While I was stuck behind a long line of traffic in Columbus, I decided to play a game to pass the time. And the game was, “Find the most creative vanity license plate.”
And the winner was a car that had “Latte 7” on their plate. Anybody that would need to let people know how many cups of coffee they need in the morning concerns me.
When we were living in Findlay, Ohio, Penny purchased new plates for her car. And the people behind the counter at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles wanted to give her a license plate that began with the numbers 666.
And she said, “I’m sorry, but I need different plates. I’m a pastor’s wife and 666 is not a good message to send.”
And the person behind the counter said, “You have to take it unless somebody in the line behind you will take it.” And the guy behind Penny said, “I’ll take it.” This also concerned me.
Vanity license plates. Today is the fourth part of a seven part sermon series on what Jesus wants to tell us. We’ve been reading through the Gospel of Luke for these messages that Jesus has for us. And we’ve been putting them in the form of what you might see on a vanity license plate. And today, the message is for us as his followers to be ready to the end. Ready to Dee End. That’s our vanity license plate for this week.
I attended a seminar with a group of 30 church leaders and we were asked to write a seven year letter. The leaders of this seminar asked us to think about our church seven years from now. And they wanted us to write down what our walk with Christ would look like and what our ministries would look like in seven years.
And the seminar leader said, “Think about how old you will be in seven years because that will put this in perspective.” And all of the sudden, the woman sitting next to me let out this terrifying yell as she thought about how old she would be in seven years.
It’s not easy to think about our lives seven years from now or even one year from now. And the whole point of this seven year letter was to help us to think about where we want to be in the long-term since we usually only think of the short-term.
In our Gospel reading from St. Luke, this is exactly what Jesus wants us to do. He wants us to think about our future. He wants us to think about what our relationship with Christ will look like down the road. Jesus is reminding us that he will come again and when he comes again, will we be ready for him? Will we be found faithful when he returns?
The Tour de France was held just a few weeks ago. Cyclists are known to say that the race is won not at the beginning but in who makes it across the finish line in Paris first. That’s how the race is won.
Churches also are called to think about the future and where they want to be in order to be faithful to the end. Jesus reminds us from the Gospel of Luke to watch out for complacency because he will return and he wants to find us ready.
Luke chapter 12 Jesus tells us, “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit.” Jesus is using two images here for being always ready in our faith. The first image has to do with clothing. Be dressed for action he says.
During Jesus’ day, people usually didn’t wear a belt around their garments because it was more comfortable to wear their clothes loosely around the house. But they would need to wear a belt if they were to go on a trip. So a belt was a symbol of being ready to go somewhere. And Jesus is saying that in a symbolic sense, we are to be dressed for action and always be ready to be faithful in serving Him.
And Jesus also uses the image of a lamp to make his point about the importance of always being ready. We are to never be without the light of Christ in our lives. That’s a great image. Every Christian is a reflection of the light of Christ for the world to see. And sometimes we forget to light our lamps or we feel like we can make it through the day without Christ’s light. But Jesus is saying that we need those lamps lit every single day.
What does it mean for you and me to be ready to the end?
First of all, it means that we know Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord. We can’t have our lamps lit for the world unless we first receive the light of Jesus Christ in our own lives.
One of my duties at the house is to be the light bulb changer. By the way, do you know how many TV evangelists it takes to change a light bulb? One. But for the message of light to continue, send in your donation today.
Do you know how many Methodists it takes to change a light bulb?
Twenty-two: One to hold the ladder, one to climb the ladder, ten to form a committee to evaluate the effectiveness of the old light bulb, and ten to form a committee for a pot-luck to welcome in the new light bulb.
Once in a while, I go to our closet to find a new light bulb, and find that we’re all out. That’s why the first thing we need in order to be ready to the end is to have the light of Christ in our lives by knowing Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.
The most significant moments of my life have been the times when I have allowed the light of Christ to shine through me. Allowing the light of Christ to shine through us can turn a bad day into a good day.
What does it mean to have our lamps lit? It first means that we have received the light of Christ in our lives.
The second thing it means is that we grow in a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Jesus used to say that about the Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day, who he bumped heads with time and time again. Jesus would tell his disciples, “The teachings of the Pharisees are great. They say good things. The problem is – they just don’t practice what they preach. And because they are not practicing what they preach, they’re not growing in their faith.”
I was sitting with a pastor at a restaurant deciding on what we should order for dinner that night. The waitress had dropped off our menus and said she would come back to take our order. Well guess what? When you have two preachers in the same booth, it will take about 15 minutes before they will even look at the menu because we talk so much.
So this waitress would keep coming back to our booth to see if we were finally ready. And each time we would say, “No, just give us another two minutes and we’ll be ready then.” This happened three times. She would come back and we would say that we weren’t ready.
We finally decided on what we wanted and we put in our order. After our waitress left, we continued to talk and got caught up with how each other was doing.
And then someone from the kitchen brought out our food. And that’s when my good friend got an idea of how to apply his faith to that moment.
He said, “Hey, before we pray, let’s include the waitress especially since she has been so patient with us.” And he flagged down our waitress and he said, “My friend and I pray before meals, and we were wondering if there’s anything that you would want us to pray for and we’ll mention that in our prayer.”
You should have seen the look on her face. She was surprised that we would include her in our prayer but then this great big smile came to her face and she said, “Well thank you. I really feel that it’s time to make a change in my life and I’m not sure what that means.”
And my friend said, “Sure, we’ll pray for you.” She said thanks and off she went and we prayed for Amanda, our waitress.
