Gentlemen, Start Your Engines Series

Gentlemen Start Your Engines

PPT 1 Series Title

Today we are beginning our new sermon series: Amazing Race, winning the Race that really matters.

Because today is also Father's day, for brevities sake, I will give a full introduction to the series next week, and this week we will discuss this simple truth: we need to wake up to the fact that today is race day, we will have all eternity to rejoice in whatever victories God may give us, be we only have a short time now to labor for those victories. If you are going to do something that matters, you have to do it now.

PPT 2 Series text: Hebrews 12:1-4

Heb 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset [us], and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

PPT 3 Video of Nascar, start your engines

PPT 4 Picture of Yamamoto

On the screen behind me is a picture of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who is reported to have said

immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." (This quote has not been verified, but is reported to have been found in his personal diary)

That terrible resolve that he spoke of was that America would get off the sidelines, and stop sitting by idly while nation after nation, and island after island fell under the control of one of histories worst axis of evil. We are talking about the Nazi empire, and the emperor worshipping Japanese empire.

PPT 5 The eye from Lord of the Rings triology.

Similarly, The following quote is from The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien "Darkness crept back into the forests of the world. Rumor grew of a shadow in the East, whispers of a nameless fear, and the Ring of Power perceived, its time had now come."

I believe we are living in such days. Evil is aware that its times is almost here.

I want to challenge all today, especially the men with this thought: That Island after Island, and nation after nation are falling under a dark shadow again, a dark shadow that is rapidly spreading around the world and will culminate in the world government of the antichrist.

The good news is that it doesn't have to happen in our generation. The antichrist is said to be a beast that arises out of the sea. Figuratively, I believe it is speaking of difficult world conditions that resemble a troubled and angry sea, and that stormy sea produces the conditions from which he will arise. I see those conditions existing in the world at this very hour. But I am not a fatalist, I don't think it has to happen on our watch.

I believe that if the men and women of God, will start their engines, so to speak, we can change the writing on the wall for this generation. If the sleeping giant will arise and shake off his dust and rouse himself to action we can turn the tide that will most surely befall us if we do nothing.

In the beginning of WW2 our nation adopted a somewhat neutral position thinking it will not effect us. I am reminded of the word of warning Mordecai sent his cousin Es 4:13 Mordecai sent her this message: "Don't think that just because you live in the king's house you're the one Jew who will get out of this alive.

There is too much happening for us to think this dark cloud will simply pass us by, it has already enveloped our land and its strength grows everyday. To think otherwise is to be naive at best, and at worst it means you are living so worldly you can't see how far down the path of darkness we as a nation have already come.

Ladies and gentlemen we need to start our engines. It is of little value to have a formula 1 race car if you never bother to put the key in the engine and fire it up.

There are those around us who are looking at our lives and the question on their minds is like that of men at a car show. Fire it up, lets see what you got under the hood.

PPT 6 Burning Bush

That reminds me of the text in Exodus where Moses saw the burning bush, and the bible says he turned aside to see the strange occurrence. It wasn't strange that a bush was on fire, what was strange was that it wasn't consumed, but kept on burning.

PPT 7 Hurricane Lamp