A Tale of Two Servants

Well, good morning, everyone. No, they say there's a rule in show business. Never follow pets and small children.

I don't know how I drew this assignment. I'm going to have to talk to the person that sets up the schedule for the speaking here and have a good long talk with them about that. We saw that at the preaching camp this summer, Melody and Mandy put that together. The kids did that on the last day of camp. We thought, we've got to do that on the Feast of Trumpets and let everybody else see it and memorize the books of the Bible along with all the kids.

So that was good. Thank you very much. Good to see all of you and have everyone together from the four congregations, or at least most of the people from the congregations here with us today on this Feast of Trumpets. It's always good to see this hall filled. I hope you had a safe trip in. The weather's a little bit ... not quite a lot of sunshine out there, but it's still a good day and a good day to be here among God's people on the Feast of Trumpets.

Just take a little bit of a break from the bad news going on around us. Just don't look at the stock market today. It doesn't make any difference. For those of you from the other congregations, I told my Indianapolis and Fort Wayne the other day that after all that's been going on the last few days, I was going to have to move my retirement age from age 80 up to 90.

After this week, I'm going to push it up to 100 and just hope I get there and deal with it at that time. Anyway, let's take a day off from that, though. We're here on the Feast of Trumpets, a holy day that pictures the return of Jesus Christ and His appearance and glory as the King of Kings.

The Feast of Trumpets is the central event in God's plan. All the other parts, before and after in one sense, focus on this day, the appearance of Christ and glory, the Son of God, the Messiah. And especially after this day, when you understand the rest of the events of God's plan, it's like everything else kicks into an afterburner stage. Once the event of this day, the central events of the return of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead on this day, everything else jets off in warp speed from this day forward. We eagerly anticipate the event, and it is, as I say, central to what we have come to look for, hope for, and anticipate in God's plan of salvation.

The Christ appearing, the kingdom of God begins, the time of the restoration of all things, according to Acts 3, 21. Let me ask you a question. What if Christ does not come when we expect? What if He doesn't come when we expect? Which would be basically in our lifetime. I've been keeping the Feast of Trumpets since about 1962, and I haven't seen the events of this day come to pass yet. I still look forward to them. I've put on a few years, hope to put on a few more years, but what if He doesn't come in my lifetime or in yours? How will you and I react?

What will we do? Today, I'd like to take us through a look at the Scriptures, brethren, that can tell us about the reaction of God's servants from the Bible when Christ delays His coming. We look for the coming, we anticipate it, but if He doesn't come when we expect, what does the Bible tell us about the reaction of the servants of God when Christ delays His coming? If you want a title for this sermon, it's called, A Tale of Two Servants.

They always ask me, what's the title of your sermon? When they put it together on the CD. So, I've got one for them this morning. Those of you that like the titles, A Tale of Two Servants. Let's turn over to Luke 12. This will be my text for the day from which we will orbit, go out and come back. Luke 12. Beginning at verse 35, we have, in the midst of Christ's teaching at this particular point, at least in my King James version of the Bible, there's a heading at verse 35 that says, The faithful servant and the evil servant. Let's read quickly through this section, get an overview. He says, Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning.

And you yourselves be like men who wait for their master. And in this parable, the master is speaking of Christ. When he will return from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks, they may open to him immediately. Blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching. Assuredly, I say to you that he will gird himself to have them sit down to eat and will come and serve them. If he should come in the second watch or come in the third watch and find them so, blessed are those servants. But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.

Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Then Peter, the impetuous one, always interjecting a thought, he raises his hand. He's the one in the class, or was the one in the class, where there's always one person. And he said, Lord, do you speak this parable only to us or to all people? And Christ continued. He said, who then, and it's almost like Jesus just kind of looked at him and then went on with what he was teaching and what he was saying and kind of half ignored Peter's question, who then is that faithful and wise servant whom his master will make ruler over his household to give them their portion of food in due season?

So this is a different servant that is coming up here. Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly I say to you that he will make him ruler over all that he has. But if that servant says in his heart, my master is delaying his coming. He begins to beat the male and the female servants into eat and to drink and to be drunk.

The master of the servant will come on a day when he's not looking for him and at the hour when he is not aware and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. And that servant who knew his master's will and did not prepare himself or do according to his will shall be beaten with many stripes. This is a little difficult part of the scripture here as he goes on to round this particular parable out.

