[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the way community church podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Darahal and I'm the pastor of the way community church.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are showing people the way to life with Jesus and we are thankful that you joined us today.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want any info about our church or if you're interested in becoming a member of our church, you can email info at the waycc.online.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, if you like to worship
[SPEAKER_00]: We're continuing our series called Ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we look now at if we're ready for Jesus' return, we're going to look at Matthew chapter 24 in chapter 25 and it's not going to be a scary conversation but a hopeful conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: About making sure our faith in the Lord Jesus is sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can follow along the notes of this sermon and the transcript of this podcast or you can find them in the Bible app.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grab your word.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's study together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grab your Bibles and join me in the book of Matthew.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna be in Matthew chapter 24 and chapter 25.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna read a huge chunk of scripture today, but we'll just read through it once.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we do so, I believe the one central truth from these,
[SPEAKER_00]: these verses will become clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Matthew chapter 24 is where we're going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find these notes in the Bible out for you, or you can follow along on the screen.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will be there for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once you found it, would you acknowledge within a man?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna start at verse
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we're going to jump down the verse number 44.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to read through the end of Matthew 24 and then the beginning, verse 13, verses of Matthew 25.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word of the Lord says in the new international version, but about that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the sun, but only the Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse number 44.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you also must be what church ready because the son of man will come at an hour when you do not expect him
[SPEAKER_00]: Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time?
[SPEAKER_00]: It will be good for that servant who's master finds him doing so when he returns.
[SPEAKER_00]: Truly, I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions.
[SPEAKER_00]: But suppose that serving is wicked and says to himself, my master is staying away a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards, the master of that servant will come.
[SPEAKER_00]: On a day when he does not expect him and in an hour, he is not aware of.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter 25, at that time the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom, five of them were foolish and five were wise.
[SPEAKER_00]: The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bridegroom was a long-time incoming and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: And midnight, the crying out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the bright room, come out to meet him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps.
[SPEAKER_00]: The foolish ones said to the wise, give us some of your oil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our lamps are going out.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, they replied, they're may not be enough for both us and you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived.
[SPEAKER_00]: The virgins who will watch church,
[SPEAKER_00]: Ready went in with him to the wedding banquet.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the door was shut.
[SPEAKER_00]: Later, the others also came lower, lower, they said, open the door for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he replied, truly, I'll tell you, I don't know you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 44 of chapter 24, he said,
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the Son of Man will come in an hour when we do not expect him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 10 of chapter 25 says, the virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to continue our ready series of this thought in mind, ready for Jesus' return.
[SPEAKER_00]: You may be seated in the presence of the living guard.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ready for Jesus' return.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are plenty of great fathers in the African American community, and I know it to be so because one of them is my daddy, and I am looking at the face of me and I know are great fathers.
[SPEAKER_00]: I say this because we are all well aware of the common story of pervasive fatherlessness in our community, particularly in the 80s and 90s and how the ripple effect of mass incarceration and strict laws on what could have been described as petty crimes, or part of a systemic
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we know about Fatherlessness, we know about the damaging effects of the emotion of Fatherlessness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us have had Father's absent in our life, not because of some systemic scheme against our people, but just because, as a man, in that moment, he did not want to step up to his responsibilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we understand the pain, if we've not filled it ourselves, we understand it from those that others have filled.
[SPEAKER_00]: I say that it's not to poke at a traumatic wound because though I have the greatest man in the world to also be my dad, we have a great relationship now, but he and I both have discussed his absence from a physical standpoint in my life growing up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not poking at the trauma, I'm just trying to draw our attention to the pain in a picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: on vivid pictures of the pain of Fatherlessness happened in an episode of the Fresh Prince of Ballaire.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might recall that episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Will, who was raised by his single mom, Vai, had got to a point where she can no longer do anything with him, so she got him out of West Philadelphia, where he was born and raised on a playground as where he spent most of his days chilling out, Maxon, relaxing all cool, and then shooting some meatball outside of the room, you understand?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hill number one, 19.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, Vire realized that the environment she was raising her young man in without the help of a father was not for his betterment long term so she relocated him in the bed there to live in what she hoped would have been better circumstances and it turned out to be so or for there he was able to be ingracted into a family intact.
