Got Oil?

 Read Matthew 25:1-13

We know that there is a sorting at the end of the age. We want to be in the group that is told to come and get their inheritance.

We know there is an accounting at the end of the age. We want to hear well done, good and faithful servant.

We know there is a banquet in heaven as the Bridegroom and the Bride are joined in eternal union. We want to be there.

We don’t want to hear you wicked, lazy servant.

We don’t want to hear depart from me you who are cursed into the eternal fire.

We don’t want to hear the words I don’t know you.

I don’t know you!

The disciples wanted to know what life would be like at the end of the age. What was coming?

Jesus responded with a parable about a huge celebration that is to come. He compared it to a wedding banquet. People know weddings. There was feasting and celebration, and it often went on for days. People usually drank a little too much.

It was a big deal. You didn’t want to miss it.

You don’t want to miss it!

The parable uses the wedding as the part of the parable known to people of that time. It was a big deal, not just for the bride and groom, but for the community. It was a big deal.

But sometimes, there was waiting. After the groom had prepared a place for the bride and groom to begin their new lives, he would go and claim his bride. People knew when he went to claim her and the anticipation began. There was waiting.

How long that waiting period was might vary and was not published weeks or months in advance.

It didn’t pop up on your Google Calendar. There was no app to remind you. You waited.

There was waiting. Ten young maidens came and waited along the expected path of the groom and his bride. All brought lamps.

Only five of these young ladies brought a container of oil, and only five were ready if this waiting took a while.

It did.

Everyone fell asleep. When the clamor of the arrival woke them, five found that they were out of oil. Five trimmed their lamps, added oil, and were ready for the wedding party's arrival.

Five were ready. They entered the banquet and joined the celebration.

The first five sent the second five to get their own oil. It might sound harsh, but some things you have to get on your own.

So, is the oil our discipleship or our salvation? I think we see it mainly framed as our salvation here.  We are ready for Christ’s return because we have received the gift of salvation. Is that it?

We repented and professed. We trusted, and we continue to trust, that the promises of our Lord are true. We wait faithfully upon the Lord.

We are prepared to wait faithfully upon the Lord.

The other two parables in this chapter are more about living out our salvation. This one is about repentance, belief, and faith that our Master will come and claim us.

Do we have oil?

If we have repented, professed with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe that God raised him from the dead, then we have oil. Our lamps are full. Our oil can is full. We are ready.

Our place in this celebration of the ages has been reserved.

If we take this parable as stand-alone instruction, we might never learn discipleship. We would know the gift that came in Jesus's blood, but we would have no response to it.

But as you have been reminded so many times, we are to take the full biblical witness and apply it to our lives as we respond to this gift of grace received in faith. There is no cherry-picking.

If we live by this parable alone, we cry out Maranatha daily. Come, Lord Jesus, come. Get me out of this place!

We who are not content just to be saved, but must somehow respond to this incredible gift, move on to discipleship.

We know that discipleship is a necessary response from anyone who has repented and received the gift of salvation. It is reflexive. It is our first nature. It is our fruit and the evidence of our salvation.

Because our oil won’t run out, we are ready to respond to our Master's call to put his words into practice.

Your salvation is assured. You have oil enough.

Your response calls you to be known as a disciple of Jesus by your love.

We can sing Blessed Assurance. We are saved. We have oil.

We can anticipate the Lord's coming and the celebration that will follow, but for now, our oil should be evident in our lives.

Our oil should be evidenced in our lives.

Let us live as people who know that tomorrow is not promised but eternity is.

Let us live as people who know they will never hear these words from the Lord.

I don’t know you!

Live as people who know that tomorrow is not promised but eternity is.

Amen.

Parable: The Absent Householder

Read Mark 13:32-37

I enjoyed my time at sea while in the Marine Corps.  You go to sleep off the shore of one nation and awaken off the shore of another.  Knowing where you are with relation to other nations is important.  That’s where Marines do most of their training and operations—ashore.  While embarked, the Navy keeps things afloat and headed in the right direction.