So here we have described two servants, a faithful servant and an unfaithful servant. Which one are we? Which one? Where do we fall? Let's look again at these and go through what we are told and pull in a few other scriptures and thoughts to answer that question before we conclude here this morning. Because I think it is a central question to this day, to ourselves, where we find ourselves in God's Church at this time in 2008 with the events of our own lives, where we find ourselves and our age groups and our expectations and how we are living our lives.

What we see going on around us in today's world, economically, socially, morally. And look at those events, but also look at what is taking place internally in our own lives and within the greater Church of God. Let's go back, if you will. I'd like to go back to verse 45. Because here is a description of this unfaithful servant.

Let's focus on the unfaithful servant for a moment and learn what we can from the one who says that his Master delays his coming. If that servant says in his heart, my Master is delaying his coming and begins to beat the male and female servants and to eat and drink and be drunk. Now that's quite an extreme reaction. Keep in mind, we are looking at a description of the servants of the Master. And if the Master in this parable is Jesus, the servants would have to be the people of God at whatever point in time you want to label them from the time of Christ establishing of the Church at this period in the first century to today and beyond.

The servants would have to be the people of God, called of God, the Church of God. And an attitude or a spirit or a feeling begins to develop, and it all comes over the result of coming to a conclusion where a servant says, Christ delays his coming.

Now what does that mean? Does that mean he's not coming? No, because it just says delay. It's not as if the whole idea is thrown out the window. There's a delay. A delay can be described in any number of ways. You can study prophecy as some have and kind of set a date and think, Christ is going to come on this date and this year. Direct contravention to the warning Jesus gave that you can't know that, but we've done it. People have done it. We'll continue to do it. And it doesn't happen, inevitably. Then you can begin to live and go on. You still believe he's going to come. You still have that hope. I mean, after all, we're all here today, aren't we? On the day of Trumpets.

We believe in the meaning of this day. But then, when do we think it's going to happen? Or let me ask it this way. Do we really believe that it is going to happen? Do you really, really, really, really believe that Jesus will come in glory as this day pictures? Do you really believe that? Or is it what you've been taught? Is it what you have held as a tradition? How deep is that belief? I think that is central to this description of this person here who says he delays his coming. It's not like I think I could go up and down these rows, and most of you, at least your adults, baptized, we all say, yeah, I believe he's going to come. I believe that this day is going to happen. No one would probably say otherwise. But then, Thursday morning, Friday afternoon at 2.45, Saturday night at 10.15, what would you say?

If you were thinking something else, if we were involved in something else, would that thought, would that conduct really testify to the belief that he is coming? And translate into our lives to the point where how we live, how we think, how we breathe, and figures that belief that Jesus is going to come, he is going to appear. Or would it be a lifestyle that thinks, that's not going to happen, it's kind of off over here. I'll think about it next time I hear a sermon about it, or read an article about it, or next year on the Feast of Trumpets. That's something we all have to think about because we have to put ourselves, I think, in this parable and ask the question, are we this particular servant who says, my Lord delays his coming? Because look on what he says. This servant, then, has some behavior problems. It says, he begins to beat the male and female servants. It's pretty strong. Beat the male and female servants. Does that mean just literally pummel them? Abusive? Physical abuse? Could, I guess, but I don't think that's really the full intent of it. Because, as many of us know, behavioral problems take different forms. There's different types of abusive behavior, which this describes right here, of beating people up. You can beat kids up on the playground, which some of us used to do, I guess, when we were kids, or get beat up, or beat up someone else. Or you can give somebody a verbal tongue-mashing.

