WWUTT 2098 The Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13)

Jesus tells a parable of 10 virgins, 5 kept oil with their lamps, and 5 did not, so that when the bridegroom came, the wise virgins were ready as we should be when we understand the text.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. And greetings, everyone. In our study of the Gospel of Matthew, we are in the

Olivet Discourse. Jesus talking with his disciples from the Mount of Olives about what it will be like when the temple is destroyed and then what they can expect with the coming of the

Son of Man. And that's really where we're picking up Jesus telling his disciples about his coming.

And we read of the parable of the 10 virgins here at the start of chapter 25. This is verses 1 -13, which

I'm reading from the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. Then the kingdom of heaven may be compared to 10 virgins, who took their lamps, and went out to meet the bridegroom.

Now 5 of them were foolish, and 5 were prudent. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them.

But the prudent took oil in flasks along with their lamps. Now while the bridegroom was delaying, they all got drowsy and began to sleep.

But at midnight there was a shout, Behold the bridegroom! Come out to meet him. Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps.

And the foolish said to the prudent, Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out. But the prudent answered, saying,

No, there will not be enough for us, and you too. Go instead to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.

And while they were going away to make the purchase, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast, and the door was shut.

And later the other virgins also came, saying, Lord, Lord, open up for us. But he answered and said,

Truly I say to you, I do not know you, therefore stay awake.

For you do not know the day nor the hour. And this parable is really the second of three parables, and it's like the parable that we read yesterday at the conclusion of Matthew chapter 24.

Jesus had warned his disciples not to be deceived, though they had not seen the

Son of Man return yet. Don't think that he's not coming back. The Son of Man will come.

He'll come at an hour you do not expect, so you must stay awake and be sober. And he gave the parable of the faithful and prudent slave, and then also the wicked slave.

So picking up in chapter 24, verse 45, just to kind of recap on this parable, who then is the faithful and prudent slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time?

Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.

Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But if that evil slave says in his heart, my master is not coming for a long time, and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards, the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him, and at an hour which he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and assign him a place with the hypocrites, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Now that description of hell as a place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,

Jesus had also used that descriptor back in Matthew 22 when we had the parable of the wedding feast.

There was the man at the wedding banquet who wouldn't put on the wedding clothes, and so the master of the feast had him bound and thrown into the outer darkness where Jesus said there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And what this means is that in hell, it will be filled with people who will either be in sorrow because they knew the truth and did not believe it, and so they weep for all eternity.

This mistake that I've made, and now I'm going to be here forever under the judgment of God.

And then there are others that are going to be gnashing their teeth because they believe God owed them something.

How dare you send me here? I should be there with you. I deserve to be there with you.

And so they are just angry and hate God forever, gnashing their teeth at him. And so that's the picture of the two kinds of people that we have in hell.

It's those who are weeping for eternity and those who are gnashing their teeth for eternity. I remember

R .C. Sproul talking about this one time, and he said, God forbid, if it should so happen that I fall away and I did not endure to the end,

I did not truly have faith in my Lord and I have to stand before him in judgment and he cast me into hell,

Sproul said, I will be among those who will be weeping for all eternity because I knew the truth and I did not endure in it.

I did not make it to the end. And so I will have only myself to blame.

And Sproul said it would be him weeping for eternity. And then on the other side will be those who will hate

God for eternity, believing that they deserve to be there with God.

And so they will just gnash their teeth and clench their fist at him for all eternity. And the warning

Jesus gives here is not to become lazy. Don't think that just because you haven't seen the return of the son of man that he's not coming back.

And I'd quoted to you also from second Peter, chapter three, where Peter says, the

Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises as some count slowness. But he is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish.

But that all all whom God had elected from before the foundation of the world would come to faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ. So now we have this second parable that's given here. And once again, the purpose is the same, to tell the disciples to endure, to continue, to not get lazy, to be on the watch, stay awake for you do not know the day nor the hour.

Now, this is the parable we're looking at today, the parable of the ten virgins. The next one that we'll get to has a slightly different purpose to it, but it's the parable of the talents.

