The Oil
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Christ’s Object Lessons Chapter 29—“To Meet the Bridegroom”
They do not know God. They have not studied His character; they have not held communion with Him; therefore they do not know how to trust, how to look and live. Their service to God degenerates into a form.
So they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain.
2 Timothy 3:1–5 (ESV)
But understand this, that in the last days ...people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, ...lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.
Introduction
Introduction
When I was a teenager my family lived in rural Kentucky. Most of us has a burn pile, or in our case, a burn barrel where we incinerated any trash that was burnable. If the trash wasn’t burnable, we’d bag it up in special bags that the garbage disposal people sold to us. It had to be one of those bags or we couldn’t take it to the dump. It was my job to take out the trash. But I had other things I was interested in and stuff that would take up my time so often the inside bins would be full long before I noticed. At those times my mother was kind enough to remind me to take out the trash. What she often heard from the other room where I was doing my own thing was an, “uh, huh. Sure.” And then twenty minutes later she’d remind me again, “Jason, please take out the trash.” Usually with a little more intensity. At that point I would begin to get frustrated. In my mind, I’d be thinking, “Didn’t I have my own things to do? If she needed it taken out that bad couldn’t she do it herself? I’ll do it when I have time!”
What I didn’t recognize in my immaturity is that mom was already overburdened with her chores that taking the garbage out was a significant burden for her. For me, it was a small task, but added onto her tasks, it was an added difficulty that she shouldn’t have had to bear.
I’d like to pay attention to what was happening in my heart during these interactions. A sweet request from my mom produced indifference. A more urgent request produced irritation and even anger.
We’re nearly finished with a series of messages taken from the last parables of Jesus. In each parable Jesus focuses on the heart, but in todays parable from Matthew 25 this is even more evident than the others.
Let’s turn to Matthew 25 as we begin to explore the parable of the bridesmaids.
Kid’s activity
Kid’s activity
If you’d like something to do with your hands, then here’s a something for you to draw.
In this parable Jesus tells the story of ten bridesmaids that are waiting on the side of a dark road for the bridal party to come by. They each have a lamp and five have an extra flask of oil. Draw these ten young ladies with their lamps. Imagine them out on a farm road with trees and fields around them. I’d love to see your drawings after the service today.
Now, lets read the story from Matt 25:1-13.
The Bridesmaids
The Bridesmaids
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.
Let’s stop for a moment and recognize the similarity between this parable and the others we’ve already explored.
In Matthew 21 we found two boys, one who openly refused to obey His father, but then repented and in love for his father went out and did what He asked. The other who said he would do what His father asked, but then he never did.
Then in Matt 22 we studied a parable of the wedding feast where there were worthy and unworthy guests. We found that the the worthy guests were the ones who responded to the invitation and accepted the garment provided by the king. The unworthy guests refused the invitation and even abused the messengers.
In Matthew 24 we found a servant who was asked to feed the master’s household while he was away and then the parable describes the faithful and wise servant who obeyed, and then unfaithful servant who squandered his master’s resources on partying and then abused the other servants and members of his master’s household.
Each of these parables is a comparison between two extremes. The obedient and disobedient, the worthy and unworthy, the faithful and unfaithful. And now, in Matt 25 the parable of the bridesmaids gives a contrast as well—the wise and unwise.
I believe Jesus is using all these parables to tell the same story from several different angles. So, before we read any more in today’s parable, let’s review what we’ve learned so far:
In Matthew 21 we found that God expects his people to bear fruit and give it back to Him. We found that there are three vineyards God wants us to be fruitful in—the vineyard of our own hearts where He has provided every means to grow the fruit of the Spirit in us; the vineyard of our church family where he expects a harvest of brotherly love and a maturing walk with Him; and the vineyard of the world where he expects us to cultivate and harvest the fruit of lost people turned towards Christ.
