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We do that well together, so thank you. The last two weeks, I have not preached since my family and I were in Florida, but the last time I preached Christmas Sunday, we finished up Matthew 24. In that sermon, I showed how Scripture ties the first coming of Christ with His Second Coming.
The Messiah Jesus came the first time to die for sinners. And when He comes again, He will come to judge the world for His people and establish His kingdom. We don't know when His return will be, but we do know that at some point in the future, Jesus is going to abruptly end world history, and we need to live in anticipation of that grand event.
What we have seen is that anticipating the return of Christ is intended by God to be rejuvenating to His followers. The one you long to be with, you draw closer to that person as that longing grows in your heart.
As Christians long for Christ, God intends for His people to deepen their relationship with Him. But as the Bible describes, the positive side of the return of Christ, that is longing to be with the Lord and experiencing great joy as one longs for Him, there is a sobering side to the return of Christ.
The sobering side is that many will not be ready for His return, and the darkness and tragedy that awaits that person is enormous. This morning as we continue our sermon series through Matthew, we will see Jesus explain this tragedy of people not being ready at His coming, and He will explain this tragedy through the telling of another parable.
So at this time, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew 25. We'll be looking at verses 1 -13. And if you're using a red Bible, it's on page 987. This sermon is titled, Locked Out. And I'll begin by reading the text.
Matthew 25, verses 1 -13. These are the words of the Lord Jesus. Then the king of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.
For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them. But the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight, there was a cry, Here is the bridegroom!
Come out to meet him! Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out. But the wise answered, saying, Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers, and buy for yourselves.
And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward, the other virgins came also, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.
But he answered, Truly I say to you, I do not know you. Watch, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. Here's our big idea. Understand that the door will be shut on many when Christ returns.
Understand that the door will be shut on many when Christ returns. And we're going to see one reason why in this text, which I will reveal at the end. But before that, let me give you a little recap here.
Three weeks ago when we were last in Matthew, Jesus struck a similar tone with the parable we just read when He compared the days of Noah's flood with His second coming. It's interesting how Scripture does that.
It ties these two events together. There in Matthew 24, in verses 37 -42, Jesus said, For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark.
And they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away. So will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men will be in the field. One will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill.
One will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Thousands of years ago, there was a flood on this earth. And while Noah was building the ark, people were preoccupied with their lives, with the busyness of life, the distractions of life.
As Jesus said, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. People had plans, hopes, dreams for the future. They did not think that the entire planet was shortly going to be under water as the heavy rains came and water burst from under the ground, where even the highest mountains were covered.
But this is what happened. We think about that. When we think about floods, we think, okay, as long as you're high up,.
You're good.
With the global flood of Noah's day, no place was safe on earth. Every place was under water. Some might think that people knew nothing of the coming flood in that day. This is not true. Noah warned that a flood was coming as 1 Peter 3 19 -20 says.
He went and proclaimed the spirits in prison because they formerly did not obey. When God's patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, 2 Peter 2 -5 called Noah a herald of righteousness.
Someone who heralds is a proclaimer. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm heralding. So the ancient world was not ignorant that a flood was coming. Scripture says that they saw Noah building the ark and they probably thought he was crazy.
Some of you have been to the ark encounter in Northern Kentucky to see how big this ark is. And actually we're planning on going there sometime. This giant ark is being built. And of course in today's, they didn't, a man did not just build this a little over time.
That's what Noah did. Think of how long it took him to build this. And people are thinking this guy's mad. There's no flood coming on this earth. So Noah's building the ark and he's warning people, a flood is coming.
You need to repent. But the world at that time was unprepared for the flood. What Jesus did in Matthew 24 is make a connection with the unpreparedness of the ancient world for the flood with the unpreparedness of the world at the end of world history when Christ returns.
Last week at Sunday school, Keith Johnson asked the class why it's important to study history. One person answered, because history repeats itself and you don't want to make the same mistakes as those who did that in the past.
