Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. We are on episode 238 with Pastor Paul Nitz behind the microphone, bringing you the big ideas of the Gospel of Matthew chapter 25. The focus today is two very interesting parables. So have your Bibles ready. Here we go. Matthew chapter 25.

Are you ready? But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For just as the days of Noah were, so the coming of the Son of Man will be. For in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day came that Noah entered the ark. They did not understand until the flood came and took them all away. So will the coming of the Son of Man be.

Therefore stay awake. You do not know which day your Lord is coming. Those were Jesus’ words just after his prophetic revelation in chapter 24, as he and his disciples sat on the Mount of Olives overlooking the city of Jerusalem. This was just a couple days before his arrest and crucifixion. Chapter 25 continues with two parables on this theme, and then some more information about what would happen when he did return. Perhaps Jesus told these parables as they walked the rest of the way back to the village of Bethany where they were staying.

The first one returns to the image of a Jewish wedding and wedding feast, which we’ve seen him use before. It’s short. Let’s listen to it as I read it from the Contemporary New Living Translation. Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The five who were foolish didn’t take enough oil for their lamps, but the other five were wise enough to take extra oil along.

When the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight, they were roused by the shout, Look, the bridegroom is coming! Come out to meet him! All the bridesmaids got up and prepared their lamps. But then the five foolish ones asked the others, Can you give us some of your oil because our lamps are going out? But the others replied, We don’t have enough.

Go to a shop and buy some for yourselves. And while they were gone to buy oil, the bridegroom came. Then those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was locked. Later, when the other five bridesmaids returned, they stood outside calling, Lord, Lord, open the door for us! But he called back, Believe me, I don’t know you. So you too keep watch, Jesus said, for you don’t know the day or hour of my return.

Getting married in that culture was much different than in modern Western societies. Most marriages were arranged by parents. A man and his family contracted with the bride-to-be’s father for an agreed-upon price. Once the contract was made and the price paid, legally the couple were married, although they didn’t live together yet. The bridegroom needed to make arrangements for a home for them and be established as a provider in his own right before the marriage ceremony was actually held and they commenced life together as a couple. Often that took some time, in some cases up to a year.

Interestingly, because I’m writing this podcast episode at Christmas time, it was during that between time after Joseph had contracted to marry young Mary, but before their actual wedding, that she realized she was pregnant. Marriage contract once made, though, was binding unless, unless there was some very clear moral reason to not follow through, and there seemed to be in that case. But Joseph was reassured by an angel of God in a dream that although Mary was indeed pregnant, the baby growing inside her wasn’t the result of her breaking their covenant or acting immorally. The child was, in fact, the Messiah, the Son of God, and was conceived in her through a miracle of the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus’ story here, the contract had been made, the bridegroom had been away busily preparing a place for his new family, and now was returning to get his bride and finalize their marriage at a wedding so they could start their future together. When word reached the bride and her family and friends that the bridegroom was coming, they got their act together, and the wedding party went out to meet him that evening. But there was an unexpected delay. The delay lasted into the night, and by and by, the friends of the bride who were there to accompany her to the wedding party got sleepy and started dozing off. Then at midnight, the shout is heard, The bridegroom is coming! The bridegroom is coming!

Get ready to meet him! They’d brought torches to light the way for their procession that evening. The torchlight created a lovely scene and atmosphere as the bridal party would walk through the streets of the city to the place where the wedding was to be held. But because of the delay, their torches had burned out. Half the bridesmaids did not have any extra oil to relight theirs. Jesus calls them foolish.

The others were prepared for this, and he called them wise. They had plenty of oil to relight their torches. The foolish girls who didn’t, in panic, asked to borrow some from their friends, but they didn’t have enough for themselves and them too. Maybe you can go find some somewhere, buy some somewhere. But while they were gone looking, and good luck with that because remember it’s after midnight now, the bridegroom arrived and the torchlit procession through the city into the wedding went on without them. They did arrive sometime later at the home where the wedding was being held, but they were not allowed to enter and join into the festivities.

In fact, the Lord of the house said, Sorry, but I don’t know you. Jesus’ application was, You too then must keep watch, for you do not know the hour of my return. I think we’ve mentioned before that Jesus’ parables are stories intended to convey important spiritual ideas. But let me give you a caution. It’s not wise to press every detail of parables into some important doctrinal tenet. For example, from this parable about the wise and foolish bridemaid, I’ve heard some long, very detailed sermons applying every detail of it to the belief that Jesus will rapture church age believers.