In the second message we looked at the parable of the wedding feast where we learned that we cannot bring the fruit of our own labor to God. Our best and most righteous deeds are filthy rags. We found that God has invited all of us — both good and bad— and he simply asks that we say “ok, I’ll come” and then receive the spiritual robe of Christ’s righteousness to allow us entrance into the wedding feast. Nothing we can do can ever help us enter the kingdom of heaven—the only thing we can do is to accept Jesus’ righteousness which covers our sins and gives us the right to the kingdom of heaven.
Then, in our last message we explored the parable of the servant “whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time.” We found that God has provided all the resources necessary, but he asks us to share those resources with God’s children both inside the church and outside the church. If we squander the Word of God on theological debates and squander the Spirit’s gifts on ourselves, then God sees us as unfaithful servants. But when we share the Word of God faithfully with our own church family and with those outside of the church God sees us as a faithful and wise servant.
Let’s repeat all that so it’s super simple to remember:
Bear the fruit of the spirit
Wear the robe of Christ’s righteousness
Share the food God has provided in His Word
With that in mind, let’s go back to Matthew 25 and start reading again:
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.
Imagine the scene with me. There’s a wedding going on. The groom has gone to the bride’s house and whether because of the bride’s preparations or her father’s hesitations, everyone expects theres going to be a delay. Anticipating the oncoming darkness, the groom has provided oil and lamps for several young ladies dens who have agreed to wait for the party at a particular junction in the road. When the party comes back from town the lamps these ladies are carrying are suppose to provide light so the guests can find their way to the next location.
The lamps in this story represent the word of God:
Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path.
And the oil represents the Spirit of God. In Zechariah 4 the Bible pictures a set of lamps that are fed from oil that is produced by two olive trees on either side of the lamps. The source of the oil for the lamps is pictures as inexhaustible. There is no end to the supply.
Zechariah 4:6 (ESV)
Then he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.
Notice another similarity with the other parables. While this parable doesn’t tell us explicitly, we can infer that the resources for this wedding were provided by the groom. Just like God planted the vineyard that produced fruit in the parable in Matt 21, and just like He provided the food for the faithful servant in Matthew 24, God is the provider of the resources in this parable as well. God’s Word is a gift from God. God’s Spirit is a gift promised by Jesus. These are God’s resources that are freely made available to His people.
As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept.
Here’s another similarity to the other Last Parables: there is always a separation, a period of time where the master is away, a delay. And in this story of the ten young ladies, we find them each in their post along the road with nothing to do but wait for someone to come by so they can shine their light and point the way to the wedding. But as the night dragged on they all, one-by-one, fell asleep.
But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’
At midnight, a time when the wedding party needed light the most, the call finally came for the party to come by. Notice how their lamps had all dimmed and needed to have the wicks pulled out of the oil and trimmed, and some more oil added. Simple work like this is a repeating theme in these parables. The master expected the caretakers of His vineyard to care for the vineyard and then harvest the fruit. The servant who was given charge over his master’s household was expected to give the household food, which required some preparation. And these young ladies are expected to keep their lamps trimmed and burning.
But, Jesus says that all of them slept. It would have been better if they didn’t, but they all did fall asleep. Sleeping wasn’t the thing that made some of them foolish, though. The thing that made them foolish was that they didn’t have “extra” oil to refill their lamps when the bridegroom came. Verse 4 says that the wise “took flasks of oil with their lamps.”
It’s tempting for us to think of these young ladies as five extra spiritual Christians and five nominal Christians. The wise ladies had more of the Holy Spirit, we think. They were more righteous. They were better prepared. They knew all the doctrines forward and back. In short, their light shone brighter. While the foolish had less of the holy spirit and didn’t know the doctrines and their light was not as bright.
But the lesson here is less about the quantity or quality of the oil and more about its duration. As a source of light, an oil lamp with a wick can only consume a certain amount of oil at a time. It doesn’t matter if you have a thousand gallons of oil, the lamp will only burn a certain amount per minute. Extra oil for a lamp doesn’t mean a brighter light, it means that the lamp can burn longer. The lamps of both the wise and the foolish had light for a time. They both had the Word of God and they both had the oil of the Spirit. The thing that made the difference was when the oil in their lamps had burned up and needed to be replaced some still had oil to refill the lamp with, and others had none.
