Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Be Reading Verses One to thirteen,
Matthew Twenty Five, beginning in the first
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verse. Then the Kingdom of Heaven
shall be likened to ten virgins who took
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their lamps and went out to meet
the bridegroom. Now five of them were
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wise and five were foolish. Those
who were foolish took their lamps and took
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no all with them, but the
wise took all in their vessels with their
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lamps. But while the bridegroom was
delayed, they all slumbered and slept,
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and at midnight a cry was heard
behold, the bridegroom is coming, go
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out to meet him. Then all
those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps,
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and the foolish said to the wise, give us some of your all,
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for our lamps are going out.
But the wise answered saying no, lest
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there should not be enough for us
and you, but go rather to those
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who sell and buy for yourselves.
And while they went out to buy,
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the bridegroom came and those who were
ready went in with him to the wedding,
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and the door was shut. Afterward
the other virgins came also, saying,
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Lord, Lord, open to us, but he answered and said assuredly,
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I say to you, I do
not know. You Watch, therefore,
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for you know neither the day nor
the hour in which the son of
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man is coming. Let's pray.
Well, we thank you for your word.
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We thank you that your word is
indeed sharper than any two edged sword
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and it cuts us, Lord,
to the very depth of our being.
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We thank you, Lord, for
Your Gospel, which cuts us, which
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divides us, which separates and exposes
us. Well, we pray that you
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would open our eyes this evening to
see what it is that you would have
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us know. We pray, Lord, that even as you tear us apart,
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as it word, with your word, that you would also build us
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up, that as you bring us
to conviction, Lord, that you would
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also bring us to an assurance of
pardon. Well, we pray that,
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as we see our lack, you
would show us your sufficiency. And we
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ask, Lord, this evening that
you would let the words of my mouth
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and the meditations of our hearts be
pleasing to you as we give attention to
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your word, and we know that
you will, for we ask it in
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Jesus name. Amen. All right, please be seated. Well, I
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reckon. Y'All know that, for
the last few months we've been having a
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Bible studied our house on the book
of revelation and as a result, during
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the course of that, even though
it's been a few months, we are
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still only like a third of the
way through. Maybe they all make fun
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of me because we're so slow,
but there's a lot to talk about.
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But as we've been talking about it
and working our way through revelation, we've
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seen that there's we've had a lot
of conversation about the end of the world
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and the Judgment Day and these sorts
of things, and that's what we tend
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to think that revelation is all about. We tend to think that revelation is
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about the end times. But in
actuality, the book of revelation has very
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little to do with the end times, even though that is what we tend
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to think about it as being.
In actuality, the book of revelation is
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given to us by the Lord so
that we would have a better understanding,
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not of what's going to happen way
off in the distant future, but so
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that we would have a better understanding
of how he wants us to live now
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today. And indeed, if you
peruse any of the Bible's discussion of the
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end times, you'll find that that's
really what most of it is about.
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God's concern isn't for preparing us for
the end of the world. Rather,
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his concern is about his people living
faithfully today, fulfilling his mission to take
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his Gospel to those of his people
who have not yet heard and embrace that
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Gospel message. And it's also,
of course, about US learning to live
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blessedly with him and one another forever. And so I've had this on my
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mind a lot lately. The other
night we were talking about revelation Chapter Twenty
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Four, I mean Matthew Chapter Twenty
Four, and it made me think that
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they might be a propo at least
for me and those who go to the
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Bible study, to follow up by
hearing about Matthew Chapter Twenty Five. I
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hope that there might be some benefit
for the rest of you as well,
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but we'll see. We'll see how
that goes. So I want us to
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look this evening at this parable here
in Matthew Chapter Twenty Five, and as
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we approach the parable, it's helpful
for us to know something of the context
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in which this parable was given.
