Alarm Call

By Odon Bulamba

Luke 17:26-30

This verse is about the call.  God is trying to tell us, you don’t need to forget the past.  Many people when they live, they only think about the present and don’t have time to think about what might come tomorrow or what happened yesterday.  I’m not sure if you have already heard some say that the Word of God is like a mirror.  A mirror is just a glass but different to the glass that we use to drink water or coffee.  Yet, the only difference is the back.  The colour that you see on the back; that is the secret of the mirror.

When you look in the mirror, you see yourself but you can’t see others standing behind the mirror.  The role of the mirror is to see yourself and what is behind you but not what is in front of you.  This is the foundation of this verse in Luke.

The Word of God is like a mirror, what is happening in the future belongs to God and you don’t need to discover it but instead look at the present and what went before in the past.

This message is titled “Alarm Call”.  Alarm call means someone will ring you and speak to you in order to wake you up rather than setting up the alarm on your phone.  It’s when a human being talks to me to wake up.  When we are told to wake up, it’s not easy.  When you are sleeping and someone tells you to wake up, maybe you feel like sleeping and you feel tired and you don’t want to leave your bed but you need courage and self-decision to push yourself to stand up now and leave your bed, “my sleep I’m coming back to you later but for now I will move on”. If you are not someone who can make a decision, then you won’t get up.

The enemy of waking up is sleep.  When your mind doesn’t push you, then your body becomes weak and when your body becomes weak you can’t move.  Sometimes you can sleep with sheets on but you wake up without sheets and your body is in a completely different position.  Sometimes we snore and we can’t tell because we are in a deep sleep.  The person may wake you up and you become angry because they are disturbing your sleep.

Jesus is saying, “I know you are tired and you need to sleep longer but don’t sleep forever, wake up”.  It’s up to you to stand up and say enough is enough, I must leave my bed.  In my culture, when someone sleeps we put water on their head and they will wake up but you have to make an effort to stop the sleep.

What happened in the time of Noah is what will happen in the days of the son of man.  Look at yourself now but in the background see what happened in the past.  In the time of Noah, Genesis 6, the first thing that happened sounds strange but for God it was a concern.  People were eating, drinking and giving people to marry.  To eat is not a sin, to drink is not a sin, to marry is not a sin or to give people to marry is not a sin.

God created food for us and water to drink then He is the One who said marriage must be honoured so how can He say because people were eating, drinking and marrying, I am unhappy to the point that I sent the flood to destroy the world.  At the time of Noah, sin was there: hatred, lies etc but what concerns God the most is eating, drinking and marrying because they were prioritising their time with food.

First commandment = you have to love your God with all your heart, mind and life.  At the time of Noah people loved food with all their heart, mind and strength.  People were happier to drink than to think about their God.  When it was time to get married, people will prepare seriously for months.

Last night I was invited to have a meal to eat.  In my mind I was wondering if I should go but I went.  We were supposed to be there at 7:30pm but at 7:25pm we were on the road and it was raining and no carpark and because of no carpark, I started to say the person who organised this wasn’t clever.  Why did she choose to come to town on Saturday where many people will come and there will be no carpark.  I was going on but on the other hand,  if we had left earlier, we might not be late.

We drove around and around and then had to walk.  Hayley was pushing us to walk faster. She didn’t want to be late but to be there on time.  Was it because we didn’t want to be late or miss the opportunity to have nice food or for others to think that we respect time.  But when we got there some of the bosses were not there yet.

Food was served and we picked up all that we wanted.  A small discussion, we should make a big order and share while others wanted to have their own order.  When food was given to us, wow this is yummy.  What did you order, do you like it, can I try yours.  7:30-10:30pm, then finally time to go.  We were the first to leave and others left after.  Because of food people can sit for hours to eat and appreciate the food more than what they appreciate the Word of God or when they sing.

They can think about it and say, what flavour is this.  We had ice-cream and someone said, they put lime leaves in the ice-cream and they knew the elements even though we couldn’t see the leaves.  Many were saying, I have never tasted this before, it’s a good opportunity to taste it.

The day of Noah was the same.  Our children know food better than anything.  We adore food.  When we hear about food our hearts beat fast and we smell it and say, “I wish I could taste it”.  That spirit is controlling the world today.

For example Esau sacrificed his birth right for food.  Today we also sacrifice our faith, time and belief and effort for food.  We can’t pray for 2 minutes but can eat for hours.  When it’s time for spiritual food, we don’t have time because it’s not yummy.

