I still remember my first date with Mary. I know that she was really impressed when I picked her up in my banana yellow Ford Pinto, especially since it was the middle of summer and that car had no air conditioning – unless you call rolling down both windows and driving as fast as that car would go air conditioning. We went to see a movie at the El Dorado Theaters, which was really big time since it was the first theater in Tucson with two screens. For those of you who are recent arrivals in Tucson the El Dorado Theater no longer exists, but at the time it was across from Park Mall, which was a pretty good drive from the northwest part of town where we both lived.
I can’t remember for sure which movie we saw that day, but I do remember that we were one of the last ones in the theater so we got to sit in the front row – certainly another way to impress Mary on our first date. After the movie, we were going to stop and grab something to eat, but apparently I hadn’t properly gauged how much gas it was going to take to get to the theater and back, so we ran out of gas and had to walk to the nearest gas station to get a can of gas so we could get back to the station and fill up.
So when we got back late to Mary’s house and told her parents that the reason we were late is because I ran out of gas, they kind of just rolled their eyes, thinking “Yah, right!”. So when Jackson Browne released this song a couple years later, I just figured that he had heard about our first date and had written a song about it.
[Play clip of “Running on Empty”]
You know it’s going to be a good sermon, when you can figure out a way to squeeze in a Jackson Browne song video during the first five minutes of the message.
I learned a lot about grace that first date. In spite of my good intentions, I hadn’t really done a whole lot on that first date to merit Mary’s love or affection. And yet she actually agreed to not only to go on a second date, but to eventually marry me and stick with me for over 36 years of marriage now.
The parable that we’re going to look at this morning also reminded me of that date, especially the part where I ran out of gas. As we’ll see, the main point of this parable is that spiritually speaking, there are a lot of people, both believers and unbelievers, who are running on empty. And even worse, they are trying to alleviate that condition by trying to survive on the fuel of others rather than filling up their own tanks.
As we’ve done each week in this series, we need to take a few minutes to put this parable into context. The parable itself is found in Matthew 25, so go ahead and turn in your Bibles to that chapter so you’ll be ready to follow along as a read the parable in a moment.
This parable is in a section known as the Olivet discourse, which is found in chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew’s gospel and in the briefer parallel accounts in Mark 13 and Luke 21. Jesus is responding here to the question the disciples ask about Jesus’ return to the earth and the accompanying end of the age:
As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
(Matthew 24:3. ESV)
After Jesus answers their question in some detail, He then gives an object lesson using a fig tree, He cites the example of the way people were living in the days prior to the flood and compares His future coming to a thief coming in the night. Then, beginning on verse 45 of Matthew 24, He tells a series of four parables to illustrate how the disciples are to live in light of the fact that the timing of His future return is unknown.
The first parable is that of a wicked servant and his master. The second, the one we’ll look at this morning is the Parable of the Ten Virgins. The third is the one we usually refer to as the Parable of the Talents and then Jesus concludes the Olivet discourse with the Parable of the Sheep and Goats.
With that context in mind go ahead and follow along as I read the Parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25, beginning in verse 1:
“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 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.
(Matthew 25:1-13, ESV)
Before we go any further, we need to briefly discuss one more important piece of background information. Jewish weddings in the first century were nothing like our contemporary weddings. And since this parable involves a wedding we need to make sure we understand the wedding process.
A Jewish wedding during that time consisted of three distinct phases. The first phase was the engagement, in which the fathers of the bride and groom negotiated the terms of the marriage, including the price to be paid by the father of the groom to the father of the bride. So marriage was not so much an agreement between two individuals as it was a financial agreement between two families.
The next phase was the betrothal in which the bride and groom exchanged vows and became legally married. However they did not live together or consummate the marriage at that time. The husband would go off to prepare a home for the couple, usually by building an addition on to his family’s home.
When that home was ready and approved by the father of the groom, the groom would go to the house of the bride to retrieve her and bring her back to his house for the third phase of the process – the wedding feast. The procession from the house of the bride to the house of the groom usually took place at night, accompanied by flaming torches carried by the bridesmaids.