[SPEAKER_00]: on Vivian and Uncle Philip loved him as if he were their own.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's this one episode where the iconic actor Ben Varene steps in as this absentee father.
[SPEAKER_00]: who out of nowhere comes back into the life of wheel and gets wheels hooked up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Uncle Field is not just jealous of the relationship, he's really protective of wheels' heart and tries his best to warn wheel to guard himself, but wheel instead goes all in emotionally until the closing scene where he's waiting for his father to return.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he never does.
[SPEAKER_00]: and will lashes out from a broken heart in anger.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he acts his uncle before his uncle holds him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, why he don't want me, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's been your experience, it could be difficult for you to make the theological jump from a father who never came back to believing in a savior who will.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to assure you that if you got your shoes waiting at the door for Jesus, he will not abandon you.
[SPEAKER_00]: APPLAUSE And so we got to be ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy for us to be ready for something that we know when it's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Detention is, how can I be ready for something?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure when it's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because the win has taken so long, the win starts to turn to if and if starts to set in to abandonment from traumatic experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I start to feel like a fool that I started to wait to begin with.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you will, please give me a few minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to have a conversation with you from these passages about why we should be ready for Jesus' return.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we came in the 2026, our goal was to be in lock step with the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so a group of us, collectively, unify, salt the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we could deduce that it was God's will this year for us to focus in on one prophetic idea and that word is ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let the Church say ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, ready is our word for the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's our prophetic rallying cry is, it's our one focus that will shape, not just our preaching and teaching and our worship, but also the practical things on our calendar that add to the levels of readiness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, we've adopted the first Peter chapter three verse number 15 as our theme verse, and our big idea for the year is that God develops readiness through repeated obedience.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, we made a commitment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Coming into 2026, we're not gonna make another resolution.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna start a rhythm of repeated obedience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Understanding that the small obedience every day has a compound effect to get us ready for the more significant points of obedience that we cannot predict.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the truth is, we're having this conversation around readiness because we fully embrace our humanity.
[SPEAKER_00]: as daughters of the divine and sons of the sovereign, it's not lost on us that we're also human.
[SPEAKER_00]: And human beings have a fraility about us, that if we're not careful, we can start out waiting.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'd the right attitude.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then when we wait longer, then we thought we would have had to wait when we started out, the attitude starts to change.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as the attitude lands, now we think we're doing a favor to God for waiting instead of missing that the goal was our maturity more than his manifestation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It written, let me run that bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are chosen of God to be sure, but human beings as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: which means we can start out with the right intention.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a wait on the Lord and be of good courage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a trust the Lord, I'm a do-guys wheel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thinking that we would wait a certain season, not knowing you can't predict how long you're gonna have to wait.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord made a promise to a child, Abraham and Sarah, and you could have went to IVF, you could have tried all these other forms to make it happen, and if it don't happen,
[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't know you didn't have to wait 25 years, Abraham and Sarah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the longer we wait, the harder it is to wait, then the attitude changes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's less us being faithful, more us doing God a favor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we miss waiting was about maturity, not manifestation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so because we struggle with that in our humanity, we want to have a compassionate conversation about what it means to be ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a few weeks ago, we started out in 1st Peter 3, 1st number 15, asking the question, are you ready?