This parable comes two days before Jesus is
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crucifixion and immediately preceding chapters, Jesus
had pronounced his woes on the scribes and
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the Pharisees. He'd lamented and wept
over Jerusalem and their hardheartedness, the hardheartedness
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of his people, Israel. And
then in chapter four, Jesus took the
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twelve out and he pointed to the
city of Jerusalem, into the temple,
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and he told them that the days
were coming. We're not one stone would
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be left upon another in that city. And so, of course this led
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the disciples to ask him when these
things would be. They said, when
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Woen these things be? When will
all of this come to pats and how
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will we know? What will be
the signs of all these stupendous, stupendous
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things that are fixing to come about? And if you think about it,
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this these you and I would probably
ask the exact same thing if we'd been
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standing there. These are the sorts
of things that we would all want to
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know. And you know, if
you have any familiarity with all of the
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commentary out there, you'll know that
so many Christians today are obsessed with prophecy
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or the end of the world or
wanting to find out about all that interesting
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and exciting stuff, and so I
think it's really remarkable to note how Jesus
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responds to their questions. Jesus responds
to their flurry of questions about all of
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these things by barely giving them any
detail about it at all. Instead,
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what he does, which clever trick
he often uses, is he answers the
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question they should have asked. Jesus
gives them a few vague signs of the
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end of the age. He tells
them a few things about the signs before
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the end of the age, but
the main point of what he goes on
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to talk about in Matthew Chapters Twenty
four and to twenty five is to emphasize
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that, since no one knows the
day or the hour of his return in
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glory and judgment, we therefore need
to be ready at all times. We
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need to be ready for his return
at any time. And so then,
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to illustrate his point, he tells
two parables. In the first of those
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I want us to look at this
evening and I want us to see three
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things in this parable. First,
I'd like us to see what it means
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to be prepared for his coming,
what it means to be prepared for his
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coming. Second I'd like us to
ask ourselves the question, am I prepared?
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Am I prepared? And thirdly,
I'd like us to look into becoming
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prepared as Jesus calls us to be. And so the setting of the parable.
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The setting of the parable is right
before a wedding feast and right before
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the wedding feast the bridegroom is going
down to go collect the bride, to
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take her to the House that he's
prepared for her so that they can have
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the wedding ceremony and the wedding feast. Now, in those days, it's
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helpful to know a little bit of
the culture. In those days, it
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was the practice that the groom would
go to the bride's house with his friends
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and he would be preceded by some
musicians and they would go ahead and they
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would be playing music and blowing trumpets
to go collect the girl for the wedding
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ceremony. And also, in those
days it was common that the wedding would
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be in the evening. And,
bearing in mind this was an agrarian society,
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you couldn't take time off from the
field to go do a whole lot
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of extraneous stuff, and so it
would be in the evening. And since
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it was in the evening, the
wedding party would need people to carry lamps
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to light the way from the girl's
House to the groom's House, and this
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would be usually a group of the
bride's friends. This would this is what
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bridegrooms did in the ancient near eastern
world. They acted as flashlightholders, and
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that's what these ten girls do in
our parable now, the important thing to
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note about these ten girls is very
simple. Five of them were wise and
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five of them were foolish. Now, what made the difference between the wise
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and the foolish girls was very simple. It was how they prepared for the
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groom's coming. Since the common practice
was for the groom to come in the
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evening, after the sun set,
then it stands to reason that the thoughtful
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or a wise girl would carry enough
all with her in her lamp to keep
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it lit till the bridegroom got to
the bride's house. And, by contrast,
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only a very stupid or a foolish
girl would fail to bring enough all
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to light her lamp. And I
think it's pretty interesting. If you ever
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do a study of widom and foolishness, and scripture that you'll find that throughout
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wisdom and godliness are paired on the
one hand and foolishness and sinfulness are paired
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on the other. So you've got
foolishness and sinfulness if you got wisdom and
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godliness. They go hand in hand. In a fool in scripture is very
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simple. It's someone who is neither
prudent nor provident. Someone who's neither prudent
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nor provident. It's someone who is
careless in the practical affairs of life and
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who doesn't intelligently plan and prepare for
the future. The Biblical fool is someone
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who pins his hopes and his plans
for life on vain optimism. He bases
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it on schemes perhaps it have very
little basis in reality. The fool lives
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in a fantasy world of selfishness,
thoughtlessness and selfsinneredness. And, as I
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believe I've noted in the past,
wisdom is defined in Hebrew at least,
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as skill in living, skill in
living. That's what the word means.
