on and on and on. And, yeah, the world's bad, but, you know, it's not quite there yet. It's not quite there yet. And so spiritually, they all get sort of sleepy.

They just sort of get a little numb to what's going on. So that's going to happen towards the end of the age. And so when we look at all these things, because I know people, they're sometimes just driven by prophecy, and we should be to a point, but that's everything to them is prophecy. And sometimes when you're driven by nothing but prophecy, you're asleep in terms of this part of prophecy.

And that is who we have to be as we prepare for these events. And at midnight, a very strange time for a cry for a wedding to happen, a cry was heard, behold, the bridegroom is coming, go out to meet him. Then all those versions rose and trimmed their lamps. Now this is where this gets...

it depends on how you break this down. And, you know, sometimes once again, a parable king is not supposed to be all that too complicated. One is they trim their lamps. You have a lamp and you have a vessel with oil in it, because you have to pour some oil into the lamp, because it burns the oil up. And there's two different ways of looking at this.

One is they had oil in their lamps, but they used it all up. There's another explanation of this, looking at the Greek, that the problem was the only oil they had was in the wick. In other words, they really didn't have oil. They just had one dipped in oil and now they could light their lamp. And now you pour oil in. Well, either way you look at this, you have a problem. You have people that have come to God, that God has led them there, right? Because none of us come to God unless God's leading us. They have come to God and they have stopped in their development.

They haven't truly responded to God. This sometimes is the greatest problem we have when we get second and third and fourth and now we have fifth generation Christians. You've noted all your life and you've responded, but have you responded all the way? Do you really know what is expected? And so we have people who have some light.

They have some light, but it's not very bright and God's Spirit is not interacting with them in the way they need God's Spirit to interact with them. So once again, either way you find this, you come up with the same issue. People that have interacted with God's Spirit, but not to the point where they're prepared to let their light shine so they can go into the wedding supper with Jesus Christ. Verse 8, and the foolish said to the wise, give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out. In other words, you have extra oil, give some to us.

And what they're doing at this point, and this is interesting, they're not going to God. They're going to other people and saying, you must show me what to do, and the other people say, well, I can't give you that power. That comes from God. I can tell you things. I can't make that happen.

But the wise answer is saying, no, lest there should be not enough for us and you, but go rather to those who sell and buy for yourselves. In other words, there's a process by which you get oil. There's a process by which you use oil. And you have no oil in your lamp, and you have no oil in the little vessel that pours it in. You don't have it. You've burned it up, or all you you had was a little on your wick anyway. So, you know, that doesn't get you very far, which may be just an issue of God's work with you, but you never received, you know, God's Spirit in you. Or it may be they received God's Spirit in them, and they've just not used it to the point there's none there.

But the point is, this is a dangerous spiritual place to be. Those who are spiritually prepared for what God's going to do, and those who are not spiritually prepared for what God is going to do.

Oh, let's go back to the, you know, how God's going to punish the world, okay? That's a little more exciting in this prophecy.

These messages are in the middle of this. Jesus gave these all together for a purpose. This is what's going to happen. Are we spiritually prepared for what's going to happen? And it doesn't matter if it's next year or 50 years from now. You have to be prepared all the time.

This is a lifestyle of preparation, and that's what this means. There's no lifestyle in these people. Oh, they show up at Sabbath services. Oh, they, you know, they know about the Holy Days. Oh, they know this, and they know this, and they participate, and they, you know, they might sing in the choir. Okay, they do these things, but there is no real daily conversion process happening. And that's the great warning here. So verse 10, while they went out to buy, while these Christians realize, oh, it is going to happen, and I'm not prepared for any of this, I'm just not prepared for spiritually being able to have the faith, the faith what's going to happen. I don't even know what to do. I have to go buy it. In other words, I have to go beg God. I have to go to God. I have to get help. I have to look at the Bible. I haven't read the Bible in years. I've got to go back and look at the Bible. I just got used to being spoon-fed at Sabbath services.

