This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 8.15am (lay-reading), and Grace Lutheran Church, Childers, 9am.
Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and
from our Lord Jesus Christ.
But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom!
Come out to meet him.’
Prayer:
May the words of my mouth and meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your
sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
In our
Gospel reading today, we read a very rich parable of Jesus, the Parable of the
Ten Virgins. We read: Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins
who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. The scene that Jesus
paints here is one of ten virgins who are bridesmaids waiting for the groom to
arrive so that they can go into a wedding reception, or a wedding banquet. At
weddings, it is always important that things run on time, and there are a lot
of jokes about brides running late. If a bride arrives early, the car might
drive around the block a few times so that they arrive at the church at the
right time. But in our parable, it is a groom—a bridegroom—that everyone is
waiting for, and he is so late that everyone falls asleep.
In our
reading, we read that the ten virgins went to meet the bridegroom. And
later we read: At midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come
out to meet him.’ So who is the bridegroom in this reading? The bridegroom
is Jesus himself. One of the first things we read about in the book of Genesis
is the marriage of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with God himself as the
match-maker and the celebrant. And then, right at the end of the bible, we read
in the book of Revelation: I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down
out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. A
couple of chapters earlier, we read where an angel says: Blessed are those
who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Right back in the Old
Testament, in the prophet Isaiah, we read about a faithful servant of God
speaking of God like their husband: I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my
soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of
salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom
decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns
herself with her jewels. In Ephesians, Paul has a lot to say about this: Husbands,
love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he
might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or
wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the
same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his
wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and
cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his
body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his
wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am
saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
And so
you can see this wonderful reality described in the bible here of Christ as the
bridegroom, and the church as his bride. St Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11:2: I
betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. He
is not speaking only to the Corinthians who were outwardly celibate and
virgins, but to the whole church here. And in the church at Corinth, there were
virgins and widows, married people, and also people who had converted to Christ
from prostitution, who were adulterers and who had slept around, and also Paul
even mentions people who had converted to Jesus after having committed incest. But
when these people repented and turned to Christ, they became virgins again, not
because of themselves and their own righteousness and purity, but because of
Christ’s righteousness which covered them. As it says in Isaiah: He has
covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a
priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her
jewels.
In our
reading, we read about the ten virgins: 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.
On one
hand, in the bible, the church is always depicted as Christ’s bride. But in
this reading the bride isn’t mentioned, only these virgins, these bridesmaids.
And so, we learn from this that in this life, in the church on earth, the bride
of Christ is hidden, veiled. The church is often not a glorious place at all.
It often seems quite ordinary, even a bit uninteresting and boring and
commonplace. Sometimes in the church, there are fights and disagreements. From
the outside, the church seems to have a lot of hypocrites. Many people don’t
want anything to do with the church, because they see a community of ordinary sinners,
and if God were really in charge of the world, why would he bother wasting his
time with that lot?
But in
this life, we don’t see the bride in all her glory. We only see ten virgins,
five of them are wise and five of them are foolish. On one hand, the church is
found wherever Christ’s word and the Gospel is preached in its truth and purity
and where his sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are carried out
according to Christ’s command and institution. The Word and the Sacraments are
the Holy Spirit’s means that he uses to create faith in people. But on the
other hand, not everyone who hears the gospel believes it. But faith is
not something that you produce in yourself, but it is something that the
Holy Spirit works in your heart. You might even think: “I want to
believe, but I can’t”. St Paul writes that God wills and works in us
to his good pleasure. If you want to believe, it means that God is
already working in you, and you didn’t even know it. Thank him for working in
you—he will continue to work in you, and he has already produced faith in your
heart.
Now, the
Holy Spirit is not a toy. He is the living God himself, and the Spirit of the
Living God, and the Spirit of the living Jesus, who has risen from the dead. The
Holy Spirit will not be manipulated. And so he works whenever and wherever he
pleases in those who hear the Gospel. In John we read: The wind blows where
it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or
where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. What this
means is that just as we might be sitting inside one day and can hear the wind
outside, so also when we hear the Word of God, we are listening to God’s
own wind, the Holy Spirit. But just as you don’t know where the wind comes
from or where it is going, so also we can’t see the Holy Spirit coming,
and we can’t see the Holy Spirit working in this person and that person.
As Paul says: I preached, [someone else] watered, but God gave the growth.
And
so, we see this happen on the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit comes down upon
the disciples, but not everyone who sees this happening believes it or recognises
it. We read: All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What
does this mean?” But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.” Some
were interested, but some mocked. When Paul preached in Athens, we read: Now
when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said,
“We will hear you again about this.” So what we learn here is that we never
know how the Holy Spirit is going to work. We should never second-guess him and
say: That person’s never going to listen. We simply speak the word and go home,
but the Holy Spirit then continues to work and create faith in people.
So on
one hand, the word of God and the Holy Spirit comes to us from outside of us.
And all of us hear the word of God altogether. But God doesn’t speak his
word in such a way that it hits you on the head like a rock and bounces off. He
calls you to believe it. And so, even though all kinds of people might
come to church and hear the word, God calls each individual to be saved personally.
Later in our reading we read: As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became
drowsy and slept. 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.’ 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. Afterwards, the other
virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I
say to you, I do not know you.’
We
learn a few things here. Firstly, we learn that Christ calls us to receive the
gift of salvation personally. When the time comes, it will be too late for the
individual virgins to share their oil with each other. We can’t rely on others.
