Correct Yourself, Before You Wreck Yourself! Series

This parable of Christ seems to be pretty simple. Even though there doesn’t seem to be much hidden meaning here, somehow, most of humanity seems to ignore it completely. What I mean is, the lesson may be simple, but the action we are called to, seems to be hard for many people. Is it because we do not understand it? Is it because we do not think it is serious enough? Or is because we are the people who are not serious enough?

We can see through God’s Word in this case that people will not know when Christ is going to return. It seems that that doesn’t stop many people from trying to predict it anyway.

Just two or three months ago, do you realize people traveled to villages on odd parts of the world because they thought the Mayans might be right when they stopped their calendar back on October 22nd? What was that about? If you know anything about Scripture, we have to know that Christ is very clear when He says, no one will know the day or the hour that He will return and the world ends, at least the world that we know of. That was completely ignored by thousands of people.

But we don’t have to look far before we find groups of people that believed they knew when that day would come. There were biblical scholars from as far back as year 110 A.D, again in the year 275 A.D, and on and on, in the 1600’s there were groups of people that believed so strongly that they knew the world was ready to end, they didn’t plant their crops or take care of their basic daily needs because they didn’t think they would be around much longer.

It goes on today! I was telling the Teen class last week, there are churches in this city, well known churches with a million members around the world that have tried to foretell the ending of the earth and the return of Christ no less than three different times in the last 50 years. Wrong every time! How is it that people still go to that building every week? I just don’t know. And I don’t know when Jesus will come back. But there are things that He told us, that we do know. Last week we talked about some of those signs. Wars, and rumors of wars, famine, disease, the persecution of believers.

We know that, and we know from the natural disasters that we do fit into those end times that the Bible describes. Then again, we have fit into that time for the last two thousand years. (pause)

I think I can make it easier for all of us. If we can simply watch for three things, we will be much better off. And whenever that day does get here, we return to heaven with our Lord. Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that be the best day in your whole life?

Well here they are: First, Watch Your Correctness. Then watch your commitment, and lastly watch your companions.

The first of those three things again was Watch your Correctness.

What I mean by that can be found in our scripture focus for today. The parable tells us that when the groom returned, that 5 of the young women were ready, and 5 were not. Five of them had prepared ahead of time. It didn’t matter what time he came back, because they were prepared. They had extra oil for their lamps, and simply had to wait to refill them. They were doing it correctly.

Are you? Your lamp is your life. Is it ready for Christ to look at and give His approval? Or is it empty? Is it Dirty? Does your life look like His life? You know better than anyone, no one can tell you if you are ready or not. But you know. You know if you ever lie, you know if you ever cheat and you know if you ever steal.

For the younger kids, do we lie to get out of trouble? DO we take what isn’t ours? Do we cheat on tests? Do we say mean things, or talk about others? Do we help people around us?

And the adults don’t get away with anything either. Do we look at people that we shouldn’t be looking at? Do we listen to people, to music or to TV that we shouldn’t be? Do we lie? Do we steal? That could be on our taxes, that could be stealing time from our employer who thinks we are working.

And teenagers, don’t think you’re somehow safe. The devil gets to teenagers even faster than adults and kids. Kids have adults looking out for them. And adults have enough maturity, at least they are supposed to, to have some self control. But teenagers are generally less mature, living in an adult body, in an adult world. We think we are giving them space to grow up, to make their own decisions, and many times we are giving them just enough rope to hang themselves.