You can beat up on them that way. You can deal with them with emotions, emotional abuse, cold shoulder, other things that can be done. And that's abuse as well. Psychologists identify all different types of abuse. But it gets to behavioral problems that can have various degrees of extremity here. It is talking here, really, about people not treating each other in a Christian manner. That's what is happening. When those servants start to beat each other up, male and female, without any distinction, you've got problems. There are issues. There's conflict. That's what this is describing. And it comes when people come to a point by degree in their thinking, My Lord delays His coming, the Master delays His coming, and it begins to impact the way we live, the way we treat each other. And it has to do, in this parable, with the people of God, the servants of God. When God's people do not really, really believe, this is my personal conclusion about this, thinking about it, observation. When God's people do not really believe and focus on the event of this day, the appearing of Jesus Christ in glory as King of Kings, and really focus on it and believe it, they disintegrate into varying forms of this behavior that is described right here. That's how I see it. We could argue or discuss it, perhaps. But I think that there is a lesson here that speaks to the people of God. That our growth, that our development, that our focus, that our sharp, alert feeling about God, His purpose, His plan, each other, the way we live our lives in this world, depends upon a central, sharp focus on this day and living. Not trying to always figure it out and thinking Christ is going to come right after this, because this event has happened. That's not what I'm talking about. Those of you that know me well enough, I'm not an alarmist. I don't set dates. It's not that an approach. But we have to live with a belief central to the very core of our life that Jesus is going to return, and we are those servants looking for that. This parable is speaking to the people who are in the house, the servants of the house of the master, the church, people who share common goals and common values and a common commitment. They're committed to the goals of the master of the house. And what is the most central goal of the Father and of Jesus Christ? You can sum it up. It is the event of this day to come and then to kickstart the rest of the plan of God into action through the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Tabernacles, the Last Great Day, to begin that process of restoration of all things that Acts 3.21 talks about. That is the central focus of God's plan, and it begins on this day. So this is talking about us. It's talking about the church. And yet, as we know, we live in a world that doesn't share that belief, doesn't share those values. Paul describes this as this present evil world. And in terms of the values of the kingdom, in terms of the focus, the belief, the plan of God, and the goal of life, that's true. It doesn't mean that they're not good people and there are not good things that are being done in many different ways and venues by people and organizations. That's not what Paul was talking about. He was talking about an overview. When you come down to 2 Timothy chapter 3, you see the description here. You can put a marker, as you will, in your place there in Luke 12.

In 2 Timothy 3 and verse 1, Paul talks about perilous times. In the last days, perilous times will come and he gives a description of society. And it's not a very pleasant one. It could have fit his period and it did in the first century. And it fits our world today. Where men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters and proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanders without self-control, brutal, despisers of good.

Skip to verse 5, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people, shall we say, from such attitudes, from such a spirit, turn away. This is the times, the perilous times of our world. In a generalized sense, perhaps. You can always find it again, individuals, situations that go counter to this. But this is what the Scriptures describe. And it's talking about a society that should be outside the walls of the house in which the servants live. And if you will, you almost look at this as a cold, unloving, unforgiving spirit, way of life, that's outside what should be our well-insulated home. And it's like the cold that is out there. You know how it gets when it really gets cold?

It really gets cold down below zero, ten below, fifteen below. We've all seen it. Our furnaces are running. The cold's out there, but inside our homes it's warm. But you can see if there's a leak, or there's a crack in a window or a door sill, you will see that cold begin to creep in.

And you can see the evidence of it. You can see the frost on a very, very cold morning or day. And you see that the cold is always out there, and it's going to creep in, and it's going to come as far as it can, until it hits that warmth. That's, in a sense, how it works. And Paul is describing the cold of the world that is out there that should not be impacting the attitude, the feeling of the servants. And it's a constant struggle for us to resist that, for the church and for the people of God to resist that.

Back in Matthew 24, we have a well-known statement that Jesus refers to in all of that prophecy. Again, talking about the time of the appearance, the time of His coming, as this prophecy describes. In verse 12 of Matthew 24, it says, "...because lawlessness will abound," and what we just described in 2 Timothy 3 is a time of lawlessness, in the sense of those attitudes there. He says, "...because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold." Now, we read this many times, and many of us know this verse in the context in which Jesus spoke it.

The love of many is growing cold. It's an instructive verse. It's a warning that our love does not grow cold. The cold is out there. It's beyond the walls. It's trying to get in. And it can get in, where it finds a leak, where it finds an open space, an uninsulated, unprotected part. That cold can come in and cause our love, the warmth of the love we have for God, for His truth, for one another, to grow cold, to the point where we would be like that servant that begins to beat up other people in some way.

And that beating can... I've got a minister friend who used to talk about getting beat up by somebody, and he wasn't talking about being physically hit, but just verbally or emotionally beat up in some type of a situation. And that happens. We can get beat up by our boss. We can get beat up by our mate. We can get beat up by our good friend in an emotional, verbal sense, through an argument, through a disagreement, and a problem that can arise, things are said.