[SPEAKER_00]: All right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got a black moment, too, huh?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, auntie, you want it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And we agree from 1st Peter 3, 15, that I stay ready when the Lord is my Lord and I stay ready when the gospel is my hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, last week, we went to Joshua chapter 1 verse 10 and 11, and we want to be ready for God's next move, understanding that the Jordan River in front of us reminds us of the Red Sea behind us, and the same God who has moved is about the bus another move.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we want to be ready in the meantime before God moves miraculously on our behalf.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all to be ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got to appreciate that readiness is covenantal.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're in a covenant relationship, your readiness is your responsibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once we agree to a covenant to relationship with God, we have to stay in a ready state.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's our responsibility as a part of the covenant, but then also readiness is faithful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rating is says to God, not only do I trust you, I trust you when it's difficult to trust you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I embrace waiting as an opportunity for growth, to for growth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then also readiness is practical.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, we don't have some spiritual conversations around readiness like the one we're having today, but to be sure, there's a practical nature to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, Joshua told the people, get your provisions ready because in three days, the Lord is gone, open the Jordan River, West provisions, stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you spiritually ready, you gotta be practically ready, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, you gotta be ready to manage some money.
[SPEAKER_00]: You gotta be ready for what the Lord tells you to do, and that you gotta be ready for the move God wants to make.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the Lord is gonna give you a new house, you gotta take care of how she got now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, I want all that junk and your attic move then to his new good house for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: Throw it away now.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a practical nature to readiness that really proves what we are spiritually.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so from there, forthwith, we enter this text and Matthew 24 and 25.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is Jesus coming towards the end of his earthly life.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's about to go to the crossbow before he does.
[SPEAKER_00]: He already started talking to his followers about what he's going to do after he do, what he finna do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I'm about to go die for y'all because I got to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I'm going to leave, because I got to do that too, and if I don't leave the Holy Spirit won't come.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I can tell you, when I leave, I'm not abandoning you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just moving to a different vantage point to cover you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to see for you while the Holy Spirit moves among you, then I'm coming back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't tell you when I'm going to come back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's all I can tell you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm coming back and be ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're trying to decide what to do this year to help spire on your spiritual growth, I want to tell you the book of Matthew is a great opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can read the book of Matthew.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you read it, I just want you to keep two words in mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: King and kingdom say that with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: King and kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you read Matthew and you hear Jesus say stuff like the kingdom of heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: is alike.
[SPEAKER_00]: He starts to tell these parables, these practical stories with spiritual revelation, or these spiritual insights with practical application.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's showing us the connection between the spiritual and the practical, so he can reveal the culture of the kingdom of God, because the kingdom of God has an entire world culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Matthew is all about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as he gets here to the end before he goes to the cross,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'ma come back and get you when I get done doing what I'm finna do next.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're having a conversation now about the end times, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The return of Jesus, this part of scripture that some of us are scared to even touch all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us have only read 65 books of the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your pages and revelation still stuck together.
[SPEAKER_00]: You get all the way to Jude and go back to Genesis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep on reading.
[SPEAKER_00]: Apocalyptic literature is therefore a reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's found in the book of Revelation in the second half of the book of Daniel, in the book of First Essalonians.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here in the end of Matthew, we see apocalyptic literature, meaning biblical revelation about the end times.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the whole reason is there is not to scare us, is really to give us hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord is saying, look, you're going to go through a lot, but I'm telling you in the end, what's going to go down, so that when it gets scary for real, you're going to be stable from the inside out, because you already know what's going to happen, because I told you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Knowing the end, stabilizes the soul in the middle.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he says in the end, I'm gonna come back and get you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, he's talking about his ultimate return.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we, by the year ago, went through the end times in a message when we were in our firm foundation series, I'm gonna show you a picture that I showed y'all back in March for those who were here.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might recall for those who weren't here we are together.
[SPEAKER_00]: This picture is just a snapshot of the timeline between where we are and how the world is going in.
[SPEAKER_00]: from our theological perspective, or from our theological perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not only one way to see it, it's two or three different pervasive views, but this is the view I hold to, biblically.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so I'm going to let it to feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see this orange part that says church age with the dot, dot, dot, under it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is where we currently live right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, you have a graduated college or you got some fancy certificate or you signed your marriage license, and it says, in the year of our Lord, 2026, they don't know what they say and we're in the church age.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in that age after the ascension of Christ, but before the return of Christ, the church age.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which, I mean, we in the time what a Holy Spirit is among us.
