Our Advent theme this year is preparing to meet our God. Prepared means “to make or get something or someone ready for something that will happen in the future, properly expectant, organized, or equipped.” The opposite is unprepared which means, “not prepared; not ready, not expecting.” Where I live it snows every winter. You may not know exactly when or how much, but you know it is coming. Today the white stuff began to fall. My snowblower presently is more of a scoop and the engine is me. A few weeks ago, I took the snow scoop and the shovels out of the shed and placed them where they needed to be. If I did have a snowblower, you would take care of the maintenance and make sure it was ready to go. Years ago, I did have a snowblower and while I thought I was prepared, I did not have spare belt and when a snowstorm that came with a state of emergency dumped three feet of snow, my belt broke and my snowblower was completely useless. I was unprepared, as there was no way to get to the store. That was a lot of unnecessary shoveling when I had a powerful snowblower just sitting there. John the Baptist was sent ahead to prepare the people for the arrival of Jesus. Luke 1:13 “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
As you can see from the title of this sermon, we are focusing on being unprepared. Many Christians very confidently think that they are prepared but in fact will find out that they were unprepared. Not every church follows the liturgical calendar but every church focuses on Christmas and Easter. Today is the first Sunday of Advent. The term advent means a coming or arrival. Since Jesus already came and reigns on the throne of David, Advent really now has only one meaning as we are not awaiting His arrival. What we are waiting for is His return to take His faithful followers into eternity. Jesus said John 14:1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” Acts 1:11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Matthew 25:1 “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish and five were wise. 3 The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. 4 The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. 5 The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. 6 “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ 7 “Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ 9 “‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’ 10 “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. 11 “Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ 12 “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ 13 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” The question is are you prepared to meet God?
The answer is most are not prepared but think that they are. If you ask most, they will say that they are ready. How sad it will be for those who were expecting the bridegroom but were not prepared for His arrival. They believe they are prepared because they have chosen to believe what they have been taught at the church they go to. They do not test the spirits but accept the doctrines and theology of their church to be the truth. 1 John 4:1 “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Most do not know their bibles will enough to think for themselves and put their trust in their leaders. If they do ask questions, they will usually be shut down and their commitment to the church questioned. To their followers, these leaders appear to be men and women of God, so they do not test their words against scripture; they just accept their words as truth. Yet these men have been found wanting. Daniel 5:27 “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.” Paul said to Timothy, 1 Timothy 1:3 “As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer 4 or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith. 5 The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. 7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.” Prophets and teachers have been teaching false doctrines ever since Paul said this to Timothy. Luke 6:39 “He (Jesus) also told them this parable: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit?” Over and over we are warned throughout scripture not to fall for the teaching of false teachers/ prophets. Acts 20:29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.” Paul said 2 Corinthians 11:3 “But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.” He also said, Galatians 1:6 “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.” So even at the time of Paul this was happening. Now picture all those savage wolves multiplying along with their false teaching.
False teaching leads to certain death and destruction unless of course you turn away from it. You may not see its devastation in your lifetime, but it will have eternal consequences. Matthew 25:41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Think back to John 14 where Jesus said I go to prepare a place for you and remember God created the world in six days. This preparation has been ongoing, and our minds cannot fathom what eternity with God will be. Nor can we imagine what eternity without God will be as God has been preparing that place also. The word sorrow or anguish that people will have cannot describe what these people will face, those who have taught other gospels and those who have accepted those other gospels as truth when they find out too late that they followed a different Jesus and what they accepted as truth was in fact false and now they will spend eternity separated from God. There is a reason we are told James 3:1 “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.”
Bad theology and doctrines give a false sense of security and leave you unprepared to meet God. Most will be shocked when they hear, Matthew 7:23 “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” Many will be like the rich man who said, Luke 16:24 “Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire. ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ 29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ 30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent. 31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” The rich man had everything but was unprepared for eternity. Jesus rose from the dead but people still do not listen and make the necessary preparations.
These other gospels masquerade as preparedness, but in reality this is unpreparedness at its worst. Jesus said Mark 1:15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” Those who follow these other gospels have no reason, or so they think, to repent because they think they have found the way, truth and life, but it is a different Jesus they are following. They are also unprepared because in their false sense of security, they do not heed to the warnings we see all through scripture. 2 Peter 3:17 “Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position.” Many have been falsely told they cannot fall. As we have talked about many times, deception and delusion has decimated the church leaving only a remnant of survivors. We were warned about the abomination that causes desolation, but the church has not paid attention to the warnings in scripture. Even if they do notice the warnings, they believe the to be a future event and does not apply to them. Not only is the church unprepared to meet God, the church is unprepared to battle our enemies as many have been taught that this war we are presently in is way off in the future.