That's the great error that people make. Long ago, people did the same thing and they suffered the consequences. And in the present, we don't want to make the same mistakes. But what Jesus says at the end of Matthew 24 is that people will make the same mistake as the people did in the days of Noah.
Most of the world will be unprepared for his return. But here is the good news. You don't have to be. You don't have to be. So as we look at passages like this, we need to remember that. This is written so that we would not be in the number of those unprepared.
Now that I have given this background, let's take a close look at this parable. What we already read in the parable of the 10 virgins is an illustration concerning a Jewish wedding in the first century.
Every culture has certain unique customs with weddings. A number of years ago, I used to do evangelism to Somali Muslims in Minneapolis. And a friend of mine and I developed a friendship with one particular man.
And what's really interesting is that when Trevor Rubenstein was here, he used to do evangelism to Somali Muslims. And he knew this same man. This man really stood out. His name was Roblai. My friend and I decided we should attend a fundraiser because at this time, this was about 2011, there was a famine in East Africa.
And we thought we should really go to this fundraiser that this man is telling us about. So we found out the date and the time and the place, and we showed up to the place he told us to go to at the time he told us to go to.
And guess what? No fundraiser. There was a wedding, a Somali wedding. So we walk in and we realize, okay, we're in the wrong place. And it actually wasn't the wrong place. He gave us the wrong information.
And so we walked out, but there was a man. There was an attendant at the door who said, nope, you're gonna stay. And we weren't dressed for the occasion, but they brought us in, and we sat through a Somali wedding.
I kind of chuckled at it because I have friends whose weddings I've never been invited to. And yet, these people we've never met in this completely different culture, we're invited, we're here. And so we, it was so interesting because the way it was set up, the bride was on one end of the room, the groom was on the other.
The bride had her party, the groom had his party. All the other guests would sit in the front. And so we sat in the front at a table. And then during the wedding, they bring out the food. So we ate the food and we kind of felt bad.
We didn't have a card or anything, but we ate and then we left. But it was a different culture. Different from an American wedding. During Jesus' day, the Jews had certain customs. And as Jesus tells this parable to his disciples, they would have known exactly the custom that he was talking about, the Jewish wedding custom.
To understand a Jewish wedding, John 14 verses two through three is an important passage. In that passage, Jesus says, in my father's house are many rooms. If it were not so,.
Would I have told you.
That I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am, you may be also. In Judaism, there was a betrothal stage. The betrothal stage started when a man and woman agreed to be married.
It was similar to how we understand engagement, but even more binding than that. When Joseph thought that Mary had committed fornication, it says that he resolved to divorce her, which shows how strong the bond would have been.
If you're at betrothal to someone, there's a high likelihood you're going to get married to this person, where engagement today, it's a little bit looser than that, but it's similar. Now, as the groom or the would-to-be groom, he had a responsibility to build a room connected to his father's house.
And once he completed the room, the time would come for him to show up to his future wife's home, and he would show up at a time only known to his father. There was a recent video that explains this Jewish wedding custom, and it's called Before the Wrath, which I highly recommend.
The Jewish wedding custom sheds more understanding than the meeting of John 14 and the parable of the 10 versions that we're looking at right now here in Matthew 25. It also informs us about what Jesus said in Matthew 24, 36, where Jesus said, but concerning that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the son, but the father only.
In the Jewish wedding custom, once the son finished building the room attached to his father's house, this did not mean he would then go right at that moment to get his bride. He would only go when his father told him to go at the time his father told him to go.
And the time that he would tell him to go was in the middle of the night while she was sleeping. He would just show up. And then the wedding custom would begin. You can see how this Jewish wedding custom fits with the details of the return of Christ.
In John 14, Jesus tells his disciples that in his father's house, there are many rooms. And he says he is going to prepare a place for them just as the would-be groom prepared a place for his bride onto his father's house when he built that room.
Scripture describes Jesus as the bridegroom and his church as the bride. Now, we don't use the terminology bridegroom, but that means groom. What he has been doing for 2 ,000 years is preparing a place for his people.
