In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Even though lots of people today have a low view of the Bible in general, that tends to be especially true when it comes to the Old Testament. When they read about the brutal battles and strange rituals that we find scattered throughout Moses and the Prophets, they quickly dismiss that part of the Scriptures as being unnecessary or even incorrect. In fact, sometimes individuals who call themselves Christians will even try and pit the teachings of Jesus against what’s recorded earlier in the Bible as if the two of them contradict each other. Who’s heard the argument before that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality? Despite the fact that God’s Word clearly defines it as wrong in many other places, since Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, never record an instance where Christ literally speaks that specific word out loud, we’re told that it’s an open question. In many cases, people almost act as if there are two different gods that are fundamentally opposed to each other. There’s the god of the Old Testament, and he’s kind of a meanie. And then there’s the god of the New Testament, and he’s a nice guy.

But the closer we look at the Word of God as a whole, and even the New Testament itself, the quicker we see just how wrong that line of thinking is. For example, as Saint Paul tells us in our Epistle lesson today from Romans chapter 15, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” So, on the basis of these words, allow me to explain to you all what our attitude towards the Old Testament should be, and what the benefits are of still reading it.

First, this passage from Romans 15, clearly shows us that even New Testament believers should continue to have a great deal of respect for what God tells us in the Old Testament. Again, as Saint Paul says, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction.” The only possible thing that the apostle could be referring to here is Genesis to Malachi. Paul lived at the time when the books of New Testament were still being produced. The stuff that was written in former days, means the stuff that written before Christ was born. In fact, every time that the New Testament references “the Scriptures,” or the writings, even though it does, of course, apply to everything in the Bible, it’s first and foremost about the Old Testament. When Jesus says to the Pharisees, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,” what Scriptures is He talking about? When our Lord tells us in John chapter 10 that “the Scriptures cannot be broken,” meaning they don’t contain any errors, what infallible Word is He referring to? When Paul tells Timothy that, “All Scripture is breathed out by God” and to continue in them because they are able to “make you wise unto salvation,” what inspired text is He referencing? Yes, these passages apply to every part of the cannon of the Bible, but according to their original purpose, they have to do with Old Testament.

The reason why we should have just as much respect for the Old Testament as we do the New, and not pit them against each other, is because in the end both of them are the literal Word of God. They both have the same Author. Even though God used human men as instruments to record His Word, He’s still the origin of all of it. The people that He inspired weren’t writing their own opinions. They were recording the very proclamations of God Himself. As Saint Peter explains in 2 Peter chapter 1, “No prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” In the Lutheran Church, we call that the doctrine of verbal inspiration. It means that not only did God give the impulse for the human authors who recorded the Bible to start writing, but He guided their work, and He provided them with the thoughts and the ideas to put down. 

This whole thing that we see nowadays were people go, “Well, yeah, but what did Jesus say,” or “That’s just Paul” or “But is it anywhere in the New Testament” completely misses the point. It’s a not-so-subtle way of arguing against the authority of the Scriptures. But when we dismiss one part of God’s Word, we call into question the rest of it too. When we cherry pick the things from the Bible that we like, and ignore the parts of it that we don’t, we’re playing a dangerous game that always ends badly. Eventually, it won’t just lead us to rejecting God’s written Word, but the Word made flesh too. If dismiss the Old Testament as unnecessary or uninspired, it’ll cause us to reject the New Testament too. As Jesus Himself warns us in John chapter 6, “If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

There are so many ways in which reading the Old Testament can still benefit our faith today. The first one that Saint Paul gives us in our reading this morning is instruction. Again, as he says, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction.” When we read the content of Old Testament, we find the exact same teachings presented to us there as we find in the New Testament. In fact, many times the Old Testament teaches us things in even greater detail. Think about the doctrine of creation. Yes, there are references to God being the greater of the universe several times in Matthew through Revelation, but in the book of Genesis, God gives us two whole chapters filled with wonderful details about how it actually happened. Or what about the doctrine of sin? The Old Testament literally gives us the account of how sin entered the world. We find verse after verse that teaches us about the depravity of our sinful condition and our great need for God’s forgiveness. Where does the Bible tell us that all of us are conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity? That’s from the Old Testament. Where does it say that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God? It says it in the New Testament, but that’s only because it’s a direct quote from the Old Testament. Even the central doctrine of our faith, the doctrine of justification by grace through alone, is not something that we find only in the New Testament. Remember what it says about father Abraham and how he received God’s favor? It says, “he believed in the Lord and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

Sometimes in Lutheran circles the impression is given that the Old Testament is the Law and the New Testament is the Gospel. But that simply isn’t true. Both Testaments contain both the Law and the Gospel. In both places, God tells what to do and what Christ does in our place. In both places, God shows us our sins and shows us our Savior. In both places, the Lord calls us to repentance and offers the healing balm of His forgiveness when we do. 