The sailors manned watches, generally 4 hours.  The ship’s intercom system—the 1MC—would announced the watch change. 

Relieve the watch.  Relieve the wheel and the lookout.  On deck, condition…

Condition IV was afloat and cruising not ready to shoot anything, aka peacetime.

Condition I was completely ready for action—ready to engage any enemy.

Condition IA was always fun.  That is ready to conduct amphibious assault operations.  If you are a land lover and a little squeamish, then this is not for you.  The ship purposely takes on water in what is called a well deck so that Marines who have been loaded into amphibious vehicles can be spit out into the open sea.

But when you are at sea and the Navy is doing all the driving and the Marines are just fighting to get time in the weight room, Condition IV is what you want to hear.

When you hit the rack, the 1MC will awaken you at midnight and 0400 but once you hear Condition IV, you go right back to sleep.  You know the watch is set and you know that all is well.  You know that the watch is set.

Reading this parable, you might think that Jesus is telling everyone that it’s go on—stay on from now until the second coming.  Nobody is getting any sleep.  But that’s not it.  He is not saying that we should do something so self-destructive.

The owner of the house gave everyone assignments before he left.  Everyone knew his or her responsibilities.  They knew exactly what to do in his absence.  Among those responsibilities was to keep watch.

Some might be assigned kitchen and household duties and others to work fields or winepresses or take care of livestock.  And some assigned to keep watch.  In a small household, few servants might do many tasks and the watch might be rotated. 

The important thing was that everyone continued to do what they were assigned to do and that they maintained a state of alertness.  If you are doing the things that you know to do and have a little security in place, you should be able to sleep at night.

If the watch saw the homeowner coming, he could wake all in the household and they would be ready to receive him on short notice.  It’s not like they didn’t know he would return.  They expected his return.

Visualize a fireman on a night watch sleeping in shorts and a tee shirt who can slide into his firefighting gear in a matter of seconds.  He sleeps but he is ready in a moment’s notice.

The Marine, the fireman, the Christian is ready not because he never sleeps but because he does the things that he knows to do all of the time.  When the condition of the ship goes from IV to I, it’s only a matter of minutes before everyone is ready to do what they have been trained to do.

You can’t do this unless your life is given completely to your purpose.  It doesn’t matter if the homeowner, commanding officer, or the fire chief is around or not.  You know what to do and you do it.  It is a way of life.

Our preparation for the return of our Lord is a way of life.  We sleep, perhaps better than much of the world, but we are ready for his return.

This short parable follows Mark’s text about the signs at the end of the age.  Read Matthew’s 24^th chapter for similar context.  Matthew follows what I call eschatology for fisherman with the Parable of the 10 Virgins which again is about readiness.  Mark gives us readiness in the parable of the absent householder. 

We who have ears to hear this parable must keep watch.  We must be ready.  When Jesus returns in his glory, there won’t be time to get our affairs in order.  There won’t be time to get right with God.  There won’t be time to make some last-minute decisions about what really matters. 

We are to live in right-standing with God now.  The blood of Jesus has done this for us.  We simply live out our salvation as the most important thing that we will do in these bodies of flesh and blood and live in such a way as to bring glory to God.

That’s our readiness.  That’s our watchfulness.

Yes, we are tuned into the signs of the times.  We know the season.  We see the love of many growing cold.  We see followers of Christ being alienated in their own countries.  We have seen this happening here in our own country. 

The time is near, but we do not know the hour.  Jesus told his disciples that he did not know when.  That time belonged to the Father alone. 

Our charge is to be ready.  We are called to, “Watch!”

What does watch mean in the 21^st Century?  Here are some synonyms for this part of western Oklahoma:

·      Pop Tarts and Peanut Butter

·      Chewy Tuesdays

·      Vacation Bible School

·      Monthly memory verses and extra readiness for actually memorizing them!