[SPEAKER_00]: The church age started when the Holy Spirit failed on Pentecost and the Holy Spirit came upon those who were there in unity.
[SPEAKER_00]: They started speaking tongues before many signs and draw people into this newfound community, guess what they call it, a community.
[SPEAKER_00]: T-d-o-s-e-c-c.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just playing, that's what we call it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They called it the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Acts 24, verse number 14 and John, chapter 14, verse number 6, Jesus said, I am the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Acts 24, 14, the followers of Jesus became followers of the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they started to church age, the age in which we live now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the church age will come to an end at their red arrow, which is the rapture.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rapture is when Jesus will snatch out of the earth, those who are a part of the church, whether alive or dead, snatch out of the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you hear rapture, think snatch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus not gonna be like, oh, come on, it's time to come on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, let's sing, come by, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, he gon' snatch just like you would your child if they were standing in the middle of the street with a truck driving full speed towards them and they're not paying attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you gon' go to your child and say, come on, little's, come on baby, I'm calling you to safety.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to, the rapture is the snatching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only would the church be snatched, but the spirit will be too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you think the world is terrible now, which it is, though seven years after the Rapture where it's no church and no Holy Spirit will be no light to counteract the darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we into these seven years, these seven years aren't the time of tribulation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second, three and a half, are called a great tribulation.
[SPEAKER_00]: which are going to be worse by contrast in the first.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Revelation in Daniel is all about the terrible things that are going to be happened during these seven years.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of those seven years is that green arrow, Jesus is returned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is going to return to the earth, set up a kingdom, rule for 1,000 years from Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of those thousand years, it's going to be a war.
[SPEAKER_00]: You probably heard about it, the Battle of Armageddon.
[SPEAKER_00]: While all these kingdoms going to come together, they're going to say, we taught at Jesus, we're going to take over Jerusalem, we're going to be kings to ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to come to Jerusalem to fight against Jesus, surround Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is going to say, y'all ready?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to say, not yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: He can say, OK, let me know we are ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to get him battle to the right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all ready now?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's fight.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going to call down fire from heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: Revelation says, 19, concern them battle over in the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Revelation 20, 21, and 22.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, where we are in Matthew is the green arrow down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where we are going to go with the Lord is the red arrow up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is saying, I'm a retired one day, so be ready for the return.
[SPEAKER_00]: We won't be here for that, but that still don't mean, we don't need to be ready to get smashed, either.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all picking up what I'm putting down?
[SPEAKER_00]: So we need to be ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let the church say ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: Essentially, Jesus explains that his faithful saints and servants ought to be ready for his return.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to ask you one question that I want you to ask yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can answer this question in the affirmative, then you are ready for his return.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is my faith real?
[SPEAKER_00]: only you can answer that for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because what Jesus tells us is number one, real servants are ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: In chapter 24, he says, nobody can know the day, know the hour, so you must be ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm a coming you don't expect me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he gives this example of two servants.
[SPEAKER_00]: who are left in charge by a boss and needs two servants are given the responsibility to care for the rest of the people with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them is ready and you can tell because they serve faithfully.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them is not ready because they look at like, oh, he and Kaye back in his time, I'm in charge now.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the second one who decides they're gonna be in charge starts to become a slave of their own appetite.
[SPEAKER_00]: They start to be cruel to the people they should serve and they so lost in hedonism and in pleasure that they are not even paying attention to the fact that the boss gonna show up when you least expect it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the boss comes back and the faithful servant gets one outcome
[SPEAKER_00]: of promotion, and the unfaithful servant is another outcome of being thrown out with the hypocrites.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we learn is this, nobody knows when Jesus will return because nobody can know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna tell you a rare flag when you know somebody lying.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's somebody told you that they had a dream and they know that the Lord is going to return.
