How Prepared Are We For Jesus?
If we look at this parable with western eyes, it may seem an unnatural and a "made-up" story. But it actually telt tells a story that could have happened at any time in a Palestinian village and which could still happen today.
A wedding was a great occasion. The whole village turned out to accompany the couple to their new home, and they went by the longest possible road, in order that they might receive the glad good wishes of as many as possible.
Everyone," runs the Jewish saying, "from six to sixty will follow the marriage drum."
The point of this story lies in a Jewish custom which is very different from anything we know.
When a couple married, they did not go away for a honeymoon; they stayed at home; for a week they kept open house; they were treated, and even addressed, as prince and princess; it was the happiest week in all their lives.
To the festivities of that week their chosen friends were admitted; and it was not only the marriage ceremony itself, it was also that joyous week that the foolish virgins missed, because they were unprepared.
The story of how they missed it all is perfectly true to life. Dr. J. Alexander Findlay tells of what he himself saw in Palestine. "When we were approaching the gates of a Galilaean town," he writes,
"I caught a sight of ten young women all dressed up and playing music, as they danced along the road in front of our car; when I asked what they were doing, they told me that they were going to keep the bride company till her bridegroom arrived.
I asked him if there was any chance of seeing the wedding, but he shook his head, saying in effect: `It might be tonight, or tomorrow night, or in a fortnight's time; nobody ever knows for certain.'
So the bridegroom comes unexpectedly, and sometimes in the middle of the night; it is true that he is required by public opinion to send a man along the street to shout:
`Behold! the bridegroom is coming!' but that may happen at any time; so the bridal party have to be ready to go out into the street at any time to meet him, whenever he chooses to come.
Other important points are that no one is allowed on the streets after dark without a lighted lamp, and also that, when the bridegroom has once arrived, and the door has been shut, late-comers to the ceremony are not admitted."
There the whole drama of Jesus' parable is re-enacted in the twentieth century. Here is no synthetic story but a slice of life from a village in Palestine.
Like so many of Jesus' parables, this one has an immediate and local meaning, and also a wider and universal meaning.
First, its immediate point was directed as a criticism against the chosen people of God; in a real sense their whole history should have been a preparation for the coming of the Son of God; They actually were waiting for the Messiah to come. This was built into their understanding of God.
And really, they ought to have been prepared for him when he came. Instead they were quite unprepared and so those who were unprepared to receive God when He came in the person of the Christ of the Messiah were shut out.
So this a very dramatic expression of the tragedy of the unpreparedness of the God’s people for the Messiah.
Now we know of course, that most of those who first heard the gospel we're in fact Jewish. There were a few Gentiles and a few Samaritan's as well, but since Jesus I've come to the lost sheep of Israel, it was in fact
people among God’s chosen, the Jews, who did respond in faith to Jesus. But of course many did not, and the Pharisees, as religious leaders, kind of represented that general of rejection the Messiah when he came.
Let’s look at the key people in the parable:
The Groom
The groom in this parable is none other than Jesus. Elsewhere in Scripture Jesus is referred to directly or indirectly as a bridegroom.
The Virgins
In the parable the virgins are waiting for the groom. Their name suggests purity. Purity of character perhaps, or at least we can say that they are focused on the bridegroom.
Their intent is to meet with the bridegroom. Throughout Christian history the 10 virgins in this story have been understood to be the church. We’re not talking about those outside the church and then those inside the church, we’re not talking church-goers vs non-church-goers.
There isn’t a sound argument to be made for that. We’re talking here about the church, those who profess to follow Christ. That makes this parable all the more compelling.
So we have 10 virgins in all who go on a journey. All of them are eager to meet the bridegroom. Half of them are prepared to meet the bridegroom. Half of them aren’t. 5 are foolish, 5 are wise. 5 took their lamps with zero fuel. 5 took their lamps along with jars of oil.
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!’
The bridegroom takes a long time to arrive and when he finally does show up, he comes at an unexpected time. It is dark. There is not enough daylight to light the path to the bridegroom.
For us, for Christians who await the return of Christ, or who await the day when we will see Him face to face at our death, we also do not know the day that that will happen.
The issue is not WHEN Jesus will return. The issue is not, should Christ tarry, WHEN we will die and meet Him face to face.
