Sermon Tone Analysis

Pray for all of the families right now within the family at CWC, who are dealing with the Covid-19 virus.

You know, when I was a boy growing up in Chattanooga, TN, my good friend that I grew up with, Terry, was a part of an organization that, for decades in our country, was an organization that was considered honorable and well respected as to the upbringing and character development of a young man.

That organization was of course, the Boy Scouts of America.

And for two reasons I became a Boy Scout myself.

One, because, as I just stated, my best friend Terry was a part of the Boy Scouts and two, because my dad was a part of the Boy Scouts when he was my age at that time, and so I decided that I would join as well!

And please hear me out, it was a really good learning experience in my life.

There are things that have transpired over the last couple of decades within the organization that I completely disagree with, but at least when I was in the organization, there were many great traits that we were taught as members of the Boy Scouts.

Years ago in this nation, when a young man attained the level of being an “Eagle Scout”, which was the highest honor that you could attain within the Boy Scouts, and one that took a long time and a lot of dedication to acquire, it was a huge thing!

The newspapers would be there for the ceremony as they awarded the young man his status as an Eagle Scout and a large crowd would attend the ceremony to honor the young man!

And wherever that young man went in his life, anytime anyone saw on his résumé that he was an Eagle Scout, they just knew that they were potentially getting the highest caliber of a person that there was!

That status carried clout and notoriety for the life of the man who had earned it!

The Boy Scouts taught each young man about a 12 point standard of life that they were to live by.

Those steps said that a Scout was to be: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

And along with these standards of life, they also taught each young man the Boy Scout Oath, which was to be committed to memory and which stated, “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”

And the motto for the Boy Scouts was, “Be Prepared”!

Robert Bayden-Powell, the founder of the organization, wrote that to “Be Prepared” means, “you are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your duty.”

“BE PREPARED; be in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your duty; be mentally awake!”

And it’s with this thought process, of “being prepared and in a state of readiness and of continually being mentally awake”, that we will look at a very familiar parable this morning that Yeshua taught us in the gospel of Matthew.

So, if you have your Bibles ready, turn with me please to the book of Matthew 25:1-13, and we will begin reading there.

As I just mentioned, this passage, this parable, is very familiar within the Body of Christ.

And if you read before and after this parable, as to what our Lord and Savior is talking about and who He is talking to, there is not some great mystery as to what He is stressing to us from within this passage and those around it!

Back in chapter 24 of Matthew, we find the disciples of Yeshua coming to Him after they have all left the temple and they comment to Him about the beauty of the temple and about the stones and all of the detailed structures.

This temple, according the Jewish leaders in John 2:20, took some 46 years to build and it was magnificent in every detail!

One commentary said this of the temple, “From a distance it looked like a mountain of gold, because its nine massive gates and much of its exterior was plated with gold and silver.

The great bronze gate alone was worth more than any of the other gates.”:

The historian Josephus recorded this detail about the temple in Jerusalem, “The exterior of the building wanted nothing that could astound either mind or eye.

For, being covered on all sides with massive plates of gold, the sun was no sooner up than it radiated so fiery a flash that persons straining to look at it were compelled to avert their eyes, as from the solar rays.

To approaching strangers it appeared from a distance like a snow-clad mountain; for all that was not overlaid with gold was of purest white.

Some of the stones in the building were forty-five cubits in length, five in height and six in breadth.”

The incredible size of the foundation's stones, almost the size of boxcars, was breath-taking.

The Temple was indeed a wonder!

And as the disciples made a big ta-do about the temple and its glory and splendor before Yeshua, He simply said the following to them in Matthew 24:2, “You see all these, do you not? (talking about the stones and the buildings) Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”

And soon thereafter, the Lord went and sat down atop the Mount of Olives, which was across from and slightly elevated above the temple to give a perfect view of it, as His disciples, specifically, Peter, James, John and Andrew came to Him and asked Him, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are going to be fulfilled?”