The only difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament is that in one Christ is concealed and in the other one Christ is revealed. One of them gives us Jesus through signs, shadows, and types, and the one gives us Jesus in the flesh. One of them points us to the Messiah who would come and save us, and the other one identifies exactly who that Messiah is.

Not only can we learn many things by reading the Old Testament, but without the Old Testament the New Testament wouldn’t even make sense. What does it mean to call Jesus the Lamb of God if you don’t even know about the Passover lamb whose blood marked the door of the Israelites so that death passed them over? Why would we refer to Christ as the second Adam, if there was no first Adam, and he hadn’t actually plunged the world into sin? How would we even be able to identify who the Christ is if it wasn’t for the specific prophecies that tell us who to look for? All of God’s Word holds together. Everything in the Bible is one story. It’s the true story of our salvation in Jesus.

Besides being written for our instruction, the Old Testament was also written, above all, so that we would have the hope of eternal life. As Saint Paul also says in our reading, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

Again, the way that the New Testament gives us hope is by showing us all the things that Jesus did in order to win for us salvation. But the Old Testament does that by predicting it. Even down to the smallest of details, God’s Word in from the Old Testament shows us how He planned our redemption long before it happened. Right after the first sin, God told us how the Seed of the woman would crush the head of the ancient serpent. Or what about the ram that was caught in the thicket so that Abraham didn’t have to sacrifice his sin, but could use a substitute instead? How could somebody possibly read Isaiah chapter 53 and not see Jesus and the cross there? “Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” We don’t have to know every single little detail from the Old Testament to know that Jesus is the Savior of the whole world, but every single little detail helps. They all point us to Christ.

And one more thing too. The last way that God uses the Old Testament to give us hope is by providing us with countless real-life examples of how He saved poor sinners in the past. Yes, the New Testament gives us a few accounts of believers who lived and died in the faith. We mostly find that in the book of Acts. But what about the Old Testament? It’s full of them. Over and over again, we see the grace of God in action. We see how God sought people out before they ever went looking for Him. We see how He remained faithful even when others were faithless. We see how when they stumbled God raised them up, and when they wandered away, He called them back. When those who should have known better fell into egregious sins, God did punish them and let them feel His anger, but only so that they would repent and seek His mercy. He didn’t reject them forever, but even enticed them to return, and when they did, He immediately restored them.

How many stories in the Old Testament follow the pattern of somebody sinning and God going out of His way to bring them to repentance and then forgive them? That’s the story of King David. That’s the story of Jonah and the Ninevites.  That’s the whole story of Israel and why they went away into exile. Even the times where people did not listen to God, and continued in their sin until their destruction, our Lord uses those instances to plead with us to take our sin seriously. It’s so that we would head the call of our Savior who says, “Come to Me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

The Old Testament is filled with examples of God’s love and mercy. So, don’t let it intimidate you. Don’t chuck it aside as a bunch of worthless myths from a bygone era without any real point. Don’t pit it against other parts of the Bible as if contradicts them or doesn’t hold the same weight. Read it as God’s Word. Ask for the help of the Holy Spirit, and study it diligently with the intent of learning something, and the Scriptures themselves say that you will. Look at it through the lens of Christ, who is the fulfillment of all of God’s promises, and that same Christ will fill you with hope. He will strengthen you through every trial and sustain you through every need. He will bring you to everlasting life.

As Jesus Himself tells in our Gospel lesson today from Matthew chapter 24, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” That’s true for everything that God says, even what He says in the Old Testament. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The traditional reading for the first Sunday in Advent is always the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. As we begin a new Church Year, this text reminds us of our Lord’s promise to continually come to His people and never leave them or forsake them. In fact, that’s what the word “advent” literally means. It means a “coming” or an “approaching.” Just like Jesus approached the people of Jerusalem, riding on the back of a lowly donkey, He approaches us week after week, year after year, in Church to give us the things that we need. So, in this morning’s sermon, as we look more closely at our Gospel lesson from Matthew chapter 21, let us consider together what it teaches us about the reason why Jesus comes to us and the manner in which He does. 

