Matthew 25:1-13 No Wedding Crashers

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Recast Church.

I'm Don Filsak.

I'm the lead pastor here. Glad that you're all here with us this morning. It's a special welcome to those of you that are here for the first time.

We welcome you.

We're glad that you came out to see what we're all about. And the name Recast is an acronym for our core values. You'll see that posted back there, but our core values, our replication, the R and the E go together, stand for replication, and the C for community, the A for authenticity, the S for simplicity, and the T for truth.

Those core values drive us and help define what we try to do week in and week out here as a church and give you the overall feel of Recast. And the core value of truth is what keeps us coming back to the Bible as the word of God, the capital T, truth.

Every one of our gatherings is going to come back to the word of God on Sunday mornings. We don't use the Bible primarily to support my thoughts or my feelings. It's not like I come up with an idea, or I read a headline, or I come up with some kind of concept, and then, quick, go through the Bible and find out what the Bible says about that subject.

But at the end of the day, what I'm really trying to do is faithfully march us through books of the Bible and see what God desires to communicate with us, letting the word drive the questions, not our minds drive the questions.

The word is going to answer the questions that God wants to answer for us. And so, this morning, we're going to be looking at a text that is, once again, reminding us to live this current life in a state of readiness for the return of Jesus.

Now, that might not be, how many of you would just admit that wasn't forefront of your mind this week as you were kind of going throughout your week? Go ahead and raise your hand if the idea or the concept of Jesus Christ's return was not the first thought in your mind every morning when you woke up.

That's just being honest, right? There's no shame for, people are like, am I supposed to answer yes to that?

He's a pastor.

I'm supposed to be thinking about Jesus, right? No, it's not a trick question. At the end of the day, it's not probably the question that you had in your mind when you woke up. Hmm, wonder about Jesus' return and how I ought to live.

But it's something that you see how God's word changes us and draws us into a discussion that we wouldn't have normally been having, but because that's the next text in the Scripture, that's what God desires to communicate to us.

And so Jesus is going to use in our text a parable about a wedding feast. And in the end, he says there will be no wedding crashers allowed into his final banquet. And to his final eternity, there will be nobody who crashes that party.

When he returns, only those who are ready and known by the groom are going to be allowed.

In.

But as I read the text this morning here in just a second, consider what Jesus is saying both about being ready, and being ready for his return particularly, and being ready for the long haul as we await his return.

So if you're not already there, I encourage you to open up in your Bibles or grab your phone or a device and navigate over to Matthew chapter 25. We're going to read the first 13 verses there, 1 through 13, Matthew 25, 1 through 13.

And again, recast, this is God's holy and precious word. It's a word that desires to transform us and change us. And I firmly believe that if we believe it, then our lives will be transformed as we go out and live it out in this next week.

So Matthew 25, 1 through 13, recast God's holy and precious word. Then the kingdom 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 arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, give us some of your oil for our lamps are running 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 yourself.

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 up 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. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for a word that just sets our tone, sets our direction, sets the agenda for us.

Father, we've spent a lot of time in these last couple of chapters of Matthew, the last chapter 24 and chapter 25, going over this and it's obvious that your son desired to communicate a lot about how to live during this time of waiting.

All of the anticipation, all of the hope of an eternal kingdom is wrapped up in our faith in you, a hope for resurrection, a hope for an eternity that goes beyond this life, a life without sin, a place without suffering, and we long for that.

Even as we suffer and we endure and we fight with sin and battle here and now, Father, we look forward to that day and I thank you that you give us a mission to accomplish here. You have a desire for us in the waiting.

So Father, I pray that you would help us to be long-haul Christians, that we would be people who are in it for the lifetime that you give to us. Father, I pray that you would make that a reality for us through your word transforming us and that we would take this on as a word that you desire to communicate to our hearts, not somebody else sitting next to us, not for someone else that's sitting in here, but for each and every one of us to grab hold of what your spirit desires to communicate to us this morning.

We ask this in Jesus' precious name.

Amen.