And that's in verses 14 to 30. So we'll we'll get to that. It's kind of like a blend of the two parables, but we'll get to that one on Monday.

Let's come back to the parable of the ten virgins. So starting here in verse one, it's a very straightforward parable.

We understand the purpose, of course. It's Jesus warning to his disciples, stay awake.

You don't know when the bridegroom is going to come. You don't know the day or the hour. But some of the symbolism that's used here tends to be a little confusing.

And if you don't if you're not up with Jewish customs, especially Jewish wedding customs, then some of these pictures here can be a little odd.

Why in the world does the bridegroom have ten virgins when if the bridegroom is Christ, he only has one bride and that is the church.

So why are there ten here? Well, easy explanation for that. But this is where some historical context comes in.

So here it says the kingdom of heaven may be compared to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.

Now the phrase the kingdom of heaven may be compared to is synonymous with the coming of the son of man will be like, because that's what

Jesus is talking about. So don't lose the context, the perspective on what

Jesus is giving to his disciples. It is the kingdom of heaven. It's the coming of his kingdom in its its fullness, its consummation, its completion.

So the kingdom of heaven in that day when the son of man returns. Maybe compared to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.

This is this is also to say of the kingdom of heaven in the sense that these persons are looking for Christ.

They haven't yet entered into eternal glory. That's certainly not the setting here.

It's looking for the bridegroom to return. But these are members of the kingdom, or at least they claim to be, because, of course, we see the distinction between five of the virgins from the other five.

So they took their lamps and they went out to meet the bridegroom. Now, five of them were foolish and five were prudent.

For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them. But the prudent or the wise took oil and flasks along with their lamps.

Now, again, historical context kind of helps us out here. Weddings at this particular time in the

Middle East, not just Jewish weddings, but but even many kinds of weddings in the Far East did not happen in the daytime as many weddings do at the present.

There are some weddings that are taking that take place at night. My sister got married. The ceremony was mostly in the late afternoon.

But then, I mean, when it was all said and done, it was nighttime. We had these sparklers and everything, and she and her husband ran down the aisle, hopped in the car and got in their getaway car.

My wedding, however, was right after church. It was on a Sunday. And then we had the reception all day long.

And the sun was still up when we left for Kansas City, where my wife and I were going to stay in a hotel and then we were going to catch a plane on our honeymoon.

So so all of that was happening during the day. We got to the hotel at night, but it was it was all daylight. The whole ceremony and the reception and everything was during the day.

A lot of weddings happen during the day, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the middle of the afternoon. Not as many happen at night.

But in the Middle East, it was very common, especially in this particular day for weddings to be at night.

And so these these virgins have their lamps to know where it is that they're going.

Five of the virgins have oil that they take with them so that they'll have enough that their lamps won't go out.

But the other five were foolish and did not take oil with them. Now, why ten virgins? Oftentimes numbers in the

Bible are symbolic. There's a meaning. There's a purpose and intention there. So why the number 10 here?

I don't really know. I tried looking this up in various different commentaries I read from different scholars on why ten virgins, they all seem to have different opinions.

So maybe we don't know for sure why Jesus chose 10. Maybe there isn't anything special about that number at all.

It's just because it divides evenly between five virgins and and five more virgins. That could be the reason he chose 10.

But one commentary had presented this idea, and I liked it the most.

I don't know if this is really the reason why 10 virgins, but I liked this explanation the most.

It was said that 10 men were usually needed to have a functioning synagogue or to have judgment at the gates.

Because if you'll remember in Bible times, judgments or decisions that were made between two parties happened in the gates of the city.

Like if you go back to the story of Ruth, for example, when Boaz had made the deal for Ruth and the land that came with her, that that deal happened in the city gate.

And then there were the other elders of the city that were present to witness the deal and give the blessing to Boaz when

Ruth was given to him. And they, you know, blessed him and said, may

God multiply you and bless you with many children. So all that happened, that legal exchange happened right there in the gate to the city, which would have been

Bethlehem, because that was where Boaz lived. So it was said that you needed a minimum of 10 men to serve as that council at the city gates, or you needed 10 men to oversee and lead the synagogue if there was a synagogue in a particular town.