[SPEAKER_00]: on December 31st, 1999.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you bet a party like it's 1999.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because why two k is the end?
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody line.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody knows when Jesus is going to return because nobody can know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Guess who all don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only do we not know, but the angels don't know either.
[SPEAKER_00]: Guess what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus don't know when Jesus is going to return.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which means Jesus is on his throne, ready for whenever the Father says now.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if Jesus can be on his throne, ready for when the Father says now, who will we to be on earth not ready for when He returns?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there anybody who can give God praise for the fact that I may not know when?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm ready when they go down.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all waiting on the Father to decide.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ain't just don't know, Jesus don't know, and we can't know, and anybody who said they know been lying this whole time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And anybody who says they do know is lying when they say it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then here's the tension point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rev, you mean to tell me that I'm supposed to get ready for something, I know it's gonna happen, but I don't know when it's gonna happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I'm not ready, it's on me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this is like a window.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is like a window.
[SPEAKER_00]: because it don't just apply to our salvation, doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Being ready for something, you know going to happen, you just don't know when it's going to happen, is a part of every area of our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, all the husbands in the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: My prayers are with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't pray for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You pray for me, because we know it's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know it's gonna happen, we just don't know when it's gonna happen, so we gotta be ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ready for what, Ralph, for our lives to challenge us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Derek.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't think so real was in a day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yikes!
[SPEAKER_00]: You're a young brother.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ebony is not here, I got an owl before I get home.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we know it, don't, don't we, husbands?
[SPEAKER_00]: And your wife's in next year right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's somewhere between Elbow and you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And me and Mugging me, I ain't making contact with no wives in the room right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are a husband in this room, if I be not a prophet of the living God, I declare unto you that by this time tomorrow,
[SPEAKER_00]: You shall have been challenged so be ready because you don't know when it's going to come but you know it's going to come.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're really from the Thor's Caribaults now because I don't say it all out, my bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why we need our men some minutes, we can talk about this stuff just, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But not just husbands, parents know it too, don't we?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, we know, we know it's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just don't know when it's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you mean, Ram, if wives are going to challenge us, kids are going to try us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I telling the truth?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you got a child, you're going to be trying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I promise you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know where.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just got to be ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: So ever so often, I just practiced my back hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I practice the short hand, the long version, shoulder out, knee up, to keep my shoulder loose.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes, I'd be walking through the house like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were like, dad, what you doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, they weren't about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You wouldn't know when I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know when it's gonna happen, but I'm ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mama kept her back hands smooth for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my mama wore rings on all her fingers too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lower hand mercy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Husbands, we know it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The wives are going to challenge us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Parents, we know the kids are going to try us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And anybody who manage money, you know it's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're just on a win.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you mean, Ralph, experiences are going to find us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I telling the truth?
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to get in the car, try to crank it up, battery dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I need $215 to put a battery in this car.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you got multiple cars, you're not the first thing you think, well, one of them got to spree you Jesus, please.
[SPEAKER_00]: I gave you my tiles today, Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't let the battery and the other one go out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I don't know when it's going to happen, I just know that is going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Experiences are going to find me because one day something that's been working all this time is just going to start working.
[SPEAKER_00]: And need to be replaced.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in every area of our life, we know we got to be ready for what's going to happen, even though we can't predict when it's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if I'm unfit for something, I know it's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: I might be the person who don't believe that fire is high until I touch it myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: or I might be the person who's forgetful or doubtful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And neither of those is necessarily judgment worthy because I'm a human being.
[SPEAKER_00]: The hope is I'm not what this text defines as wicked.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says, the servant that's not ready?
[SPEAKER_00]: He could have said lazy, he could have said, forgetful, he said, the servant that's not ready is wicked.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would Jesus use so strong of a word when he could use the euphemism to kind of paint the same picture?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because he wants us to understand if I make you aware of something and you don't take me seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then it wasn't ignorance that led to your unfaithfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: This time unfaithful refers to somebody who is worthy of trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know somebody who faithful, you can get them $5, telling them to go buy you groceries for the week and they gonna bring you back 50 cents.