First, there’s the reason why Jesus comes to us. The mere knowledge that Christ is present in our midst, or that He promises to be with us repeatedly, is not, by itself, necessarily good news. It’s only good news, if we know the purpose for His arrival. Just because a king enters into a city, or a powerful person visits your home, that doesn’t mean that it will be a pleasant experience for you. Sometimes kings show up to conquer people. Sometimes they ride into town in order to burn it to the ground and lead everyone away as captives. Sometimes the only reason why they show up is for the purpose of getting revenge on their subjects and putting them into their place.

So, is that the reason why Jesus shows up, or does He have another purpose entirely? If, we only consider a portion of God’s Word, we might be led to the wrong conclusion. After all, just listen again to what it tells about Jesus in the first part of our reading. It tells us how He orchestrated the entire event of His arrival into Jerusalem down to the smallest of details. He knew where the donkey would be that He was going ride on, and He was able to make people obey His commands even from a distance. Jesus demonstrated in one action both His omnipotence and His omniscience, showing us without a shadow of doubt that He is the Word made Flesh. He is God Himself.

And just like Jesus knew where the donkey would be, and what to say to those who were taking care of it, He knows a lot of things about you too. In fact, Jesus knows everything about you. He knows the things that you want Him to know, and He knows the things that you wish He didn’t know too. He knows all about your sin. More than anyone else, even yourself, Jesus is acutely aware of the terrible ways that you have treated Him as your King in the past. Even if you have long forgotten them, He can still recall them with ease. He knows the kinds of things that you’ve said, and He knows the kind of things that you’ve done. He even sees the desires that you have in your heart. Unlike anyone else, Jesus has a complete and perfect knowledge of your whole miserable and sinful condition. 

And yet, what does our Lord choose to do with that information? Most kings would use something like that in order to destroy us. They would use it to punish us with the just suffering that we deserve. But that’s not how it is with Jesus. He does not want to come to us as our executioner, but as our Savior. He does not want to be present with us as our Judge, but as our Redeemer. He does not want to draw near to us in order to condemn us, but in order to deliver us.

Why did Jesus ride into Jerusalem on the back of a lowly donkey? Why did He enter into that holy city as a fulfillment of God’s Old Testament promises? What waited for Christ at the end of His road, and what did the people shout out to Him when He arrived? They said the same thing that we say right before Communion, “Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” The word “Hosanna” means “save us now.” That’s what Jesus comes to do. That was, and always is, the main purpose of His arrival. He comes not in order to punish us for our sins, but in order to forgive us for them. He uses His perfect knowledge to make a perfect atonement. He employs His almighty power to render an all-sufficient ransom. He shows up in order to take away our sins.

And until He comes again in glory, our Lord will never stop coming to us for that main purpose. He never gets tired of giving us what we need to be saved. It doesn’t matter how many times we have ignored His coming in the past, all that He wants is for us to receive His coming now. Whether it is at the first hour, or the ninth hour, or the last hour, our Lord’s only desire is that that hour would turn into an eternity. It’s that we would receive the forgiveness of our sins.

Nobody here today in Church should think that their sins are too bad to be forgiven. No one should be afraid that they have committed the same sin too many times in the past, and that there’s no hope left for them in the present. Unless, you don’t want to be forgiven, there is always forgiveness to be had in Christ. Unless, you plan on continuing in your sin without any remorse or any intention of stopping, there is no sin that you need to be afraid of. Jesus can deliver you from all of them. That’s the whole reason why He comes to us.

And that leads us to the second thing that our reading shows us about the coming of Christ, and that is the manner in which He comes. Besides teaching us that Jesus comes to us for the main purpose of forgiving us of our sins, the account of the Triumphal entry also reminds us that Jesus always does that in humility. Except for on the Last Day, when our Lord will appear in visible glory together with all of His holy angels, every day until then He conceals His coming under ordinary means. Just like Jesus rode into Jerusalem not on the back of magnificent war horse, but seated on the back of lowly donkey, He still comes to us today in ways that look very plain.