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A wise person therefore, someone who
understands how the world works and how to
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live in it well, and the
way that this wisdom and foolishness thing then
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enter sex, with the concepts of
sin versus godliness. Is that the important
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thing, the key thing that makes
us either be foolish or to be wise,
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to have this skill and living or
to live in a fantasy world?
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The key difference is that those who
are foolish don't know whose world this is.
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The wise man knows that this is
God's world, like the Song Julia
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had a sing a little while ago, this is my father's world. He
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made it, he makes the rules, he says what's fair, he is
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the judge and, what's more,
he is the only savior. To be
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wise is to live in God's world, according to God's ways. It is
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to understand his ways and to live
as he calls us to live, both
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for his glory and for our good
and in our parable. These foolish girls
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were foolish because they knew what bridegrooms
did. They knew that bridegrooms came after
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dark. Therefore, as I said, only a very foolish girl would fail
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to bring all to last till he
arrived. And the wise girls were wise
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simply because they understood how the world
worked and acted accordingly. They were prepared
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to wait faithfully for the bridegroom to
show up. So all of that sort
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of begs the question, what does
it mean for us to be prepared?
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What does it mean for us to
be wise? Well, it's the answers
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very probably exactly what you would expect
me to say. It means that we
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need to live according to what our
bridegroom, Jesus, has told us about
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living in his father's world. And
in these chapters on the end times,
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Jesus tells us that no one knows
when the end of the world will be.
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He tells us that it can be
at any time and he tells us
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that things will be bad in the
world at that time. But beyond that
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he doesn't give us much in the
way of detail, and I think that
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what we can take from Jesus's silence
on the topic is it he doesn't want
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us to be consumed with worrying about
days and times for the end of the
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world. He doesn't he's not really
concerned about it. He doesn't want us
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to be really concerned about it.
It distracts from what he has us to
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do, already has for us to
do. His point, then, consistently,
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his consistent point is that we need
to be prepared by at by living
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as if the end of the world
could be at any moment, and that
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means that he's calling on us to
live lives that demonstrate that the Gospel call
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on our life is utterly and completely
life transforming. What he wants us to
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do is to live a life that
is so gripped by the good news of
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Salvation in Christ Jesus, that it
changes every aspect of our lives. That's
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what he wants us to be focused
on. Now, I know that Presbyterians
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aren't exactly known as people who try
to scry into this, you know,
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the the magic ball to figure out
what's going to happen at the end of
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time, but we all tend to
fall into that trap. We all it.
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We love to talk about it.
Everybody likes to either that or they
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get hung up on some millennial scheme. Perhaps you know some people who've done
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this, but that's not what he
wants us to be focused on. Rather,
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he wants us to be focused on
what it means to be a true
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citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven,
and I came across a really great quote.
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I want to read Y'all about what
that said. What that means.
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True citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven
are people who were so overwhelmed by their
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need for God's forgiveness and who are
so overwhelmed by and thankful for God's Free
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Gift of Love and Salvation in Christ, that they are willing to forsake everything
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in the world to dedicate their lives
to loving God, to serving him and
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to telling and showing the love of
Christ to everyone in their lives in all
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circumstances. That is what it means
to be prepared. That is what wisdom
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is, and so, if that's
what it means to be prepared, the
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next point to consider is to ask
ourselves the question, am I prepared?