Focusing on WHEN can cause us to be obsessed with something that a) truly doesn’t matter and cannot be known by us and b) distracts us from the whole point of this parable. What is the point?
The point is that we need to be prepared. The virgins who took their lamps and no oil clearly did not know some important things. The first is what we’ve already talked about – we don’t know when Jesus will return or when we’ll face Him.
The second is that a lamp without oil is not a useful thing. A lamp REQUIRES oil in order to serve its function. The virgins who took their lamps and extra jars of oil understood that they needed to be prepared for the long haul, that they needed good fuel.
The Oil
Since this is a parable, an allegory…what does the oil…the oil itself, that state of having the oil mean?
Oil is a fuel. Most commonly, olive oil – easily available – was used in Jesus’ day. It is what keeps the lamp wick burning.
Without the oil, there may still be a wick, but the wick would either go out or burn super fast. So the oil is the part that keeps the light burning brightly. The oil is the fuel.
What are some things that fuel the Christian life? Enter some things that fuel our lives as Christians into the chat room. Go ahead. Really! Just one thing.
It might be Prayer - praying the Psalm; confession of our sins, praying for others close to us, praying for those we know. I keep a prayer journal that divides all of the people I pray for - hundreds actually - into 5 days, and then I pray most days going through a number of people each time.
What else fuels the life of a follower of Jesus and keeps our lamps burning, keeps us prepared for Jesus, keeps us in right relationship with God?
It may be Bible study, fellowship, deep engagement in community as a Christian – witnessing to the love of God and the cross of Jesus; the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit]
In a nutshell, if we’re to take this parable down to its essence and talk about what it means for us right here, right now, we can talk about the virgins representing perhaps two different approaches to faith. One is the “empty lamp” approach.
In a sense, when you think of an empty lamp, you can think of the bare bones of what a Christian is, the skeletal structure or outline of the way a Christian lives that distinguishes him or her as a Christian.
I might go to church, in person or online pretty regularly. I might have some little level of participation in the life of the church. I’d definitely want to call myself a Christian. It might include sparse acts of charity. That’s the positive stuff. The outward stuff.
For the empty-lampers, let’s call ‘em, there’s the same potential, the same access to the deeper life in Christ that everyone has in the church, the same availability of people to look up to, to follow others as they follow Christ…
The same deep wellspring of life in the Holy Spirit to drink from, the same God to pursue and grow to know and the same Bible from which to drink the revelation of God.
But somehow, and for reasons known to these folks and to God alone, there is the decision not to go there. There is a level of satisfaction with the empty lamp, the bare bones of the Christian life.
Perhaps distracted by other things, other apparent sources of light, there is a choice to not pursue at a deeper level the things of God. Or maybe something the Bible calls sin is a regular thing I do. I do it and I don’t really care what God says about it.
Or perhaps even though they are in the ‘Christian camp’ so to speak, they remain, in truth, unconvinced that Jesus is the only way to God.
They entertain that there are other ways to God, showing a lack of understanding and embrace of the gospel, and so they simply don’t have the passionate commitment to go as deep as possible into their relationship with God.
Not having any oil, there is not much light there. Not much witness to the goodness of gospel, not much pointing people to Jesus.
The full-lampers, let’s call ‘em, have made different choices with the same potential. They have kept their lamps full of oil, or if they have gone dry, they have pressed in to God and known the replenishing of the Holy Spirit.
If they have doubted, they have worked through their doubts enough to have grown to doubt their doubts.
And in the parable the oil represents the fullness of a life, the richness of a person whose character has been refined through deep desire for close proximity to God.
The oil suggests someone who through persistent pursuit of God in prayer and study of the Word, in worship and in fellowship and service to God and others, has prepared herself or himself for Christ’s coming.
What is essential to understand is that we live in the light and love of God’s grace. We are saved of course, not through the things we do, the prayers we pray, the amount of time we spend studying the Bible, our acts of kindness to others. Those are the fruit of our faith.
We are saved solely and completely by grace…undeserved, unearned, unmerited favour. When we believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, when we repent of those sins and turn to God, and receive Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, we have been saved.
We are encouraged though, by this and many other Scriptures, to work it out, to make sure that our faith has feet, to be sure that ours is a faith that expresses itself. May we practice a truly Biblical faith, so that what we believe and how we live that out in our actions is one thing.
