Be Ready - Mitch Levingston

Luke 12:35-48

“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

Peter asked, “Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?”

The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.

“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

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TRANSCRIPT

That passage seems familiar. We looked at its cousin. You could say that's how theme verse of the year came from. Matthew 2445. There's one thing that I have learned in teaching is that repetition is important, and repetition is also important for our Lord, Mark said. It's a scary passages, quite confronting and challenging, and I'm going to teach us a very, very big word.

I'm sorry about that. There shouldn't be a word used outside of Bible college, but we'll say it together. Eschatology. Let's say it together. Eschatology is anyone reckon they know what eschatology is that end times? Yes, eschatology. So eschatology is end time stuff. And we're going to use this word eschatology because it includes our Lord's return heaven hell judgment.

Why? The reason I'm teaching you this word, eschatology, is because your eschatology will shape how you serve our Lord. Your eschatology will shape how we serve our Lord. If you a bit like that foolish chevron thing, master is not coming, don't have to worry too much. You don't really believe heaven or hell judgment, all that stuff. If you don't really believe in eschatology, it's going to shape how you live your life.

He. And now. That's why that big fancy word eschatology is so important. Because to be a prepared, faithful servant, you need to have very, very good eschatology. Now, what I love about this parable, Jesus is he begins off at verse 35 that says, be dressed and ready for service and keep your lamps burning. Now when I first started at the center, let me get here.

We we have two uniforms here. Okay? One of them is our very fancy office shirt that, you know, the office staff meant to wear. One of them is our sports shorts. Shirts. Now, when I first started. And in flight of the world would close on Mondays, I for a long time would often be wearing this office shirt on a Monday.

And guess who often got a knock at his office door on Monday about 1230. Say, hey Mitch, can you come help with pick up? Yeah. And so for a while there I would be packing up inflatables, dressed in this shirt wasn't the most conducive to packing up in flight of world wasn't really dressed and ready for service. So you know what happened after that happened?

A few times. Start wearing this one more and more. And in fact, sometimes you might even see me just in the sports shirt and the shorts to be ready and dressed for service, because I know that probably inevitably, at some point on a Monday, there's going to be a knock him off to say, hey, Mitch, leaving enough people for pack up, can you help us being dressed and prepared?

It's very, very important. Now, in today's passage, we use the NIV, which says be dressed and ready for service. Now in some Old English translations, it has. Here, let your loins be girded about and your lights burning. What do you think? Have your loins girded? Means I don't want to have a guess what that means? Pardon? So I was a now I.

I was a joke. Oh, so I had an answer. They went. Actually, no. It's pretty weird expression. Hey, let your loins be girded. Or if you have the new King James, let your waist be good and your lamps burning well, to gird their loins is an old expression of how you manage your robe. And then the next slide we have here.

So you going to imagine that most Middle-Eastern people wool robes like this. And so when you were getting ready to either act in war or do some sort of action, having a long robe around you, it's not very conducive for getting activities done. So how are you going to your loins? You can just fall out there on the screen.

You tuck it up tight, round you, and there you're ready. You have girded your loins. You are dressed and ready for service. Now, what is really cool, and I like to teach you guys cool little facts that, you know, off the church things I would say. You can say, well, I learned about the word eschatology. Now here's another cool little fact that we can learn this morning is that when Luke uses be dressed or ready for service or good, your loins, this isn't just some random little throwing that Jesus has used.

It's like Jesus is referring to one of the most significant moments in Israelite history where the people, too, were called to gird their loins, and it was the Passover. And since the Exodus 1211. So I've got the older English translation just to kind of keep the same girding loins, and thus shall ye eat it. That's the Passover with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and ye shall eat it in haste.

It is the Lord's Passover. And there's a more modern translation just to help out. This is how you eat it, with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. Girding your loins is a common expression used in the Old Testament to be ready for service.

But Luke here, in structuring his gospel, you can just throw it in randomly. He's actually designed the sentence structure to be identical to how the Greek version of Exodus 1211 was translated. So for the original readers, their minds immediately pick up on that. Jesus here is referring to Passover. He's alluding to that event where Israelites had to be ready, had to be ready with the.

