Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Good morning guys, I hope everyone is well.

I get the privilege of taking us through today as we continue through our parable series.

Kevin took us through the parable of the wedding feast last week and today’s parable has to do with a wedding as well.

You’ll hear some similar items but my prayer is that we leave a little wiser today.

Let’s pray.

[Pray]

So… let’s read the text shant we:

A few things before we begin.

We’ve talked a whole lot about the Kingdom of God prior to today.

We’ve seen Jesus give examples of those who display kingdom qualities and those who do not.

We’ve talked about those individuals who are in the sheepfold and those who aren’t…we’ve talked about individuals that have been invited to the wedding and never accepted the invitation vs those who were grabbed from the streets and invited to come in and who accept the invitation on the spot.

Today we continue with the wedding imagery.

Except today we do it from the angle of 10 virgins, a bridegroom and a bunch of weirdness.

Background

I spent a little time this week really thinking through why Jesus would use this example to explain the kingdom of heaven and those who ‘get in.’

We get the general imagery of the fools vs the wise virgins but this whole thing needs to be set in context:

The bridegroom is Jesus Christ, and this parable describes His return.

In the Old Testament (; ; ), God pictures Himself as the “husband” of Israel, and in the New Testament (; ; ), Christ is pictured as the bridegroom of the Church.

The Church is described in Scripture as the bride of Christ ().

So… I don’t know how many familiar you all are with

The point of this story lies in a Jewish custom which is very different from anything we know.

When a couple married, they did not go away for a honeymoon.

They stayed at home; for a week they kept open house; they were treated, and even addressed, as prince and princess; it was the happiest week in all their lives.

To the festivities of that week their chosen friends were admitted; and it was not only the marriage ceremony, it was also that joyous week that the foolish virgins missed, because they were unprepared.

The story of how they missed it all is perfectly true to life.

Dr J. Alexander Findlay, Principal of Didsbury Methodist College, Manchester, tells of what he himself saw in Palestine.

‘When we were approaching the gates of a Galilaean town,’ he writes, ‘I caught a sight of ten maidens gaily clad and playing some kind of musical instrument, as they danced along the road in front of our car; when I asked what they were doing, the dragoman [interpreter] told me that they were going to keep the bride company till her bridegroom arrived.

I asked him if there was any chance of seeing the wedding, but he shook his head, saying in effect: “It might be tonight, or tomorrow night, or in a fortnight’s time, nobody ever knows for certain.”

Then he went on to explain that one of the great things to do, if you could, at a middle-class wedding in Palestine was to catch the bridal party napping.

So the bridegroom comes unexpectedly, and sometimes in the middle of the night; it is true that he is required by public opinion to send a man along the street to shout: “Behold! the bridegroom is coming!” but that may happen at any time; so the bridal party have to be ready to go out into the street at any time to meet him, whenever he chooses to come … Other important points are that no one is allowed on the streets after dark without a lighted lamp, and also that, when the bridegroom has once arrived, and the door has been shut, late-comers to the ceremony are not admitted.’

There, the whole drama of Jesus’ parable is re-enacted in the twentieth century.

Here is no made-up story but a slice of life from a village in Palestine.

So to recap: it was Jewish custom for weddings to happen in this fashion.

It wasn’t like the western…Save the Date.

Register for gifts.

Rehearsal Dinner.

Wedding.

Honeymoon.

This was a ‘hey here comes the groom everyone get ready because this happening now’.

And this has been turned into a little game…where if you catch the majority of the wedding party napping/not paying attention you had your man run through the street to announce the groom’s coming.

So…once again, we see the wisdom of Jesus on display and we also continue to see the Bible as what it is…a piece of Jewish mediation literature and we see the importance of reading it within its context.

The Jews

So… as we move on here…I’d like to map out our characters.

We know the groom is Jesus.

We also see that this parable was directed against the Jews.

They were God’s chose people and they were supposedly preparing for the coming of the Messiah.... they should’ve been prepared…and they weren’t and therefore they were shut out.

The is the tragedy of the unpreparedness of the Jews.

Jesus once again calls out the Jews for being unprepared.

The unwise virgins who should’ve known better and who were now going to be knocking at the door and wouldn’t be let in.