And he is waiting for the word of his father to return to this earth to gather his bride, the church. We are his bride. With this background, we understand what Jesus is getting at as he tells this parable of the 10 versions.
What Jesus says in 25 verse one is the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. The number 10 is significant in Judaism. The Jews considered 10 to be a number of completion.
10 bridesmaids needed to be present to give a blessing to the bride and groom. The bridesmaids were also virgins because it was the Jewish custom that these young women be chaste and unmarried. So as the bride selected her bridesmaids, this was the criteria that she had to follow.
These 10 virgins knew the general time when the bridegroom would come to get his bride. And it was their responsibility to meet the bridegroom on the road as he was en route to get his bride. And he would arrive in the middle of the night.
Now our English translations say lamps, but a better translation is torches. The same Greek word is used in chapter 18 verse three when those who arrested Jesus carried torches. Now what Jesus describes in verses two and three is that five of the virgins were wise and five were foolish.
In order for the flame on these torches to continue, they needed oil to burn. The oil was essential because they didn't know the exact time the bridegroom was coming. What verse five says is that as the 10 virgins waited to meet the bridegroom on the way as he went to get his bride, the bridegroom was delayed and they became drowsy.
So they're waiting for him and they fall asleep waiting for him. But as they're sleeping, verse six says there's a cry. At midnight there was a cry. Here's the bridegroom, come out to meet him. As the 10 virgins know that the bridegroom is coming, what verse seven says is they trimmed their torches.
One author said that the torches used by waiting attendance consisted of tightly wrapped cloths attached to long poles and trimming the torches probably amounted to cutting off any ragged edges of the cloth and then saturating it with oil to make it ready for lighting.
In order for the oil at the end of the pole to light effectively, the cloth needed to be smooth, not ragged. So the five virgins with the oil are ready while the five virgins who did not bring oil are unprepared for the bridegroom's arrival.
The 10 virgins hear that the bridegroom is coming as verse six says. And verse eight describes what the foolish say to the wise. They say to the wise, give us some of your oil for our torches are going out.
But this is how the wise respond in verse nine. Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves. It is a situation where the five virgins who have oil, while the wise ones are unable to help those who don't.
There's not enough oil to go around for everyone. So the five virgins who have oil, tell the five who don't in verse nine, go to the dealers and buy for yourselves. This is a problem for the five virgins who don't have oil.
The bridegroom is on his way to meet the bridesmaids to then go get his bride. And then from there, the bridegroom and bride will take part in the wedding ceremony. They don't want to miss out on the wedding ceremony.
As the five virgins who are unprepared find themselves in this predicament, they have no choice but to go to the dealers to buy oil. But while they are getting their oil, this is the time when the bridegroom arrives.
This is what verse 10 says. While they were going to buy, the bridegroom came and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast. And the door was shut. You can see the slam shut. This is a sobering picture.
The five virgins who were ready with the oil walk in procession with the bridegroom to the bride's home. Once again, once the bridegroom arrives at the bride's house, he surprises her and then the festivities begin.
The feast begins. These virgins were a big part of the Jewish wedding custom. As they met the bridegroom, they would walk with him in the night with torches lit to meet the bride. These five virgins were ready for the bridegroom to come while the five others were not.
And the door was shut on the five foolish virgins who were not ready. What a sobering picture of some being received to the feast and others not. It's important for us to understand that when Jesus talks about his return, once again, he describes his return in phases.
When Jesus talks about preparing a place for his bride, the church, he is describing taking them before the final seven year tribulation. And we looked a little bit at the seven year tribulation in Matthew 24 where the Antichrist reigns, where God unleashes his wrath upon the earth as judgment for the godlessness of this world.
Jesus is going to come suddenly and unexpectedly just as this parable describes without understanding the rapture before the seven years. This parable does not make good sense. But when we understand this parable in connection with John 14 verses two and three, it makes perfect sense.
John 14, two and three describes the pre-tribulation rapture. We don't know when the rapture will be. It could be today. Think about that. It could be. What is remarkable is that no fulfillment needs to happen for Christ to rapture his church.