After the meal, we got the bill. And this was another high spiritual moment. He said to me, “Let me pay for this.”
But that’s not all. Then he said, what percentage tip should I give her? And I said, “Well since I’m not paying, I would recommend a really nice tip.” My friend ended up giving her a 30% tip because he wanted to make sure that the waitress knew that we really cared about her and that God really cared about her.
My friend reminded me of the importance of applying our faith to everyday encounters with people. When we grow in our relationship with Christ and apply our faith to our everyday lives, it helps us to be people who are ready to the end.
And last but not least, if we want to be ready to the end, we always need to know where we’re headed.
Jesus tells us in our scripture reading this morning that we are to be like those who are waiting for their Master to return from a trip, and who open the door for their Master upon his return.
Our faith begins and ends with Jesus Christ. It’s important that we know where we’re going.
Billy Graham was known to tell a story about Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein was traveling on a train when the conductor of the train was coming around to punch the tickets of the passengers. When he arrived to Dr. Einstein’s seat he asked for his ticket. And Dr. Einstein couldn’t find it and frantically began looking for it.
The conductor said, “That’s OK. Dr. Einstein. We believe you have a ticket. That’s OK.”
And as the conductor went on to punch the tickets of the next passengers he happened to look back and this time saw Albert Einstein now on his hands and knees of the train searching frantically for his train ticket.
And the conductor went back to his seat and said, “Dr. Einstein. Don’t worry about your ticket. We all know who you are. It’s really OK.”
And Dr. Einstein said, “But I still need that ticket because I don’t know where I’m going.”
It’s important to know where we’re going as we seek to be ready to the end.
Rev. Robert Lowry, 38 years old at the time, was the pastor of Hanson Place Baptist Church in NYC during that terrible period in 1864 when the plague was sweeping away multitudes of citizens. When he wasn’t visiting church members who were ill, he was conducting funerals.
One hot July day, Lowry himself was near collapse, exhausted, dispirited. Reaching for a scrap of paper, he began composing a poem; then, at his organ, he composed the music for it. It spoke of his hope to meet his suffering and dying parishioners in heaven, down by the River of Life.
Just listen to the words of this hymn of faith:
Shall we gather at the river, where bright angel feet have trod? With its crystal tide forever. Flowing by the throne of God? Yes, we’ll gather at the river, the Beautiful, the beautiful river; Gather with the saints at the river. That flows by the throne of God.
God has promised that there will be a wonderful homecoming for those who have been faithful to Jesus Christ to the end. For those who have received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, for those who are growing in their relationship with Christ, and for those who know that the Christian faith is a journey that leads to the beautiful river where all of God’s people will gather and rejoice together.
John Maxwell relates the following experience in his book, Think On These Things. He writes that he was awakened by a persistent knock on his motel room door at 3:45 A.M. It was the police! They were looking for a woman who had threatened to commit suicide.
Sure enough, a young woman in a nearby room lay in desperation on a bed crying out to die. Quickly the police held her down to the bed until her hands and feet were securely handcuffed. For the next 45 minutes, he listened to her cry over and over again, “Please, let me die! Let me alone! Nobody cares! Nobody loves me!”
The rest of that night John Maxwell thought about the desperation and the agony of that lonely young woman. Somehow the message “I couldn’t care less” had echoed through the streets of Chicago until she felt compelled to reject life.
And then he writes, “Just think how beautiful this world would be if this philosophy were replaced with Christian attitudes until people would begin saying, ‘I couldn’t care more.’”
This story from John Maxwell motivates me to be ready to the end for Jesus. Why? Because I want to be one of those persons who tells others, “I couldn’t care more.”
When Jesus tells us to keep our lamps burning and to be dressed ready for service, it means that we let the people around us know that, “We couldn’t care more.”
We couldn’t care more. That’s why we are going to give away water bottles to college students during move-in week later this month.
We couldn’t care more. That’s why this weekend, we will be having a Faith Builders church-wide training to help us build relationships and share our faith with people outside the church.
We couldn’t care more. That’s why our Athens First Saturday team meets each month to bless our community in several different ways.
We couldn’t care more. That’s why we provide meals for people in need through Monday Lunch each week throughout the year.
We do what we do because we couldn’t care more and we want to be ready to the end.
License Plate Sightings: RED2DEN
Sermon Discussion Questions
Acts 11:1-18
August 11, 2019
During our summer sermon series on vanity license plate sightings, we’ve been asking people to share interesting ones they have seen.
Have you seen an interesting vanity plate recently?
This week’s vanity license plate message is RED2DEN (Ready to thee end.) This is based on Jesus’ teaching from our Gospel of Luke reading where he tells his disciples to be dressed for action and have their lamps lit in anticipation of Christ’s second coming. Pastor Robert shared three ways for us to be RED2DEN. 1) Invite Jesus to be your Lord and Savior. 2) Grow in your relationship with Jesus. 3) Allow God to lead you into the future.
Why do you think these three things are important for us to be RED2DEN?
Christian author and speaker, John Maxwell offers this thought: “Just think how beautiful this world would be...if people would begin saying, ‘I couldn’t care more.” This is a much better phrase than having the attitude of, “I couldn’t care less.”
Share one or two needs that you see in our community/world that leads you to say, “I couldn’t care more.” How are you offering God’s love to show that you “couldn’t care more?”
To help us be RED2DEN, think about where you want to be in your faith journey a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now, or at the end of your life.
How can you begin living out your faith to help you reach that preferred future?
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