What does the Bible tell us elsewhere about where Jesus comes to us now? Our Lord says in John chapter 14 that “If anyone loves Me, He will keep My Word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make our home with Him.” That’s a promise about hearing God’s Word. When we listen to it, and believe it, the Bible says that Jesus comes to us. Or what about this verse from Galatians chapter 3, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Here the Bible shows us that Jesus comes to us in our Baptism too. Whenever we are washed with the water and the Word, He is present to forgive us of our sins. And what about the gift of the Lord’s Supper?  What could be more obvious about Jesus coming to us than that? Our Lord Himself says, “Take eat, this is My Body. Take drink, this is My Blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” Every time that we celebrate the Sacrament of the Altar according to Christ’s command and institution, Christ Himself promises to be present. And He promises to be there to forgive us of our sins.

Those are the ways that Jesus chooses to come to us now to give us what we need. He does it through the pure teaching of His Word and the right administration of His Sacraments. No matter how many times we use those things in repentance and faith, we have the assurance that we will receive the exact same thing through them. We will receive Jesus and His forgiveness.

Sadly, many people today end up missing out on Jesus’ coming to them, and deprive themselves of His forgiveness, because of the way that He chooses to show up. It’s not because Jesus is hard to find, but because they don’t want to go to the places where He’s promised to be. Instead of letting the humble ways that our Lord chooses to deal with us humble them into thanksgiving, they let it harden themselves into pride. They are offended by the very thing that should give them the greatest joy. Jesus actually promises to be with us in Church. He really is here every time that we listen to His Word and study His teachings. When we get baptized our sins actually get washed away, and when we take the Lord’s Supper they truly are remitted.

How could we Christians ever get bored with that? Why would we ever want that to change, or think that we could in improve it? Can we might Jesus show up in a better way than the way He’s promised to be with us? No! When people act as if we need to do new and fancier things to attract others, instead of simply preaching the pure Word of God and rightly administering His Sacraments, they reveal their lack of knowledge about how Christ actually comes to us. They show that they either don’t take His Word seriously, or they don’t take their need for His forgiveness seriously. In either case, though, it is a serious problem.

Yes, we do the same things over and over again in Church. Week after week, year after year, we gather together in God’s house to receive His gifts. Even though there are some differences depending on the day, for the most part, we follow the same pattern of worship. We sing the same sort of hymns that have been sung for generations. We listen to the same readings from throughout the Bible. We pray the same prayers. And we take Communion in the exact same kind of way. But that’s because we need the same things over and over again. We literally commit the same kinds of sins all of the time. Think back to your life, one year ago today. How different are you from year? Have you stopped falling into sin? Have you gotten complete control over your sinful nature, or do you still get tripped up by the same sort of sins as you did in the past? Have you overcome one sin, only to have it replaced by another? You the know the answer. Many things are still the same. But Jesus promises to show up in the same way for you anyway. And He promises to do it in order to forgive you. So, may we never grow tired of receiving Him, even in this new Church Year. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is the Last Sunday of the Church Year. The whole focus of this morning’s service is on the End Times and, specifically, the return of Jesus in glory. In order that we would be prepared for that event when it happens, our Lord tells us a parable about it in Matthew chapter 25, the so-called parable of the ten virgins. So, in this morning’s, I’m going to do something a little bit different than what I usually do and simply walk through this text verse by verse and explain what each part means. If you want to, you can follow along in the bulletin, or if you have your own Bible or you want to use one of the pew Bibles, you can that too.

Verse 1: Jesus said, “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.”

Here our Lord shows us that this is a parable about the visible Church on earth. It isn’t about the differences between atheists and Christians, or Buddhists and Lutherans, but about all those who have outwardly attached themselves to God’s Word and Sacraments. It’s a parable about you and me, and all of the people sitting here in this room today; everyone throughout the whole world who identifies as a follower of Christ. All ten of the virgins went out to meet the bridegroom. All ten of them acknowledged that eventually he was going to show up, and, at least for a moment, they all expected it to happen.

Verse 2: “Five of them were foolish and five were wise.”

According to God’s Word, not everyone who is connected with the visible Church will be prepared for the return of Christ. Not everyone who shows us on Sunday, or calls himself a Christian will necessarily be ready when Jesus comes again in glory. Some people are wise and some people are foolish. That doesn’t mean that some people have a high IQ and others have a lower one. It means that some people take God’s Word seriously and others don’t. As we read in Proverbs chapter 1, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, fools despise wisdom and instruction.” True wisdom, in the Biblical sense of the word, doesn’t have anything to do with how good you are at math or whether or not you know quantum physics. It has everything to do with whether or not you listen to the Scriptures and take them to heart; whether or not you have a living and active faith that firmly clings to the Word of God.

