Matthew 25:1-13
“Am I Doing Things My Way Or God’s Way?”
By: Rev. Kenneth Sauer, Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport News, VA
One day, while visiting a home for mentally challenged children...
...operated by a Christian friend...
...a minister noticed the tiny handprints of children covering the window.
“Why are their handprints all over your window?”, asked the minister.
“Oh, those,” his friend replied.
“The children here love Jesus, and they are so eager for Him to return that they lean against the windows
as they look up to the sky.”
In the parable of the Ten Virgins, the ten virgins were waiting for the bridegroom to come with word that
the wedding feast was now ready.
Five were foolish and five were wise.
One of the wonderful things about understanding the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it has nothing at all to
do with the level of our IQ’s.
What distinguishes the wise from the foolish is prepardness. The wise are ready for the marriage feast; the
foolish are not ready.
If Jesus were telling this parable today, He might replace lamps with flashlights.
Have you ever noticed that whenever you really need a flashlight, the batteries are often dead?
The oil for the lamps is faith and faith is something that takes constant recharging.
Is our faith being constantly recharged?
Our we prepared for the second coming of Christ...
...like the children in that home for the mentally challenged?
From Matthew chapter 24 on...
...Jesus is talking about the end of this age...or His second coming....
...He tells us to “Watch out,”...
...He tells us that “No one knows about that day or hour....”...
...He tells us, “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before
the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and
they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.”...
...He tells us: “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.”
Throughout Scripture the symbolism lying behind this parable involves three pictures:...
...Christ is the bridegroom...
...Believers and the Church are pictured as the bride of Christ...
...and the return of Christ is pictured as a great marriage feast.
Jesus tells us that when He returns the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins (who represent people
who profess to be Christians).
Five are foolish and five are wise...
...and there is going to be a separation of the wise from the foolish.
Now, remember, the kingdom of heaven does not only refer to the perfect state of being in the future...
...it also refers to the present imperfect state of religion in the church.
And when Christ returns, something will be clearly seen---the foolish within the kingdom shall be separated
from the wise.
For a little background on this parable....
...among the Jews...
...the wedding festivities lasted for a whole week, and the bridegroom was allowed to show up at any moment.
The bride had ten young ladies or virgins who were always supposed to be prepared to rush out and
meet the bridegroom.
In the event that the bridegroom came at night, the virgins were to have lamps ready so they could go out
to light his path along the streets...
...and this is the picture that Christ is painting of His return.
Now, notice that there is no visible difference between the virgins.
They all had lamps, and they were all called to participate in the marriage feast.
In verse 5 Christ says an interesting thing....
....there was a long delay before the bridegroom came and all the virgins slumbered and slept...
....it wasn’t just the foolish who slept...
....but all the virgins slept.
And isn’t this so true throughout our Christian journey?
Even the true believers grow weary and at times find it difficult to stay awake and alert...
...it is very difficult for us to stay at our peak performance all the time...
...I know this is true in my life.
No believer, no matter who we are...walk anywhere near as close to Christ as we should.
The world is just too dark...
...and the darkness is so heavy that it is nearly impossible for any of us to be victorious over the pull of heavy
eyelids.
We have so many “things” competing for our attention....
....often we find it so easy to get so caught up in the ridiculous....
....it’s so easy to let pride and ego lead us instead of Christ...
....and sometimes it is very difficult to distinguish the difference between pride and ego and Christ Himself!
Am I doing things my way or God’s way?
This is a question that we must continually ask ourselves if we are to be prepared....
And when we wake up to the fact that we have been doing things our way...
...and honestly repent....
...moving back to God’s way....
...we learn from our errors and come closer and closer in our walk with God.
...we become more and more wise!
But in order to be able to do this we must pray without ceasing....
...we must be disciplined in our private Bible study time with God...
...we must meet together with other believers for Bible study and prayer...
...we must make it a point to regularly and consistently attend worship and Sunday School--whether we feel like it
or not...