But I’ve also heard other people teach that it couldn’t be that because Jesus didn’t teach about the church, which was still a mystery at this point, and they insist that the rapture can’t be true because of some other details in the story that don’t fit. Then again, I’ve heard other people say, Yes, it has to do with the church and the rapture, but it’s teaching that some Christians, like the foolish bridesmaids, won’t be raptured because they are not being faithful enough now. The partial rapture theory, it’s called. So, from this one story Jesus told, people come up with several conflicting theories about Jesus’ return, and all of them insisting their view must be true based on this parable. Hold on, folks. What if your attempted applications may be going beyond what Jesus ever intended?

My point is that we should be careful if Jesus doesn’t tell us a detailed interpretation of a parable, like, for instance, he did with the parable of the sower. If he doesn’t, we should probably content ourselves to ask, What’s the big idea he was really using this story to convey? What’s clear and obvious? And build out your doctrinal beliefs about this or that from the doctrinal epistles, because that’s the principal reason those sections of Scripture exist. What’s clear and obvious in this chapter is that Jesus was stressing that he is coming back, that we don’t know when, so we should be watching and ready for him when he returns. Getting dogmatic about what each detail represents can lead to some bad interpretations.

Oddly enough, I just saw a liberal theologian, and by that I mean someone who teaches about God and religion at some university somewhere, but who personally does not take the inspiration and authority of the Bible seriously. I saw him posting on Facebook on Christmas Day, no less, that Bible believers have been talking and singing carols and reading Scripture about Jesus bringing light into the world on that first Christmas for centuries, but that the world is still very dark after all this time. And he went on to press his unbelief by extrapolating that into, So all of you who are looking for some second coming of Jesus to rescue you from your problems should forget that. And start working together to solve the world’s problems ourselves instead.

On Christmas Day, I couldn’t help but comment that God began prophetically promising Jesus’ first coming to be our Savior more than 2,000 years before he actually showed up in Bethlehem, and that in God’s time, he did arrive and do what God said he would do, because God always keeps his promises, and that we should bear in mind, as the Apostle Peter said, God is not slow about keeping his promises. He’s always on his timetable, and we mortals should remember that with Him, a thousand years could be like one day. One of the big ideas throughout this section is that Jesus is coming back, all right. He promises that multiple times here, and even throws in the line in the parable about maybe the bridegroom being delayed, which allowed that it would not come as soon as many hoped. But our impatience or lack of attention in the meantime certainly doesn’t mean He isn’t coming.

He absolutely will return. On the other side of that bad interpretation spectrum, I also just saw an excited young woman assuring those who follow her posts on Facebook and Instagram that Jesus is coming by the end of this year. For some convoluted reason, someone she listens to has computed. I love her enthusiasm. I always listen to her posts, and if the delay extends past December 31, 2025, I hope that young woman’s lamp does not go out, because Jesus says here, of the day and hour He is returning, no one knows. By the way, I don’t think there’s any contradiction between that and what I was saying last podcast about the end times requiring some setup, and that the generation who will be alive just before Jesus returns should be able to sense if it is near, if they’re alert to what’s going on.

Just don’t set dates or buy into people who do. You’ll most likely be disappointed, and much worse than that, cause cynicism among those who listen to you. Jesus’ challenge was, keep yourself ready regardless of how long my coming is delayed. And remember, Peter also wrote on this topic. The delay is because God is not desiring anyone to perish. In the terms of Jesus’ parables in this section, God is allowing time for more and more people to respond to the wedding invitation of the gospel.

The second parable, which runs from verse 14 to verse 30, is also about us in light of the promised return of Jesus. This seems to be a story Jesus told on more than one occasion, and interestingly, the details of it changes when he retells it, which again indicates to me that we should not get hung up on the details and get dogmatic with our interpretation of them. Look for the main point he was making. In this one, Jesus tells about a wealthy man who was going away on an extended journey, who calls some of his servants in and entrusts to them substantial sums of his wealth, and asks each of them to care for it while he is away. The implication is he wants them to not only oversee it, but to invest what he has given them in his interest while he is gone.

By the way, for those of you who, like me, find words very interesting, the word used here at verse 15, translated talents in most English versions, the Greek word is talanton, referred to a large amount of silver or gold. It was a measure of weight, in our terms around 75 pounds. So when it says this man was given five talents and that man was given two talents or whatever, the five talents would have been around 450 pounds of precious metal. That would be an enormous sum, whether it was silver or gold. What’s interesting to me is that our modern idea of talents, as in she has a great talent for the piano or he has a great talent at public speaking, come from this parable word, this word talenton, indicating how valuable our talents are and that we should view each one of them as great entrustments from God to us.