[SPEAKER_00]: You also know somebody who is wicked.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get them $100, telling them to go buy you groceries.
[SPEAKER_00]: They gonna come back and say they lost the money.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they incandes in your face.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you call them on it, they gonna blame you for sending them to begin with.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we gotta be ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: We gotta be worthy of trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not wicked.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a troublesome or a worthless person.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody, you can't coach up to save your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to help you be great, but you just don't wanna be great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus said, I'm trying to tell you how this goes in cause I don't want you to call on God by what you can't control.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you choose not to get ready, it's on you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is not the only time in scripture that we gotta be ready for something that we can't predict, even though we know it's coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you turn out of the first book of the New Testament, Matthew back to the first book of the Old Testament, Genesis is a story in Genesis 6.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where God looks out over the earth, and people are wicked.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just wicked, everything they think in his wicked, everything in their heart is wicked.
[SPEAKER_00]: God says, I'mma just start over.
[SPEAKER_00]: He finds a man named Noah, who has found faith where we guide because Noah's faithful.
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes to Noah and says, Noah, get ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: Noah, like for what?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna rain on the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's rain?
[SPEAKER_00]: Before Genesis chapter 7, it had never rained on the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: The earth was irrigated from the ground up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So rain was a new phenomenon.
[SPEAKER_00]: So no, like, hello.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you mean to tell me one day water just goes far from the sky the same way it comes up out of the ground?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, this is actually what I'm telling you.
[SPEAKER_00]: When is it going to happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not telling you when it's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: What should I do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Build a boat.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's a boat?
[SPEAKER_00]: Build the arc, I'm a download into your soul, the blueprint's for something you never seen, cause you got a bill, something you never seen, cause you got to survive something you never seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So get ready, cause it's coming, I'm just not going to tell you when.
[SPEAKER_00]: So no, I got all these questions, but he can't let the questions away, he don't understand, stop the obedience for what he does.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the way around, look like how I'm annoyed when I see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: How I know this boat is done when it's finished.
[SPEAKER_00]: He got to be obedient, starting now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Bible says that once the ark is finished, God brings all of the provisions into the ark closes it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The waters burst from the deep and the sky's open for 40 days.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the earth flows from the top and bottom together for 40 days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Noah had to be ready for something he's never seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when the Lord tells us, hey, be ready for my return, we're somewhere between rev, this don't make no sense to young with you, I agree, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: For some of us, what I'm telling you, sounds illogical.
[SPEAKER_00]: For some of us, it sounds possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: For others of us, it might be feasible.
[SPEAKER_00]: It could be probable or it could be definite.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you mean, impossible rev?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's never going to happen, real of you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, bro, I get it, you got a job to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this just don't sound logical to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: To shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us are like, OK, this is possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a chance it could happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the most like, it's feasible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meaning, it's a realistic chance it could happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, after all, it's a thing
[SPEAKER_00]: in the last eight years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, rev, it's probably, there's likely no rampant.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there are those of us in the room who say, now it's not, now I'm with you all the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: My goal and your pastor today is to get you to locate where you are and just take one step.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just one step.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you act in the illogical only, I'm just challenging you to go to the possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you act possible, cool, I just want you to take a step towards feasible.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you act feasible, you get it, probably, just one step.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ain't trying to rush, nobody's development.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want you to be courageous enough to take a step forward in your faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Move from is never going to happen to there's a chance it could happen because that one step might get you into a faithful rhythm that makes you ready for what you cannot predict.
[SPEAKER_00]: The faithful servant was ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: The wicked servant was not ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: You always know a faithful servant because a faithful servant don't let they title go to the hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because a faithful servant fears God more than they want the people under them to fear them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But a wicked servant will have a title in the start thinking, you to boss.
