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.