Some even go so far as to promote doctrines of demons as if these doctrines are from God. 1 Timothy 4:1 “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 2 Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.” That is the deception and delusion taking place right before our eyes. The problem is that most are blind to it. As Paul said, 2 Thessalonians 2:4 “He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.” 9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.” Jesus and Daniel also warned us, but the warnings have fallen on deaf ears.
Those who teach these false doctrines say that there was the first Advent, of which most agree on, but have separated the second coming of Jesus and have made His coming to set up His kingdom as a second Advent so in a sense there is three now. They also include the rapture, where Christians are whisked away. Some teach that the rapture will save the church from any kind of tribulation, but that is just Hollywood and the active minds of men spurred on by satan, not scripture. So many are waiting to be whisked away and are completely unprepared for any kind of tribulation even though right now the church is at war and is losing badly, people have been taken captive and the church lies in desolation. There is no power to defeat our enemies and most don’t even know the enemy has infiltrated the church. I have heard people say that satan can’t be in the church but he is and he is teaching from the pulpits. Daniel 9:27 “And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.” Daniel 7:21 “As I watched, this horn was waging war against the holy people and defeating them, 22 until the Ancient of Days came and pronounced judgment in favor of the holy people of the Most High, and the time came when they possessed the kingdom.” The church does not know how to fight as they have adopted a human approach to a spiritual war. Ephesians 6:11 “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Entertaining the masses on a Sunday morning cannot battle the powers of the dark world. The church is not only unprepared to battle but is also ill-equipped.
The power and authority Jesus had and the power and authority given to the disciples show what the church would look like after Pentecost. The church would then be prepared to do as Jesus did and continue to destroy the work of the devil as we saw with Philip. Acts 8:6 “When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said. 7 For with shrieks, impure spirits came out of many, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. 8 So there was great joy in that city.” What we see in the Gospels and Acts was the power and authority the church was to continue to have but as Paul said the church decided to go with a different Jesus, other gospels and listen to satan instead of God. If the church had continued to follow the right Jesus and His gospel, the church would have continued with the same power and authority we saw with Jesus and the disciples and would have been prepared to meet God. Matthew 4:23 “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. 24 News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them.” Luke 10:1 "After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. 2 He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. 3 Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. 8 “When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. 9 Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.” 17 The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”
Today most in the church do not even know that the church is at war and has been decimated. They see churches all around and many are extremely successful from a worldly point of view but there is no power. Not only do most not know the church is being defeated as Daniel said, they do not know there is power and authority available to all who believe. Hosea 4:6 “my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.” Paul said Ephesians 1:18 “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead.” Mark 16:15 “Jesus said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” 19 After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. 20 Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.”
If the church had continued to do as Jesus did, the second coming of Jesus would have sped up, not slowed down. 2 Peter 3:11 “You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.” The church did not live holy and Godly lives and the coming of Jesus was slowed down. Truthfully the church in its present state should not want Jesus to come because the church is totally unprepared. Most do not know they need to repent and turn from their wicked ways because they have people telling them this is the way truth and the life even though it is not. If Jesus were to come now, there would only be a few enter into eternity with him. Jesus even said 23 Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” He said to them, 24 “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. 25 Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ “But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ 26 “Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ 27 “But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’” The church needs to be revived first. Most do not take Jesus at His word and think if you go to church, you will be in heaven but that is not what scripture says. Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” Ponder for a moment what it will be like for those who hear this that have gone to church all their lives.
The good news is there is hope; we just need to make the necessary preparations. Jesus said repent and the kingdom would come near. We are also told, Proverbs 8:17 “I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me.” Zechariah 1:3 “Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Return to me,’ declares the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty.” 2 Chronicles 7:13 “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. 16 I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.” To be prepared; repent! To be unprepared keep believing the lies and delusion of the church as we see it. Sadly, many will continue to ignore the warnings. Jeremiah 5:2 “They have lied about the Lord; they said, “He will do nothing! No harm will come to us; we will never see sword or famine. It is the whole church that has fallen. 23 But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts; they have turned aside and gone away. 24 They do not say to themselves, ‘Let us fear the Lord our God, 30 “A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: 31 The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?” Are you prepared to meet God?