[SPEAKER_00]: Position with no reverence.
[SPEAKER_00]: A faithful servant is self-led.
[SPEAKER_00]: A wicked servant is self-indulgent.
[SPEAKER_00]: A wicked servant gets in position and then uses position to feed appetite.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I don't think there's no accountability
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they would either unhealed or unholy before they got in that position, they thought the stuff that came with the position was supposed to spill the hole and they saw it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they started to eat with the drunkards and be cool to those they should serve.
[SPEAKER_00]: A faithful servant is one who serves those they're called the serve and a wicked servant abuses those they should serve and in the end the faithful servant is going to be promoted but the wicked servant is going to be put with the hypocrites.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let the church say hypocrites.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one of our favorite words, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, the juice-key video later, right at our feet this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: For y'all in the room who don't know, keep not knowing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I promise you, you are blessed.
[SPEAKER_00]: For those of us who can't pick your phone up without seeing the video or somebody respond to the video, I don't have an issue with it in general, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I have some issue with some of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reason I have an issue with it
[SPEAKER_00]: And they hit me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm just saying, dang, dang.
[SPEAKER_00]: Me, hit me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not offended, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's some level of it that grieves me if this is how the world sees the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: That part grieves me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is he was highlighting hypocrisy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what that chart, that word hypocrite means when Jesus says, if you will wicked servant, I'm gonna put you with the hypocrite.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hippocrite means stage actor, that's the Greek ideal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's somebody who goes into the dressing room, puts on our costume.
[SPEAKER_00]: puts on a mask goes out on stage to perform and then when the director says, same, they go back into the dressing room, take off the mask, take off the costume and go live in darkness, a hypocrite of somebody who likes to play in the light but live in the dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus says, the problem with the hypocritus, you misstook who your audience was.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're tempted to hypocrisy when you think pleasing people is your audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you know God is my only audience, you understand he can see my face behind any mask.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there anybody who can give God praise what effect that he helped you learn a long time ago?
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't live for the people you live for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Real servants are ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, and I'm going to be doing real sites already too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we just went from Matthew 24 to 25.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the English Bible, one of the benefits of the translations is that there are chapter numbers put in and verse numbers put in.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the Holy Spirit breathed, the book of Matthew, the Holy Spirit and say, okay, chapter 25, verse number one.
[SPEAKER_00]: the Holy Spirit breathed Matthew wrote in his on a scroll.
[SPEAKER_00]: As it was translated, translators said, hmm, we need to make this user friendly so that the people who are reading this revelation can break it down into bite sizes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's put chapter numbers where they're saying to be natural literary breaks.
[SPEAKER_00]: and let's put verses where they're saying to be natural thought breaks.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that you can put an address on a revelation.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it wasn't for chapters and verses, we wouldn't have an address for a revelation thought.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to go through the scroll every time to try to figure out, man, what was that story about the 10 mergers?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, man, it's somewhere at the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, man, I don't know, I don't know what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: autographs are separate.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a continuation of the same thought.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Jesus says at the end of 24, real servants are ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says at the beginning of 25, real saints are ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what he does is he moves from a story about servants to a parable about virgins.
[SPEAKER_00]: And his point is, is there real saints?
[SPEAKER_00]: The real holy ones?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you ever heard this term, Saint, it means holy one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means somebody who is set apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: This morning, on my way in for worship, I listened to Marvin Gaye's album, What's Going On.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he cut this album back in the 70s.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's so profited.
[SPEAKER_00]: that it could be true for the people who are going to be listening to it in the great tribulation.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can listen to it the day after the bombing of Venezuela and be lying.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's going on?
[SPEAKER_00]: Brother Brother, far too many of you died.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's one song he has on the album called Holy Holy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen to what Uncle Marvin said.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, believe in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus left a long time ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: Said he would watch church, returned, believing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He left us a book to believe in in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got a lot to learn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, holy, holy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, we ought to be holy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every part of us, holy, separated.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the key to that, Uncle Marvin?