The last one had to be ready for this moment, this moment of crisis. Another crisis was that if you hadn't prepared the Passover, you had that blood poured over the doorposts. That angel of death was going to come and take your first born son. This was a significant moment of preparation. So Jesus here deliberately alluding to the key moment in Israel's history.

Here he's pointing to a future key moment that's going to impact all of us. Like I said before, who eschatology is going to shape how you live your life. So being dressed and ready for service is so important because who knows, it could be the middle of the night when the master comes home. Jewish wedding face. They went on for days.

Who knows when the master might return. This is why you needed to be ready. Because he did not know the day or hour of return. Not just chatting about being prepared for the master's, rather in return. That's all pretty standard stuff. But here this is really interesting. So when I talk about this, I'm going to pause and we'll come back to it later.

Now if we could just pull up verse 37. Thanks, man. So you read along and Jesus says he from verse 37 says, it will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Okay, that's pretty standard. This is the amazing part. Truly, I tell you, he will dress himself to serve. He will have them recline at the table and he will come and wait on them.

Do you understand the significance of those words we're talking here? Master and slave relationships, who not only serves, who, servants serve masters, not masters, serving servants or slaves. This is remarkable. It's a remarkable passage of Scripture which is kind of just chucked in there in the middle. Now read it again, because truly, until he will dress himself to serve, they will have them recline at the table.

He will come and wait on them. No master ever, ever does this except one master, our Lord Jesus Christ. And perhaps we can think of a time, a time where Jesus does good, his loins and serves others. Can you think of that time? When he washes the disciples feet? So in a sense, yeah, we are serving a master who is our Lord, who expects a lot of us, but he also wants to give us a generous, abundant reward.

For the fact is that it's not just any old feast. We get to recline. That means this is a banquet. You only recliner banquets, and he gets your client the very best of the best of banquets. While Jesus serves us. That's amazing. It's amazing passage of Scripture. And then by coming here in Luke 12, it's point two when Jesus actually tells he's disciples directly in Luke chapter 22, verse 27, for it says, who is greater, the one who is at the table, or the one who serves is not the one at the table, but I am among you as one who serves.

Now I feel like I've been talking for a while. I actually want to give a moment for you to pause and reflect and speak to God, a particularly to as we come to the image of the faith in the night. This is, artwork here by artist. I called James B Jenkins, and he does modern retellings of parables.

So I invite you now as I just read the words of Jesus here, just to pause for a moment and see how God is speaking to you in this image, as Jesus said. But understand this if the owner of the house had known what hour the faith was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.

So, friends, I invite you. Look at this image. Notice the shapes, the colors, the lighting, perhaps some of the details, both the foreground and the background. Is there a part that you're drawn towards?

As you sense that drawing, why do you think God drew your attention to this particular part?

Is there a part of it that conveys to your life today?

And as you reflect upon this image. There's something here that God, he feel God calling you to do. There's something in your life that needs to change. I give you a moment to reflect and pause on that.

I look at this image. It speaks so much into our modern world, doesn't it love how the artist is drawn? The moment that he he's robbed as a storm, a storm, a stormy night. We just get comfortable watching TV, and it's easy to grow complacent, Caesar. Grow complacent when it feels like our Lord isn't returning. And Peter, as in typical Peter fashion, he asked this question Lord, are you telling this parable to us or to everyone?

Jesus gives not a to us or to everyone answer. It's kind of a cryptic answer. It is to us. It's to disciples. Jesus answers answer to Peter's. Who then is the faithful and wise manager whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? How? We will spend a bit more time in banter, unpacking.

That's sort of the four different servants. There's a lot of interpretation in, I guess, church history around this. So that's a little plug there. If you haven't signed up to Mansa, if you want to listen in to kind of hear about what people think about these four different servants. But just to summarize, there's four types of servants and perhaps you can see yourself within one of them.

The first one is easy, the faithful and why servant. This servant is rewarded with authority over his master's possessions, not the second. So this is the wicked one. The one who eats and drinks and gets drunk and then thinks that actually I'm like the master and does what only a master is allowed to do is beat the fellow servants.