It could happen today. The question we need to ask is, are we ready? We have seen parables in Matthew and in every parable, what Jesus is doing is using a physical illustration from the real world to communicate a rich spiritual truth.
In this parable, Jesus is the bridegroom who is coming at an unexpected time. He is waiting for the word of his father to go get his bride. The 10 virgins in this parable are the professing church. In other words, people who say that they are Christians.
The five virgins who are foolish and unprepared are false Christians, phony Christians. And the five virgins who are wise and prepared with their oil lighting their torch, these are true Christians. And the torches represent the expectation of Christ's imminent return.
One author describes the 10 virgins well. The 10 bridesmaids represent professed disciples of Christ who claim to love the prospect of his appearing and who demonstrate outward readiness for entrance into his kingdom.
In appearance, the 10 were indistinguishable. They were all dressed appropriately in wedding garments and all had the required torch to carry in the wedding procession. But they were not all alike, which is the point of the parable because they were not all prepared.
Not everyone who identifies as a Christian is a Christian. But my old pastor used to say, not all who profess faith in Christ possess faith in Christ. There are certain marks of a true believer. What this passage is communicating is that one of those marks is that true believers long for his appearing.
As the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 4, 7 -8, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day.
And not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing. The five foolish virgins are professing Christians who would have no problem saying Jesus is God. Jesus is the only way that He is coming back.
But they didn't long for Him because their love was somewhere else. Now it is true that even Christians do not long for Christ's return the way we should. No one longs for Him perfectly. But all true Christians do long for Him some.
But a false professing Christian has no true longing for Christ. For this person, the focus is only the world. The things of the world. The question that everyone in this room needs to ask is do you have any longing for Christ?
That will tell you whether you truly belong to Jesus. Every true believer has some longing for Him. As we just saw, the Apostle Paul write that all who have longed for His appearing will be gathered to Christ when He returns.
But to those who do not long for Christ, who are not prepared for His return, showing their rejection of Him, these will be rejected by Him. And this parable illustrates this at the end of verse 10 by showing that the door is shut on them.
They are locked out. Once again, you can see how this relates to the global flood. There was a day when Noah stopped building and stopped preaching. The time had passed. The door on the ark was shut. It was too late for the population.
Judgment was coming. Judgment would come through the fierce waters that God sent on the earth. When Jesus raptures His church, everyone left on the earth will know that they stand condemned in their present state, that in their present state, they are not invited to the great wedding feast, that Jesus and His church will be enjoying in heaven.
What will be communicated to every person is what verses 11 and 12 say. Where Jesus says, "...afterward the other virgins came also, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. When He answered, truly I say to you, I do not know you.".
What Jesus says here echoes what He will say to many at the final judgment, as He said in Matthew 7, verses 21 -23. There He said, "...not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father, who is in heaven.
On that day, many will say to Me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name and cast out demons in Your name and do many mighty works in Your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you.
Depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness.". When that day comes when the church is raptured, can you imagine being left behind? At that point, the world will never be the same. What happens after the church is raptured is the Antichrist will set up his throne and God will pour out His judgment on the earth.
If you are a believer in Christ at the time of the rapture, you will be with Christ at the wedding feast, not left in this world that will be under God's judgment. So this is coming to this world.
Are you ready?
A similar episode will occur after the seven-year tribulation when Jesus comes to this earth to establish His throne. 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 7 -9 describes this. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels and flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might.
There will be people who are able to believe during the tribulation, yes, but the many who reject Christ will also have the door shut on them. The worst experience there is is to be rejected by Christ and miss the grand wedding feast.
This world is so short. Think about how short it is. The Bible describes it as a breath. It's a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes. That's this life. If you miss out on the wedding feast, you miss out on what life is all about, what everything is moving toward.