·      Prayer

·      More prayer

·      Continuous prayer

·      Living each day to God’s glory.

·      Being God’s love in action.

·      Feeding hungry people.

·      Sharing the good news.

·      Putting our gifts and talents to use.

·      Kicking worry and anxiousness to the curb.

·      Living in the joy of the Lord—yes even on our worst days.

·      Loving our neighbor.

·      Loving our enemies.  I still wish that one was a typo, but it’s not.

·      Being the light of the world.

·      Being the salt—the God seasoning—of the world.

·      Trusting in the Lord with all of your heart.

·      Regarding our own understanding with a grain or a truckload of salt.

·      Acknowledging God in everything!

·      Staying the course.

·      Pressing on towards the goal—of living for Christ and bringing others to him.

·      To know our Lord and make him known.

·      Visiting the sick and homebound.

·      Trunk or Treat

·      Walk A Block for Jesus

·      Even the Easter Egg Hunt, aka the love ambush.

·      F4

·      Sunday morning worship

·      Love offerings

·      Tithing

·      Loaves and Fishes offering

·      Worship in drama

·      Cooking, cleaning, and enjoying each other while we eat.

·      Partaking of the Lord’s Supper.

·      Giving out GOD LOVES YOU – LOVE ONE ANOTHER WRISTBANDS.

·      Making joyful sounds unto the Lord.

·      Rejoicing in the day that the Lord has made.

·      Being baptized and baptizing our children.

·      Fearing only the Lord while knowing that love, not fear is what he desires from us.

·      Reading his word.

·      Studying his word.

·      Knowing his word.

·      Living in his word.

·      Living in freedom.

·      Not being a stumbling block to others.

·      Casting off anything that we know is slowing us down in our race of faith.

·      Bringing food offerings of stuff that we would actually want to eat.

·      Bringing up our children—and the children that we have adopted as a church family—in the way they should go.

·      Staying awake for the whole sermon. 

The list could go on.  Some of these things have a local context.  Some are for every believer, but all have a common thread.  We know what to do.  These are all ways that we live out our salvation in this world as the most important thing we will ever do.  Paul would say that we work out our salvation with fear and trembling.  I might say we respond to God’s infinite grace with great gravity.

And these things that I have listed are not extremely difficult or complex or reserved only for a special class of people.

These are the things that I expect to be doing when Jesus returns.  I don’t expect to lose much sleep.  The watch is set.  I know my assignment.

If Jesus comes at zero dark thirty, I will be up and making coffee—good Kona coffee—for him by the time he walks in the door.  I will not be worried about anything else because I am living fully for him every day. 

The watch is set.  We are doing the things the Master has given us to do.  We are ready for his return.

Come Lord Jesus, come!

Amen.

Parable: the 10 Virgins

Read Matthew 25:1-13

It’s about a wedding.

It’s about being watchful and ready.

It’s about the United States Coast Guard, right?  Semper Paratus or Always Ready is their motto.

Yes, to all, and more.

It is best understood without allegory.  Some key players are not even mentioned, the bride for instance.  And when you come to the part about buying oil that is surely salvation, then we have a problem with purchasing what is given so freely.  So we will not get allegorical in this parable, but we will find a very strong message for those who will hear.

We find ourselves listening to another story about a wedding, or at least some of the associated aspects of a wedding.  Weddings were not a save the date thing back in the day.  You knew that a marriage was forthcoming but the exact wedding date, well you could only guestimate.  Now some guesses might be closer than others.  You could swing by the groom’s new house, probably an addition to the family house or at least on the same property, and see how it was coming along.

Think back to the previous parable, the king sent out the invitation to the wedding banquet for his son as the feast was being prepared.  The invited guests knew it was coming, they were just waiting for the announcement.  It’s not like everyone would show up at the same time.  People would be coming for days and staying for days.  There would be quite the banquet and party before the bride and groom finalized their union.