The big point of this second parable, though, is that although the principal was gone for some time, eventually he returned as he said he would, and then he called those servants he’d entrusted large sums of his wealth with to give an account for what they had done with it while he was gone. Two of them did very well for him. They used and invested his money wisely, and he commended them and told them because they had proven faithful, he would put them in charge of more things going forward. But one of the servants just buried the treasure given to him in the ground, had not done anything with it to benefit his master, and that guy was punished severely.

The main idea then is that God has given each of us different but valuable things to use for his purposes: our lives themselves, our natural abilities, our resources, our opportunities, and that we should be faithful servants of his, using them wisely, purposely, with God’s interests in view. Because one day we, every last one of us, will be called to give an account to him for all he’s entrusted to us during our lifetimes. That idea continues, not in parable form, but in Jesus’ actual telling about one such time of judgment that will happen in the future. This begins at verse 31 and runs to the end of the chapter. And Jesus told them exactly when this judgment would occur, in these words, listen. But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.

And all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them from one another as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will put the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Then he will say to those on his left, Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. This third scene is not a parable. It’s confirmation from Jesus that judgment is real, and once he comes again, will be unavoidable for those who do not belong to God.

The New Testament tells about a few different judgments, in fact, which will occur after this age is over. I’ll distinguish them better for you when we get to the book of Revelation. But this judgment talked about in this chapter, in particular, happens right after his second coming, when he suddenly splits the sky, surrounded by angelic armies from heaven, returns to the earth as a conquering king. The awful tribulation will finally be over. Remember, he had said earlier that time would be shortened, or no one, especially not God’s chosen people, the Jews, would survive it. This particular judgment sounds like it will happen then.

It will determine who, among those who are on the earth at Jesus’ second coming, among those who have come through the tribulation era, who belongs to Him and who does not. In one big way, that will be determined then will be how people living during that tribulation era responded to God’s chosen people, who Jesus calls here these brothers of mine and even the least of them. As I’ve said before, and this is another indicator for us, stay far away from those who spread anti-Semitism, hatred, or fear of the Jewish people, even those who implicitly or subtly buy into it. Those Gentiles who belong to God at this future judgment will be those who have proven it by caring for His chosen people. To them, the King will say, Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

The kingdom that will commence when Jesus returns is the millennial kingdom, which will last 1,000 years, the kingdom the people of Israel were promised when the Messiah arrived and they’ve been waiting and waiting for. Jews and believing Gentiles who come through the tribulation will be the people who will populate that age, as I understand the Bible. The curse will be lifted then, and it will be a golden age on the earth. Again, we’ll discuss more about this when we get into Revelation. The important things that each of these three sections in Matthew chapter 25 stress is that Jesus is really coming back. In the first picture, He’s the bridegroom coming back for His bride.

In the second, the wealthy man who went on a journey and returned. And in the third, the King returning in power and glory to reign. But each scene also carried the very real warning that judgment is also ahead. That was represented in the first parable by the wedding crasher who was thrown out of the dinner, and in the second by the evil servant who hid his master’s talent in the ground, and in the third scene, the goats who were separated from the sheep. These are very real warnings that after this age is over, there will be judgments, judgments you really do not want to be on the wrong end of because they each represent being separated from God and from His people and sentenced to hell and destruction.

I think the line that grabs me most from chapter 25 is this one: And while they were gone, that is, the unprepared bridesmaids, while they were trying to find and buy some oil, the bridegroom came. Each of the scenes Jesus paints in this chapter point to a tragic situation: Him returning and some not expecting that, some not prepared for that, some not ready for that. The way we get ready is to accept Jesus for who He really is, to repent of our unbelief, our sin, our self-centeredness, to change our minds and heart about who He is, and claim Him as the Savior we need and determine to follow Him as our Lord. Are you ready? A favorite Christian song of mine that’s been going round and round in my head as I’ve thought about this section of Scripture is called Christ Is Coming. The first verse is a pointed message to anyone who has put off receiving Him.

The second is a challenge to all of us who already have to stay busy serving His interests. And the chorus is the reminder every person on this planet needs to hear. The song goes like this, verse one: Christ is coming, He is coming, though we do not know the hour. O sinner, you’re not ready till you taste His saving power. Verse two says, As He went up into heaven, so He cometh from the sky. O Christian, will you serve Him?

Your redemption draweth nigh. And the chorus that repeats says, Lord Jesus, come quickly and take Your children home. Are you ready for His coming when Jesus claims His own? Thank you for listening. This is Paul for Share the Word. I wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that Paul and all of the teachers that sit behind this microphone spend a great deal of time preparing and recording insightful podcasts just like this one, and I, for one, am grateful for all they do.

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