[SPEAKER_00]: Believe in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, because he told us a long time ago, I will return.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this parallel about the 10 virgins is set up as a picture for those who are religious versus those who are really saints.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's hard to tell the difference because they all together at first as 10 virgins.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then he breaks them in half and says, five will wise, five will foolish.
[SPEAKER_00]: The five who will wise had lamps with a fire, with oil, the five who will foolish had lamps with fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no oil, and they got tired of waiting for the broad groom to come.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they fell asleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were awakened and startled by the return and the five who had oil were ready and ran in.
[SPEAKER_00]: The five who had flame, but no oil didn't have enough to last them to see their way through the darkness, so they didn't have it to get in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which amine rare, we should ready ourselves for Jesus' return because we cannot predict when it'll happen and we don't wanna miss it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my question for you is, do you have the oil?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know you got a little fire, but fire is not what separates.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oil is what separates.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because see the religious have a fire, and the problem with the religious, and that fire is they use a fire to burn people who not as religious as them.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you mean, Ralph, we got 10 good people.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we know they're good?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we know they're moral?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they are all virgins.
[SPEAKER_00]: But five of them may be moral,
[SPEAKER_00]: because they don't have oil to sustain the flame.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you ever let a flame, you know, it's not just lighting the flame that matters, it's keeping the flame going.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when it comes to following Jesus, you don't just need a spark of inspiration, you need oil to keep you burning from day to day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that anybody who can testify, Lord Jesus, I trust in you and Holy Spirit, I need you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus differentiates the wives from the foolish as those who Spirit feel readiness fuels their religion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Versus those who's Spirit in this religion leaves them unready.
[SPEAKER_00]: All I'm saying is, if you don't have the Holy Spirit, you don't have the fuel to keep it fire burning.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you just got a spark, but your spark keep going out and you keep needing the spark to be relinqued.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you got religion, but you ain't got real salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you mean, Ralph, those who really know the Lord come to church, which don't fight you already, Bernie.
[SPEAKER_00]: I entered his gates with Thanksgiving.
[SPEAKER_00]: I came into his courts with praise.
[SPEAKER_00]: How?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I had my own supply in my lamp Monday through Saturday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those of us who religious but don't really know the Lord come in every week with a dry week and you need us to sing and preach until you can get a new flame and it's gonna flicker out in two days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there anybody who can testify?
[SPEAKER_00]: Ram, I love you but all in nature because I know the Lord for myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: You all that you've got praise, my little fat.
[SPEAKER_00]: The hell give your oil when you're preaching around?
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need oil when church ain't happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just a frame of inspiration to get you through a day or two.
[SPEAKER_00]: And with the oil, you need to have it before you need it, because when it's time to need it and you don't have it,
[SPEAKER_00]: stay ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm done with this morality without faith is not real salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: These virgins will pure, but they weren't ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were moral, but they weren't faithful.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know you can tell the religious person because the religious people love to tell you what they don't do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could you imagine talking to these virgins?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what all you don't do when I don't do the do?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm excuse me, dude.
[SPEAKER_00]: Congratulations to you!
[SPEAKER_00]: Aren't you a holy one?
[SPEAKER_00]: Religious people love to tell you how morally pure they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't smoke.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't drink, I don't cuss, you also don't forgive, you also don't repent, you also don't humble yourself, you also don't serve for people who you think you better than, more of people love to tell you how morally pure they are, but the question is, do you really have the oil to keep the light burning in the darkness?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you got morality, but no spirit, you don't have salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got religion, and religion will leave you dead when it's darkest.
[SPEAKER_00]: You try to pull on religion in the middle of the night, see if religion lights your path.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only thing that's going to give you light at midnight is the Holy Spirit of the Living God.
[SPEAKER_00]: A man church, a man give Lord a hand type of praise if you would.