Thinking ahead is a trait some people do not possess. For some of us planning in advance is our strong suit, while others of us can barely plan the next hour, no less weeks, months and years in advance. Take, for example, the guy from Michigan who bought a brand new, $30,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee. In the middle of winter he and a friend went duck hunting and of course all the lakes are frozen. But they headed out on the lake with the guns, the dog, and of course the new vehicle. Now, they wanted to make some kind of a natural landing area for the ducks, something for the decoys to float on. In order to make a hole large enough to look like something a wandering duck would fly down and land on, it was going to take a little more effort than an ice hole drill. Out of the back of the new Grand Cherokee comes a stick of dynamite with a short, 40-second fuse. Now these two Rocket Scientists take into consideration that if they place the stick of dynamite on the ice at a location far from where they are standing (and the new Grand Cherokee), they take the risk of slipping on the ice when they run from the burning fuse and possibly go up in smoke with the resulting blast. So, they decide to light this 40-second fuse and throw the dynamite. Remember when I mentioned the vehicle, the guns and the dog? Yes, the dog: a highly trained Black Lab, a retriever who’ll fetch things thrown by the owner. You guessed it, the dog took off at a high rate of speed on the ice and recovered the stick of dynamite with the burning 40-second fuse. The two men yelled, screamed, waveed their arms and wondered what to do now. The dog, cheered on, kept coming. One of the guys grabbed the shotgun and shot the dog. The shotgun was loaded with 8 duck shot, hardly big enough to stop a Black Lab. The dog stopped for a moment, slightly confused but continued on. Another shot and this time the dog, still standing, became really confused and scared, thinking his master had gone insane. He took off to find cover (with the now really short fuse burning on the stick of dynamite)... under the brand new Cherokee. BOOM! Dog and Cherokee were blown to bits and sank to the bottom of the lake in a very large hole, leaving the two idoits standing there with this "I can't believe this happened" look on their faces. The insurance company said that sinking a vehicle in a lake by illegal use of explosives is not covered. He had yet to make the first of those $400+ a month payments. Poor preparation may not only cost you a nice car and a Black Lab, but what is worse is when poor preparation costs you eternity. There is nothing so sad as when we assure ourselves of God’s favor, but do not consider what God has to say about our standing before Him. Sincerity is a fine trait to possess, but it is not the same as trusting in the One whom God provides for our salvation. Without proper forethought, you and I could find ourselves like the duck hunters who think of everything, but do everything wrong. Our passage is a parable reminding us of the importance of proper preparation. 1. "At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. 3. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. 4. The wise, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. 5. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. 6. "At midnight the cry rang out: `Here's the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!' 7. "Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. 8. The foolish ones said to the wise, `Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.' 9. "`No,' they replied, `there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.' 10. "But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. 11. "Later the others also came. `Sir! Sir!' they said. `Open the door for us!' 12. "But he replied, `I tell you the truth, I don't know you.' 13. "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour. The wedding scene Jesus describes is foreign to us. We don’t really know what the procedure was in the first century, but we do know that it was customary for the engaged couple to take a year for the preparation for the marriage ceremony. When the wedding day came, the groom would gather his friends and travel to the bride’s home to get his bride. She would prepare herself for his arrival and surround herself with friends who would be on the lookout for the groom’s arrival. The arrival often would be late at night and it was their job to provide a processional with well-lit lamps. These lamps were really torches, long poles with oil-drenched rags at the top. In order to provide sufficient light, these torches would burn large amounts of olive oil, so every fifteen minutes or so, more oil would be poured onto the torches. In our parable, Jesus sets the familiar scene with some very unexpected twists. In the previous parable the lesson is that the Lord comes home sooner than expected. Here he comes much later. While his arrival is later than realized (not unknown in a culture not ruled by clocks and watches), what is unthinkable is that some would wait for the groom without sufficient oil, and that this stupid mistake would cost them entrance to the wedding. There is a terrible price to be paid for poor preparation. Let’s take a look at the problem of poor preparation. POOR PREPARATION IS PARTIAL PREPARATION - verses 25:1-7 The parable centers not around the groom or the bride (she’s not even mentioned) but around these ten young women. One half are sensible, the others are just plain stupid. You know the type: The wheel's spinning, but the hamster's dead; they fell out of the Stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down. But on the surface the wise and foolish are quite identical - except for that small item of extra oil. All ten were moved by one desire: to welcome the bridegroom, to be part of the festivities. All had the necessary lamps, all fell asleep as the hour got late, all awoke to meet the groom. The wise differed from the foolish in one respect - they alone exercised their minds. They thought ahead and planned, knowing that the essential requirement in waiting for the unexpected arrival of the groom was having enough oil for the long wait. Their knowledge affected their practice. The dim-witted were caught up in the excitement