This one's scary. This guy's cut in tune and signed a place with the unbelievers. Now I got a couple other servants. Servant three I guess he called a neglectful servant. He's the one who, I know I should be doing this, and he gets beaten. Maybe not as badly beaten as the wicked servant servant number two. They have the final servant, the one who he so indeed neglects his responsibilities, but wasn't aware of what's expected of him, and so doesn't get as harsh of, beating stuff is.

It's scary, it's confronting. But in many ways, Jesus is using language that was very familiar to his audience. And this week I spent a lot of time studying some ancient documents, and I came across one. Okay, go on the next slide. Thanks. Which is called the Law of Light beneath from And she's not here. I'm going to I'm going to butcher this Italian.

Vitale in Italy and the law of Lavinia or the leks. Lim Liping Itani. I should say, it it we details how in the city of Liberia, how, undertakers were meant to act and how, a master could actually employ someone to dish out punishment to a unfaithful servant. And so it says, if someone privately wants to inflict punishment on a male or female servant, and the punishment must be inflicted or hollow must be inflicted in some way, what a time to come out when I'm talking about how slaves are getting beaten.

Must have inflicted in a way that has been asked for. So if he asks for the yoke and the cross, the contractor must provide the beams, the fetters, the whips for the flogging and the floggings, and each person asking for a inflicting punishment must pay for sister Sally's, which a brief Google touched, but a brief Google search told me is a one sister sister release is $0.50, so for $2 you could pay for your servant to be beaten by a professional beater.

Yeah. Why don't you go down to Mama? This was the world that Jesus lived in. This is the reality is that slaves were just a property of masters at the whim of the whips or whoever their master was. Good or evil. So Jesus, tapping into this language that his audience was very familiar with a wicked servant would be cut up, would be punished.

That was part and parcel of what happened. And the idea was at that time that if you inflict public punishment upon a servant, what do you think it's going to do? The other servants? It's going to be an example. The example I was, hey, don't misbehave. Make sure you do what the master says or something terrible is going to happen.

That's what Jesus is tapping into. He's tapping into his language. But remember two before you feel frightened and terrified and afraid and kind, I can feel this. So the duty to just be prepared for Jesus because you don't want to get whipped. Remember verse 37, friends, verse 37 changes everything. I read it there. It will be good for those servants whose master finds him there watching when he comes.

Truly I tell you, he would dress himself to serve well, have them recline at the table, and will come and wait on them. Yes, we serve Jesus, the most powerful Lord in the universe. He did not come to serve you, not come to peace of, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. As we finish today, I came across a quote from a New Testament scholar lady called Jennifer Lacy in an article called Slaves and Slavery in the Mercy and Parables.

So well, this is passage from Luke, but you get the idea here. I think it's just such a wonderful quote that we're just going to finish with this to reflect upon it says, the readers of Matthew recognize the disciplined flesh of parabolic slaves as an antique type, a model to avoid. Curiously, however, Matthew features another tortured body as a body, as a model to emulate the battered and crucified body of Jesus.

Jesus himself calls his followers to be willing to endure the sufferings of the cross in a peculiar way. The corporal punishment of disobedient slaves and the missing parables foreshadows the broken body of Jesus, ridiculed, beaten, and executed.

Let's pray now. Lord, keep us alert. We pray as we await the return of your son. So when he comes and knocks, he might find. Find us watchful in prayer and joyful in his praise. We pray now that Lord, that we address this service. We pray, Lord, that we are ready for your return. We pray that our eschatology is shaped by the reality of your return, and we don't grow complacent.

We don't think that you never coming back and just do what we want. I pray, Lord, that we addressed and ready, ready for your arrival and a joyful arrival when you come. There's that promises that you would dress yourself and serve us just as he served us. By giving up your body upon the cross for us. So I pray Jesus, you help us in this season of the life where there's so much distractions, distractions, so many seeing so many things that can keep us from being prepared.

So many people, Lord, that just seek to honor you. I pray this in the name of Jesus, Amen.