We can kind of walk away and just kind of feel beat up. And we can beat on one another. And that can happen when we let certain attitudes and spirits come in, and our love for one another grow cold. And yet, at the same time, we're servants, which means we are brethren. It's another word for brethren. Members, sitting next to each other, sitting within the same church and the same fellowship, supposedly loving one another and indeed showing various forms of love, but then there comes a time when other problems can happen, and they do.

And we have to contend with them. And yet, we may even think that we are showing love, that we have the warmth, we have the care. And yet, at times, there's a coldness that creeps in, that creates a problem. We can call it a conflict that needs to be resolved. We can call it not treating each other in a Christian manner.

We can call it whatever we want to call it. And we should know that we have to deal with it. And yet, sometimes we can deceive ourselves as to what is taking place and how these things are really working and what's going on. We might think we have love, warmth, concern. And yet, maybe sometimes our attitudes and our behavior are deceiving us. You know, there's an old adage about people who freeze to death, who get out in a 25 degree below zero morning and get caught, thinking that they've got enough warmth on or their car will make it, and they go out and try to do something outside and they get caught out.

You read stories about it in books and in outdoor magazines all the time of people getting caught out and freezing to death. One of the classic Jack London stories is called, To Build a Fire. It's a story about a man freezing to death in the Klondike. It's a gripping story. But they say about people who freeze to death and hypothermia, the technical term for it, they say that you're not dead until you're warm and dead. You're not dead until you're warm and dead. There is a paradox that they have.

They find with people who get caught out in a cold, exposed area and they freeze to death. They often find people with their clothes off. Sometimes they think that those people have been sexually assaulted. That's not always the case. In fact, most of the time it's not the case. Because there's what they call a paradoxical undressing that takes place.

Just before the core body temperature gets to the critical point, usually about 85 degrees inside, that all the organs shut down, there's an interesting phenomenon that takes place with the body. The capillaries and the vessels near the surface of the skin begin to dilate. There is a sensation of warmth. They're not really warm, but in their deluded state, and because of what is taking place, they think that they are warm. They think they're right near a blazing, burning fire.

They exert their last bit of energy and they rip their clothes off to avoid being burned to death. Then they are found in that type of situation, in that position, because their body surface suddenly begins to dilate and produces a sensation of extreme heat against the skin, even though their body temperature is dropping and they are freezing to death.

You can feel like you're warm, but you're freezing to death inside, is what is taking place. It is a true phenomenon. When Jesus says that the love of many will wax cold, it is an indication and a warning for every one of us. When we think we might be really warm spiritually, by the way we deal with each other, the way we act, and the way we live our life, we could be cold as well.

There is a lesson. There is a very important lesson for us. Because Jesus says there is a servant that will say, My Lord delays His coming and begin to beat His fellow servants. If you go back to verse 45 of Luke 12, the latter part of that verse says that this type of servant begins to do something else.

It says he begins to eat and drink and be drunk. So that's another aspect of the behavior here. You know, we're in Matthew 23 or 24, or at least some of you were, maybe you can go back to it. Look at verse 38. Again, in Scripture we know about, we know by heart, describes the time of Noah. And Christ uses it to describe the days prior to the return of His return.

Verse 38 of Matthew 24, He says, For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will be the coming of the Son of Man be. And so He uses this same words to describe people eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. We're just going about the business of life. We marry, we have babies, we eat and drink, and it's not saying none of that should not be done, that we should cease from that.

But in the context of what Luke 12 and verse 45 describes, in the spirit of one who says and begins in their mind to say, My Lord delays His coming, Christ here is speaking really of an approach to life that leads to spiritual drunkenness. He's not necessarily talking about people who get drunk and eat and drink to obesity and drink to drunkenness. There's a deeper meaning here. Christ is speaking there in that parable of the servant of the spiritual drunkenness of idolatry.

As people go about not the business of life, let me use a different word, people going about the busyness of life, put a Y in for the I, the busyness of life. Eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, going to and fro, life, it happens. It gets busy. It gets hectic for every one of us. Christ describes the times and the spirit of an age. He describes it as a way of warning of an attitude that can choke off the very core thought of our spiritual life, the return of Christ, the resurrection, the transformation of that time, of the first resurrection of the first fruits.