Wisdom Prepares for a Long Wait

All right, I encourage you, just as I do every single Sunday, to get comfortable and keep your place in the word of God so that you can see what the text is saying to us. It's Matthew 25, 1 through 13.

I know some of you weren't here for the reading of that, so you can grab a hold of that text, Matthew 25, 1 through 13, so you can see that the flow of the message is coming from the scriptures. Also, if at any time you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, those are available in the back, and so feel free to caffeine up there, and our goal is to keep our focus on God's word in our time here.

Wisdom prepares for the future, right? Did you know that? How many of you already knew that? Wisdom prepares for the future. When Ernest Shackleton was looking for the right type of men with a stiff upper lip, a good British troop of adventurers, he was looking for a group to join him in expedition, the first expedition to attempt to cross the continent of Antarctica on foot.

How many of you think that's a pretty ambitious endeavor? That's a pretty big deal. How many of you love cold weather? I'm not signing up for that. I can't stand the cold. It's rumored, and it's not very clear.

It might be apocryphal. It might not be a true story, but it's still intriguing to think through. It's rumored that he took out an ad in a local British newspaper that read this. Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return, doubtful, honor, and recognition in case of success.

Any of you signing up? That's your job description right there. That doesn't sound like that kind of appeal, that kind of thing that would appeal to many.

Of us.

I think I look around, and I see some of you here, and I think, I bet he had signed up. But on December 5th of 1914, with a full crew, by the way, that's months after the start of World War I. There was even doubt about he offered his ship in exchange.

They had already made all preparations. He had offered his ship for the cause for the British fleet during World War I. They said, nope, go ahead anyways. So on December 5th of 1914, Ernest Shackleton and crew set sail for Antarctica with the goal of being the first expedition, as I said earlier, to completely cross that frozen continent.

They never set foot on Antarctica. Some of you know the story, some of you don't. They never set foot on Antarctica. Instead, their ship, the Endurance, became ice-bound and was frozen solid in the sea and was eventually crushed by the ice.

All the men survived. They were able to offload all of their provisions and all of their resources off onto the ice shelf before the ship was crushed, and Shackleton had prepared so well for all eventualities that not a single of his men was lost.

They were all able to survive on the resources and supplies that they had brought with them until two of them were able to make it to the island of Georgia and call for help, and were all rescued and saved.

The goal of their mission, of course, was unaccomplished, but the leadership, wisdom, and preparation of Sir Ernest Shackleton are legendary, and I commend to you a book that's kind of biographical called Endurance, and it's a great book that I read in college.

I've read it twice now about ready preparation and just a really intriguing story if you're into that kind of historical stuff. It's not historical fiction, but it's interesting. But in our text, Jesus speaks very directly about wise people who are ready and prepared to wait for him until he returns, to wait for the eventualities of life with him, and he compares this to others who are not ready, and in essence, we see in the text, run out of steam, unprepared for his return, who are not prepared to make it the distance.

He doesn't, of course, in our text, I just read it, he doesn't use something as exciting as an Antarctic expedition, but instead, Jesus uses an ancient tradition from something as common as a wedding to illustrate his point of being ready for his return, and he starts out in verse one explaining that what he's going to share with us is a fictional story.

He's telling a story to illustrate the coming of his kingdom. He talks about the kingdom of heaven, and in the future, the kingdom of heaven, he says, will be like this. Because then, the kingdom of heaven will be like, and he goes on to explain a wedding tradition, and in this wedding tradition, we see 10 unmarried maidens.

Now, it's a feminine word, the word that's virgin there, it's an unmarried young lady is the idea in the picture, and historical documents and things that we piece together kind of explain how that would have worked, but the word virgin is, of course, not gendered in English, but it is in this language, so it could be easily translated, young maidens would be a way to look at it, but 10 unmarried maidens will take their traveling lamps or torches to go out to meet the groom.

Now, we don't, how many of you know exactly what's happening here? You read that, and you're like, oh, that makes sense to me. What is, what in the world is going on here, right? What we know about ancient weddings is really scant, there's not a lot of detail that's offered in any one, you can't turn to the document about ancient weddings.