Jesus spend a considerable amount of time speaking directly to the Jews in the Gospel accounts.

The reason behind him doing this is deeply rooted in the narrative of the Bible.

I harp on this every time i’m up to preach but it is totally worth it.

After the fall in the garden God selects a people to be his chosen people… most of what he does with this people is to make them a holy, set-apart people.

And holy sometimes looked like… ‘not boiling a baby calf in its mothers milk’ or ‘not mixing your clothe fibers’ … God was calling a people to yes, be morally upright, but to be distinct.

And this story takes us through broken, sinful individuals who always failed to live up to these standards.

Abraham, Jacob, the tribes all failed to live this out.

We then fast forward to the Jews in Jesus’ time and they had entered into a state of expectancy of the Messiah to come.

We have this period of silence between the Old and New testaments… and this group, the Jews, went from expectancy to a mixture of following the torah but also adding their own versions of things into the mix.

They found so much comfort in their religion that, ultimately, when the Messiah came (and didn’t fit their frame) they rejected him.

[Verses]

11 Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12 But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’

The unwise virgins weren’t prepared for the arrival of the groom… and they paid for it dearly.

In its immediate significance, it was directed against the Jews.

They were the chosen people; their whole history should have been a preparation for the coming of the Son of God; they ought to have been prepared for him when he came.

Instead, they were quite unprepared and therefore were shut out.

Here in dramatic form is the tragedy of the unpreparedness of the Jews.

Universal Warnings

#1: Certain things cannot be obtained at the last minute

(1) It warns us that there are certain things which cannot be obtained at the last minute.

It is far too late for a student to be preparing when the day of the examination has come.

It is too late to acquire a skill, or a character, if we do not already possess it, when some task offers itself to us.

Similarly, it is easy to leave things so late that we can no longer prepare ourselves to meet with God.

When the Queen of England, Mary of Orange, was dying, her chaplain sought to tell her of the way of salvation.

Her answer was: ‘I have not left this matter to this hour.’

To be too late is always tragedy.

So… we, understandably so, are quick to point of the penitent thief on the cross—our dear St. Dismas… but often forget the urgency of our message.

Yes, we serve a merciful God but the warning in parables like this one are clear: 13 Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

The overall and easily seen thrust of the parable is that Christ will return at an unknown hour and that His people must be ready.

Being ready means preparing for whatever contingency arises in our lives and keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus at all times while we eagerly await His coming.

As seen in the fact that all the virgins were sleeping when the call came indicates that it doesn’t matter what we are doing when Christ returns.

We may be working, eating, sleeping, or pursuing leisure activities.

Whatever it is, we must be doing it in such a way that we don’t have to “make things right” (get more oil) when He comes.

This would apply to either the coming of Christ for His Church or for the Tribulation saints as they await His second coming.

#2 Certain things can’t be borrowed

(2) It warns us that there are certain things which cannot be borrowed.

The foolish virgins found it impossible to borrow oil when they discovered they needed it.

We cannot borrow a relationship with God; we must possess it for ourselves.

We cannot borrow a character; we must be clothed with it.

We cannot always be living on the spiritual capital which others have amassed.

There are certain things we must win or acquire for ourselves, for we cannot borrow them from others.

Some commentators will take this parable and look at the oil… the virgins were unprepared and wanted to ‘borrow’ some oil from the wise virgins but they couldn’t.

The wise virgins couldn’t prepare for the wise ones… you cannot prepare for your unsaved friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc.

Like we’ve said in the past you aren’t ‘responsible’ for their salvation either because ultimately you don’t save anyone… so our message is an urgent one of the fact that when the sky cracks your positional holiness and righteousness in Christ cannot be borrowed to anyone/ lent to anyone…

We cannot live on the spiritual capital that others have amassed.

Being ready for Christ’s return ultimately involves one major thing which manifests itself in several areas of our lives.

If we would be ready for Christ’s return, we must be born again through saving faith in Jesus Christ…His death, burial and literal resurrection from the dead (; ; and 10; ; ).

Saving faith in Jesus Christ will manifest itself in every aspect of our lives.

The fruit of the Spirit () will begin to show.

A desire for greater holiness and less sin will be apparent.