And it was here, that Jesus began teaching what we know to be, His “Olivet Discourse”, where He gave details about, both the fall of the temple and of Jerusalem, as well as details that pertain to His second coming.

Or what is referred to as His “Parousia”, which means His return!

This same discourse is also found in the gospels of Mark 13 as well as Luke 21:5-36.

And yes, there is much information packed into this teaching, and yes, there is much debate about everything that He was saying to the disciples and to us as well within these verses, especially as to the timing of everything.

No one can perfectly give all of the detailed answers that people want pertaining to this teaching, because Yeshua didn’t give it in such a way as for us to have them all, in exact detail and in a chronological manner!

Though men have tried and tried and speculated for centuries about these verses and about this teaching and wracked their little eschatological brains for answers and used all of their deep seminary theology to deduce and come up with their flavor and spin upon its meaning for the “Olivet Discourse”, in the end, there remains much speculation.

BUT, as to the reasoning for Yeshua giving this parable, the parable of the 10 virgins as well as a few more parables like it, we can see with clarity, the main emphasis that He was making to His disciples and to us, and without trying to dig some deep, bottomless theological hole to get lost within!!

At the opening of this parable, Jesus changes the time perspective with which He usually refers to when He spoke of the kingdom of heaven/God.

For instance, when Jesus spoke of the parables in Matthew 13 that He gave, as in the parable of the Weeds, He opened by saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to...”.

Or with the parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven, Yeshua opened these two parables up in the same way, by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like...”.

Again in the parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value, He started them both out by saying, “The kingdom of Heaven is like...”.

The point being, whenever He referred to the kingdom of heaven in His parables, it was in the present tense that He spoke.

He did so, because with His coming into this world, the kingdom of Heaven and the reality thereof had broken into the present existence with Him and there is a present reality that we all become a part of as His children!

But, in this parable, you notice a shift; there is a dynamic change.

In the opening of this parable, Jesus starts off by saying, “THEN the kingdom of heaven WILL be like...”!

In other words, for the purpose of this parable, He is speaking of a future time frame and of what is going to take place that affects the kingdom of God here on earth!

This parable was not mentioning a future time period as some allegorical statement or to try and throw us a curveball, but rather, it and the other parables similar to it that Jesus gave at that same time-frame, were issued as both warnings to the reader, as well as sources of encouragement and comfort to all who paid attention!

So, let’s start off by taking a quick look at the people who we’re dealing with in this parable of Yeshua, shall we?

Jesus tells us that there are 10 virgins and that there is the bridegroom within the parable.

Of the bridegroom, we know Him to be the Lord Yeshua, as He is referred to the bridegroom of the church.

He said so of Himself, when the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist questioned Him as to why His disciples didn’t fast as they did.

To this, Jesus answered that as long as the bridegroom (Himself), was with the attendants of the bridegroom (His disciples), they couldn’t mourn.

They would mourn once He was gone from them!

In 2 Corinthians 11:2, Paul said that he had betrothed the church of Corinth, to one husband (Jesus), showing again that Yeshua is the bridegroom and the church, is His bride!

Just as God, Himself, in the Old Testament, is called the husband of Israel, as we find in verses such as Isaiah 54:5, where we read,

And again Jeremiah 31:32 mentions of God, Himself, being a husband to Israel.

So also is Yeshua called the bridegroom of the Ecclesia, His body, the church.

God is the husband to His people in the Old Testament and Yeshua, who is God the Son, is the husband to His people in the New Covenant!

That is, He is the bridegroom and we are the bride!

And in saying this about the bridegroom and the bride, let me quickly point out that in this parable, although there is a wedding and a bridegroom and a bridal procession, we are never introduced to, or mentioned of the bride herself in this parable.

Although we know Biblically, that the bride of Christ is His body, the ecclesia, the church.

But that is not the focal point here and thus she is not represented as such.