Now the groom surely knew the story of Jacob and his first wedding and knew not to drink too much too early so he knew who he was getting hitched to, but that’s another story.

If the groom was just laying a stone a day building a home for his bride-to-be, then perhaps his enthusiasm level for the betrothal was not quite peaked.  If he was burning the midnight oil, he wanted to get this show on the road.

The Hebrew man upon proposal to his bride—surely in concert with both sets of parents—would make a place for he and his new bride to live.  The good thing was that in that day it didn’t matter if you were a wine maker or a fisherman, you probably knew how to build a house.  Materials were readily available. Now if you wanted fine cedar from Lebanon to panel the inside, your father might need to have some money; but everyone could build a place to live.

Getting a mortgage—a loan to build a new house—wouldn’t make sense.  Why go into debt for something that costs you mostly sweat equity.   Surely, the were some material costs, but with dad’s help, you could build the place.

So you would tell your bride that you would go and prepare a place for her and then come and get her when it was ready.  You would not tell her this unless you meant it.  That sounds sort of familiar.

The story is about a wedding but mostly it’s about being ready.  If the homeowner had known when the thief would break in, he would have held a reception.  Surely Smith and Wesson would have been on the receiving committee and Colt 45 on tap.  But criminals just never seem to show up when you want them to—how inconsiderate.  You must be watchful and ready.

Not only watchful and ready but always ready.  We are not speaking of a thief but of a time when Christ will return.  Jesus made the comparison to something that people understood.  The disciples surely wanted a date to put in their day planners or smartphones.  But, the best we can do is to know the season.  We can be watchful of the signs of the times.

Even then, we must not become complacent when things do not happen the way we think that they should.  Remember, the Lord’s time and our time are not always the same time.  The Lord is not slow in coming as we calibrate speed, he is patient; but he is coming.

He is patient because he wants all to come to repentance and to know his incredible love, but he is coming and we must be ready.

So, the parable is about being ready, always ready, and a wedding and associated banquet—and more.  And more…

The parable goes back to the foundation of the world.  

Wisdom was there at the beginning of the world.  Wisdom is intertwined into the fabric of the universe.  Wisdom remains the hallmark of God’s servants to this day.

The parable is about wisdom.  Five of the maidens are wise and five are foolish.  Five are ready for the bridegroom’s arrival and enter with the procession and get to enjoy all that is in store for them.

Five are foolish and are caught unprepared.  They ask the other five to give them some of their oil and the five who are wise tell them to get their own.  On the surface, it seems sort of harsh.  “Sorry, girlfriend but you are on your own.”

Perhaps, Jesus should have preceded the reply of the wise girls with, and they loved the foolish girls and told them, go and buy your own oil.  The wise were not being cruel or unkind, they spoke truth.  In the context of the story, they might not have enough oil and then everyone would be out of luck.  They brought enough for themselves.  They were not oil merchants.  They were bridesmaids.  They were wise.

Today, you could probably go to Amazon.com and get 1 hour delivery by drone.  In the parable, the foolish girls had to go wake up the oil vendor and buy more oil.  I wonder if there was a middle of the night surcharge.  It didn’t matter.  They didn’t make it back in time.

Go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.  There are some things that I cannot give you.  I can’t give you my:

·     Wisdom.  I can teach and mentor and encourage you to learn, but my wisdom is my wisdom whether it is much or little.  You have to get your own.  Many of us have longed to be able to just transplant or download wisdom into our kids, especially during their teenage years, but you can’t do it.  The good news is that if you are truly seeking God’s wisdom, he is so generous in giving you just what you need.  God gives wisdom and he is not stingy about it, but I can’t give you mine.

·     Salvation.  I can’t re-gift the greatest gift of all time, nor do I need to.  It is available to all who will receive it.  You can get your own, and I hope that you have already done that.