Because the busyness of life overtakes us and can get caught up in a spiritual drunkenness that can be like idolatry because we begin to look to ourselves and what we are doing and what we need to do. And we're not able to discern God in life and most importantly in our life. That is what he is describing. And idolatry is something that to bring up before a group of people of God, sometimes we just don't get it. When it comes to idolatry in our own life and the idolatry of this world, if we think of idolatry as a wooden statue or a stone image of some sort that some ancient person bowed down and sacrificed to or even modern religionists may pray to a statue and to an icon and to some other visible form and image, which again is idolatry, but we look at that only, idolatry only in that sense, and we can miss the deeper meaning and application of idolatry.

I think that the prophetic scriptures and these teachings here bring through and that is the idolatry of the busyness of life. That we are erected for us and we can partake of and take off of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Today our idols are not necessarily...the idols that cripple our society and ensnare and entice the people of God is not the images on a wall or out in a grove of trees. It's different idols today. It's idols of money, power, celebrity, status. It's when those or any form, any variation become the desire of our life, become our gods, and we become drunk with materialism to the point of spiritual blindness to where we then cannot see.

We cannot see what we're doing and what is happening around us. That spirit of the world has found its way in to a portion of our life and then begins to impact the way we think and treat one another. Back in Luke 12 and verses 45, it talks about this person eats and drinks and is drunk. Drunkenness, we use the word alcoholism today. Everyone that has studied alcohol abuse knows that acute alcoholism eventually distorts reality in a person. When a person has to rely on chemical stimulation of that type, drunkenness, just to use this one here, they distort reality.

It impacts self-respect, self-esteem. I grew up in an alcoholic family. I know the pressures and the impact of that and how it impacts a family life and the lives of family members going forward. I've counseled enough of it over the years to see its impact, long-term impact, even when we recognize the problems and erect positive behavioral patterns and teaching in our own lives to overcome either our own abuse or the abuse of a parent or someone else that impacted our life when we were young.

There's still something that we have to do that lasts for a long, long period of time. I recognize that. God's Spirit covers a great deal. God's Spirit mollifies and forgives and helps us to build a great deal. Sometimes, depending upon the severity of the problem, as long as we're human, there's still going to be something back there that will be a memory, an impact, an indication of our life going forward of what was in the past.

It is obviously very destructive. But what does it do? It impacts our view of life and the way we deal with one another, once again. What Jesus is talking about here in Luke 12 and verse 45, of people beating each other, whatever form that takes, and then living a life of busyness or living a life that leads to a distortion of reality, which drunkenness does.

Alcoholics tend to abuse those that are closest to them, whether physically, emotionally, in that way. But all that Jesus is talking about here are the issues and the matters that deal with relationships and get in our way and cloud the central meaning of this day, of the coming of our Master, the coming of our Lord.

We get to the point where we say it is delayed. However that translates out into our lives and the decisions we make, then is what that verse is talking about. We are not able to have our eyes clearly focused on our Master and hearing what he says and able to deal with each other in a right manner. And I think what Luke 12 is talking about is a sign of the times among God's people.

Revelation chapter 3 describes a well-known group of people that we call the Laodiceans. I long since got away from the idea that the Laodiceans could be identified with a corporate title. So I don't point at a person or a group and say, You're Laodicean Jones, as we used to have in our old church newspaper one of them years ago, or point to an organization saying they're Laodicean and that's distorting the Scripture and ungodly. But nevertheless, it's right here and Christ does use it. And the one thing I have come to understand about this period of the church that is described is that it is talking about the state of the world and the church as a whole at the end of time before Christ appearing. And I think there is a direct application for us there. You know what Jesus says about this church? He says of them, I know your works in verse 15 that you're neither cold nor hot. I would that you were cold or hot. I take cold as, in a sense, in this case being just completely worldly, turned off of the world, fully immersed in the world, the spirits and the attitudes that we read about in 2 Timothy 3. Being warm, hot, a zeal, an urgency, a zealousness for the church, for the work, for the truth, for the people of God, for the event of this day, the appearance of Jesus Christ. You're either one or the other. And that's what he's really addressing is an attitude where he says, get off the fence. He said, I would that you were either hot or cold. In other words, get all the way in, maybe, or get all the way out. But don't try to have it both ways. I've talked before about how when I first learned all this when I was a kid, saw the scenarios, 1972 January, had it all figured out. I was going to live the way I wanted to right up until 6 months before, well, maybe 3. Would you believe 30 days? And then repent. Repent and sneak right in under the wire.