Verses 3 and 4: For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.

The main way that the wise virgins showed that they actually took the return of the bridegroom seriously was by making preparations for it. They weren’t content simply to be ready at just one time, they knew that they had to be ready all of the time. That’s why they brought along extra oil for their lamps. They recognized that without constant replenishment, the oil of their lamps would run out.

This passage, and this whole parable for that matter, strikes a crushing blow to the false teaching of “once saved, always saved.” Nowhere in the Bible are we taught that just because a person believed in Jesus at one point in their life, they’re automatically “good to go” at every other point of their life too. 

The foolish virgins did not think that they could ever fall away from the faith. They weren’t trusting in God’s promises to preserve them in the faith, they were abusing those promises so that they didn’t have to keep the faith at all. This is sort of like when people today who refuse to come to church, or are living in unrepentant sin, act as if just because they got baptized as a baby, or confirmed when they were a teenager, or that their name is still on the roles, there’s no possible way that they could ever go to hell. They act as if just because they had faith in the past, that faith will still save them even if they don’t have faith in the present. Well, are you saved because you used to have faith, or are you saved because you have faith when you die? Will you go to heaven because you used to live a life of repentance, or do you still have to live a life of repentance now? We all know the answer. 

In order for us to remain in the faith until we die, our faith needs to be fed all of the time. Just like how a person will starve to death unless they eat food, we need to eat the spiritual food of God’s Word over and over again so that our souls don’t starve. We need to hear the Law and Gospel and receive the forgiveness that comes from Jesus on an ongoing basis so that we will have enough oil to keep our lamps burning to the end.

Verse 5: “As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept.”

In this part of the parable, Jesus reminds us that even though there are differences between the wise and foolish virgins, there is one way in which all of them are the same. They all got tired and fell asleep. In the Bible, sometimes sleep is a euphemism for when a Christian dies in the faith. But since one of the main points of this parable is that the foolish virgins lost their faith and didn’t go to heaven, we know it doesn’t mean that here. The other option is that becoming drowsy and falling asleep has to do with falling into sin. Remember what happened in the garden of Gethsemane? Jesus asked the disciples to stay awake and pray with Him, but none of them could keep their eyes open. Then Jesus said, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

All of us, believers and unbelievers alike, have the same sinful nature. Even after our conversion we continue to carry around with us a fallen flesh. That means that we still sin. The difference is with what we do with our sin. Do we repent of our sin, or do we indulge our sin? Do we turn away from our sin, or do we defend our sin? Do we look to Jesus to forgive our sin, or are we content to keep on living in our sin?

What set apart the wise virgins from the foolish was not that they didn’t have any sin. It was that they didn’t take their sin lightly. They didn’t act as if their sin was “no big deal.” On the contrary, they knew that the corruption of their sin ran so deep that they never stopped needing the mercy and forgiveness of Christ. They never stopped needing to listen to God’s Word and receive His Holy Sacraments. They never stopped needing to go to Church.

When people make a habit of skipping church, or not go to church on a regular basis, they are doing what the foolish virgins did in the parable. They are not making any provisions against their sinful flesh. They are proving by their actions that, to a certain degree, they don’t really take their sin that seriously. And that’s a very dangerous thing to do. Because even though we all get drowsy and fall asleep sometimes, even though we all sin, if we give into our sin, we risk the possibility of not waking up from it on time. We risk the possibility of not being able to receive forgiveness for it before it’s too late.

Verses 6 and 7: “But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps.

Eventually, Jesus Christ will make good on His Word and come back in the same way that He left. Just like we confess in the Creeds, He will return to judge the living and the dead. The reason why our Lord says in this parable that the bridegroom came at midnight is not because He wants us to try and figure out, or predict, the exact date and time that it will happen. As God Word tells us in multiple places, including at the end of this text, “No one knows the day or the hour.” Rather, Jesus uses the language of midnight to remind us of how it will happen very suddenly, even when many people are secure and complacent in their sins.