The wedding coordinators obviously didn't take a lot of time to chisel in exactly their activities and their schedules and stuff, and so we can piece together, though, from a variety of documents, kind of get, you take a little bit here, a little bit there, and eventually you get a picture, and piecing it all together, it seems likely the invitations would have, in some sense, gone out to those who were invited.

This might have happened a week or two before the event, but invitations go out, individualized, probably hand-delivered or something to that effect, and the groom would make preparations at his home, or at a banquet area, but most likely in his own home, and then on the night of the wedding, he would get all gussied up, and then proceed to walk to the bride's home with his parents, and probably his siblings and his family.

Upon his arrival, a second invitation would go out by a herald, who would cry out in the streets, prepare for the wedding of so-and-so. The time has come, and so people would get ready, and they would wait in their own homes or on their porches or out in the streets, waiting for the procession to come their way, and that's the point of, that's the place where the point of the negotiations of the dowry would commence when the groom arrives at the bride's home, and the question there is kind of like, was she a two-camel kind of gal, or a 12-camel kind of gal?

So they would be debating back and forth. That sounds really terrible, doesn't it? But that's the kind of stuff that would be discussed, and so the negotiations would last quite a while between the father of the bride and the father of the groom, and they would literally be debating cost and price and all of this stuff, and during this time, people were eagerly awaiting for the two of the bride and the groom to proceed through a procession, a parade down the streets, where they would be joined by others as those who were invited would join in the procession.

And where we pick up our text is the part of the procession or the parade that included young maidens to lead and light the way for the processional through the evening streets, collecting those invited guests as they wound their way through the village.

Is that making sense to you? So the groom goes to the bride's house, there's a debate that goes on there, there's a price, there's vows taken, the marriage is confirmed there before God and some witnesses, and then they proceed out through the streets.

The first to join them are going to be some young ladies carrying torches to light the way, and as they move along, the group grows as they wind their way through the village streets to get to the place of the banquet.

Is that making sense? Are you guys tracking with that?

Okay.

But for some reason, Jesus has in his story, by the way, just to clarify, weddings happen in the evenings. We know that from historical documents, so thus the need and the importance and the value of having it lit, of having lamps at the head of this procession.

It was always evening time that weddings commenced. And so for some reason, Jesus has this story going late into the night. There must have been some serious debate about the bride price going on in this particular marriage and apparently Jesus doesn't think that's that uncommon, so you throw that out in a story.

But once the price was agreed on and then the vows were taken and witnessed, then the groom goes out into the street, according to the story of Jesus, to head back to his home with his new bride and they will be accompanied and led by those young ladies in that celebratory parade.

In this story, there are 10 young women given that task of leading that parade or that procession through the dark streets. Five of them, says Jesus, were wise. Five of them were foolish, according to verse 2.

And we're going to see the nature of their foolishness and the nature of the wisdom found in verses 3 and 4. In verses 3 and 4, we see that the wise prepared for a long wait. They brought extra oil for their lamp, while the foolish only brought the lamp with the oil that would fit in it.

No extra oil. They were like, this will be enough. The foolish were, in essence, in one sense, you could kind of make a metaphor of it, they were expecting a 100-yard dash while the wise settled in for an evening marathon.

They expected this, they were ready for the negotiation to go longer than they thought they needed. Now, you've got to remember that these young ladies, in this context, have one job. You just had one job, right?

Light the way for the procession to the place of feasting. By the way, some documents indicate that there might have been dancing in this procession and all of that stuff, and some of it would have been the young ladies leading the dancing along the way and all of that, carrying these lamps and dancing.

That sounds like dangerous, doesn't it? But that's the way it would have gone. But it really seems like a simple job, right? Provide the light, carry the flashlight, light the way, and get attention as you're going through the streets.

So if their lamp goes out, then they will not have fulfilled their calling, their responsibility to the groom and the bride. How many of you have ever been a part of a wedding?

Any of you?

