I believe in Jesus' Return

Scripture

Matthew 25:1–13 NIV

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 ones, 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. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ 12 “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ 13 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

Pray.

Introduction about judgement.... Court room...

Tell the story.... got a speeding ticket. I sat there in this little country courtroom and listen to stories of old guys fighting with each other because one blew leaves into the other’s yard and then got punched.

We don’t want to talk about judgement. I am sure you want me to talk about it because we are curious what might be said. But we dont really want to talk about the future judgement. And yet, we all want to be judge. We spend all of our efforts doing it.

I think the big questions we have though are:

Why judgment?

Who is in?

How will it happen?

There is not shortage of texts about the coming judgement in Scripture....

Matthew’s gospel has 5 discourses of blocks of teachings from Jesus. Matthew is doing a lot here by organizing or presenting Jesus in this way. I wont nerd out for you on that right now. But for now this discourse is Matthew 23, 24, 25. It is typically called the Olivet discourse because the setting is the mount of olives. But it is also called the discourse of the end times, becuase that is what Jesus begins to teach about in this discourse.

We will dive down into the text at the end but I also want you to see it with the rest of Matthew 25 for a few moments. If you dont have your bibles open yet, it would be good for you to do that:

10 Virgins:

5 with oil in their lamp and 5 did not prepare and miss out on the wedding banquet, emphasis on preparation

Bags of Gold:

3 servants

5 bags brings back 5 bags

2 bags brings back 2 bags

1 bag only brings back 1 bag because he was afraid to lose it

Sheep and the goats:

Separation of sheep and goats

Those who feed the hungry, thirsty, welcoming to the stranger, imprisoned. Jesus associates himself with all of these outcasts and visiting them is to visit Jesus.

All of these sermons or even multiples sermons, to fly over them in one sermon is to do an injustice.

Judgement is a separation of the righteous from the unrighteous

There is an obvious contrast here in these three stories. There are those that are given the inheritance and those that are cast out. No gray area.

Sheep and goats

Oil and no oil

Gold or no gold

The sheep and the goats is a fascinating image. Did a little research this week because I am a city boy and know nothing about animals. As a matter of fact when my kids want to go to the petting zoo and see the little goats, I am very anxious. I dont want to go in there because they scare me. I just tell lauren about this parable and send her in.

But notice a couple of things:

First, It is very obvious to all about who is on the throne. There is no doubt, when Jesus returns it will be clear and obvious. That is probably the only mechanistic claim I will bring today. (we for too long have spent so much time worrying about how it will happen)

Secondly, notice that none of the goats are going, “hey I think I should be over there.” Instead....

Matthew 25:44 NIV

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

In other words....well if we would have known it was you in prison, we would have gone.

The goats are not rejecting that they did not visit the prisoner.

The righteous will bring life into the world.

The unrighteous will find every excuse not to.

Righteous in the stories are:

prepared

entrepreneurial

Humble

Prepared:

The story of the virgins tell us to be prepared. There is life now so we live in anticipation of what is to come.

Entrepreneurial:

Now not in the modern sense of the word. I am not saying the righteous are those that are turning a personal profit.

Saw a story last night of another church doing a money-back guarantee on tithes.

The righteous are playing with house money. They have been giving life and they will walk in life in such a way that it multiplies life into the world.

The story of the gold tells of people that do something with what they have been given. Both the servant with 5 bags and the servant with 2 bags lives that are entrepreneurial with salvation. How can I multiply this?

Humble:

The sheep served not because they were trying to earn something or win heaven points or because they knew Jesus was there. They fed, visited, clothed, and cared for because that is what you do. It’s a characteristic now. This is the ultimate calling and nothing in this world can bring joy and life on the level of providing for others.

Our lives are much more marked by

(instead of preparation) “wait and see” .... I will figure this all out later.

(instead of entrepreneurial) Scarcity .... We live lives like what we have is not enough

(instead of humility) Hedonism .... life is about pursuit of satisfaction and happiness. CS Lewis, even in travelling the world, all of the romantic partners, all of the money, you will not find satisfaction.

Judgement is also a separation of the righteous

The Apostles’ Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism “And He Will Come to Judge the Living and the Dead”

The judgment that Christ brings, moreover, is not just a division between two kinds of people. When Christ’s light shines into our lives, it creates a division within ourselves. None of us is entirely good or entirely bad. Each of us is a mixture. The bad grows up in our lives like weeds among the wheat, and the two are so closely entwined that in this life we can’t easily tell the difference (Matt 13:24–30). Sometimes our worst mistakes turn out to produce good fruit. And sometimes we discover that our virtues have produced unforeseen collateral damage. Our lives are not transparent to ourselves. We cannot easily tell where the bad ends and the good begins.

Gregory of Nyssa:

The Apostles’ Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism “And He Will Come to Judge the Living and the Dead”

The divine judgment … does not primarily bring punishment on sinners.… It operates only by separating good from evil and pulling the soul toward communion in blessedness. It is the tearing apart of what has grown together which brings pain to the one who is being pulled.

We should yearn and welcome judgement

It is the relief of knowing who you are

A joy to experience refining

Therapy

Why Judgement?

Jesus is on a mission to get the hell out of earth:

Let me just wet your appetite here. We cannot dive fully into this idea:

First we need to define Evil:

Jerry Walls – The essential point is that evil is not something that exists in its own right in the same way that goodness does. The fundamental reason for this it that God is perfectly good, and everything he created was originally good, even Satan. Evil, then, must be defined in relation to goodness. As many classic theologians have put it, evil is a privation or loss of the good. So evil things are good things that have become deformed in some way and thereby have gone bad. Evil is a parasite that can only subsist on things that were originally good by corrupting them.

Then in a similar fashion, hell is to heaven as evil is to goodness. Heaven is the fundamental reality, and we cannot understand hell unless we understand heaven first, just as we cannot grasp the idea of a fallen world unless we start with a world that is originally good.

God’s redemptive mission in Jesus Christ, is to get all of the hell (evil) out of us and earth.

The hope of heaven is a place that God fully dwells with us again. That his kingdom is complete on earth. It is a joyous future.

Prepared with oil

We have another wedding ceremony gone wrong and this time it is the groom who is not honored in the proper way. We need to understand the wedding a little to grasp what Jesus is saying in this parable.

It is accustomed that the wedding feast would be prepared and the groom would go to the brides parents and negotiate the Mohar (or the bride price). This is proving to the parents that the groom is aware of the great worth and value of the bride. Once that is done then the groom would come to get the bride from her home. The virgins are bridesmaids so to speak that are invited to be a part of this special day for the bride and groom. They would gather torches and wait for the groom to return and then celebrate them by escorting the bride and groom to the grooms home. There they would participate in a wedding feast that could last days. This was a high honor for the women selected and it would be a nightmare for them to make such a careless failure that we see in the story.

The focus of these women is not on:

perfection (good vs. bad) They all fall asleep at some point

Activity (earning vs. not earning)

It is about active preparation. The reality is that we have all been invited to the feast and we can live in that reality of expectation now.

I don’t know in the story where the oil came from. It is provided, it was there for them to receive.

Our prayer:

God give me the oil. Give me the eyes to see the broken and lost. God give me the urgency to bring life into the world. God I want to live in the reality of the feast of heaven now. I want my torch to burn until you come. Tomorrow or 100 years from now. I want to burn. Give me the oil and I will carry it with me.