·     I can’t give you my readiness.  If you live in my house you might get the benefit of my readiness if someone breaks in while I am home; but readiness is something that everyone must negotiate on their own.

Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus that the people should be wise for the days are evil.  There is much evil in the world and we need to make the most of every opportunity to obey God and love our neighbors.  There will be a time, surely in the middle of all the wickedness of the day, when Christ will return.  Will we be ready?

Today, we are a people who need our guidance summarized in a tweet or a Facebook post where you don’t have to click the hyperlink that reads “more.”  So here is Tom’s tweet on this parable.  I make it indicative and not interrogative.

When Jesus returns, he is going to catch us doing exactly what he told us to do!

We are saved.  We practice wisdom.  We are ready day or night, sooner or later, early or late, summer or winter—sometimes in Oklahoma it’s hard to tell them apart—for Jesus to come and claim us because we obey him.  We are his.  We are completely his.  The world does not receive our affection.  Our love for God is manifested daily in our love for our neighbors.  Our oil vessels remain full.

Our lamps won’t go out!

We are ready!

There are words in this parable that I don’t ever want to hear.  I don’t want to hear them spoken to me.  I don’t want to hear them spoken to you, and because God is shaping me in the image and likeness of Christ Jesus, I don’t want to hear them spoken to anyone.

Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.

Ouch!

Jesus had parables about fishing, building a house, shepherds, and even father and son relationships.  Occasionally, he had one that involved the women.  Society was male oriented, but Jesus still included parables with the women.  In this case they were young women, bridesmaids if you will.

Let’s note something about these bridesmaids that often gets overlooked or sometimes modern day presumptions take over.  Sometimes, those presumptions make it into the translation.  Sometimes, they may be correct.  But consider the third verse in this parable.

Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them,

In the original Greek, the word extra is not there.  Some modern translations add the word presuming that nobody would show up with a lamp that doesn’t have oil or subsequent remarks a few verses later, but the original words that we have say that the foolish took lamps but no oil.

Who would do that?  Answer that question for it is not rhetorical.

Fools despise wisdom.

What kind of person brings a lamp and no oil?  The person who detests and despises the ways of God.

I can’t beat up the translators too much because later the foolish girls ask the wise ones for oil because their lamps are going out.  I have to ask, were they ever burning in the first place?

Before we continue, I tell you that I don’t like cute when it comes to biblical interpretation.  I think considering the literary, textual, tradition, and historical lenses for any exegesis is beneficial.  Even the redaction criticism—how the biblical writings were assembled by their final authors or editors thousands of years ago—brings benefit. 

But the exegesis titled, “cute” or “neat” or “funky” doesn’t work for me.  What do I mean?  People who read the Bible and preach, develop curriculum, and otherwise launch into expository commentary sometimes resort to cute.  That is they find a lesser used meaning of a word that fits very well into context as is or twist a phrase to mean something that sounds good but perhaps lacks fidelity to the original intent or the full biblical witness.    

It is good to explore these possibilities.  They make great Bible study inquiries in a Berean type model, but we must be careful about making them doctrine or becoming dogmatic and straining out gnats at the expense of missing the very clear message.  That said, I think it worthwhile to consider that the foolish maidens brought no oil at all. 

That would be to take verse 3 literally and to regard with some skepticism the comments of the foolish.  Who ever said that the foolish always speak the truth.  For those who made it through the Proverbs with me a couple years ago, we know that this is not the case. My guess is that the foolish girls just grabbed their lamps and went to the place where young maidens waited for the bridegroom to arrive.  When they realized they were unprepared, they concocted the best story they could come up with at the time.  The foolish seldom let the facts get in the way of the story.  The foolish think that their lack of effort, concern, readiness, and general disobedience will somehow prompt an emotional response from the wise to do things that they are not called to do.