of the moment and so led by their enthusiasm of emotions they didn’t complete the preparations. What kind of partial preparation might you and I make? It is far too easy to make a profession of faith in Christ, but to have nothing of the internal work of God’s grace. Just imitating the Christian life is never enough; it's only a charade. In the Church today as we have mistakenly reduced God’s demands to live by faith in Christ’s accomplished work for us to a set of moralistic codes of behavior, many of us find it rather easy to live in a Christian manner without a life transformed by the indwelling Holy Spirit. We think that lives under our control is all God desires, forgetting that ill-preparation is detrimental to the Christian life. With the lamp of profession in hand, but minds that have no sound teaching, hearts that are rooted in unstable emotionalism, some of us act under the influence of external inducements but are void of true spiritual transformation. A careless coziness with the Lord and feelings of warm devotion toward Him are dangerous if we think they substitute for obedience to Jesus’s ethics more. If you think a dramatic conversion will do the trick, your experience is only a lamp in the hand. The Christian life demands preparation. This preparation is by no means something of your doing. Rather preparation is the life of faith, flasks of God’s grace which will strengthen and enable you to persevere to the end. Endurance through time is what shows the real difference between the wise and foolish. The evidence of God’s grace in giving us faith is perseverance; it is the ongoing nature of the Christian life which encourages us to continue in faith. Paul’s oft-repeated quoting of Habakkuk 2:4, “the just shall live by faith," reminds us of the need to continue in faith. It was for this reason that when Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses on the Wittenberg door, the first thesis, the first call, was to a lifestyle of repentance when he wrote: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said 'repent' he intended for the whole life of believers to be a life of repentance.” One-shot Christianity is misleading and finally fatal. The lamp of experiential Christianity, without the flask of believing and obeying Christianity, betrays poor preparation and will result in exclusion from the Kingdom of God. Grace is both the lamp and the flask. A bright and dazzling beginning can fizzle out. It is far too easy to drift. Many begin in the Church, but in time there is no perseverance to make it through the dark times. There is nothing so sad than to know of one who, as the Puritans called it, possessed a false fire; they begin with good appearances, but in time lose interest, don’t possess sufficient oil for the long haul. They run out of gas; they made no preparations. This morning we have another baptism. There is nothing so dangerous as to think that your oil is secure because you were baptized. To think that what occurred in the past is sufficient for today and tomorrow is to live as a fool. Kids, as your parents presented you for baptism, you must respond in faith and make that sign and seal of the Covenant your own. Don’t neglect a good beginning by thinking that a past event is all that is necessary. If your profession of faith was later in life, don’t allow that profession to be all the oil you need. Preparation is an ongoing, continual part of the Christian life. Don’t think having good form as a Christian is all that is necessary; an inward life of looking to Christ is what is necessary. You may profess faith, carry a Bible, read it regularly, worship weekly with others, give money faithfully, but lack the essential ingredient of reliance on Christ. If that is you, you are a fool. POOR PREPARATION IS PIRATED PREPARATION - verses 25:8-9 When people do not prepare adequately and are caught unprepared, what happens next is understandable - they rely on those who’ve done their job, like the kid in school who doesn’t do his own work the night before comes into homeroom the next morning wanting to copy the work of another. As the hour got later, understandably all decided to get some shut-eye. During this time the torches would’ve been extinguished and re-lit when the time was right. It is then as the bridegroom arrives and the lamps are ignited that the foolish virgins notice they won’t have enough oil to make the processional; their lamps are flickering and spurting. The immediate question we may have is: why didn’t the others share - a basic lesson in life. As a parable there are questions we can ask, but not know the answers to. This is not a parable about sharing, but on preparing. Besides that, for the five wise girls to give their oil would no doubt mean that all ten would run out before the groom gets into the house. There is no reason for all ten to leave the groom in the dark because five stupidly neglected to prepare. Their forethought is seen in refusing to give their oil away. The preparation of others can not be done in your place. At times in the Church’s history some have taught that the works of others can be meritorious. Their oil can be shared. This view, called supererogation, is refuted by this passage as well as by the whole of Scripture. God’s grace and God’s grace alone is the only means by which I can be certain of my place in His Kingdom. I can never expect another to supply what I neglect to do. You and I can not rely on others for God’s grace. Not only will the works of other believers not pave our way into heaven, neither will our parents' faith be sufficient for us as we mature into adulthood. We must make it our own, we must “own the Covenant.” You can’t pirate the faith of another; you can’t live on a borrowed relationship. There is a great advantage and benefit of the communion of the saints; the faith and prayers of others is a great help, yet your sanctification, your growth in Christ is your responsibility. I can’t do it for you. I can lay out each week the necessity to see your own sinfulness and the good news of Christ’s death for you, but I can not make you eat and drink of the gospel and make you grow. Don’t expect the faith of a parent or a spouse, or a pastor to stand in the place of your faith. POOR PREPARATION IS PRETENDED PREPARATION - verses 25:11-12 