Okay, how many of you know that that's a pretty big day for a couple, right? How many of you don't want to let down the bride, right? That's just the last thing that you want to do. You want to make sure that you show up.

I mean, not showing up and not having the light in this would be like a bridesmaid showing up and going, oh, I totally trashed my dress. I just don't have my dress.

It's gone.

Or one of the groomsmen showing up without the suit, right? I don't even know where it is. What's going on here? That's not the way that that's going to work. That's not going to go well in that situation.

There's going to be some potential tears involved in this. It's not going to be a good thing. The foolish women bring no extra oil. Now, I want to be careful to state that this text is not an allegory.

It's a parable.

It's got one main storyline, one main plot, one main moral. That's what you think when you think parable. It's not an allegory where everything stands for something. In other words, we should not be racking our brain to try to figure out what the oil stands for.

What were they lacking?

What were they missing? Was the oil the Holy Spirit? Is the oil supposed to be the Word of God? Is the oil supposed to be What is it that they were lacking that we need to make sure that we have in our lives?

We know that the wise are prepared to continue to give light, and the foolish are not prepared to continue to give light. I think we can land there pretty solidly and let it go from there. And the waiting for this particular groom proved to be a marathon this night.

The groom was delayed according to verse five, and so all the ladies fell asleep.

You see that.

Since both the foolish and the wise fall asleep in this parable, it shouldn't be understood as a sinful metaphor. It's not as though, oh man, don't fall asleep. That's not the parable that's going on here.

Instead in the story, the falling asleep serves two purposes in Jesus telling the story. First, it just heightens the drama. It shows that Jesus was a good storyteller. He wanted to bring you in. He wants there to be a dramatic pause here to just kind of go, oh, they fell asleep.

What's going to happen next? They fell asleep. Are they going to miss the groom? What in the world are these ladies thinking, because they've got a vital part to play in this wedding. This is like one of your bridesmaids falls asleep five minutes before your wedding, and she's sleeping back there in the back room, and you're like, what in the world?

This is a pretty big deal. It also Second, so first it heightens the metaphor, but second, it shows that both groups had ample, and this is significant, both groups had ample time to prepare.

Do you see that?

If they have time to take a nap, they have time to go get extra oil. Do you get what I'm saying in this? They had time to prepare. Despite the fact that the foolish girls were unprepared, they still take a nap.

They still fall asleep in a state of unpreparedness. Both the foolish and the wise, hear me carefully, because I think this is part of the parable. This is a significant part of the parable. Both the foolish and the wise rested in their level of preparation.

They both said, that's enough. I've got enough oil here. Some had extra. Some had done just enough. Not really enough. It proved not to be enough. Let me steal a little of my own thunder from the end by inserting a little bit of application, a little bit of thoughtfulness about our own lives here in the middle of this parable.

So many people in our world today are resting in a good enough spirituality. They're resting partway to the truth. You see what I'm getting at by that? If I had a dollar for every time that someone told me that they're good enough, they're fine right where they're at, they're good enough to get to heaven, I'd have at least enough to fill my tank with gas or go out to eat.

But seriously, people are spiritually napping on incomplete fuzzy notions of the big man upstairs who will let them into the pearly gates if they've done good enough. If the good that I've done is placed on the scale and the bad that I've done is placed on the scale, well this is going to be better and so I'm okay.

A fuzzy, incomplete, unsourced view of God. I just feel like God will let me in.

Have any of you ever heard that before?

I just feel like I'm good enough. I've even spoke with people who have some very terrifying notions that hell is a party with friends. I've had it said to me, and I'm paraphrasing, but almost directly, I might even be getting it right.

I'd rather be in hell with friends than in heaven with a bunch of stuck up people.

Any of you ever heard it?

That shows a very, very significant lack of complete understanding of what God says is true. Do you understand what I'm getting at? A half-baked notion. I've thought it through and I've thought it through to a point and I guess I'm okay with.

It.

