Sermon Tone Analysis

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.

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

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

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

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:

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:

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.

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.

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.