Jesus tells another parable that can help us understand the foolish ladies better. It’s the parable of the four different types of soil in Matthew 13. For those who might not be familiar I’ll summarize it quickly. A sower, that represents Jesus, sowed seed, that represents faith in the gospel. He sowed it in a field with four different types of soil, each representing a different type of heart—a hard path that didn’t allow the seed to grow, a bramble that choked out the new plant of faith as soon as it sprung up, good soil that allowed the seed to grow and produce fruit (that’s the wise young ladies in the parable we’re studying), and rocky soil that allowed the seed of faith to grow, but soon it withered and died in the sun because the rocks prevented it from taking root. Difficulty revealed that the seed of faith hadn’t penetrated the heart.
The issue with the foolish ladies was that while they had accepted the bridegrooms invitation to help with the wedding and they had received at least some of the recourses He had provided to do their job, at some point they decided they didn’t need to take that extra flask of oil. They didn’t allow the root of faith to go deep into their hearts and as a result the root of their faith died.
Let’s read the rest of the parable in Matt 25 and see where it takes us from here:
And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’
Do you see the problem with this first sentence? “While they were going to buy...”
Did the wedding guest who bought a special garment for the wedding get any points for rejecting the free robe offered to Him at the wedding?
No, the only resources that really matter are provided by God. Anything else we bring to the table is not only inferior, it’s a slap in the face of God. When God pours out all of heaven and makes the ultimate sacrifice for you, when He weaves a robe of righteousness just for you, when He invites you to an all-expenses paid destination wedding, every single alternative falls short. The people who thought their new field or their new cow was better than the wedding feast ended up being judged unworthy of the kingdom of God. The man who brought his own garment and refused the king’s wedding garment was judged and cast into outer darkness. And these poor young women who bought their religious experience in the carnival of man-made religion are met with the final and terrible words, “I do not know you.”
The picture in this story of a wedding is the second coming of Jesus. At that time the door of salvation will be closed forever. All decisions will have been made. Jesus will take his bride to be with Him in heaven, and everyone who rejected the invitation or rejected the resources of God and brought their own alternatives will be no more.
Application
Application
So, what do we do when we hear this story? What’s the practical application for the everyday Christian?
The first thing we need to recognize is that God has given us every resource we need. In preparation for these sermons I’ve been reading a great book about the parables of Jesus called Christ’s Object Lessons. I love this quote from chapter 29:
Christ’s Object Lessons (Chapter 29—“To Meet the Bridegroom”)
In the great and measureless gift of the Holy Spirit are contained all of heaven’s resources. It is not because of any restriction on the part of God that the riches of His grace do not flow earthward to men. If all were willing to receive, all would become filled with His Spirit.
This is a fabulous concept. The foolish ladies in Jesus’ parable never should have lacked anything for the task they were called to do. They had a limitless supply provided by the bridegroom. So, the problem wasn’t in their supply. What then was their problem?
The key is in that last sentence, “If all were willing to receive, all would become filled with His Spirit.” The foolish ladies were unwilling to receive the resource of God’s Spirit. They didn’t want it. Sure, they started out wanting it, but as life got difficult, or the pleasures of the world distracted them, they stopped wanting it. The seed of faith began to shrivel and die.
Here’s the solution we need:
Christ’s Object Lessons Chapter 29—“To Meet the Bridegroom”
We cannot keep Christ apart from our lives here, and yet be fitted for His companionship in heaven.
In John 15 Jesus made the plan of salvation super clear: abide in me, and let me abide in you. Abide, that means to live. Salvation means to die to ourselves and let Christ do the living in our stead. Daily we drink from the water of life in God’s word, and daily we surrender ourselves to the Holy Spirit. And as we do He covers us with Christ’s righteousness and begins to transform our character so that the stuff coming out of our lives is unmistakably the work of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, and self-control. We abide when we bring Jesus into every aspect of our lives. We talk with him about all our relationship stuff and let Him tell us what to do. We give Him control of our money, and when we work we do our work as though Jesus were our boss. We stay connected to Him in prayer throughout the day, and when He points out an error in our beliefs or our life we quickly let it go and stay close to Jesus.
