At the church where I serve we
are nearing the conclusion of a sermon series entitled the kingdom of heaven
is. During this series, we are spending our time together
looking at a series of statements that Jesus made that are recorded for us in
an account of His life that has been preserved in the New Testament of the
Bible, called the gospel of Matthew.
During this series, we are discovering how Jesus
described the kingdom of Heaven. During this series, we are discovering how one
enters into the Kingdom of Heaven. During this series we are discovering how
one should live as part of the kingdom of Heaven. And as we go through this
series, our hope and our prayer is that God would move by the power of the Holy
Spirit, in our heads, hearts, and hands in such a way that we would live lives
that reveal and bring the light and love of the kingdom of Heaven into the
areas of influence we have been given.
This week I
would like for us to spend our time together talking about a tension that we
must wrestle with when it comes to the kingdom of heaven. As we have been going through this series, one of the
tensions that we have found ourselves wrestling with is the reality that while,
in one sense, the kingdom of heaven is in the here and now, in another sense,
the kingdom of heaven is not yet.
You see, in one sense, when we
recognize and feel remorse for what we have done that has hurt God and others
as a result of our selfishness and rebellion and see our and need for
forgiveness and respond by changing the trajectory of our life that was moving
away from God back to God by believing, trusting, and following Jesus as Lord
and Leader, we receive forgiveness and enter into the relationship with God
that we were created for as part of the kingdom of heaven. In a very real
sense, we are participating in the kingdom of heaven in the here and now.
And yet, at the same time, there
is this other sense that the kingdom of heaven is not yet. While as followers
of Jesus we are members of the kingdom of heaven, we are not participating in
the kingdom of heaven in its fullest sense; the kingdom of heaven has not yet
been arrived in its fullest sense. We still have to deal with our old nature
that is dominated by selfishness and rebellion; we still have to deal with the
flawed and broken nature of the world we live in; we still have to deal with
things like the Coronavirus; we still have to deal with our aging and decaying
bodies.
As followers of Jesus and the
church, we are waiting for Jesus to come again to earth. And the reason that
Christians, that followers of Jesus make such a big deal about Jesus return to
earth is because of the hope that we have at his second coming; the hope of the
kingdom of heaven being arriving in its fullest sense and the establishment of
God’s royal reign on earth where selfishness, sin and death will be removed and
we will experience the fullness of the life and relationship with God as it was
designed to be.
Now this tension between the
kingdom of heaven as being in the here and now and the kingdom of heaven as
being not yet is not a new tension. You see, 2000 years ago, as Jesus walked
the earth, His disciples felt this same tension. You see, the disciples heard
Jesus state the that kingdom of heaven is at hand. The disciples saw Jesus
fulfill predictions that were made hundreds of years earlier that validated His
claim as being the Messiah, the promised one of God who would usher in the
kingdom of heaven.
Yet Jesus kept bringing up that
He was going to be crucified; that He was going to allow Himself to be treated
as though He lived our selfish and sinful lives so that God the Father could
treat us as though we lived Jesus perfect life. So the disciples were confused
as this tension built in them as they followed Jesus. And some 2000 years ago
today, Jesus made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we celebrate this
morning as Palm Sunday.
And as Jesus entered into
Jerusalem on what we refer to today as Palm Sunday, His closest followers felt
this tension grow as the tide slowly began to turn against Jesus and opposition
grew against Him. As we saw last week, by the Wednesday afternoon after Palm
Sunday, Jesus had a heated confrontation with the scribes and Pharisees, who
were the self-righteous religious leaders of His day. And after that confrontation,
these self-religious religious leaders began to plot how they might kill Jesus.
The following day, Thursday
morning, as the Jewish people began their preparations for the Passover feast,
Jesus went to the temple and pronounced a harsh condemnation against these
self-righteous religious leaders. And as Jesus and the disciples left the
temple, the tension was palpable. And that Thursday afternoon, after walking
from the temple to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the disciples could take
the tension no longer and asked Jesus the very question that we still ask today
“When is the kingdom of heaven coming in its fullest?”
And it is in this context that
Matthew gives us front row seat to an event from history where Jesus tells a
story in response to their question, and the tension behind the question, that
reveals for us a timeless truth about the kingdom of heaven. So let’s take that
front row seat together, beginning in Matthew 25:1-4:
"Then the kingdom of heaven will be comparable to ten virgins, who
took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2 "Five
of them were foolish, and five were prudent. 3 "For when the
foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, 4 but the
prudent took oil in flasks along with their lamps.
Matthew begins to give us a front
row seat to this event from history as Jesus responded to the disciples
question about the kingdom of heaven’s arrival by telling a parable. As we have
seen throughout this series, a parable is an earthly story that is designed to reveal
a deeper spiritual truth. In this parable, Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven
to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.
To understand what Jesus is
communicating in this parable, we first need to understand what a wedding
looked like in Jesus day. As we talked about last week, in the Jewish culture
of Jesus day, a bridegroom would make a wedding proposal to the bride and her
family. The bride and her family would then agree to the wedding proposal. At
this point, the bridegroom would then go back to where his family lived and
would prepare a place for them to live, with his family.
The bridegroom would basically
build an addition on his parent’s house for them to live in. After the addition
was completed, bridegroom would then come back with his entire family banging
pots and pans in a loud parade-like celebration. The parade would then stop at the
bride’s house, where a wedding ceremony and reception would take place, which
could last several days. At the end of the celebration, the bridegroom would pick
the bride up, and take her to be with his family.
With that background in mind,
when Jesus refers to ten virgins, these would be unmarried friends and
relatives of the bride and bridegroom who would be looking and waiting for the
bridegroom to return from preparing a place for the couple to live. These
friends and family would then meet the bridegroom and His procession and lead the
procession back to the bride’s house for the wedding feast.
Of these ten virgins, Jesus explained
that five of them were foolish and five were prudent. Jesus then provided the
reason for their foolishness and prudence. The foolish virgins were foolish because
they took no oil for their lamps, while the prudent took oil flasks with their
lamps. Now the fact that the foolish virgins took no oil for their lamps was
significant because of the nature of the wedding.
You see, the virgins had no idea
how long they would have to wait until the bridegroom arrived. And because they
had no idea when the bridegroom was going to arrive, the foolish were foolish
because they were not prepared for the potentially long wait. The prudent
virgins, on the other hand, were prepared for however long it took the
bridegroom to prepare the place for the couple and then come back for His
bride.
Tomorrow, with that background in
mind, we will see Jesus continue His parable…
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