The Parable of the Ten Virgins

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What are you waiting for? Uh, that’s the question that propelled me towards a life in ministry, a life in seminary, and, uh, honestly, into this exact church. Uh, when I heard that question asked, uh, to me, I was standing in an evidence room of the US Postal Inspector in Tucson. Uh, I just graduated college with an undergrad degree in criminal justice studies, and it was the last week of my internship at the US Postal Inspector, which by the way was way more interesting than it sounds.

Uh, my supervisor and I were labeling packages of drugs. Uh, it was actually, I was standing in front of a table of like tightly packaged cocaine, uh, right in front of me. Uh, those drugs had been seized by the FBI. Uh, in a mail drop box nearby. Uh, so a huge part of what the postal inspector’s job was, especially here in the southwest, is to find and seize drugs sent through the mail, which is also way more common than you would think.

Now, my supervisor was a great guy. He had a long career in various federal governments, uh, for various, uh, federal agencies working for different government agencies. Uh, but at the time he also taught, uh, bible study classes and workshops throughout the week at his local church. But it wasn’t the drugs that were, uh, that we were labeling that had my attention as I was standing there in this evidence room trying to figure out how so much cocaine could get sent in the mail and not insane.

We were in the middle of a conversation, actually, uh, again, this was the last week. So I had spent a couple months there. We were in the middle of a conversation about how he, uh, working a full-time job at, in a government federal agency, balances a life in law enforcement with a life serving the church.

And our conversation went all over the place. But as I looked at him and as I talked to him, he seemed at the time to represent everything that I wanted to be in that moment. He was a man with a stable career. Uh, he wasn’t super wealthy, but he was taken care of. He had benefits. He had a family, he had a good job, and he had an audience to listen to him teach the Bible throughout the week.

Now, throughout our conversation, he was trying to convince me that I could work in the secular world with a quote unquote real job, while also working with a local church. You can do both. I remember how he said that vividly in my head. That was his answer when I told him I was struggling as I was ending this internship, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, attempt a career in criminal justice after my internship was over, or apply to seminary and attempt a career in church work.

There we go. Now, the longer we talk, the more I realized that. I didn’t actually want a career in law enforcement. Uh, I couldn’t wait to try getting my master’s in theology. I couldn’t wait to learn more about the Bible, about God, about philosophy and history and art and all the boring things. I couldn’t wait to pour over open books and then work alongside others to serve people in a local church.

Well then, what are you waiting for? I, why not just skip the criminal justice career head straight for what you really want? That’s what he had just asked me. And the answer that I gave was that, well, I was waiting for more life experience. No one was gonna listen to me. I was 22. Uh, I started working at this church at 23, and that turned out to be true.

I was waiting for more stability. I was waiting for more money before spending my free time serving the Lord. But the real answer is I drove home that night and reflected on that conversation over the next couple of weeks was I was waiting for something else. I was waiting for assurance. I wanted to know from God that I wouldn’t fail before risking my planned future of government benefits and job security on a life spent doing God’s work.

Who knows where. Now, that question revealed the deep attachments that I held in my own heart, the fear I had of not having enough money, support or stability, should I go where God was leading me? What are you waiting for? It’s a question that all of us have asked. It’s a question that feels familiar. It’s a question that actually points to our deepest aches as human beings here today.

And it’s essentially the question that Jesus wants his disciples to ask and the parable that we just read. And so this morning, we’re continuing our teaching series, working through these parables of Jesus. Uh, the parables, as we’ve said before, are some of the most familiar, but also some of the most misunderstood of Jesus’ teachings.

They’re stories that Jesus tells. They’re riddles. They’re pictures that reveal a truth about the kingdom for us to linger with and ponder. Now, the parable that we just read is actually the first parable in a sequence of three parables all told back to back by Jesus in one sitting, at least according to Matthew’s gospel.

Our goal this morning is the same as our goal every week of this series. To sit at Jesus’ feet. Yeah, to hear the parable, to let it linger in our minds, sink down into our hearts, and then see what we can learn with our actions. Yes. Now, to do that this morning, we’re actually gonna look at just two of the parables, and I’m gonna break them up into two scenes, the wedding, and then sheep and goats.