You can't do that. Christ said, be either cold or hot. And I think he might have more respect if you admit you're either cold and quit trying to appear as if you're hot, than trying to be both ways. That seems to be what he's saying here to the servants. And he goes on and he says, look, he talks about buying gold and he said, you don't know if you're really wretched, miserable, and poor and blind. And then he uses that word naked in verse 17. You don't have any clothes on. One of my favorite stories is the emperor has no clothes. Love that story. There's such a lot of teaching there for life of somebody who thought he was really important, and he was deluded by everybody around him that he was clothed in finery and he went walking down the street in his birthday suit. And everybody said, oh, look at the king. He looks good. But it was little kids who said he's in laughter and said he doesn't have any clothes on.

And right here, Jesus is saying you're naked. You don't know it. You're naked spiritually. And he says, I'm knocking at the door. He said in verse 20, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I'll come in to him and dine with him and he with me. Same type of language that we found back in Luke 12, the master coming and setting down with the servants. To him who overcomes, I'll grant to sit with me on my throne. The members in this situation of this description can't hear Christ knocking. That's why they're neither cold nor hot. That's their problem. They can't hear Christ knocking. Now let's go back to Luke 12.

How do we avoid this?

Which servant do you want to be?

Let's go back to verse 35. Let's look at the faithful servant.

Let's look at the faithful servant. I think we all want to be this one. I do. And I'm sure you do as well.

But we have to look at both of them to understand the contrast. In verse 35, he says, let your waist be girded and your lamps burning. Again, an imagery that we can turn to a number of scriptures and find additional explanation. Let your waist be girded.

From Ephesians 6, verse 14, what does Paul say our waist should be girded with? Don't look. Anybody know? Truth. Let your waist be girded with truth, Paul says, in Ephesians 6, 14. The truth. The truth of the scriptures. The truth of God. You know, they say that when war breaks out, truth is the first casualty because of propaganda on both sides. And that's true in human war. Truth is usually the first casualty that happens. And it's only years later when historians write the books that they sort out the true stories, and you hear the true stories of whatever battle, whatever decision, whatever invasion, whatever it might be. Truth is always the first casualty in war. You know, in our spiritual warfare, truth is always under attack. The truth of God, the truth of the scriptures, the truths that we live by, they're always under attack.

And we have to remain vigilant for those. We just had a regional conference for this region in St. Louis, and the theme of the regional conference was to teach as you've been taught. And it was just going back to the basic scriptures to teach, sound doctrine. They gave us a thick notebook of all the fundamentals of belief of the United Church of God as a resource tool. And that was the emphasis, and it was a very, very good refresher, review. And I came away, again, just reminded of something that I've known, but it's good. And we all need to be reminded of the basic truths that we have, because truth is always under attack. And Christ says here to let your ways to be girded. And if we pull in what Paul said, let's make sure that it's girded with truth. True doctrine, true teaching, true living, true ways of life. He says, let your lamps be burning. Immediately, your mind goes to Matthew 25, the parable of the ten virgins, who went out when they heard the call, and five had enough oil, and five did not.

We don't necessarily think about keeping our lamps burning so much, because today we just flip a switch. We walk into a room, we flip a switch. All of us do, and you know, if a storm blows through like we've had of late, we flip that switch. We know just how crippled we can be and how blind we can be. This year I bought some, just not necessarily to be reminded of this, that was not my intent, but through the summer months, as I watch on my patio, I'm reminded of this principle when I think about it. I bought some of these tiki-type torches that you put on an outsider on your patio, and you have to fill with citronella oil, you know, and you burn them to create an ambiance and keep the mosquitoes away. We had poured some new concrete in our patio and kind of made it a nice little refuge for ourselves this summer. I bought some nice torches out there, because initially my thought was, well, it's cheaper than trying to string lights out there in electricity. But when you see those, the oil in those torches go down, you see the light goes down. So it's been an object reminder for me of this particular principle that we find in Matthew 25, and Jesus says here, keep your lamps burning. And to keep your lamps burning, you've got to keep the oil in. The oil is a symbol of God's Holy Spirit. We have to keep those lamps filled with the oil of God's Spirit. Plenty of oil. You have to have it on reserve. So I bought up all I can on Special at Lowe's, so I can keep it around and not find my lamps going dry.