And that could have been tied back into when Abraham pled for Sodom and Gomorrah and said, what if there are 10 righteous people in the city, will you spare the whole city on account of the 10?

And God said, I will spare the city on account of the 10. But of course, there wasn't 10, there was only Lot. And that was that was it.

And so out of God's faithfulness to Abraham had sent the angels into Sodom to retrieve

Lot and his family out of it for God's wrath was going to come upon that city and destroy it.

So that's the that could be the possible explanation for the 10. And so here there's 10 virgins who serve as witnesses to this wedding between the bridegroom and the bride.

By the way, this is a wedding party. These virgins are they are not marrying the bridegroom.

And that is one of the common misconceptions about this parable, that some will look at these virgins as there's multiple virgins who are marrying this bridegroom.

But Jesus only has one bride. So why 10 virgins or why even five?

He's not going to marry all five. He would just have one bride. No, they're like bridesmaids.

In this particular case, though, they're on the bridegroom side of the wedding party. And again, as said, weddings would happen at night.

The bridegroom would come to the father's house of his bride.

So his bride's father's house, he would come to the house, he would receive his bride. There would be the ceremony.

And then he would after the ceremony was over, he would take her to his own house.

But there would be a wedding party that would go with them. And the wedding party has the lamps.

And sometimes they would even carry them on a platform. So the bridegroom and the bride might be sitting on a platform and they're carried by four people for the men or something like that to the place where the bridegroom is taking his bride.

And then they drop them off. And there's there's much rejoicing and feasting and so on and so forth. The feast would go on for a week as a matter of fact.

So just like I said, my wedding happened all in the daytime. We got done with the reception. We headed off to the hotel.

But if if this were a Jewish wedding in the first century, it would have gone on for a week.

There would have been feasting for a week. And you see that here because that's how it concludes. They go into the house where the feast is going to be held.

And so then there's going to be great celebration that will continue on for a week. But these these virgins are very common to have virgins, unmarried women that were part of this wedding party because those who were married, well, they're going to be with their husband.

They would be with their family. The unmarried virgins are either going to be on the bride's side or the groom's side.

It wasn't like the groom only had groomsmen and the bride had her bridesmaids. There would be men and women on both sides of the wedding party.

So in this particular case, they're looking for the bridegroom who's coming with the announcement, hey, I'm going to go get my bride.

So that way, the virgins would go along with him to retrieve the bride and then go into the place where the feast was going to be held.

So all of this, again, happening at night. They have their lamps. Verse five. Now, while the bridegroom was delaying, they got drowsy and began to sleep.

But at midnight, there was a shout, behold, the bridegroom come out to meet him. And then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps, meaning they lit their lamps.

They're ready to go and meet the bridegroom. And the foolish said to the prudent, give us some of your oil for our lamps are going out.

But the prudent answered, saying, no, there will not be enough for us and you to go instead to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.

Now, as I've said before about parables, we have to be careful not to overinterpret them.

A parable has one meaning to it. There's one reason why Jesus is giving this parable.

And we have the reason at the very conclusion. Therefore, stay awake for you do not know the day or the hour that the son of man is going to come.

So be ready. That's the point of the parable. And there there's all different kinds of of elements to a parable.

But that doesn't mean that every element in the parable has some sort of pictorial or symbolic significance to it.

So, again, be careful not to overanalyze a parable. Get to the point.

And all these other different elements of the parable may not necessarily mean some of the things that people will say that they mean.

So here we have this story of ten virgins, five and five, and they have these lamps.

And it could just be that that's all Jesus means by that. They have lamps.

And so they're using their lamps to go and meet the bridegroom because it's dark outside. It's really dark.

This is the flashlight that they had back in that back in that day. Didn't have electric flashlights, didn't have the cell phones with the flashlight on it.

So they have these oil lamps to help guide their way or torches. Some translations will actually translate this as torches.