First, before we do that, a little bit of context. Now, these scenes come at a time in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus has all but abandoned Jerusalem. Now, Jerusalem was the center of Jewish life, religion, and culture. It was established as the epicenter of Israel, uh, and represented the central point of God’s presence, made famous by King David centuries before Jesus, and promised to be the place where the new and long awaited Messiah would rule the world.

Jerusalem represented all that Israel was and all that Israel was meant to be. Right Now, Jesus comes announcing that the long promised kingdom has finally come to God’s people, the Jews, and he is there long awaited. In Hebrew, it would’ve been the word ishak or Messiah. Anointed one kristos in Greek, Christ the king.

Yeah, coming to into Jerusalem to do what God has promised that he would do since the beginning, restore creation back to him by establishing his new kingdom. That’s what the Jews were expecting, but what they weren’t expecting was the kingdom that Jesus actually came announcing. It was more confronting than comforting.

See, in this new kingdom, the way up is actually the way down, and it’s not the religious elites that will be at the top. It’s the poor in spirit. In this new kingdom, you gain more honor by giving it away. Anger is the secret, hidden sin that leads to relational murder. Lust is the secret hidden sin that leads to emotional adultery.

And the way you win over your enemies is by praying for them, not conquering them. Those most despised will be the most honored. Maturity is measured by your capacity to love others, not your adherence to the spiritual practices or the law. Man, that’s good. And Jesus as he comes announcing this kingdom is welcomed initially, but then he looks back on the city and denounces it because he knows though they’re celebrating him then in what we call the triumphal entry.

They miss the point. He gives seven woes, which are like seven curses, I guess seven like woe to you, Pharisees and all of that if you’ve ever heard that language before. He gives seven woes to the religious elites before then turning his attention to the city. Uh, just a few chapters before what we just read, Matthew 23.

He says this, Jerusalem. Jerusalem who kills the prophet and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children to gather as hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you weren’t willing. See your houses left to you. Desolate for I tell you, you will not see me again until you say Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Now, when the verses that follow, Jesus explains to his disciple what that moment is going to look like when he comes back to the world and all of us say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And honestly, it’s not a great picture. If you read Matthew 24, you’ll find Jesus predicting wars and famine, the destruction of the temple itself, which happened just a few C cen a few years after Jesus’ death and resurrection persecution.

In other words, the fourth quarter. That’s good. Now it’s an explanation that’s vivid enough to ignite the disciples and our imaginations and stir up the disciples and our anxiety. But then Jesus tells a few stories, stories that redirect the disciples attention and anxiety away from the end times. And back to the present.

Now, each of these scenes is meant to give us a picture, not about what it will look like when Jesus comes back, but what our inner and outer lives should look like while we wait. So with that, the first scene, 📍 the wedding, look again at Matthew 25 verse one. Now, at that time, remember, this is the end of the world.

When Jesus comes back. At that time, the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the groom. Now, five of them were foolish and five were wise, and the foolish took their lamps. They didn’t take oil with them, but the wise ones took oil in their flasks with their lamps.

And when the groom was delayed, they all became drowsy and they fell asleep. Now, in the middle of the night, there was a shout. Here’s the groom. Come out to meet him. Then all the virgins got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise ones, give us some your oil because our lamps are going out.

The wise ones answered, no, there was not gonna be enough for us. And for you, go instead to those who sell oil. Buy some for yourselves. So when they had gone to buy more, the groom arrived and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet and the door was shut. Now, later, the rest of the virgins also came and said, master, master open the door for us.

He replied, truly, I tell you, I don’t know you. Therefore be alert because you don’t know either the day or the hour. Now, there are a lot of details in that scene that we can get lost in, and so much of this scene depends on your understanding of how first century Jewish weddings worked. So with that, here are a few things about first century Jewish weddings that you need to know.

First, when you read the word virgins, think bridesmaids. Uh, it’s likely a better translation. These would’ve been just kind of single young women, likely friends or relatives of either the bride or the groom, at least 12 years of age, likely a little bit older, and these would’ve been, uh, women who were part of the wedding party.

Second weddings were not just a few hours on a sunny weekend. These were like festivals that could last up to seven straight days. Now, the specifics about how marriage celebrations happened at this time vary depending on the specific city and region and culture. But here’s what Jesus’ listeners likely would’ve been familiar with.