People still run out of gas today, even with all the bells and whistles on modern vehicles.  If I am driving cross country and know what’s ahead, I will push the limit on my gas tank; but when I come home for the night, I usually like to have at least half a tank.  I don’t know what the night holds in store and if I get a call at 2:00 a.m. it is usually not something that will wait until 2:00 p.m.  The last thing I want to do is have to go fill up may gas tank.  There is just something about being prepared.

Perhaps the words of the wise maidens to their foolish counterparts were founded not only in wisdom but in recognition of those with whom they were dealing.  You need to go get your own oil.  You need to realize what is at stake here.  You need to wake up, get out of your business as usual mode, and do what the Lord requires of you!

Let’s roll the clock back 2,500 years from the first telling of this parable.  Noah, worked on the ark for a long, long time and people scoffed at him, but beyond that, they went about their business as usual.  You think after 25 years or 50 years, people would stop labeling this man as crazy and start asking, “Just what is he getting ready for?”

Matthew’s 24^th chapter is what I call Eschatology for Fishermen.  The Parable of the 10 Virgins follows this short course on end times.  What’s in this chapter?  Many signs of the end of the age for one thing but also the fact that people will continue to live in a business as usual mode.  It’s just another day.

Some people will continue living—existing—as if there is no accounting for their lives.  They know that there is.  They may say otherwise and their lives say otherwise, but people know that they must account at some point; but denial comes easy when you believe the world’s version of anything or everything.

Who would haul a lamp around with them and not bring any oil?  Someone who is vested in the world’s version of everything—someone just going about business as usual.

Remember how this parable begins, “At that time, the Kingdom of Heaven will be like…”  What is the antecedent here?  Eschatology for Fishermen or the short course on end times—Jesus is talking about his Father’s kingdom at the end of this age.

Some will be living in it and ushered into the next age ever so naturally.  Others will have never known it and can only wonder about what they missed.

We may wait a very long time to see the end of the age but everything that we do for the rest of our lives is done in obedience while maintaining readiness and it is done with urgency.  Obedience and readiness are for our own good, but urgency is for those who may one day hear the words, “I do not know you.”

If we have the heart of Christ—that divine heart being shaped inside of us—then we will not hesitate to tell those that we know who do not know him, to go at once and buy oil for yourselves.  Deliver the gospel to them. 

Do not sugar coat it.

Do not think that your salvation covers them.  “He’s with me,” isn’t going to get it.  You know him or you don’t.  That’s the sort of thinking that says, “I’ve earned my salvation and can do what I want with it.”

And for those who know him, we make him known from now until kingdom come—this kingdom that will be a part of the age to come.  Urge those who do not know God and his Love that goes by the name of Jesus to repent and believe the good news.

We are wise.  The days are evil.  We are ready.  We are obedient.  We keep watch.  We live in God’s kingdom now.  When Jesus comes back he is going to catch us doing exactly what he told us to do—love one another.  We are ready.

Some are not.  They are foolish.  They are disobedient.  They do not keep watch. They live in a business as usual mode.

We love them, warn them, counsel them with truth spoken in love, but we do not subsidize their foolishness.

Go and buy oil for yourselves.  This is a message of love.  This is not being harsh or unkind.  This is a message of love.

Let me frame this one last way.  What if Jesus sent you to answer the knock at the door and said tell the people knocking—perhaps someone you know—that you do not know them.  Would you not rather share the gospel one more time or with one more person or for one more day than deliver this message?

I do not know you.

If we are truly living in God’s kingdom now, we don’t desire God’s exclusion of anyone.  You can’t give anyone your own salvation, but you can lead them to the one who holds theirs.  The time to do that is now.  We are ready for the day of his return, but so many are not.

While we won’t speak in parables to the lost of our age very often, we need to have ears to hear this parable and find ways to tell the foolish and apathetic and ambivalent to go and buy oil for themselves.

We are called to take the message of salvation to the lost, many of whom are foolish, and we are called to do this—our lampstands shining brightly with God’s love—until the end of the age.

Amen.