As I mentioned last week, the wedding feast was the grandest of all parties. It usually lasted a week and at the end of that week, the bride and groom would dismiss their guests and retreat to their wedding chamber where the marriage would be consummated.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time focusing on the details of this parable because, as I’ve pointed out previously in this series, one of the things we must not do with these parables is to over-analyze them. In particular we need to avoid the temptation to give meaning to every little detail in the parable. This week I read quite a few commentaries and sermons that attempted to do that and in my opinion, that kind of analysis really takes us away from the main point Jesus is trying to make by telling this parable.
For instance, quite a few commentators focus on the fact that the bridesmaids were virgins and conclude that therefore they represent Christians who are pure and of good moral character. But there is nothing in the parable that would lead us to draw that conclusion and in fact, making that assumption actually seems to me to contradict what the parable teaches.
Like we find often in Jewish literature, the main point of the parable is actually found in the middle of the story. In this case, the main theme of the parable is found in verses 8-9:
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.’
This morning, I’m going to begin by laying out the main theme of the parable and then we’ll see how the rest of the parable supports that main theme. Here is how we can sum up the theme of this passage very simply:
I cannot live on someone else’s oil.
Although all of God’s Word is relevant for our lives and my goal each week is to shares messages from the Bible that are important and applicable to our day to day lives, this may very well be one of the most important messages I’ve shared with you recently. So I urge you to listen carefully and consider thoughtfully what I’m going to share over the next few minutes.
This parable is another of Jesus’ so-called “kingdom parables” because he uses it to describe what the kingdom of God is like. The four parables we’ve looked at in this series are also kingdom parables. And as we’ve seen, each of those parables deal with some aspect of salvation and how a person enters into the kingdom. Unlike the first four parables we have examined, which focused primarily on the present spiritual aspect of the kingdom, you’ll notice this parable begins with the words “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like…” which means that Jesus is dealing primarily with the future aspect of the kingdom – one that is both spiritual and physical. That is not surprising at all since Jesus is teaching his disciples about His future return – a time when He will usher in the physical aspect of His kingdom.
But even though this parable is about the future aspect of the kingdom, it is primarily a parable about how we are to live right now in view of the future return of Jesus. It is a parable that, like the others in the Olivet Discourse is directed to Jesus’ followers. This appears to be a private discussion with His disciples. Neither the Jewish leaders nor the crowds of people that had been following Jesus seem to be privy to this conversation.
The parable itself is pretty simple. There are five wise bridesmaids and five foolish bridesmaids. The five wise ones take their lamps as well as flasks of oil to fuel those lamps when they are needed. The five foolish ones took the lamps, but not the oil that would be needed to keep their lamps burning during the bridal parade.
In a Jewish wedding the bride and her bridesmaids never knew exactly when the groom would come for his bride and in this case the return of the groom was delayed even beyond what anyone expected. So day after day the bride and her attendants went on with life. They made preparations for the wedding during the day and slept at night.
You’ll notice that all the bridesmaids – both the wise and the foolish – slept at night. So no one in the parable is condemned for sleeping. We probably don’t want to make too much out of that fact, but the idea seems to be that as we wait for the return of Jesus we are to go on with the regular things of life. We need to work, eat, and sleep. We are not to just sell all our possessions and sit around idly waiting for Jesus to return. In fact, the apostle Paul had to warn the Thessalonian church about idleness and commanded them to “work quietly and earn their own living” (2 Thessalonians 3:12).
Finally the groom arrived to take his bride to the wedding feast. So the bridesmaids all woke up and lit their lamps, which were probably more like a torch than the kind of oil lamps we’re familiar with. But the lamps of the five foolish bridesmaids immediately went out, because they had no oil to keep them burning. So, as we would expect, they asked the other five to share their oil, which, as we saw earlier, brings us to verses 8-9 that contain the main message of the parable.
Our first reaction to the refusal of the five wise bridesmaids to share their oil with the others is that their response is quite severe. Our sense of fairness leads us to think that they should have been willing to share their oil. But these young women were wise enough to understand that they had just enough oil to keep their lamps lit for the entire length of the procession to the house of the groom and if they shared that oil with the others, none of them would have enough oil.
By the time the five foolish women go into town and buy oil and return, the doors to the feast are shut and they are not allowed to enter.