So when a, a man and a woman get engaged, they have a long engagement period called the Betrothal. But when the day for the wedding between the group and his bride actually came, then they would start with a ceremony and a celebration, most likely at the bride’s house. And when they were ready, they would then start a processional, like a small parade through the city, all the way back to the groom’s house where the real party starts, what we would call the wedding banquet.

Now these bridesmaids, as the bride and groom are ready, getting ready to leave the initial celebration at the bride’s house, the bridesmaids would be sent ahead back to the groom’s house to get the house ready for the party. Then once they figured that the bride and groom were coming back to start the party after they had gotten things ready, there are no clocks at this time, nor are there street lamps.

They would take their oil lamps with light and they would go out front of the house and wait for the bride and groom to come lighting the way, uh, for the rest of the wedding party. So in a typical first century Jewish wedding celebration, the bridesmaids are sent to the groom’s house in order to prepare it expectantly for the return of the groom with his new bride.

Now, from there, the story is pretty easy to understand. Uh, the bride and groom get hung up at their first celebration back at the bride’s house, and when the bridesmaids go out to wait for the groom after they get the groom’s house ready, half of them bring extra oil while they wait, and half of them don’t.

The groom is late. Half of the bridesmaids run out of oil. They have to go buy more, and while they’re gone, the groom arrives and the party starts. When the foolish, quote unquote bridesmaids get back from buying that extra oil, it’s already too late. The parties started. They’re locked outta the house, and they hear the four most terrifying words from the groom representing Jesus himself.

📍 I don’t know you

Now, this parable has a fairly simple meaning. Be ready for Jesus to return, or you might miss out on the party like a groom coming back to his house to party with his people. Jesus is coming back to the world to party with his people. Come on, and if we’re not prepared, we might find out that. We never really had a relationship with Jesus to begin with.

Now, I don’t know you. That’s what Jesus says, and it echoes a warning that Jesus gives at the end of his famous sermon on Sermon on the Mount in Matthew seven. Now, the point of these verses is this, don’t confuse activity for Jesus with discipleship to Jesus. Both in this passage and in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus assumes that our discipleship to Jesus, to him will include activity, but the aim of our discipleship is not productivity.

It’s not optimized lives. It’s not good mediation skills or good conflict, uh, good meditation skills or good conflict mediation skills. The aim of our discipleship is a relational connection with Jesus himself, the giver and sustainer of life. The aim of our discipleship must be to maintain connection to the vine, to abide in Jesus, to commune with God himself.

But a key component to following Jesus, at least according to Jesus as a disciple, is waiting. Right? Right. What are you waiting for? We’re waiting for Jesus to come back and start the party. And honestly, maybe that’s a great takeaway for you this morning. Maybe the invitation is simple. Aim your life at now at Jesus before it’s too late to live.

An expectation to wait is to anchor our lives in something that hasn’t happened yet, which is something that all of us do just by nature of being human. See, our first problem, uh, according to this parable, isn’t that we’re bad at waiting. It’s that some of us are waiting for the wrong things. We’re anchoring our lives in a better future, a better job, a better spouse, a better church, a better president, a better season of life.

And honestly, not all of these things are bad. It’s not bad to wait, but they aren’t things that can contain the weight of our expectation or the gravity of our hope. 📍 What are you waiting for? It’s a good question, and one that some of us here in the room need to ask. Are you waiting for something less than the celebration of the wedding banquet?

Is your discipleship relegated to Sunday gatherings and morning Bible studies? Are you running out of oil for your lamp? But there’s a deeper question that this parable wants to ask, and that question is this. 📍 How are you waiting? See, Jesus tells the story to his disciples, not just to get them to think about the future and wait for him to come back, which is honestly the takeaway that I’ve heard after, uh, hearing this passage taught for years is Jesus is coming back.

So just sit tight. Wait it out. He’ll be here soon. You don’t know when, but it’s gonna happen. No. Jesus tells this story to show the difference between true disciples and those who only claim to be disciples. See all the bridesmaids were waiting, both the wise ones who were prepared and the foolish ones who weren’t.