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Am I prepared? Listen again to
versus, verses five through twelve of this
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parable while the bridegroom was delayed,
they, the ten girls, all slumbered
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and slept, and at midnight a
cry was heard behold, the bridegroom is
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coming, go out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose and trimmed
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their lamps, and the foolish said
to the wise, give us some of
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your oil, for our lamps are
going out. But the wise answered saying
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no, bless there should not be
enough for us and you, but go
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rather to those who sell and buy
for yourselves. And while they went to
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buy, the bridegroom came and those
who were ready went in with him to
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the wedding, and the door was
shut. Afterward the other virgins came also,
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saying Lord, Lord, open to
us, but he answered and said
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assuredly, I say to you,
I do not know you. I always
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hate those lines in the Bible,
in the parables or in Hebrews. It's
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always you know you, you don't
like to read it, and so you
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have to try to really think about
what it what it means. Well,
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what we see here is how these
girls unpreparedness to meet the bridegroom is revealed.
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When these girls heard that the groom
was approaching, they rose, you
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know, and they trimmed their lamps. But five of them realize that they'd
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run out of all, and so
now they're in a crisis, right,
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and your frantic, their frantic to
get some more all so that they can
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make up for not being ready.
But there's no all to be found,
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is there? The wise girls had
just enough for their own needs, and
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it was so late that no merchant
was still open so that they could buy.
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And so the five foolish girls missed
the whole wedding feast and of course
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they end up shut out and outer
dark harkness. Now this clearly is a
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parallel to what happens to those who
aren't ready to meet Jesus when he comes
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again. Many will be shown to
be unprepared to meet him and they will
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be exposed as fools, we find
out, and they will be told begone,
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for I never knew you. They'll
say. Oh but Lord, Lord,
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look and the times past. I
did this, or haven't you seen
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my focus on that? What about
this and that and the other thing?
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And he says get out of here, be gone. You have a lamp,
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but there is no light in it, and only then will many people
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discover they are danger so how are
we to know now if we are truly
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prepared or if perhaps we're just fooling
ourselves? Well, I think the answer
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is found in verses five and six. While the bridegroom was delayed, they
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all slumbered and slept, and at
midnight a cry was heard. Behold,
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the bridegroom is coming. Go out
to meet him. Notice that what we
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see here is that be for the
bridegroom came. Before the bridegroom showed up.
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An alarm was sounded and that alarm
showed these girls beyond the shadow of
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a doubt whether or not they were
ready to meet the groom. This alarm
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was a crisis point, as I
said a couple minutes ago. This is
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the moment where they know whether or
not they are ready, and I would
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suggest to you that the crisis here
does not represent the Lord himself in his
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return, but rather it's the signs
of the Times beforehand that he is coming.
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If we were to look back a
page or two, two chapter twenty
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four, in verse thirty three,
we read this so you also, when
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you see all these things, know
that it is near at the doors.
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There in chapter twenty four, Jesus
is just described a bunch of really awful
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things. They're going to be wars
and rumors of wars, plague and pestilence,
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they're going to be earthquakes and all
this awful stuff. But he says,
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when you see be these things,
know that he is at the door,
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he's here, or virtually. And
what's really interesting to me about Matthew
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Chapter Twenty four is that every single
one of the things he names off,
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save the last, is something that's
common to the entire era, from the
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ascension to the second coming. Tell
me a year or two, maybe three,
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maybe, when there hasn't been a
war, a rumor of war,
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a plague, of pestilence, an
earthquake or some other disease, famine,
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animals, rending mean it's all the
time. All of these things are going
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on all of the time, and
I think that that is Jesus's point.
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The point is that you and I
are faced with Chrises all the time and
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that it is on the basis of
how we meet these crises that will reveal
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to us the state of our heart, to show us if we are right
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with Jesus or if we are wandering
from him. And these don't have to
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be major league crises either. They
could be major or they could be minor.