God's Church moves best and moves freely when it's empowered by the Spirit of God. A spiritually minded approach that looks to God, and not the works of men. When we begin to look at what we are or what we have done as merely our works, and our genius, and our effort, and our burning of midnight oil, we'll come to the point where we're really just burning our own oil. We're not burning God's oil. And we're looking to ourselves, and we're guilty of making an idol out of ourselves. God's Church always has moved forward best when it is empowered by the Holy Spirit. So Jesus says to keep your lamps burning. There's no substitute for that. In verse 36, you will and you yourselves be like men who wait for your Master when he will return from the wedding that when he comes and knocks, they may open to him immediately. We just read in Revelation 3 that Jesus stands outside the door, the message that he gave to the church at Laodicea, and he's knocking. And he says, Open the door that I might come in and dine with you. This is what we're told here. The faithful servant is going to be watching so that he can hear the knocking and open the door and let Christ into his life, to their collective life, that he will sit down and eat and serve them. And then the Master becomes the true servant. But to do that, we have to tune out the static of our world, be able to hear the voice of God. Tune out the busyness of our life and of life that encroaches upon us all the time. I don't know if I've ever seen a time when we are any busier in our lives with things than right now. I'm as guilty as anyone else. There are so many things to do that we want to do, that we need to do, that we should do. Whether it is to pray for one another, to serve one another, to do something for the people of God, for the church, for their own lives, for their own families. And all the other things that come in, just making a living, making ends meet, dealing with the busyness of life, of children, of grandchildren, of mistakes, of successes, of just what happens every day when we get up and we dial in, check in, open the mail, go to work, go to school, come home, pick up the phone, and wonder what's next and what we have to deal with. I don't know if I've ever seen it any busier. And we are all praying to being busy and not hearing the voice of God in the right way. Don't go start hearing any voices on us. That's not the type of approach we're talking about here. But spiritual discernment through the Scriptures of Christ knocking. That's what he is talking about here in verse 36. People who wait for their master so that when he returns from the wedding, we open the door. There's another blessing in Revelation 16 verse 15 that talks about the blessing for those who watch and keep their garments. You know, watching throughout the Scriptures, when you put all the Scriptures together on the subject of watching, it's not just watching Wall Street. It's not just watching Europe. It's not just watching world events. It's watching spiritually for the conduct of our lives. It is certainly understanding our times and letting that be a prod to keep us aware that this world is moving toward the time of the end. But then, not to have just some esoteric knowledge that makes us spiritually wiser and better than anybody else because we understand prophecy or world events. That's not it. Prophecy has always been among the people of God and from the Scriptures a tool to prod us to faithfulness, to being alert, to being this faithful servant, to being one who is discerning the times, but then understanding that the times can be quite cold.

And they can encroach upon us. And we can think we're warm, but the cold may be creeping in. There are many challenges there. There are many things for us to watch and to understand. Christ pronounces a blessing for those who watch and keep their garments because faithful servants are going to be clothed properly for the times so that they're not going to be exposed and caught cold and caught napping. In verse 39 He says that, Perhaps verse 40 is the key verse to keep in mind. The Son of Man is coming at an hour you don't expect. Be ready. Be watching. Be clothed. Forward leaning is the term I kind of adopted of late. You're kind of leaning into the wind. Moving forward, not being pushed back. Ready for whatever might come. Ready to go forward. Ready to meet the challenges. Ready to do what is necessary. Because it says He is going to come at an hour that we don't expect. And that's the servant that is the faithful servant who is ready and lives his life in that way. So which servant are you and I? Are we the faithful servant or the evil servant? We can float back and forth on it at times. One thing we don't want to do is to live our life in any way and to adopt any spirit or any approach that says, My Lord delays His coming. And then that translates into the way we think, the way we live, the way we treat one another, even the way we treat ourselves. Because that's the spirit and attitude of the unfaithful servant. It's the faithful servant that we are admonished to be like. She does not come when we expect. We, five years, ten years, thirty years from today, as far as the Feast of Trumpets is concerned, if we're still meeting, or God's people are still meeting, to keep the day of trumpets with that day, we're doing what we should be doing. We're living our lives in an expectant, watchful state of preparation because we really believe that. And we will be here. And our children will be here, hopefully, and our grandchildren, if that's the case. Because really, if He does not come when we expect, we have an obligation to live in the manner of the faithful servant. That's the key. Focus our lives on that faithful servant and live in that way. And we will be ready when He does appear.