So how do we wait? Well, how do we prepare? Well, that leads us to the second scene. Before we get there, we’re gonna jump down a few verses and look at a story Jesus is gonna tell about some sheep and some goats. Uh, but wedged in between these two stories is another story about a man who wastes his master’s money.

It’s called the Parable of the Talents. Now, Whitney preached on this a couple weeks ago. I’m not gonna rere it. He did better than I could. So just go back and listen to it if you missed it. But as a recap, and for our purposes this morning, the point of that parable, according to Whitney, I think, is this

what you do with your resources here on earth, whether financial, physical, relational, or spiritual stretches into eternity right now. Hang on to that. So after that, Jesus tells a story. 📍 The next scene, sheep and goats. So jump down if you still have your Bibles open. Matthew 25. Look at verse 31. When the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.

Now he’s just being blatant. There’s no par. It’s just this is what’s gonna happen. Jesus is gonna come down the son of man and glory. That’s Jesus. The angels are gonna come with him. It’s gonna be a big deal. This is what it’s going to be like when Jesus comes back. Now, all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them from one another.

Just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He’ll put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, come you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to.

I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison. You visited me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink?

When did we see you a stranger and take you in or without clothes and clothes? You, when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will answer them. Truly. I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. Yeah. And he will also say to those on the left, depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

If I was hungry, you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty. You gave me nothing to drink. I I was a stranger. You didn’t take me in. I was naked and you didn’t clothe me. And in prison you didn’t take care of. And they too will answer, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, or a stranger without clothes or sick or in prison and not help you?

And then he will answer them. Truly, I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me. And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. It feels like a bit of a sharp pivot from a common wedding celebration to a story about goats going to hell.

But scholars all point to this being the story that ties everything together. See all three of these scenes, the wedding, the talents, and the goats, they’re about waiting. Hmm. Right. See, the wedding introduces the concept of waiting with preparation. The parable of the talents introduces that what we do with our stuff while we wait matters.

The parable of the goats tells us that how we see our roles in the world while we wait, also matters. That’s a word. Commenting on this scene of the sheep and the goats. 📍 Alice Willard writes this To wait means we encounter people with anticipation that this may be an opportunity to meet the Lord. To serve the Lord, to work with the Lord.

Yeah. He goes on to argue that it’s this scene of the sheep and the goats that explains all the others before it. While we wait, we don’t sit idly. We prepare with our money, with our resources, our minds, with our capital. Yes. But we don’t prepare by stocking up doomsday supplies and pointing people towards the clouds.

We prepare according to Jesus by anticipating that Jesus could come to us, not in the clouds, but in our interactions with those that we’re called to serve. Yeah, exactly. See, in our waiting, we’ve got jobs to do. And according to Willard, our role in waiting for Jesus to come back is to meet, to serve, and to work.

So with that, just a few thoughts on each 📍 first meet whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me. That’s what Jesus says, which means, according to Jesus, there is a special encounter with the presence of God that we can experience while we’re serving the least of these in our world.

And if the primary warning of the first scene, the parable of the wedding banquet, is that Jesus won’t even know someone who claims, uh, Jesus won’t even know everyone who claims to follow him, then our goal isn’t just to wait for Jesus. It’s to get to know Him, to meet him, and meet with him as often as we can.

In other words, the way that we know we know Jesus isn’t by how deep our quiet times are, how long our fasts are, how silent our prayers are, or how restful our Sabbath days are the way we know Jesus is by how ready we are to encounter him in loving service to those around us. How do we know Jesus? How do we get to know him more?

If we only relegate our discipleship to inward practices of Sabbath scripture prayer, all of which are good and vital to the life of a follower of Jesus. But if that’s it, there’s only so much we can do to grow in our spiritual formation.

See, if the goal of our discipleship is to aim our lives at communing with God, but we only keep those inward focused practices, then we will hit a wall that we cannot get past and we will not get to know Jesus more intimately, we’ll become well adjusted, emotionally regulated, productive individuals with optimized lives and good morning routines who don’t even know Jesus.

See, the remedy isn’t to work harder to do more Bible study. It’s to stop looking at ourselves altogether. Right? Right. And before we’re quick to analyze what Jesus means by, well, the least of these, uh, just like the, uh, parable last week of the man asking Jesus, well, who do you mean exactly? Who’s my neighbor?