Half-baked theology is a very dangerous game. Resting while halfway to the truth, I believe, is a powerful strategy of the evil one. I believe it's his desire to dull our spiritual curiosity to the point where his desire would be that we will never seek out the truth that leads us all the way to the gospel that gives our lives in glad submission to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

He would love for us to just stop and take a nap somewhere in here. Just not complete our quest for the truth. But while the five foolish and five wise ladies sleep, remember, five of them ready, five of them not, but okay, they're confident with where they're at, a cry goes out from the.

Herald at midnight.

The groom is coming. It's time. And they are called out to meet the groom to start the procession through the streets. It says, while all 10 wake up at the call, proceed to trim their lamps to make them burn brighter and that's when the foolish girls realize, uh-oh, we have a problem.

Their lamps are flickering and going out because they're out of oil. In verse 8, it says that they ask the wise to share but they refuse and we're not meant to read a whole lot of meanness on the part of the wise girls who have enough oil.

Well, shouldn't they just share? But no, they have a serious concern. They have only enough oil for themselves and if they share, they might all run out and if then the procession is at risk of having no light at all and all of the wedding party being completely shamed.

Better five that can light the whole way than 10 who cannot carry the task to the end. So the fools go off in the night to see if 7-Eleven sells lamp oil, 24 hours, right? So, we'll see and while they're out there, probably grabbing a Slurpee on the way, the groom shows up and the procession makes it to the marriage feast and the door is shut all while the five foolish girls are in a quest for lamp oil.

The wise maidens have completed their task well because they were prepared for a long haul but in verse 11, the foolish girls showed up at the feast and we're not even told in verse 11 whether or not they accomplished their task.

It doesn't even give us, Jesus isn't that concerned with them anymore and it's not even told whether or not their trip to 7-Eleven was successful or not. And they bang on the doors, commanding entry.

Now, they're respectful but they give the master a command, let us in. Lord, Lord, let us in.

They want in.

And I've always wondered, was there banging on the doors of the ark in Noah's day? Was there banging on the doors of the ark in Noah's day? Did Noah's family endure petitions, open up, the waters are rising, open up, Noah, we believe now, we believe, let us in.

Was that the cry?

I ask that because the imagery here, as Jesus talks about the end times, is parallel. The ark was the place of salvation. It was the place of the salvation for God's chosen people, in that case, the family of Noah.

In the wedding feast here is the place of salvation. It is the place of God's chosen people with the very one, a celebration with the very one who has pledged to save any who come to him and trust him.

He will let them in. The reality of this text is increasingly hard to handle in a culture of participation trophies. There are some who are in and there are some who are out. Jesus is telling a story and I want to remind you, Jesus is making up a story.

He can have How many of you know that when you are telling a story to your kids at night or you're telling a story to somebody, you have the freedom, you're the master. You are, in essence, God of the story, right?

You can make it go wherever you want it to go. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? When you're telling a story, you have freedom over that story. He could have left the door open and welcomed in those foolish servants saying, oh, you guys, I know what you meant to do and I know that you had better intentions and at the end of the day, just come on in.

Celebrate with me. But he didn't tell the story that way because it would have been ungracious to tell the story that way. It would have been misleading to tell the story that way because history will not go.

That way.

There is a real judgment. There is a real condemnation just like there is a real and glorious salvation. Verse 12 shows the basis upon which that judgment is rendered and no, fortunately, it's not. Do you have oil.

How many of you would just be on your way to buy some lamp oil today, like wherever you buy that. Where do I go find lamp oil? But you go find it. If it was like, you can come in to the wedding feast if you have lamp oil.

I get a lot of it, gallons of it. But notice in verse 12, we might expect the groom to shout through the door something like, truly I say to you, you ran out of oil and you disgraced me. No, you can't come in.

Or you were foolish and you missed your chance. Or you weren't good enough. You didn't follow me well enough. You didn't attend church enough. You didn't give enough. You didn't share your faith enough.

But is that what he says?

No.

What does Jesus have the groom say in the text? By the way, I hope it's clear to you who the groom stands for.

Who's the groom?

Jesus himself. He's illustrating his kingdom and what it's going to be like and what he's going to say. And what does he say here in this text? What is the indictment for those who are left out of the celebration?