Instead, we meet the bridesmaids in the parable, who are the 10 virgins.

In a wedding setting back in the days of Yeshua and in that culture, the bride would have been looked after and assisted with her coming new life, by her closest friends and maybe relatives, who also were not yet married, and thus they were called, “virgins”, because that is what they were.

How different the cultures are now, that virginity in a young man or a young woman is something that has little to no value and something that people feel the need to try to give away, so that they can fit in with society, or to gain the “love” of another person!

And yet the God of creation and His created purpose for our bodies, has never changed.

The Bible clearly tells us that we are to keep our vessels pure and free from the sin of lust and fornication and that only in marriage do we freely yield that special give of sexual purity to and between another person of the opposite sex!

And that is what was expected to happen within a marriage back then, two people coming together on the night of the wedding celebration and becoming ONE FLESH, as God had created mankind to do.

And that is still supposed to happen today as well!

God has NEVER changed His mind, nor can He on His purpose for creation!

And real quickly, for those of you who may not very clear about the wedding process back then, in the days of our Lord and Savior, let me quickly try and create for you a mental image of what was going on.

Their weddings were not like ours today!

(ELABORATE on a typical Palestinian wedding process)

As to the other details about this parable that are mentioned, the virgin’s lamps and the oil for those lamps let me say this.

The emphasis is not upon the items of the parable, but on the care for those items.

In other words, Jesus gives no attentive detail about any explicit meaning for the lamps and the oil, but He devotes the attention of the parable to how they are are cared for by the virgins.

And that it what makes all of the difference for the parable and the heart of the listener!

Throughout the Olivet Discourse, as Yeshua is teaching the disciples about the signs and things leading up to His return, He mentions four times to them that no one knows the day nor the hour of His second coming!

And then He gives a series of parables about the fact that the day and hour of His second coming would catch EVERYONE off-guard!

And with that same mindset in place, that we DO NOT KNOW the day and the hour of our Lord’s return, we can derive the purpose and the meaning of the parable of the 10 Virgins, as well as the parable of the Thief and the house owner and the Faithful/Wicked servant and the parable of the Talents.

Look at what happens with the 10 virgins in the parable.

We are told that there 5 wise virgins and 5 foolish virgins.

(The word for wise in the Greek, refers to someone who has gained understanding from having insight.

On the other hand, the word for foolish used in this parable, which is the, mōrŏs, means to be dull and stupid; a blockhead!

From the word mōrŏs, we get our word, “moron”!

And what separates the 5 wise from the 5 foolish virgins?

Simply this: the five wise virgins made the proper preparations to keep their lamps burning until the return of the bridegroom and thus they were ready to enter in with him into the wedding celebration!

The five foolish virgins brought NO extra oil for their lamps, and thus when it came time to join in with the bridegroom for the wedding celebration, they had no oil, no LIGHT and thus they couldn’t be identified with the bridegroom and the wedding procession and they were excluded!

The parable informs us that the bridegroom was delayed in His coming and because of this “delay” all 10 virgins became drowsy and they thus fell asleep.

There is no chastisement for their falling asleep, as all 10 of them, the wise and the foolish became tired and slept.

This is not about the “good” and the “bad” virgins, the “holy” and the “unholy” virgins.

This parable is about one group who did what was needed, even in the face of a prolonged period of waiting, to be able to go out and join in with the bridegroom at His return!

Look, in this life, just like with the virgins and their prolonged period of waiting for the bridegroom, we too become tired and weary.

And yes, we sleep in between going about with our normal lives.

But within our normal lives, we are to EVER be vigilant and longing to see the return of our Lord!

The five foolish virgins claimed to be a part of the bridal procession: they looked like the five wise virgins, the talked liked them, they walked like them, they carried lamps like them and the went around declaring that they were excited to see the bridegroom come and to be a part of the wedding ceremony!

BUT........in the end, the truth came out and it was revealed that they had no oil for their lamps.