Jesus uses this parable, like the others in the Olivet Discourse, to make it clear to His disciples that His return was not going to be nearly as soon as they supposed. And like those other parables, this one shows that His return is going to be sudden and unexpected because of what seems like a long delay to us. So therefore we are to be in a constant state of attention and alert so that whenever Jesus does return, we will be prepared. That’s a pretty simple message isn’t it? But how exactly are we to make sure we are properly prepared for his return? By heeding the main message of this parable that we identified earlier:
I cannot live on someone else’s oil.
You’ll notice that I haven’t given you the usual, “fill-in-the-blank” outline this morning because my message this morning really doesn’t fit some tidy outline with a lot of alliteration or some easy to remember acronym. So I’ve left you some room to make whatever notes you’d like as I just share what’s on my heart this morning.
This idea that I cannot live on someone else’s oil applies on two levels.
First, since this is primarily a parable about the future, physical kingdom of Jesus, it impacts whether I am one of the wise who get to enter the wedding hall or I’m one of the foolish who show up late only to have the door slammed in my face.
As we’ve seen clearly in the last few weeks, no one can enter the kingdom of God based on their own merit. No one can earn his or her way into that kingdom. The only way to enter the kingdom is to accept the scandalous grace of God that has been offered to us through His Son Jesus. And as we saw clearly last week in the Parable of the Wedding Feast each person has to make an individual response to the invitation to enter God’s kingdom.
The Parable of the Ten Virgins reinforces that idea by showing us that we can’t rely upon someone else’s oil to get us into the kingdom. In this parable all ten women had an equal opportunity to obtain oil for their lamps, but only half of them chose to follow through and actually do that. And it was impossible for the other five to get into the wedding feast based on what the five wise women had chosen to do.
In April 1988, Ivan McGuire, a veteran sky diver, was going to film an instructor and his student. So he jumped from the plane and then began to film the other two with a voice activated camera attached to his helmet. All was going well until Ivan reached for his ripcord, only to discover that he apparently had mistaken the video equipment strapped to his back for a parachute. At that point the video showed his hands and arms flailing wildly about as he descended rapidly to his death.
That incident graphically illustrates two important points that we learn from this parable.
The first is that no one else can enter the kingdom of Go on your behalf. Ivan McGuire died because it was not possible for someone else to wear a parachute in his place. And unless you accept Jesus’ invitation into His kingdom by personally placing your faith in Him, you will die on your sins and never enter His kingdom. Just because you were raised in a Christian home or because you regularly attend church with other people of faith is not enough. Another person’s faith will not cover you. You cannot catch faith like you catch a cold. You can’t borrow it from your family or friends.
The second point is that there is a point that is “too late”. Up until the time Ivan jumped from the plane, he could have put his parachute on and saved his life. But once he jumped from that plane it was too late. When the foolish bridesmaids got to the home of the groom, it was too late. Although they said that they wanted in, their actions demonstrated that they really weren’t sincere about that since they had failed to make the proper preparations.
A lot of people put off a decision about entering the kingdom, figuring they can just do that later. But the Bible is clear that there will come a point in everyone’s life where it is just too late to do that. There are two times in a person’s life when it is going to be too late to enter the kingdom of God.
The first time is at the time of our death. The Bible is clear that when we die physically, our eternal destiny is sealed. The writer of Hebrews makes this quite clear:
And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment…
(Hebrews 9:27, ESV)
There is no “second chance” once we die. There are quite a few religions, some of them which even claim to be “Christian”, in which people pray for the dead in hopes of somehow praying that person into the kingdom. But those efforts are completely futile because none of us can exercise our faith on behalf of another person.
And because none of us know when that day may come in our life, the Bible repeatedly urges us to accept the invitation of Jesus and enter His kingdom today.
When Ivan McGuire got on the plane, he certainly wasn’t thinking he was going to die that day. I don’t know whether or not he had accepted his invitation into the kingdom, but I do know this: At the very moment he hit the ground and died, his eternal destiny was sealed forever.
The second time that it is too late is when Jesus returns. When He appears in the sky in all His glory and calls His followers to be with Him, it will be too late for anyone to change his or her mind and accept the invitation that he or she has repeatedly refused throughout his or her life on earth. Again there is no second chance at that point.
So once again this morning, if you’ve never entered into the kingdom of God by placing your faith completely in Jesus and what He has done for you, I urge you – please don’t leave here today until you’ve done that.