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It could be some great, big
awful thing, like having your house
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burned down or having a loved one
get sick and die, or you yourself
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coming down with some grave disease,
or it could be something minor, like
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you having a car accident or just
having trouble in a relationship. With someone
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who's close to you. It could
even be those sort of quod tity and
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daily sort of crises that come along, like having some jerk derail your plans
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for the day or having to choose
between what is right and what is wrong
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but so desirable. All of these
things are able to reveal our hearts to
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us, and I would suggest that
it's your gut reaction to these things you're
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off the cup, that will give
you a really good indicator of where you
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are in your process of sanctification.
I'll give you a couple of examples.
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This is these are a couple of
examples from many, many years ago,
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because you know, it's always easier
to talk about sin problems you had a
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long time ago, right when,
back when I was nineteen years old,
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my mother fell ill and eventually died
the summer of my nineteen year. And
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when she got sick, I was
already a Christian and I was I thought
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that I was sincerely trying to follow
the Lord to the best of my ability,
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but I also was aware somewhere in
the back of my mind that God
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was calling on me to put to
death some cherish sin patterns that I had
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in my life. I had some
choices that I had to make, but
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I just kept ignoring that still small
voice of the Holy Spirit. And as
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my mother eventually came to die,
my unfaithfulness to the Lord was revealed in
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my general real reaction to this crisis
in my life and I began to backslide
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into sin and I eventually hid myself
from God and tried to distract myself with
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anything and everything I could lay my
hands on. And eventually, on the
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way to her funeral, which maybe
the single worst road trip in the history
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of humanity, God brought some events
into my life that made me realize what
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I've been doing, and God used
that experience of this road trip to break
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me and humble me and get me
to the point where I really would finally
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truly seek to clear the deck and
follow him. Of course, life event
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eventually came along, and I'm a
reprobate senator, it seems like so often.
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So it's not like that was the
end of the story, but that
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was a big crisis point in my
life. Another example came from about a
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year or so later, and I've
been having a hard time in my walk
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with the Lord because I felt like
such a failure after how I dealt with
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my mother's death and about a year
or so later I had I'd bought a
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new bicycle to ride from my apartment
over to the U of A, and
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one day I rode my bike back
from campus and the the bike rack at
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my apartment complex was completely filled up
with bikes and all I could do was
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wedge the front tire of my brand
spanking new bicycle into there and lock my
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tire. When I came back the
next morning, my tire was still there,
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but the bicycle was not. Now
my usual reaction to things like that
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at the time would have been to
get just I rate, just absolutely I
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rate. I would have cursed,
I would have stamped around, I would
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have been just upset all day,
maybe for days. And as I sat
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stood there looking at that lonely tire, instead of all that, I was
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really surprised because, by God's grace, the first thing that went through my
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mind was a quote from job that
I'd recently heard put to music. Naked
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I came from my mother's womb.
Naked I shall return. The Lord gave,
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the Lord has taken away. Blessed
be the name of the Lord.
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Now I don't tell that story because
I'm so great. Rather, I tell
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that story to praise God and to
show how he gave me grace to face
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a crisis. I still remember that
the cat the counterpart of those two things
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and it was a great encouragement to
me that the Lord really was about the
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process of sanctification in my life.
And what we need to do, I
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think, in all of our lives, is to look at ourselves and we
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need to say, you know,
if I don't see the hand of grace
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in my response to crises, then
perhaps I should be concerned. Perhaps we
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need to re examine ourselves and our
priorities and our walk with the Lord,
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because if we see poor and ungodly
responses to the events of our lives and
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if we ignore them consistently, we
may find that one day we are like
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those foolish, foolish girls who heard
Jesus say be gone, for I never
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knew you. So what do we
do? What do we do if we
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look at ourselves and we find that
we are unprepared or re concerned about our
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lack of preparation? How do we
go about getting prepared? Well, the
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first thing to do is to realize
that the time to get prepared is now.