God hasn't talked to me in the Bible for a long time. I have to get back to where I'm supposed to be with God. And while they're doing that, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him to the wedding, and the door was shut. Jesus says when he comes, there's going to be some people that aren't ready. You know, that's why. And the Sermon on the Mount, one of the most powerful sermons in the entire Bible, at the end of it, he tells us all these things, how we're supposed to live and have a relationship with God. I mean, the Sermon on the Mount is just remarkable. At the end, he says, and but when I come, there were people that come to me and say, we followed you, we did great things in your name, we taught people about you, we even did miracles. And his answer is, I don't know you. That's what this is about. I don't know you. I'm not trying to take your hope away. I'm trying to say, God is telling us how we endure what's going to happen, and how we have hope, and how we receive salvation by what's going to happen.

Not, oh, give up. No, this is the opposite. Because he says afterward, the other virgins came saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. And he answered and said, assuredly I say to you, I do not know you. And then he tells us, Christ says, watch therefore, for you know not, neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming. He says, don't get to the point where you say, you know, right now the most important thing in my life is taking this advancement. So I'm going to make $40,000 or more a year, and I'm going to buy a big car. My family's going to be really happy, and this is going to happen, that's going to happen, and that's the most important thing in my life. No, that's always secondary. Everything is secondary to being the child of God. Now, to letting him and having him work in us now. And in that is hope, in that is a positiveness, in that is a faith, in that is we don't lose that faith because of what's happening around us.

Those virgins lost their faith. I don't know how to do this. I can't figure this out. Then go get close to God. And he says, watch, because at some point you don't have time to get close to God. You either you are or you're not. And so we have this urgency that's here.

So what do you have? Well, in that negative sort of list we have, if you're going to add to your list, we have people that are spiritually unprepared. They're just not prepared. We have, they're uninvolved in personal spiritual growth through God's Spirit. That's the point of the oil. They're just not involved in personal spiritual growth.

When we're involved in personal spiritual growth, there's always a struggle involved. Mr. Tim Franke said something the other day in a sermon. I wrote it down. I thought, man, alive, I'm going to quote him all the time. Simple statement. He said, there is no such thing as untested faith. If it's not tested, it's not faith. Oh man, that is absolutely true. It's so simple. There's no such thing as untested faith. It's only faith when it's tested.

And so what we have is the understanding that personal growth is a struggle, and personal growth, spiritual growth, is what gives life this driving energy because it comes from God.

It comes from God. And it's our purpose. It shows us how to make this work in a world where nothing works. How do we make this work? Because God's working with us. That's how. Because we understand Jesus Christ is with us all the time. That's how. Because God's Spirit's in us. That's how. It is inactive in daily interaction with God. So there's not enough prayer, study, there's not enough fasting, there's not enough thinking about God's way. We have a pretense of religion, which these virgins do. They have a religion. It's the Christian religion. It's the true Christian religion. It's following God. And yet, in a day-to-day basis, it's a pretense.

It's not the driving force of life. Now we all drift, okay? It's who we are as physical human beings. Oh, wow. I've been drifting the last week. That means if Christ comes back, I don't make it. That's not the point. We all drift. It's when the drifting keeps going on and on and on. God keeps trying to bring us back if we'll follow. The drifting is what He's saying. Don't drift. Keep drifting. You have to keep coming back, let God pull you back.

So we can see then, on the positive side, we have these virgins who are active in being spiritually prepared. They're active in growing through the spiritual virtues of God. Not just knowledge, yes, knowledge, but it's the virtues. It's learning not just how not to murder, but how not to hate, and then how to love, okay? That's the virtue. We take the command, we must keep the commandment, and we move towards virtue. I gave a sermon on that a couple years ago, about two years ago. We have to keep moving forward into virtue. That's called conversion. We start with the law, don't do this, now learn to do this. This means you can't go back to breaking the law. That's bizarre.