I never knew you. Now to how many of you does that sound strange in the story? Just seems strange. Like how would he not know these girls that he asked to lead a procession and all of that? And did the groom literally not know who they were?

And at this point, I think the explanation for that is he's breaking out of the parable a bit in order to express more specifically the issue with those who will face final judgment. He's breaking out of the metaphor to speak in real clear terms.

He's breaking into his own story with a real world declaration. And he mixes the real world basis of judgment. What's the real world basis of judgment? Being known by Jesus or not being known by Jesus.

And he mixes that with his story, the issue in the parable, having enough oil or not having enough oil. So that something about the oil and the amount of oil at the end of the day is about a relationship.

With God.

At the end of the day, it's a trust and a relationship that wants to honor him, that desires to please him, that desires to go the long haul with him. As far as the parable goes, these five foolish maidens prove themselves in the text to be wedding crashers.

They are not in a real relationship to the groom, and this is proven by their lack of preparation. In other words, if they were true friends, they would have been prepared. But the way you can tell that they were not true friends is that they were not prepared.

Do you see the cycle there? Do you see the reasoning?

Do you see the logic?

In other words, let me state it more bluntly, perseverance is the proof of a life that has been known by the king. If you're known by the king, you will persevere. What does it mean, though, to be known by Jesus?

Doesn't, think about it, just being honest, doesn't Jesus know everyone? Doesn't he know everything? But this is a word of relationship. It's a relational word. To be known by Jesus is to have received his attention on you in the way that he offers attention to you.

He comes to you, right now, recast, this morning, he comes to you as king. Will you submit to him? He comes to you as savior who died on the cross. Will you ask him to be your savior and forgive you? He comes as the lamb of God who takes away sin.

Will you receive him as your sacrifice for sin? To come to him in humility and to receive him as our master and savior, asking him to save you is the way that we are known by him. You want to get God's attention, in essence?

Put your faith and trust in his son. That's the way you can be known by him. And so Jesus summarizes these last couple of paragraphs with a warning to us all. In verse 13, watch, therefore, for we do not know the day nor the hour of his return.

It means that we don't know how much time we have to do business with him. We don't know how much time we have to accept him as savior. And so there are two questions that come up out of this text this week that lead us into application.

Like, what should we do about this? And the first is just a simple question that I think all of us, I mean, you could be calling yourself a Christian and in the faith for 20, 30, 40 years, and I still want you to ask this question this morning.

Are you ready to meet with God? Are you ready to meet with God? What if he had come back during your drive-in this morning? Anybody do the whole thing with the minivan and the kids and, you guys, put on your smiley.

Face this morning.

Like, kind of lose it a little bit on the way to church? Or we might even think in our minds right now would be a really good time, Jesus, because we're in church, we're all on our best behavior, all right?

We're all trying to make ourselves look better than we are right now, it's great. Let me be clear that being ready is so much more than just the short-sighted thing I might be doing at the very second of his return.

How many of you know you don't have a lot of time to prepare in that one second? But in the parable, young ladies lacked oil, but as the metaphor progresses, it's more clear what Jesus was getting at.

It wasn't primarily, at the end of the day, fundamentally about the amount of oil they had, they lacked a relationship to the groom and therefore they lacked oil. It's their relationship to the groom and he never knew them.

They were in the end assumed to be wedding crashers, their lack of preparation shows them to be outside of a proper relationship with the groom and a person given this responsibility who was in relationship to the groom would be prepared and take their role to light the procession seriously.

Notice that all 10 in the parable, this is shocking, all 10 in the parable tried to get in to the wedding feast, did you see that? All 10 of them tried to get in, only 5 were admitted. Does that shake us a little bit?

Is there an assumption that everybody who appears to want to get in with Jesus is okay.

With Jesus?

I want to caution us about thinking thoughts like that. We need more, we need more than just merely positive sentiments towards Jesus. We need a faith that acts on his lordship over our lives. We are only saved by a faith that is head over heels for Christ and willing to do whatever he asks of us, that kind of faith.