Matthew 25:1-13 - Ten virgins

25:1

In this chapter there are three of the most well known parables of Jesus. We should remember that all this teaching is occurring in the days between Palm Sunday and Easter. It is amazing that Jesus gave so much deep teaching in this most critical of weeks. “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like...”. When we think of the end times we tend to focus on the teaching of chapter 24, but what Jesus says in this chapter is part of the “end times” teaching, and at the end of chapter 24 He has said how good it will be for the servant whose master returns to find him serving faithfully. So these three parables show us something of what serving faithfully means.

25:2

So in this parable we have ten virgins. The virgins would be something like bridesmaids at a wedding. Now note that all of them were waiting for the bridegroom. Five were wise and five were foolish. Outwardly they were all the same, all waiting for the groom, but inwardly there was a great difference between them. All these three parables contain a severe warning, and the one here is that following the outward form of being a Christian is not enough, or can be misleading. Christianity is a matter of the heart, a matter of our deepest being.

25:3-5

At the end of chapter 24 we have been warned that Christ will return suddenly, at a time we do not expect. Here we are told to be ready for the long haul. The foolish versions had taken a lamp but no oil, it was like taking a torch with no spare batteries. The wise virgins had lamps and “spare batteries”, i.e. extra oil. So outwardly there would be no immediately obvious difference between the wise and foolish virgins. The groom was a long time in coming and they all fell asleep.

25:6-9

Though he was a long time in coming, he did eventually arrive, at midnight. Likewise, it has been two thousand years since Christ ascended, but one day He will return. All the virgins awoke and got their lamps ready, but the foolish virgins had a problem, they had no oil. So they asked the wise virgins for some of theirs. The wise virgins refused for there was not enough to share. Now we might think this was rather selfish of the wise virgins, but there are some things that we can only do for ourselves, and we cannot borrow from others. Too often when we talk about Jesus and Christianity it is all “too nice”, but if we look at the gospels (and the whole of the Bible) we see that there are many places where Jesus makes it clear that decisions and actions have consequences.

25:10-13

Realising they needed oil, the foolish virgins went off to try and get some (though how successful they would be at midnight is doubtful). However, the bridegroom arrived while they were away. The wise virgins went into the wedding banquet with the groom and the door was shut. When the foolish virgins got back they asked to be let in, but He replied “Truly, I tell you, I don’t know you”. We should take on board the severity and harshness of these words. If your picture of Jesus does not allow Him to say such things then your picture is a false picture. 

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour”. We are to be ready at all times. If we look back at the teaching in chapters 24 and 25 then we are to be ready for the long haul, and ready for Jesus coming back at any moment.

Matt 24:45-50 - Get on with the job

24:45,46

So what are we to do instead of musing about when Jesus will return? We are to get on with the tasks assigned to us. “Who then is the faithful and wise servant?” Notice “faithful and wise”. If we do what Jesus tells us we are being faithful to Him and we are acting wisely. There are no kudos in knowing the date or hour (which we cannot do anyway). It does not please Jesus, and it does not help us live our lives. Jesus has “put us in charge of the servants”. We all have responsibilities of various kinds. We need to get on with doing them! We are to love those around us, we are to preach and teach the gospel. We are to do the work of the kingdom. If we are serving God, then whenever He returns we will be ready. It will be good for us when He returns. The best preparation for tomorrow is to trust and serve Christ today.

24:47-50

The price of not following Jesus’ advice is really high. Jesus is not mincing His words here. The person who says “He is not coming back for a long time”. Such a person has forgotten that God sees all that we do anyway. Note that while utterly disobedient he is still referred to as a servant. We have a God given duty to be servants of the Lord. While obsessing about the day and hour is futile, so thinking that Jesus is never going to come back is a wrong attitude to have. Conversely, the good servant who does about his daily task of serving the Lord will be greatly rewarded.

Matthew 21:37-44 - As in the days of Noah

24:37-41

Earlier Jesus spoke about wars and rumours of wars, earthquakes and famines, and said that this does not signify the end, but they are the beginning of birth pangs (Matt 24:6-8). Now He tells us that people will be going about their normal daily lives just before Jesus returns. Note that this is the complete opposite of the approach taken by the prediction merchants. They look at the frequency of earthquakes or other events and claim that this means the return is soon. Jesus takes the opposite approach. In the days of Noah it was not as though people did not have the chance to learn, but they chose to ignore the message of Noah. 

24:42-44

“Therefore keep watch”. This does not mean keeping watch to see if we can work out when Jesus will return. The whole point is that we do not and cannot know when He will return. Moreover, we do not need to know when He will return. In fact we have the explicit statement that Jesus will return when we do not expect Him. So to spend our time trying to work out when He will return is the most idiotic, disobedient , utterly stupid thing to do.