They're active in a personal relationship with God. They live by their faith. They live by their faith.

Okay, verse 14, and we're running through these, but at the end we have a really fairly intensive list, because they're all given at the same time. Verse 14, For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his own ability, and immediately he went on his journey. Now, there's something interesting here. These talents, of course, is a measurement of money.

In other words, he gave certain resources. He gave certain responsibilities. He gave...

and it's different to each person.

This sort of... he didn't expect each person to produce the same. He did on a spiritual level, but not in their participation with God. Certain people have... you know, that's the whole thing about the different gifts in the church. The character we build in our relationship with God is the same. Everybody has different gifts, and we all appreciate those gifts. And it's unfortunate when we measure those gifts in ways we should not. The people that come in here at 930 to set up, that's a gift. We just notice those who sing more. That's a gift. But you know, you can sing if the other people come give their gift. So he says, I give different gifts, and then you're supposed to do something with them. He says, verse 16, that he who had received the five talents went and traded with them and made another five talents. And likewise, he who had received two gathered two more also. But he who had received one went and dug in the ground and hid his Lord's money.

So we have two different approaches here. One is two of them, whatever God gave them, they made something. Their lies were built around what God gave them.

It's not that they, you know, one of them, well, I only have two, I might as well give up. Or I have five, I'm better than you. That's not the point. The point is, whatever God gives each of us is what God expects out of each of us. And that is how he measures us, not how we measure each other.

We measure each other in different ways. He measures, this is what I give you, go do something with this and you'll be happy. You know, when God uses our talents and what he's given to us, we're happy. We measure ourselves by somebody else's talents, which you can't do, so you're unhappy, right? No, whatever God has given to us is what will make us happy. That's the point. But there's one here that goes and says, I'll show up, but that's it. I'm not really going to live my life in service to others. And we take that approach, we're not living our lives in service to God. After a long time, the Lord of those servants came, this is verse 19, and settled accounts with them. So he who had received five talents came and brought five talents, saying, Lord, you delivered to me five talents. Look, I have gathered five more besides them. Here's what you gave me to do, and this is what I struggled to do. I made sure that I did what you asked me to do. And his Lord said to him, well done, go to faithful servant. You are faithful over a few things and will make you rule over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord. He says, come have a relationship with me. That's what you've been building in all this, is a relationship with God. And he would receive two talents, came and said, Lord, you have delivered me two talents. Look, I have gained two more talents beside them.

And his Lord said to him, well done, good and faithful servant, you have done been faithful over a few things and will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord. Now, we covered this in a Bible study. Remember about a year ago, we had some in the other hall. We had a really good discussion after services. There's an interactive Bible study. We went through this and we discussed what happened to the guy with one talent. If he would have just taken that talent and had a joyful life, doing what God wanted him to do and developing who he should be, he would have been happy and he would have been rewarded by Christ. Because the whole point here, this is Christ. Then he would receive the one came and said, Lord, I knew you would be a hard man. You are a hard man, reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seat. He says, I knew this isn't fair. It's just not fair. You're expecting something out of me, but you know, this guy, you gave five talents too. It was easy for him. He had five. I only had one. I can't do what he did. It's not fair. If you'd have made me a deacon, I would have been somebody.

What did you mean, somebody else a deacon? So you know what? I just didn't do anything because you didn't make me a deacon.

You didn't give me the ability to do this or that or the other. So therefore, I didn't do anything because it just isn't fair. And I was afraid and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours. I'm giving you back what you gave me.

I didn't squander the money. I just buried it in a jar in the backyard and here it is. Here's the money you gave me. And he was afraid.

It's not fair and I'm afraid. I'm afraid that I won't measure up. I'm afraid of failure because the problem here is a comparison with other people and a terrible misunderstanding of who God is.

But the Lord answered and said to him, you wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I've not scattered seed. You know that I gave you something to do and expected you to do it. And you know that other people have other responsibilities and other talents and other opportunities. You know, you can be in a big congregation and have different opportunities than somebody in a small congregation. Right? I've seen in very small congregations where one person does everything and it really helps the congregation until it gets a little bigger and then it won't let anybody do anything.