We can’t say: I’m saved, because I go to church with bla-bla-bla, and he’s a
good guy. Or: I’m saved because my grandma is a Christian. Or: I’m saved,
because my grandfather, or my son, is a pastor. Or: I’m saved because I go to
the church Martin Luther started, and he knew what it was all about. Or: I’m
saved because come from such-and-such a country. No: we can’t get our
righteousness from each other. We can only receive our salvation from Jesus and
him alone. Now, sometimes, when a person dies, we don’t about their salvation,
and so we might commend them to God in prayer and to his mercy. But this does
not mean that our good works or our prayers can earn salvation for someone
else. Some of you might have a relative or a friend who is not saved and is an
unbeliever. Of course, we should pray for them every day and not give up. But
we don’t pray that we would be their saviour, but that Jesus
would be their Saviour. So salvation is through Jesus and Jesus alone.
Peter says in Acts: There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other
name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. So the oil
cannot be shared between fellow virgins. It can only be received from Christ
and the Holy Spirit, through the living and active word of God.
But
secondly, there is a very important teaching here that not everyone will be
saved. This is a very unpopular thing to say, but we must learn from the
Scripture and not from our own ideas that there will be a judgment,
and that each person will be judged by God. There are a number of parables
where Jesus teaches this: one of them is the wheat and the weeds, where
at the end, the wheat and weeds are separated into different piles. Another
parable like this is about the drag net which pulls in all kinds of fish, and
then they are sorted into the good and the bad. And here in the parable of the
ten virgins, there are two types of virgins: the wise and the foolish. The wise
virgins are ready and prepared and they go into the wedding feast, but then
there are the foolish virgins who are not ready and it is too late for them,
and then the door is shut. So you can see that there is a judgment.
Now
today there are many people who don’t believe this. First of all, many people
say that there is no distinction between God and his creation. They say that
God is everything, God is the universe, or that God is in
everything. The first verse of the bible contradicts this and says: In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God is the creator, and
the heaven and the earth are his creation. Second, many people say that the
Holy Spirit is in everyone. This is not true. Everyone is born with a conscience,
everyone is born with a soul, but to be saved, Jesus says you must be
born again, a second time, in Holy Baptism, and God gives the Holy Spirit as a
gift. Instead of being united around Jesus and his word, many people today just
want to be united in their feelings and experiences, and so there
would be no difference between the Christian faith and any other faith. But
Jesus says: I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through me. If this isn’t true, then Jesus is a liar, and he’s not
the true God. If the words of Jesus are not absolute truth, then nothing in
this world is right or wrong, there is no good or bad, no heaven or hell, and
of course, the church has no mission, and the missionary zeal of the church
completely dries up.
Instead,
the bible teaches us that God is the Creator, and he has made heaven and earth
as his creation, which is distinct from him. Jesus is true God who entered into
this creation and took on human flesh, and then died on the cross and made a
payment and an atonement for sin. Through faith in Jesus, we receive the Holy Spirit.
In the end, we will be judged; but through Jesus, forgiveness and eternal life
has been won for us, and is ours through faith. Jesus is our Mediator,
our Advocate, our Defender. The Holy Spirit brings us the Gospel,
and through the Gospel the Holy Spirit creates faith in us. The Holy Spirit is
the oil in the lamps, and the light of the Gospel in our hearts is the light.
And so while we have the light of the Gospel shining among us on this earth, we
need to make good use of the time we have to fill up our flasks with God’s oil.
If we leave it, and refuse to believe the Gospel, there may be a
time, then, when it is too late for us.
And
so, at the very end of our reading, Jesus says: Watch therefore, for you
know neither the day nor the hour. Jesus here is calling us to repent and
to reconcile ourselves with God now, in this life, while we have
the Gospel. Psalm 95 says: Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your
hearts. Isaiah says: Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him
while he is near. St Paul says in Romans: The hour has come for you to
wake from sleep. And in Galatians we read: As we have the opportunity,
let us do good to everyone. The time for acquiring faith, and believing in
Jesus, and receiving the Holy Spirit is now. It is not next year,
not next month, not tomorrow. When we hear the Gospel, we can’t
guarantee that it will be there for us when we need it. We might say:
I’ll read the bible at home another day, but who knows if later you’ll go blind
in your old age? People might say: I won’t listen in church all that carefully,
but then later on they go deaf and it’s too late? They might say: I’d like to
come to church, but then later they find themselves unable to come when they
want to.
Or
someone might say: I’m going to church at Easter. I haven’t gone to church for
a long time. And then they go along, and the preacher tells everyone that Jesus
hasn’t risen from the dead after all. It’s too late – the Gospel isn’t preached
in that church any more, and the glory of God has departed from that place.
They rejected God earlier, and when they sought him later, they couldn’t find
him anymore. They might call for a pastor to come and see them on their
deathbed, but then they can’t find anyone to come, because by that time, either
no Christians live there anymore, or the Christians who do are too lazy and
apathetic to come.
The
time of grace is now. And while we have the Gospel, our Lord Jesus
doesn’t call us to be apathetic, but to fill up, to stock up our
vessels, and to keep our lamps burning. And when our lamps burn
brightly, and when they burn with the wonderful light of God’s word and his
Gospel, then the words will be fulfilled: Let your light shine before
others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who
is in heaven. Others may see the light in the lamps, and will say: I want
to go and fill up on the same oil as they. I want to fill my lamp with the same
word of God, and the same Gospel, and the same Holy Spirit.
And
so, let’s be ready and prepared. Let’s continually learn God’s word, receive
the free forgiveness of sins, and to fill up our vessels continually, so that
when the time comes we can wake from our sleep and hear the words: Here is
the bridegroom! Come out to meet him’. And those who were ready went in with
him to the marriage feast. Amen.
Dear
Jesus, our loving bridegroom, keep us watchful and ready, and continually fill
our lamps with your precious Word and your Holy Spirit. Wake us up from our
sleep, forgive us all our sins, and lead us into the wedding banquet of eternal
life. Amen.
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