Their poor preparation is a sham. They are fools because they believe they can recover from their foolishness. Their hypocrisy fools even themselves. They try to recover, but it is too late. They show up after the bridegroom has arrived and they respectfully, earnestly, but fruitlessly plead for entrance. Their cry of “Lord, Lord!” takes us to the melancholy petition in Matthew 7 when, in the last day, many will cry, “Lord, Lord did we not prophecy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?” Our Lord’s response is the same here: “Depart from me!” This is an expression rabbis used when dealing with students that refused to listen, refused to be taught. “Get out of my sight!” “I’m not working with you anymore.” This response seems so brutal that it shocks us. We should be startled. It is meant to put us on our toes. The kingdom of heaven is not how we envision it to be. Preparedness is absolutely necessary. We are confronted here with a holiness with which we are not often accustomed to. Jesus’s hard teachings warn people away from judgment. It is not loving to skip talking about judgment, for recognizing its reality will encourage us to repent. Their true character is revealed in the crisis of the final judgment, but for them it is then too late to repent. Their hypocrisy is uncovered and they are doomed. George Burns once said that “Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.” But such can never be said of the Christian life. Enthusiasm is never a substitute for regeneration. No matter how zealous our hearts or how exciting our worship services, everyday fidelity to our vocational is the main way to prepare for the Lord’s coming. At the Last Judgment, the zealous ones “ask,” but they do not receive, they “seek,” but they do not find, they “knock,” but there is no opening - because they refused to prepare before, their spirituality is fraudulent. We are, to our own destruction, rather well-trained in pretended preparation. We live in a day in which external appearance is more critical to our self-esteem than internal transformation by God’s grace. David Wells, author of No Place for Truth and God in the Wasteland, which examined the modern exchange of a transcendent God for a weightless god of personal fulfillment, has just written a new book called Losing our Virtue. In this Wells contrasts the two ways of understanding spirituality: Classic spirituality is rooted in the Reformation which came on through the Puritans and has come down into the modern world through Martin Lloyd Jones, Carl Henry, RC Sproul. At the heart of this spirituality is an understanding of God as Other, as over-against us, as God whose holiness is weighty and before whom we are accountable, who addresses us by His Word and we approach Him through His Christ. Post-modern spirituality is a hybrid, with elements of the Reformation and post-modern experience. Here God is not so wholly other. The Holiness of God has diminished, His love accentuated, the immanence of God (God within us and at times identical to our intuition) has been accented. God speaking over and against us has been lessened. What Wells describes as the worship of post-modernity is the worship of the five foolish virgins. They maintained the externals, the trappings of the wedding party, but rejected the necessity for anything deeper than that. No flasks of oil, no personal work and preparation. The thought and concern that to be ill-prepared would have consequences is lost. The fear of disappointing the Bridegroom is absent. They expect to be let in for it is inconceivable that they would be excluded because of something so seemingly insignificant as oil. The wise virgins understood that they stood in the presence of one before whom they were accountable. This is what sets off Christian spirituality, classic, Biblical faith from what is marketed today. We believe that we approach our God only through the mediation of the Son, that we stand accountable before a God who is holy. When God loses the weight of holiness we lose the need to change, to prepare. What then is to be our response so that we never hear: “I tell you the truth, I never knew you!” What is the proper preparation? How can we know if we are wise or foolish? “Keep watch!” In the Atlanta area there is a chain of coffee shops called Caribou Cafes. Their motto is "Life is short. Stay awake." That is what God calls us to do. We stay awake, we remain prepared not through some meritorious works, not through some great acts which convince God and others we are the guests who’ll be invited into the wedding. Rather we keep watch, we maintain jars of oil for our torches which God gives us for the task. We return again and again to Jesus’s promises that He knows His own sheep. We realize that, as Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:19, "The Lord knows those who are his." We know we will never hear him say to us: “I never knew you,” because we believe God chose us before the foundations of the earth and that those He loved He predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. We avail ourselves to the wonderful oil of God’s promises as we apply all the means of God’s grace to our lives. Our preparation, our watchfulness is a life of trust, of faith in His provision for us. Preparation is so important; our lives depend on it. We should not be like the man who became stranded in an Alaskan wilderness. His adventure began in the spring of 1981 when he was flown into the desolate north country to photograph the natural beauty and mysteries of the tundra. He had photo equipment, 500 rolls of film, several firearms, and 1400 pounds of provisions. As the months passed, the entries in his diary, which at first detailed his wonder and fascination with the wildlife around him, turned into a pathetic record of a nightmare. In August he wrote, "I think I should have used more foresight about arranging my departure. I'll soon find out." He waited and waited, but no one came to his rescue. In November he died in a nameless valley, by a nameless lake, 225 miles northeast of Fairbanks. An investigation revealed that he had carefully mapped out his venture, but had made no provision to be flown out of the area. God’s provision for you is a life of faith in Christ; look to Him alone for your preparation. |