They won't let anybody do anything. Many churches have solved the problem. The person, the one person running the coffee station for 30 years. See, we haven't had this problem here so I can say this. The person who's run the coffee station for 30 years and if a person shows up with a certain kind of donuts they're told to take them home because that isn't the way we serve donuts here. Okay? Now I'm exaggerating but not by much. The coffee station, you know, tyrant.

And you know how many churches have solved that problem? It's called cure-ings.

And you feel bad. I mean the woman was there an hour before services, made big pots of coffee, everything tasted the same, made sure everything was set up a certain way, made sure there were napkins here, made sure that certain cookies and things didn't come in. That's too much sugar. You can't bring that in here. Made sure everything was perfect. But after 30 years, the talent wasn't being used and nobody else, it wasn't being used properly and nobody else was learning. You got to share. This person's afraid. Can't share their talent. Got to have control and you didn't give me what other people have.

I told that to a minister just recently. Being a regional pastor, I get to deal with all kinds of things. Solve your problem with the curing. I never thought of that. But of course that person will be very hurt. So I said you can't just go do that without discussion. And I mean because the person has done this for years, you just can't discard them. But the bottom line is there's simple ways to do this and still let her be in charge. So what happens is, verse 27, so you ought to have deposited by money with the bankers. And at my coming, I would have received interest. He said you could have done something with what I gave you. You could have done something with it I gave it to you. Maybe you just put it in a bank. I said well, you made some interest.

So take the talent from Him and give it to whom has ten talents.

Wow, what's this have to do with the second coming of Jesus Christ? This means that what God gives us now, He comes back, when He sends Christ back, it's what did you do with what I gave you to do? How did you love each other? How did you care? Sometimes the greatest service isn't somebody with a title. It's the person you've all met them that knows people, who takes care of people, who loves people, and doesn't even know what they're doing. They don't even know what they're doing. It's just who they are. We say wow, that's a lot with one talent. No, understand. Sometimes that's the person with five. It's the rest of us who have one. Sometimes the rest of us have one.

It's the person who's just doing it because they care. That's the five, because we measure this differently than what God does. Verse 29, for to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance, but from him who it does not have, even what he has will be taken away.

Wow, that's pretty harsh, but the next statement is remarkable. And cast the unprofitable servant into outer darkness. This is another eternal proclamation. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is tough. We can become real comfortable and forget what God's called us, the privilege we have. The privilege for God to say, you're my servant. Here, you do this, and you do this, and you do this, and spend the rest of your lives growing and learning and loving and becoming more like Christ, and to say, I'm going to fail anyways. Or, no, you didn't give me enough. Or, I'm comparing myself to that person, and it's not fair. So let's look at, on our list now, the unprofitable servant. They're motivated by a fear of failure. They're afraid.

God won't help me. I will fail. And so they actually predict and create their own failure.

If God's called us, He's given us whatever we need. There's a number of places in the New Testament where it says, you have everything you need, because God gave it to you. Everything you need to be the person you were meant to be in the kingdom forever.

He's already given it to us. Also, they're motivated by a wrong perception of God.

You just set me up. You didn't give me what other people have. You know, you are unfair. You were unfair. If you would have just let me do this, then I would have really succeeded.

God says, no, your success is measured by what I have you do as part of my people, as part of the family. And every person, and the New Testament, Paul especially, every person in the church has value to God and to each other. Every person counts before God.

Because we're all called to be part of the same family.

They have no, this person has no sense of personal responsibility.

You know, that's not my responsibility to do what we all know we should do. And it says, the man, you know, the employer comes back and says, you're just lazy. Sometimes we're just spiritually lazy. It's too much, we're too much effort. We just won't do it.