You don't want to miss that. It is those who are unprepared in their unbelief who will miss the grand feast that Jesus enjoys with His people. And Jesus makes clear the message of this sobering parable in verse 13 as He says, Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
This is the clear message of the New Testament. Christ is coming soon and the whole world is called to be ready because His return will be sudden. What we saw in Matthew 24 is that there are many signs and as we look at the signs that Jesus explained would come on this world, the world we live in indeed shows us that He can come at any time.
The call is for us to have our torches lit, to be ready for His return. In one sense, every Christian is ready to meet Jesus because you're covered by the blood of Christ. But if we're all honest, we could be more ready.
We prepare ourselves by living godly lives. It's not necessarily doing extraordinary things. It's doing the normal things. It's loving your spouse. Loving your children. Spending time with God. Being a good neighbor.
Pursuing deep, rich relationships within the church. It's serving one another. It's sharing the Gospel with unbelievers. It's spending time in prayer. Included in those prayers are praying for Christ to come.
That's one of the prayers we should be praying. For the one who has no relationship with Christ, no longing for His return, the call is to believe in Christ. He went to the cross and rose from the dead to save you.
And the fact that you are here or can hear my voice tells you there's still time. But the call to believe is today because the door may be shut and the opportunity to attend the wedding feast may pass.
To have genuine faith in Christ is to be prepared for eternity. There are fools and there are the wise in this world. The wise are ready while the fools are not. None of us knows the day when either we take our last breath or the day when Christ returns, but the call in Scripture, the call in this parable is to be ready to meet Him.
The bridegroom is coming and we are His bride if we have that relationship with Him. So understand that the door will be shut on many when Christ returns. And in this text, we've seen one reason why. And this is the one reason why in your bulletin.
Many people will find themselves unprepared. Many people will find themselves unprepared. The call of this passage and of the New Testament is to be ready for Christ is coming soon. That's one of the major themes you see in every book in the New Testament.
As you know, our family drove to Florida and back over Christmas break. And on the way home, we stopped at a restaurant for dinner. And as we drove in, there was a minibus that said Madison Baptist Church.
By the way, this was in Tennessee somewhere. They had a group of young men who had traveled to this place in Tennessee from Huntsville, Alabama. And when we walked into the restaurant, pretty much all the tables were taken up.
And I noticed that there was a man with a tie. And I told Brianna, I said, I bet this guy's the pastor. And Brianna and the kids went to the restaurant and I was just standing there and he walks up to me and he says, are we taking up all the tables?
We'd be glad to open up a table for you and your family. I thought that was very nice. And I said, no, we're good. We're just getting our food and we're gonna hit the road here. And I said to him, are you the pastor?
And he said, yeah. He says, I'm an assistant pastor at this church, Madison Baptist Church in Huntsville, Alabama. And I told him, I said, well, I'm a pastor. I pastor Eureka Baptist Church in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.
I didn't say Eureka because St. Croix Falls is a little more known probably. And I said, you know what? I said, if you're ever up in our neck of the woods, come visit, we'd be glad to see you. And he said, if you're ever in Alabama, come visit, we'd be glad to see you.
And then he stopped and he said to me, he said, but if we don't meet here, we'll either meet there or there. What he meant was the rapture or in heaven. I thought that was pretty neat. But I'm thinking, this guy lives with this expectancy.
You can just see it that he said that. And my old pastor as a child used to say, he would sign on his greeting, here, there, or in the air, we'll meet. But we need to live with that constant expectation.
This is the hope of Christians and this should constantly be on our minds. But sadly, for many, many, this is not on their minds as they are distracted with the things of life and not prepared to meet Jesus.
For these people, Jesus will come at a time they do not expect and the door will be shut on them. May no one in this room be in that number. At this time, let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word and the focus of your word and the encouragement it gives us, the hope that it fills us with.
And that hope is Christ is coming back and we are the bride, we are the church and we need to be ready for that day when he comes back. So help us, Lord, to be prepared for that day. And may everyone in this room have that sincere relationship with Christ.
And my prayer is that for those who do have that relationship with Christ, that we would live lives of godliness where you are glorified through our lives. And I ask this in Jesus' name, amen.