As our mother’s often warned us, nothing good happens after midnight. And as Saint Paul says in our Epistle lesson, “those who get drunk get drunk at night.” People do shameful things under the cover of darkness because they think that it’ll be easier to get away with. They think that no one is watching. What they are forgetting about, though, is that there’s Someone who’s always watching. God never slumbers nor sleeps. He sees everything that we do and He knows every thought that crosses our mind. Even the things that are hidden to others, like our deepest and darkest secrets that we’ve never shared with anyone else, we can’t keep secret from Him. And soon, everything will be exposed. That’s why we expose our sins now by confessing them and receiving forgiveness for them. It’s so that we don’t have to be ashamed for them later.

Verses 8 through 9: “And the foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.”

Just like it’s not enough to have believed in Jesus in the past, it’s not enough to have other people believe in Jesus for you either. Everyone must believe in Jesus for himself.

Yes, it’s a wonderful thing, and a true blessing from God, to have faithful friends and family that look out for you and encourage you in your walk with Christ. Thank the Lord for parents who make their kids go to Confirmation Class and wives that keep on inviting their husbands to church. Praise God for grandparents who pray with their grandkids, and neighbors who witness to those who live next to them. But eventually, each one of us will be responsible for ourselves. We won’t get to fall back on the fact that we have relatives who were really pious Lutherans, or that we can trace our blood line all the way back to father Abraham himself. None of that will matter. All that will matter is whether or not our lamps are burning. All that will matter is if we have faith. The foolish virgins had to leave and try buy oil because they didn’t have enough of it for themselves when they actually needed it. They tried to repent and get some after the fact, but then, they found out just how impossible that was.

Verse 10: “And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut.

There are no second chances when it comes to Judgment Day. That’s why we call it the “Last Day.” The moment that the trumpet sounds and our Lord appears in the sky, our eternal state will be fixed, and there won’t be any changing it. Just like the door was shut in the parable, the door to heaven will be closed. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s only a bad thing for those who aren’t inside. Think about another time that God closed a door on someone. He did that for Noah right before the flood. In that case, God closing the door was the very thing that kept Noah safe. It was His way of protecting Noah and his family from the destruction that He was about to bring upon the earth.

And that’s the attitude that we should have about Judgment Day as members of the household of God. It’s not something that we’re supposed to dread. It’s something we’re supposed us to look forward too. They only reason why Judgment Day should scare us is if are sinning on purpose and not looking to Jesus for His forgiveness. But if we are repenting of our sins and trusting in Christ, regardless of what how terrible our sins have been, we don’t have anything to worry about. We can have confidence that the sins that our Lord died for, He won’t make us suffer for in entirety. When He shuts the door on us, it won’t be to condemn us, but to protect us. It will be to guard us from even the possibility of ever falling away from Him again.

Verses 11 and 12: “Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.” But He answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’

This is one of the most terrifying verses in the whole Bible. Sometimes God’s Word tells us things in order to comfort us, and other times it’s tells us things to warn us. This one is obviously the latter. We can get a lot of bad news in our life, but nothing is worse than hearing from Jesus that He doesn’t even know you. But that is what will happen to those who don’t want to know Him. That’s what will happen to those who reject God’s grace when it’s offered to them and try and stand before Him on the basis of anything other than the blood of Christ. It won’t go well for them. And the reason why Jesus warns us about it is, of course, because He doesn’t want it to happen to us. He wants us to seek His grace while it may be found, so that we’ll be found in Him, covered in His righteousness, and secure in our identity as God’s children.

Verse 13: “Watch, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

The whole point of the parable of the ten virgins is that Jesus doesn’t want us to miss out on heaven. There is nothing that He desires more than for us to spend eternity with Him in paradise. Not only does Jesus desperately want that for each and every one of us, but He has provided all of the means for that to take place. He did that, in the first place, by dying for all of our sins on the cross. That’s where Jesus bought us the oil that we need to keep our lamps burning. That’s where He purchased for us the forgiveness of our sins. But not only did He purchase that forgiveness for us, He actually gives it to us in His Word and Sacraments. He uses the Word, Water, Bread and Wine, as instruments to fill up our lamps with His saving forgiveness until they are overflowing. And through the work of His Holy Spirit, He assure us that He will use those things in order to give us faith, strengthen our faith, and keep our faith living until He comes again. Jesus provides us with everything that we need to be saved.

So, may we make use of the gifts that He has given us. May we stay as close as possible to the place where He promises to fill our lamps. May we keep coming to the feast that we get in Church so that when the Bridegroom returns we can see clearly to enter with Him into the Feast that has no end. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.