So on the good trades, what do we have? Well, proper perspective of God and what he wants in us, how he wants to develop us, the abilities he gives us that we have to develop so we can serve him and serve others. Also, the other servants were motivated by a proper perception of God. Look what God's doing in my life. What could God has given me?

They weren't measuring themselves by each other. Because the one with two could have said the same thing. You didn't give me what you gave the number, the guy with five. Or the guy with five could say, wow, you gave me five. That means I'm superior to everybody else. And he would have failed too. See, the guy with five had his problems, and it could have been the opposite, not fear, but arrogance. Look at me.

The whole point of this is we develop or have God develop in us what God wants to develop in us.

The one with five, the one with two possess a strong sense of personal responsibility. They were responsible to God to do what they're supposed to do.

You know, we look at this in service just to the church. As men, we are responsible to take care of our, you know, serve our wives and our children, aren't we? As women, you're responsible to serve your husband and your children. That's all part of this. That's what's given to us by God. And they're good stewards of resources. They use what they had. It may not have been much, but whatever they had was used for the right purpose.

And then our last one, one we would look at here, really isn't a parable.

Matthew 25, again, we'll finish up here. It's more of a description. And what's really interesting about this, you know, all these have an eternal judgment for the person who doesn't do what they're supposed to do in this parable. This one also has an eternal judgment. But this seems to be, because he doesn't give a context, the great white throne judgment, because he's judging all the nations.

This is when all the nations are resurrected, all the nations are taught God's way, and they're going to be judged. And he wants to mention a different judgment here.

You know, what we've looked at so far, and that we've only looked at the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, the parable of talents, the faithful and evil servant, those three, we're looking at Christians in their relationship with God and in their relationship with each other.

So it's all about sort of the first commandment, loving God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul, and then how we relate to each other in the church. This one takes it in a little different direction than what he teaches now.

And this is how he finishes the Olivet prophecy. It starts with his return, but it seems to end up with the great white throne judgment. When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, he will sit on the throne of his glory, and all nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate one from another as the shepherd divides his sheep from his goats. Well, his first coming is to what? Bring all nations into the kingdom of God and teach them conversion. But here he's actually separating. Okay, I'm making a judgment here, and I'm separating.

And he will set the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. And the king will say to those on his right hand, Come, you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. He says, So I'm going to look at these people, and some of these people are going to come into my kingdom. But these are the nations. It's not the church.

And he says, For I was hungry, you gave me food, I was thirsty, you gave me drink, I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me, I was sick, and you visited me, I was in prison, and you came to me. So now he uses just all the terrible things that can happen to human beings.

This is looking at how we interact with our neighbor, the second Great Commandment.

All these first parables are about the first Great Commandment, letting God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul, and how you relate then to those who are in that same body of Christ.

But this is to the world, to everybody that's being called now, before him at this point.

And the righteous will answer him and say, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, when thirsty and gave you drink? When did he see you a stranger and take you in and naked and clothed you? When did he see you sick or in prison and come to you? When did this happen?

And they can answer and say to them, Assuredly I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one, at least of these my brother, and you did it to me.

Now, sometimes this is interpreted as how you treat other Christians, but this is more than that.

He says, all human beings were made to be my brethren. How do you relate to others?

How do we represent God to others? And he'll say those on his left, depart from me, you cursed into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. That's why I'm saying this can't be Eddie's first coming because there is no eternal judgment given at his first company except for the righteous, right? The condemnation to everlasting death in the lake of fire only happens at the end of the great white throne judgment.

So he makes this judgment here. So he has to be jumping in, you know, here's where I come and here's why in this. He says, depart from me, you cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger and you did not take me in naked and you did not clothe me sick and imprisoned. You did not visit me. And they will also answer him saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to you? He says the same thing.

Then he will say and answer them saying, as surely I say to you, it is much as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.