Fortunately I am confident that most of us here this morning have already entered into the kingdom. So how is this parable relevant for us?
Here is the second level on which this parable operates. Even though this particular parable is primarily focused on the future aspect of the kingdom of God, all of the kingdom parables are also relevant for our lives right here and now. Being a part of the kingdom is never a matter of just “hanging on” until I go to be with Jesus. Life in the kingdom is the most fulfilling, joyful and abundant life possible, not just down the road in the future, but also in the present.
But unfortunately, there are a lot of Christ followers who don’t seem to be experiencing that fulfillment, abundance and joy. And I’m convinced that the reason for that is that in most cases they are trying to live their lives in Christ on someone else’s oil. Their spiritual tanks are running on empty and instead of taking the steps to fill up their own tanks they are trying to live off of someone else’s tank. And that is just not possible.
So when the trials of life come – and Jesus promised that they would – these people are totally unprepared to deal with them because they have no oil for their lamps.
We live in a culture that promises to give us what we want quickly and with as little effort as possible. So we go to a fast food restaurant and let someone else fill our stomachs with food that they have prepared. We go to the car wash and stay in our car while some other person or machine washes our car. We go home and turn on our TV and let someone else fill our minds with news and entertainment.
Ironically about the only area I can think of where we’ve become less dependent on others over the last 30 or 40 years is in filling up our gas tanks in our cars. It’s pretty much impossible to find a full service gas station any more so we have to fill up our own cars with gas. But even there, it’s pretty convenient – we don’t even have to go into the store or the office to pay because they have the card readers right at the gas pumps.
And that seems to have carried over into our spiritual lives. We want someone else to fill us up spiritually – and we don’t want them to take a lot of time to do that. We expect to come to church once a week for an hour and let someone else share their oil with us and then try to live on their oil for the next week until we can come back and get some more.
Far too many of us don’t want to do what is required to fill up our own spiritual tanks because that takes a lot of hard work and discipline. Filling our spiritual tanks only comes as a result of intentional habits built into our lives. If you want to have your own oil instead of depending on someone else’s you’re going to have to make time to be alone with God in His Word and in prayer. You’re going to have to make time to engage in real Biblical fellowship by spending time with fellow believers to study, pray and encourage each other. You’re going to have to look for opportunities to serve the needs of others in the name of Jesus and to invite them into the kingdom.
I do my very best each week to study God’s Word the very best I know how and to share what God is showing me with all of you. But there is a sense in which that is really my own oil. And I pray that that God will use it in your lives to help you to know Him and serve Him better. But unless you take that oil and make it your own by meditating on it and applying it appropriately in your life it will just remain my oil and it’s not going to do you any good at all. I implore you – please don’t rely upon my oil in order to live your life in the kingdom. It just doesn’t work that way.
In my Monday email I shared an article by Aaron Loy titled “5 Really Bad Reasons to Leave Your Church”. I think some of his observations are really relevant to what we’ve been learning this morning. The number 1 bad reason for leaving a church is the one that I hear most frequently by those who have left TFC over the years:
• “I’m not being fed”
In terms of today’s parable, we could probably rephrase that reason like this:
o I’m not getting enough of someone else’s oil.
I really like how Mr. Loy responded to that reason, so rather than trying to come up with something clever on my own, let me just share his words:
To leave a church because you’re not getting enough substance is a cop out. Your primary call in the church is to contribute, not just to consume. As a Christian, you shouldn’t require spoon-feeding for the rest of your life. Eventually you need to learn how to feed yourself so that in time you can actually feed others. Remember your call is not just to be a disciple but to make disciples.
One of the other five reasons is closely related to the first:
• “My needs aren’t being met”
Once again, I’ll just share the author’s response:
The church doesn’t exist to meet your needs. You are a part of the church that exists to meet the needs of the world. So put away the shopping cart and pick up a shovel.
Mr. Loy is really just making the same point that we’ve been focused on this morning:
I cannot live on someone else’s oil.
Are you spiritually running on empty this morning? Have you been depending on someone else’s oil to either enter the kingdom in the first place or to live as part of that kingdom? If so, the solution is not to live on someone else’s oil, but rather to get some of your own.