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It's now, even though Jesus gives
us some details about the end and
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and about what has to happen first. Those those details, as I pointed
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out, a notoriously hard to figure
out, and I think that that's mainly
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because Jesus wants to emphasize to us
that we need not concern ourselves with the
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end times. Rather, what he
does make clear is that the time will
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come unexpectedly. Again in the previous
chapter and versus forty two, forty three
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and forty four, he says this
watch. There for for you to not
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know what our your Lord is coming, but know this that if the master
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of the House had known what hour
the thief would come, he would have
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watched and not allowed his house to
be broken into. The there for you
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also be ready, for the son
of man is coming at an hour you
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do not expect. See, he
could come at any moment. He could
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come at any moment, and even
if he doesn't, even if he decides
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to wait another two thousand and eighteen
years, that still doesn't mean that you
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and I can put things off,
because even if Jesus doesn't come back tomorrow,
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you and I could all keel over
dead on our way out that door
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tonight, couldn't we? So once
you decide that the time is now,
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the next thing that you have to
do, and this is all you have
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to do, is set your eyes
on the Gospel. We said before that
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the mark of the citizen of the
Kingdom of Heaven is someone who is so
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overwhelmed by his sin and his guilt
and his need for God, and it's
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someone who is so overwhelmed by,
and thankful for the salvate and freely offered
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dissinners by Jesus is sacrifice, that
he is willing to forsake the world in
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order to dedicate his life to the
wonderful savior who saves his soul and makes
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life worth living again. See you
and I. If we're honest, we
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know we know that the things that
we cling to in this life are ultimately
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not what we truly long for or
what we truly need. We know that
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what we long for deep down in
our hearts is the peace and the comfort
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that comes from the abiding presence of
God, the Holy Spirit. And yet
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we cannot seem to escape the lie
that the stuff of our lives will really
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soothe the burning of our hearts.
We cannot seem to escape the lie that
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we can somehow compromise with or balance
God and our worldly desires. And when
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we accept the lie, when we
don't rebuke it, we're setting ourselves up
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to be like those five foolish girls, and we need to see how foolish
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that is. What God is calling
us to do is to turn away from
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those things and simply to see,
to accept and to admit, both to
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God and ourselves, how much we
have screwed up our lives and how sinful
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we truly are. And then we
need to believe what the Bible says.
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Paul said. This is a faithful
saying and worthy of all acceptation. The
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Christ Jesus, came into the world
to save sinners, of whom I am
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chief. That's the Gospel. I
am chief. I suspect that that is
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the good news that allowed Paul to
get out of the bed every day and
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go face a hostile world. That
that's the wit, that's wisdom. And
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listen, the more sinful I admit
myself to be, the more I admit
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the truth. But the wonderful thing
about the good news is that no matter
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how sinful and wretched I may be. Christ Jesus came into the world to
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save sinners, even those as horrible
as I am and as horrible as you
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are now. I'll tell you what, if you hold on to that and
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you don't let it go, if
you stare that truth in the face every
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day, that simple truth will change
your life. If you believe and accept
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that you are the chief of sinners
and that Christ Jesus died for you,
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you will be willing to leave everything
to walk with and follow this gracious Lord
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who loves you so much as to
make you his beloved child, to make
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you his friend. And you two
will not hear those words. Be Gone
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for I, I never knew you. Rather, what he will say to
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you is he will say, well
done, Thou good and faithful servant.
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Thou hast been faithful in few things. I will make the master of many
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things enter into the joy of our
Lord. So let me just leave you
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with this little thought. Jesus tells
us that the end is soon, it
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is imminent, it is eminent.
Even now he is at the door.
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And when he comes, will it
be better, do you think, to
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be caught grasping after the vain and
empty things of this world, or would
384
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it be better to be found holding
fast to the Cross of Christ and following
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him? To Paraphrase Jesus? I
tell you the truth. No one knows
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the day or the hour, but
the time is now. That is our
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calling and that is good news.
Amen.