Knowing the Father

Knowing the Father, a sermon preached at Gate Church International 

Matthew 24:26-36 - The return

24:26-29

When times are troubling we can become vulnerable, willing to believe anything that seems to offer hope. This is why the Nazis gained power in Germany. So we need to be very wary of people who say the Messiah is here, we are not to believe them. When the Son of Man returns there will be no doubt about it, no special knowledge or insight needed for it will be like lightning flashing from east to west. The carcass of v28 is the whole world system, there will be “vultures” who seek to take advantage of its demise. The end of the world will be marked by cosmic events.

This quote comes from Isaiah 13:10 and 34:4, but similar figurative language can be found elsewhere in the prophets. It is important to realise that the language is figurative. Now it might be that cosmic events do occur, but the focus is on God’s judgement upon the earth. It is the judgement, and the return of Christ that are the key messages of what Jesus is saying. Things will change!

24:30-33

Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven. The people of the earth will mourn, for the foolishness of their ways will be evident, those who trust in the Lord will be saved. Soon Jesus will tell us that no one knows the day or the hour, but this does not mean we are not to be unaware of the signs or what is going on. “When you see all these things ...” I think we should take this as applying to all that has gone before in this chapter. So when various things happen to a fig tree it indicates that summer is near, when the things talked about here it indicates that the return of Christ is near, “right at the door”. So what are we to make of this? There was a temporal application. The fall of Jerusalem also coincided with a time of turmoil in the Roman Empire, there was one year when there were four emperors. The realisation of what is going on does not mean we will know the date! It is a matter of understanding where the world is going, and how we should act and respond in that world.

24:34,35

“This generation ...” causes great problems to some. I think we should take it in two ways. One is that the immediate generation would indeed see the events that happened in AD 66-70. The second is that the whole of mankind will see the events spoken of, the “wars and rumours of wars”, the persecutions, and the return of Christ. In Isaiah we have specific prophecies about Cyrus, the defeat of Babylon and the return of the Jews to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. Those things happened and were real, but we also know that the words of Isaiah are looking forward to a much greater fulfilment, the fulfilment in Christ. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away”. We can and we must put our trust in God’s word.

24:36

This is the very clear teaching of Jesus that no, except the Father, knows the day or hour. There are two great mistakes we can make about the end-time stuff in the Bible. One is to dive into all sorts of speculations. Speculations about when, speculations about who is the antiChrist. This is almost uniformly unfruitful and a distraction. The other error is to ignore it, and the idiots who indulge in the former error are part of the reason many ignore the end time teaching. God has chosen to include endtime teaching in His word, and this must have been a very wise decision. So what are we to do with it? There are two very important lessons. One is that there is an end, this world will not carry on as it is forever, Jesus will return. If you like, we know the final result! The second is that it prepares us and teaches us how to act. If we look at this chapter there are instructions on how to live, particularly under persecution. The lessons about the end times are not just for the end times.

Matthew 24:17-25 - Time to flee

24:17-21

At this time there was to be no hesitation in fleeing, no time to put things in order.

There was only one imperative, and that was “get out!”.

They are also told to pray to God that this does not happen on a Sabbath,

when it would be far harder to get out.

Note that even with events that are decreed by God that we should still pray.

In verse 21 Jesus says the events would be absolutely terrible,

far worse than anything that had ever happened before, or would happen again.

The Jewish historian, Josephus, described the events in similar terms.

So how are we to interpret this?

Are we to take this as an absolutely literal description,

or as a graphic description meant to impress the horror of the events,

but not meant to be taken absolutely literally?

Utterly terrible events did happen in AD 70.

Does that mean these events are the complete fulfilment of the words of Jesus?

I.e. supporting a preterist view point? The problem with this is that it is hard to say that these events have never been equalled again in history. What about the holocaust?

24:22-25

These would be bad, but they could have been much worse.

Jesus says they were cut short for the sake of the elect.

This seems to have two important implications.

One is that there is an “elect”, a people elected by God for salvation.

The second is that the elect will be around at the time of tribulation.

People will be so desperate that they will long for some sort of Messiah,

so they will be ready to grasp at any straw.

It is at times of desperation that dictators tend to arise in nations,

for people long for order to be restored and think “things cannot be any worse than they are now”.

We need to watch out for false messiahs and not be taken in.

Some of these false prophets and messiahs will perform “great signs and wonders”.

We must not be deceived, the truth of God’s word is what matters.

Then again we have mention of the elect, and Jesus tells us that He has pointed these things out ahead of time.

Note that while we are the “elect” this does not mean that we do not have any responsibility.

We do have responsibility, and part of that is to be on our guard.

Sermon on Ecclesiastes

A sermon on Ecclesiastes, preached at Gate Church International