God is deserving of our deepest affection, and knowing God is loving him back sincerely. We cannot fake that relationship. When the King comes, he will find us wise or foolish, with oil on reserve, or unprepared and not yet ready for the ceremony.
Photo by Chiến Phạm
And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend.
James 2:23
Faith is as much as discipline as it is a matter of the heart, and salvation cannot be decoupled from discipline and heart matters because both matter deeply to our spiritual growth. As we’ve discussed in the last two blogs on 3 Strands, salvation is predicated upon both action and upon the posture of our hearts. Today, we’re looking at what it means to have hearts that are prepared and ready for salvation.
Waiting for the bridegroom
The Parable of the Ten Virgins is one of those mysterious and deeply important parables that can be confusing outside of the full body of scripture or apart from the historical and scriptural contexts. It is a rich allegory with both a literal and a figurative meaning- with both cultural and spiritual significance.
Today, we’ll focus on the Parable of the Ten Virgins only but The Parable of the Talents and a description of The Final Judgment that round out Matthew 25 are well worth the read, as they put The Parable of the Ten Virgins into a salvation context. Let’s take a look at the parable which opens Matthew Chapter 25.
Matthew 25:1-13
At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
“At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’
“Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’
“‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’
“But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.
“Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’
“But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’
“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.
In Palestinian culture in Jesus’ time — and even in modern times, as Dr. J. Alexander Findlay* writes — a wedding is a week-long celebration with friends and family and sometimes entire villages. During this week, it is tradition for the groom to surprise the bride and the bridal party while they are napping. The entire bridal party must be prepared and ready for the wedding ceremony that could happen at any moment of the groom’s choosing- day or night. Everyone is invited to the wedding, but only those who arrive on time will be allowed into the wedding ceremony.
In the parable, Jesus explains that the coming of Christ is like the bridegroom who comes at any time, day or night, to sweep his bride away.
The wise virgins who bring extra oil are the prepared bridal party, ready for the ceremony. The foolish virgins were not prepared for the bridegroom to come, and thus arrived late to the wedding ceremony and could not enter.
The spiritual meaning, of course, is about whether we have prepared spiritually and readied our hearts for Jesus’ coming- above all, do we know him? To better understand this, let’s take a look at what knowing God looks like according to the Old and New Testaments.
Do we really know him?
In Hebrew, the same word, yada, means to know in marriage and to know God as a friend. Yada means “to know personally and intimately”. God uses the verb yada to describe that he knew Abraham intimately as a friend. He also uses yada to say that Adam knew [had sexual relations with] Eve. Yada is intimacy characteristic of a personal, sacred relationship.
In Matthew 25:12 (New Testament, Greek), know is indicated by the Greek word, oida, which means “to get knowledge and understanding of; to have regard for one, cherish, pay attention to.”
When Jesus says in Matthew 25:12, “Truly I tell you, I don’t know you”, he means knowing as in yada and oida- an intimate knowing, understanding and cherishing of the bridegroom himself. Do we really oida (cherish) God? When Christ comes will we be ready?
Knowing God is so much more than head knowledge- it’s a matter of the heart. It is our naked souls with the split veil. It is knowing God as lover and friend. (It sounds scandalous, and it is, sorta- we’ll take a look at this in a future blog covering John 12:3).
A virgin preparing for the wedding ceremony is the groom’s delight. To be found unprepared without enough oil or not ready for the ceremony is to treat the bridegroom with disregard and without cherishing.
God is deserving of our deepest affection, and knowing God is loving him back sincerely. We cannot fake that relationship. When the King comes, he will find us wise or foolish, with oil on reserve, or unprepared and not yet ready for the ceremony. We cannot get ready at the time of his coming; if we wait that long, it will be too late.
We cultivate a deep relationship with God through discipline- over years and by reading the Word of God which helps us to know [understand] God and leads us to loving and cherishing him over time.
Sometimes it can be hard to find that discipline. I knew after my divorce that I really didn’t have a clue who God was (I’d ignored the entire Old Testament at that point for 29 years), and in my heart, I felt that the right place to start to know God was reading the Bible. Sometimes it was hard to start and to be disciplined about reading, so I prayed that God would increase my desire to study and increase my desire for him (Friends, I believe he is faithful to answer this prayer if you pray it sincerely).
In time, I developed a fresh relationship with God. After months, we had a beautiful friendship and I began to notice wonder all around me. After years, God became my everything. My reason for being. My why. But the real transformation came through hard seasons of God culling and sifting and weeding the soil of my heart so I would know that God is God; he is truly sovereign; and nothing in this life matters more than him.
It would be insincere if I didn’t say that things of this world can vie for first place in my life and displace God. Our human struggle is with the things of this world, and we cannot love the world and love God (1 John 2:15-17). It’s possible to know God, yet drift from intimacy with him, to lose enthusiasm, or to take the relationship for granted. I pray that, when the time comes, God will find me ready for the wedding ceremony and delighting in him above all things.
As we go about our 21st century lives, I’d like to challenge us all to consider- are we prepared? Do we keep vats of oil on reserve in our hearts? Are our hearts ready for the bridegroom to come sweep us away to the wedding ceremony? Where can you find more time in your days to prepare?
The first step in developing a relationship with God is knowing him, but sometimes we can find ourselves spiritually blocked. Watch for our next blog where we’ll be looking at obstacles to knowing the fullness of God’s love for us and some of the things that can make us feel spiritually numb.
References:
*Insights: Parables: What the Bible Tells Us About Jesus’ Stories. Barclay, William.
John 12:3
Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
1 John 2:15-17
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.