Who do I gotta serve? Jesus is not speaking. Allegorically scholars here point out again that Jesus isn’t just talking about the spiritually blind who are lost and just need to hear the good news of the gospel. Though there are those in our world and our role is to witness to them. No, Jesus here at least, is talking about real people with real, inconvenient needs, financial, physical, relational, and spiritual needs.

Do you want a closer relationship to God? Do you have to serve people? And we don’t know how it works, but Jesus seems to promise that at some level, if our goal is to get to know Jesus, to actually know him, vital to that goal is serving others. Yep, yep, yep. Move towards those you have difficult relationships with.

Aim your life, not just at God, but at others in loving service. Which leads us to the next idea. 📍 Serve the greatest act of preparation for the kingdom we can participate in this side of eternity is the continued practice of using our resources, whether financial, physical, relational, or spiritual for the benefit of others.

What better way to train our hearts for worship in the new creation, which is what we will be doing, where all of our resources will be put together and shared than to practice doing that now. Right, right. See, our hearts are naturally dormant to what some would call spiritual things or what Dallas Willard would call the reality of the kingdom.

We don’t recognize it here on this side of heaven, and if we want to awaken ourselves to that reality of the kingdom here and now at some level, it can only happen when we begin to serve others. And service can look like a lot of things, meeting tangible needs, which is what Jesus alludes to here in this passage.

It could be being willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of another try being a parent, right? That was kinda a joke, but it’s also real. I mean, parenting is just a sequence of being inconvenienced and interrupted.

Serving could be being generous with your money. It could be being generous with your time. It could be simply being present to the work of the spirit happening all around us already in the lives of others, and then joining him in that. Yeah. Jesus says, when we do this, we are serving both the people around us and we’re serving God himself.

📍 Lastly, work. See, the kingdom is here and now that is core to understanding the teachings of Jesus, the gospel that Jesus himself comes announcing. It’s not here fully, but heaven has broken through what the Apostle Paul calls that thin veil separating heaven from earth, and that happened when Jesus came.

We don’t just wait, we wait expectantly. Yeah. In other words, we prepare again, not with doomsday rooms or apocalyptic predictions, but with our jobs, our families. The orientation of our lives, again, to hope to wait is to anchor our lives in something that hasn’t happened yet. See, the grand overarching story of the Bible is God renewing, creation warped by sin, one promise at a time.

What starts with a broad promise to crush Satan’s head and bless the nations of the world in Genesis ends with a new creation in Revelation with God’s people working and worshiping alongside each other. But we live in between the first and the last chapters, which means we have a part to play in bringing about the end of that story.

See, Jesus didn’t denounce Jerusalem and the Jewish leaders because they weren’t waiting. He denounced them because they weren’t waiting. Well, right? See, they were waiting for the kingdom, but failing to prepare the world for that kingdom. Wow. See, the point of the sheep and the goats is simple. 📍 We wait for the kingdom by preparing the world for the kingdom.

And if our preparations don’t include reaching out to everyone from the most honored and privileged in our society to the least of these, and we’re not really preparing. See, living with expectation for Jesus with our proverbial oil lamps lit and stocked is actually about moving our attention away from the clouds, waiting for him to come down towards the earth and towards the very people that Jesus served here before he left.

Using our financial, physical, relational, and spiritual resources to love and serve the people Jesus came to love and serve himself from the rich tax collectors and rabbis to the poor prostitutes and degenerates. See the scene of the sheep and the goats tells us that we might be waiting for the wrong kind of king and the wrong kind of kingdom.

We’re waiting for Jesus to come back, but we might miss him because we’re not looking in the places he’s already here. What? It’s entirely possible to live your life in such a way that you are completely oblivious to the reality of the kingdom here on earth today, and we’re missing the party. Wow.

📍 So what are you waiting for?

What is your life actually anchored in? Is it anchored in a better hope and future? Just for yourself, what future outcome are you depending on for your current joy and satisfaction?

📍 How are you waiting? Where are you passive? Where God is inviting you to be active? What holy work might you be missing out on in the kingdom here on earth now today? Why we stand and respond?