This also reminds us of something. We cannot, we look at the world and it's being judged by God. And when Christ comes back, the world will be on the brink of self-destruction. And to come back as the Prince of Peace, he has to kill millions. He literally kills millions of people, those armies that are gathered together. This is what he must do to set up his kingdom on earth. So he comes back and there's this terrible violence that has to be carried out, yes, by the loving Jesus Christ from the loving Father, this terrible violence. But that's not eternal death. This is talking about eternal death. And this is saying, even to us today, in the context of all this, remember the second great commandment, to love your neighbor. It doesn't say just love the converted. It says, love your neighbor. Now, loving your neighbor becomes very difficult because that doesn't mean condoning the fact that they are living lifestyles and rebellion against God. That's where we get a bit confused here sometimes. Well, my neighbor, you know, I know what they're doing is wrong, but they're nice people. So they must be, you know, God accepts them, not according to the Scripture. All human beings, until they've accepted Christ, and God has to open their mind to do that, and receive His Spirit according to the New Testament, are the enemies of God. God looks at humanity as His enemies, and He loves them so much He's willing to pay a terrible price to save them, okay? I'm willing to, Christ came to die for His enemies. So when He gives us instructions to love your enemies, He'll say, here's how this is done because you're my enemies, so I will die for you.

He doesn't say, you're just such nice people, I've come to die for you. That's not what the Scripture says. The Scripture says, you're my enemies and I've come to die for you. God sees you as enemies, and He sent me to die for you so that you can be saved.

There's a huge difference between you're a nice person, God loves you, so God doesn't want to punish you, and you're an enemy of God, and He dies for you in order to save you. Those are two totally different opposite viewpoints. And so we look at this here, and He says, and remember to love your enemies. Remember to, and to love your neighbors.

You don't condone them. You don't share in their lifestyles. We already read one of the parables about that. You don't share in their sins. You don't accept their sins.

You don't really tolerate it. You just don't go around preaching to them, right? You live in this. You don't participate. But when your sinful neighbor houses on fire, you go help them put their house out, or fire out. You go help them push their car out of the ditch.

Even if they hate your guts because of your Christianity, that's not the point. So, He says, if you can't do this, verse 46, and these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

We now have another set, another set of the put on our list. One is that you have a group of people that are not interested in the simple service of loving their neighbor. And you have a group of people that are concerned with the simple service of loving their neighbor. So, what is it that we have now as our list? From the Sermon on the Mount.

No, I mean the Sermon on the Mount. I mean all of that prophecy. This is all from the all of that prophecy. One, here's what He warns the church about. A lack of vision of Christ's return, a lack of dedication to God's work, conflict-oriented, a compromising attitude towards sin, spiritually unprepared, uninvolved in personal spiritual growth, in active and daily action with God, prayer and Bible study, fasting, meditation. In other words, they're not living their faith. Motivated by fear of failure, motivated by a wrong perception of God, no sense of personal responsibility, lazy and not interested in simple service towards their neighbors.

Here's the traits then that we are to be growing in. A strong vision of Christ's return, dedication to the work of God, cooperation with others, sensitive to recognize and avoid sin, active in being spiritually prepared, active in developing spiritual virtues, active in a personal relationship with God in prayer and Bible study, and not having a pretense of religion.

Has a proper perception of how God wants us to develop our abilities to serve Him and to serve others? Motivated by a proper perception of God, a strong sense of personal responsibility, a good steward of resources, and concern with the needs of their neighbors.

That's a whole new way of looking at this, all of it prophecy, isn't it? But why is all that in there? It's to encourage us when we understand and we start to see what does happen to the world at the end time. But it applies at any time because the world's always a mess, always has been since Adam and Eve got kicked out of Eden. It's always a mess. I encourage all of you this week to do something. Every day, take this list and pray about it and ask God to help you and read the instructions we just read. Read all of that and say, God, how does this apply to me? Show me how this applies to me. So you're actually going to go to God and ask Him, help me to understand the words for me in the all of that prophecy, and then help me to live them.

Help me to live them so that we don't end up as one of those negative examples in this prophecy.