...and we must do a lot of honest self-examination.....
...seeking to walk with Christ daily...
...through the power of the Holy...
...and through what we learn from our mistakes, what we learn from our triumphs, and what we learn from
the Word of God and our fellowship with other believers....we become wise!
This is the kind of stuff that Satan hates the most....but God loves the most!
This is the constant recharging of our faith!
Let us not be decieved:
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
If our lives are not bearing good fruit...it’s time to go back to the rule book of life...meditate on the
problem and the solution to the problem...then repent and go on!
Christ said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the
person who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
What is the will of the Father?
... “For everyone who asks recieves; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be
opened.”
Remember the fervent zeal that we all had when we were saved?
Why...for so many of us...does this zeal die out as time passes?
Maybe we have not lost all our love for Christ....but we have moved away from our first love....
....Maybe we have not stopped all our worship of God...but it is no longer our number 1 priority....
....Maybe we haven’t completely stopped witnessing for Christ, but we have cooled it down quite a
bit....
....Maybe we have not turned away from all righteousness....but our attention has been diverted.
Remember that the virgins allowed themselves to become drowsy, and then their drowsiness led to sleep!
We must guard against slumbering...
...against cooling off.
If we slumber a little and cool off a little-for just a little while...
...it may not seem too serious....
...but it is the first step...
...as small as it may seem...
...toward heavy eyelids!
“At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!”
The summons will be a great surprise!
It will be totally unexpected!
It will come at a surprising hour...when sleep is most desired and unlikely to be disturbed.
A couple of months ago, Jeanne and I were in bed sleeping at 4 o’clock in the morning when suddenly the
door-bell rang!
We had no idea what to expect.
This was totally unexpected.
We are not surprised to hear the door-bell ring at 4 in the afternoon...but at 4 in the morning?
The person at the door happened to be a stranger suffering from Alzheimer’s--and she needed help badly....
Only by the grace of God were we able to help!
All the virgins woke up and began to prepare their lamps.
But the foolish virgins discovered a shocking fact: their lamps were burned out!
The bridegroom had not come while their lamps were burning, and now their lamps had used up all the
oil they had.
They became frantic, because they saw that they were not prepared.
They did not have the oil (or the righteousness which comes by faith) which is necessary to burn their
lamps (or their Christian professions).
And they found out the hard way...in the hardest way imaginable that faith is nontransferable!
The wise virgins wouldn’t share with the foolish virgins.
Now, on the surface, this may seem selfish.
But we are talking about faith.
The oil is faith.
And while faith can be shared with others, it cannot be transferred from one person to another....
....our faith must be our own!
...remember, God has no grandchildren!
The faith of our mother, father or Sunday School teacher won’t save us.
Each of us must accept Christ as Lord and Savior, repent, turn from the darkness of the world, and be
born again into the life of Christ.
The righteousness that comes by faith in Christ is the only oil that lights the lamp of life.
The righteousness of Christ is the only oil that is acceptable to God.
If we only depend on our own oil...not securing the oil of faith in Christ...
...then we are foolish...
...as foolish as the foolish virgins...
...for the bridegroom will come!
It will be at midnight, yes, but midnight is coming.
In fact, our watches tell us that it is almost midnight now!
Some things cannot be borrowed, and the righteousness that comes by faith in Christ is one of those
things!
In verse 10 we see that “the door was shut.”
Let’s not allow this to happen to any of us.
Are we sure of our faith in Christ?
There comes a moment in which the Spirit of God convicts us, calls us, speaks to us about opening our
hearts and making certain our relationship with God.
If any of us are not sure about our relationship with Christ....
...and we would like to be sure...
...we’d like to be sure that if the bridegroom were to come right now--we would be ready---let’s not leave this place
until we have made our humble confession to God, repented, asked Jesus to be Lord of our lives, knowing that it
is in asking that we recieve the right to become children of God...born again...not of the perishable seed of the
flesh but of the imperishable seed of the Holy Spirit.