But a torch doesn't mean it's like a big thing on a stick with a huge inferno at the top.

It could still just be a little dish with oil in it. And and the oil is what is lit.

There's wicks that will come then out of the oil. You light the wick and therefore you have like a little candle.

So that's probably more the picture here. And that's it. You know, don't read too much into the symbolism of that.

Some will say, and I don't think this is too far out of bounds, but some will say that a lamp is a profession.

The lamp represents a profession of someone's faith. So all 10 of these virgins would therefore claim to be

Christians, if that's the connection that you make with this particular parable. But five of them are going to endure in that profession to the end, and five of them are going to fall away so that their profession was never actually genuine.

I don't think that's too far off the mark. I don't think it's improper to interpret the lamps in that way.

But again, I still think we need to be careful not to overanalyze everything in the parable as being something symbolic.

Get to the point. Jesus just has a main point that he's making with this particular parable.

But you see that there are some virgins that were wise, that have plenty of oil, their lamps stay lit all the way to the point that they enter in the door with the bridegroom and are there at the wedding feast, whereas the other five did not bring enough oil.

They got lazy. They were not wise. They did not keep watch. They have to stop the wedding.

They have they have to stop the procession to go back into town to a merchant and try to get some oil.

And by the time they come back. Well, now it's too late because they've already gone into the wedding feast and closed the door.

So in verse 10, while they were going away to make the purchase, the bridegroom came and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast and the door was shut.

And later, the other virgins came saying, Lord, Lord, open up to us. But he answered and said, truly,

I say to you. I do not know you. Now, this is very much like Matthew, chapter seven, and I had said a few weeks ago that a lot of the things that we start seeing toward the end of Matthew's gospel begin to reflect, begin to mirror some of the things we saw in the first half, things that we read in the beginning of Matthew's gospel starting to come back in at the end.

That's by design. That is intentional. There's some there's some parallels here or even a chiastic structure, as you might call it, where some themes that we saw in the first half of the book begin to repeat in the second half.

And so with Jesus saying here to those foolish virgins, truly, I say to you,

I do not know you. This was exactly Jesus response to those saying,

Lord, Lord, in Matthew, chapter seven. Remember this from the Sermon on the

Mount, Matthew seven, beginning in verse twenty one. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.

But he who does the will of my father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to me on that day,

Lord, Lord, in your name, did we not prophesy and in your name cast out demons and in your name do many miracles?

And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

Same words the bridegroom uses here for those foolish virgins who were not prepared, they were not ready for the bridegroom to come.

Everybody is in for the wedding. The door has been shut. The feast is at hand. And these five foolish virgins missed out.

And Jesus answers and says to them, truly, I do not know you. And so once again, the purpose of the parable at the end of verse thirteen, therefore, stay awake for you do not know the day nor the hour.

Listen to these words from Matthew Henry on this particular passage, the door was shut. Many will seek admission into heaven when it is too late.

The vain confidence of hypocrites will carry them far in expectations of happiness.

The unexpected summons of death may alarm the Christian, but proceeding without delay to trim his lamp, his graces often shine more bright.

While the mere professor's conduct shows that his lamp is going out. Watch, therefore, attend to the business of your souls, be in the fear of the

Lord all day long. Let's finish there with prayer,

Heavenly Father, I pray that we would be diligent in our professions of faith, that this isn't just a profession.

It's not something that it's not just something we say with our lips, but our hearts are far from God, as Isaiah said of the hypocrites, as Jesus said to those who were

Pharisees. But what we say with our lips is a reflection of our heart. When we say that we love

God, we love you from the heart and we endure in it to the end. This isn't merely a phase, a passing opinion, something that's comfortable for us now.

But then when the going gets tough or even when things get comfortable and we think we have no use for God anymore, we abandon our faith and go the way of the world.

Far be it from us for that to happen to us. And it is only by your grace that we are saved and that we stay saved.

As we read about at the end of Jude. To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy, to the only

God, our savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority before all time and now and forever.

Keep us steadfast in Jesus name. Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the

Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study.

Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.