Drinking was in the time of Noah, not only alcoholic but also non-alcoholic.  When a visitor comes you ask them, “What will you drink?”  All visitors will say yes.  How often do you offer a bible verse to your visitors?  That is not in our culture and we avoid to talk to our visitors about what we believe.  Although we talked about useless things at the dinner last night, one man said he was going to visit the Salvation Army and help serving people and God.  Although he was serving them food, he was bringing the gospel in the situation.

For many at the dinner jokes were the most important.  How often is it hard for us to bring up new stuff and the presence of God?  You can have a nice food in front of you, even if that food was cooked by the top chief of the world, for it to taste good and smell good you need God because He is the one who gives you taste buds and nose that smells, teeth to be able to chew.  Once in the mouth, you have to chew and swallow.  God gave you the hands to pick up the food, mouth to chew and throat to swallow but why do you put Him aside when you enjoy your food.

If God can give you thirst and provides the water, why don’t you have a second to be grateful for what God has done for you.  Today, we sang, “Jesus I believe in you, Jesus I belong to you”.  As I hold this microphone, God has to give me the strength to hold it. Ange is good at making cakes while I am not.  God gave that to her.  Ange is good in singing and God has given her that. 

Because of ignoring God in their eating and drinking God became angry because our God is jealous.  How do you promote yourselves? When you sing hallelujah and say, that was a nice song, what about God?  if everyone says, “nice message” but forget God gave it, He becomes jealous.

The day that Ange married Peter, I was there.  A few weeks before the marriage I observed Ange lost weight to the point, I thought, is Ange sick?  She was like a stick of this microphone.  Peter was also trying to look nice.  That day of marriage, the church was packed with people, everyone waiting for Ange and Peter.  They were coming for the marriage of Ange and Peter.  We waited and waited and then suddenly we were told they were coming and everyone stood up so you also stand up to honour the marriage and the two people God put together.  Ofa played the piano and sang, she didn’t only show her talent for God but also for the people and the occasion.  We took videos.

We now have the fruit of that marriage, we have the four girls.  We have the ups and downs of that family and we have to remember that the master of marriage is God. If we honour Ange and Peter why not also honour God. 

God was unhappy with Noah’s time and decided to destroy the world.  Because of His jealousy He destroyed the world.  Because of the sin of that time he decided to destroy humanity.  Genesis 6, girls who were born were extremely beautiful and were so beautiful, the sons of God (angels) came down and fell in love with women.

Today, these girls of Ange are extremely beautiful.  People like me can go to Brazil to get plastic surgery to make me look handsome.  Several years ago, Michael Jackson even changed his skin colour.  Look where we are going?  Beauty is a priority today.  Everybody wants to look beautiful and attractive and sometimes we hate ourselves, “I don’t know why God created me like this”. 

I want to appear good and be seen beautiful and be appreciated and when people don’t notice or comment or give praises, we feel bad.  For that reason, God is saying marriage is good and beauty is good but you are forgetting about Me.  The Jesus we belonged to has given us flight tickets and He says very soon the airplane will take off.  We have all travelled.  It is our own responsibility to get to airport on time and check in.

At the airport you see people reading books, playing on their phone, eating, pushing luggage and most are passengers don’t know each other.  You go in front of the checkout person and they scan your ticket and give a boarding pass and tell you your seat number.  “Can I have seat number one?”  “No, it’s assigned to someone else”.  This is like some that ask, “Jesus, can I have the gift of prophecy?” and God answers, “no that belongs to someone else”. 

I once travelled with an oversized man and half of his body was on my seat and I was squashed and I couldn’t do anything and then he fell asleep on me and my shoulder was his pillow and he was snoring and he was sweating.  The flight attendant would wake him up but he would fall asleep on me again.  All seats were occupied.  What should I do?  What would you do?  I was complaining but I couldn’t change anything.  I started to sing to district myself and then reading my Bible.

When we landed in Australia I was praising God but my shoulder was painful and that pain was from someone else.  We need to carry the pain of others.  We have to be patient with every person.  Without patience we can easily sin. 

When the flight is ready, everyone stands up to board.  Do you know the gate you are taking to enter the Kingdom of God?  In time of Noah there was only one gate, the ark but not everyone was ready to take it.  Jesus is the door, not the pastor or the church but Jesus.  As passengers, we can take Tyrone to the airport but we won’t enter with Tyrone because the ticket has his name and the passport is his.

When others enter the Kingdom of God and you stop at the gate because you don’t have a ticket or passport, you will return home.  Pray to God to enter the Kingdom of God.  Use the mirror to look at yourself and the past.