Do you know what happens when someone is saturated with the Word and surrendered to the Spirit? They start to shine.
Peter says that people will see our good works and glorify God, because they know that the stuff shining out of our lives is clearly the work of God. Jesus says, “you are the light of the world,” so let your light shine in a way that others will see.
Christ’s Object Lessons Chapter 29—“To Meet the Bridegroom”
Christ does not bid His followers strive to shine. He says, Let your light shine. If you have received the grace of God, the light is in you. Remove the obstructions, and the Lord’s glory will be revealed. The light will shine forth to penetrate and dispel the darkness. You cannot help shining within the range of your influence.
If we were to distill the truth of this parable into one idea it would be this:
Receive the Spirit
and
Let Him shine through
Appeal
Appeal
Are there any rocks in your life that prevent the seed of faith from taking root deep in your soul? The rocks are usually things we cherish and don’t want to give up even when the Spirit prompts us to. They’re the things that we see as more precious than heaven.
They’re the things that make us irritable when the Spirit says, “hey, would you please come help me over here?” What stands in your way from shining for Jesus?
When my mom asked me to take the trash out for her the things that made me irritable with her were so inconsequential that I can’t remember a single one. Maybe it was legos or drawing or fiddling with something mechanical. Maybe it was a plan I had to go play with a friend.
What is it in your life that makes you unwilling to let the Holy Spirit go deeper. He gets to that point in your soul and you shut down. You turn away. You say, “no, you can’t have that.”
For many its a grudge they’ve held for years. Some bad attitude that started because someone did them wrong but they just can’t seem to give it up.
For others its a habit that they know is hurting them and others but they’ve just grown so content with it that they can’t imagine their life without it.
For some its a pursuit of leisure or pleasure that they just can’t imagine doing without—the television or video games or gambling or novels or guns or dirt bikes or whatever hobby or activity or substance that they cling to so close while in the back of their mind the spirit is nudging them to “sell all that you have and come follow me.”
For some its a pattern of belief that they are unwilling to let go of. Some doctrine they’ve held closely to for a long time and they just can’t imagine their life without it. A man-made tradition that is so important to them that they cling to it instead of following Jesus. For some this is a false doctrine that defames the name of God, and yet they’ve believed it so long they can’t imagine it any other way even though the Bible shows them they are clearly wrong. But most often these kinds of belief systems are like the pharisees of Jesus’ day. They start with a nugget of truth and then balloon into formalized systems of religion that take the place of the Holy Spirit in the heart. No longer is the Sabbath a day of spiritual and physical rest, it becomes of day of rules and judgment. No longer is church about the gathering of God’s children in worship and praise, it’s now about making sure all the forms and systems are followed just so. And oh how the saints complain when the pastor changes up one of the traditions even a little.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Jesus is not honored by formal religious practices. He is glorified when we give Him our hearts. And here’s what that looks like:
Back when my mom was asking me to take out the trash, the best thing would have been for my heart to melt at the sound of her sweet voice. I should have made every effort to pause what I was doing, not because the trash was more important than whatever I was doing, but because my MOM was more important than whatever I was doing.
What Jesus wants is your heart. The only thing that prevents the Holy Spirit from filling us, is our own unwillingness to surrender our hearts to Him.
Did you catch that? The only thing that prevents us from being ready for the return of Jesus is our stubborn refusal to let His Spirit live in us.
It’s not hard to do. All it takes is a little word called surrender. Just give up. In fact, the Bible puts it even more boldly, die. When the Holy Spirit whispers conviction into your heart, just give up. Whatever He says, do it. Let your heart be melted by the unfailing love of God and recognize that He is your everything. Surrender to the call of God’s Spirit through the Word and through your conscience.
Anything else can only be described as foolish.
