sermonette: Our Day of Alarm
The Parables of Matthew 25
Bill Cherry
Given 27-Sep-03; Sermon #632Bs; 14 minutes
Well when you say you are. And um Welcome to the last service of the
day of trumpets. Blow you the trumpet in Zion. Found an alarm in my holy mountain. That all the inhabitants of the earth tremble for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is not at hand. Well, that doesn't quite fill Richard's requirements, but I can't hold my breath for 4 days 5 months or whatever. Anyway, Are you alarmed? Are you alarmed? Does the fear of
God come in your heart, and you want to prepare for Christ's coming? Well, Matthew 25 tells us three
parables of alarm. Some people were prepared for Christ's coming, and others were not, and they heard a very sad pronouncement of rejection. So today we will review the parables of alarm in Matthew 25 in hopes that they will encourage us to be prepared when Christ returns. So Uh, you can be turning to Matthew 25. We will not begin reading there right now, but I'll just start, start with the story. The first parable. 10 Young ladies, young virgins were excited about the wedding that was going to take place. They wanted to be there. They wanted to come in and see the bridegroom and be with the bridegroom as the wedding would come. But it took a long time and they waited, and they waited, and the bridegroom took a little more time than they thought. But finally at midnight, they heard the cry, the bridegroom comes and they got up and they started to trim their lamps. And the wise virgins took the oil that they had with them, and they put it in their lamps, and they were ready to go and the, and the foolish virgin said, wait, wait, give us some oil, we do not have any oil, and there was panic. But they said, no, we can't give you oil. It is only for our lamps. You must go to the cellars for oil, and we are sorry, but we can't give it to you. And they saw the wives enter into the wedding, they saw the door shut behind them, and then please turn to verse 11 and hear what they said. And what they heard. And afterwards came the other virgin saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, verily I say unto you, I know you not. These virgins were not known by God. And one key, why, why did not they? They were not prepared, they did not have oil, but to show you where they went for oil, think about it. They did not go to God for oil. Their first thought was, wise virgins, help us, help us, give us oil. They depended on their fellow Christians, righteousness of their cohorts to get them into the
kingdom of God. They depended on their, their, their fellowship with other people and their relationships with those people who are righteous. And they did not depend on God for oil. So as a consequence, God said, I do not know you. Now, do you fear, that you fear in a way that you want to establish a relationship with God where he knows you. Well, one way to do it is through prayer. When, when you talk to your child, and when we talk to children, we understand what's in their mind and what's in their heart, and how they feel about things and whether they agree with the things that you're teaching them and how they feel and you get to know their mind and heart. And so it is with God when we go to Him in prayer, he hears us express what we are thinking. He hears us express how we feel and how we understand his mind and what we want and what we really deeply desire, and he knows if our will is meshed with his and if we are praying according to
God's will. And I say John has given us a key, you can almost cheat in prayer, you can have every one of them answered if you understand God's will perfectly and ask that it be done. So that's one way that you know that all your prayers will be answered, but that is the way that we should approach prayer, and it is a way that God can know us if we want His will to be done. The second parable, the
parable of the talents. A man, a householder called his servants in. 3 chosen servants. He had a special gift. He had special gifts to give them, and he said, to 1 here there is 5 talents. I'm giving you these talents. I'm giving the 2nd 12 talents, and I'm giving the 3rd 11 talent. And he said, I have these special gifts and I'm going away. And I'm coming back someday. And as in the parable of the virgins, he stayed a long time, a long, long time. But there was a day that he came back, and this was a day of reckoning. The people, the two servants that had used the talents came to him with great
joy. See, you gave me 5 talents. Look, I have gained 5 other talents by using them. And the second one came and said, Look, I have 2 talents. And now I have 2 more because I've used the talents that you've given me. Now what do you think the unprofitable servant was thinking. Oh no. What a development This is for me. And so he gave his answer, which we can find in verse 24 and 25. A lame excuse, a justification. So, so Matthew 25:24, then he which had received one talent came and said, Lord, I knew that you were a hard man, reaping where you had not sown, gathering where you had not straw, and I was afraid. And I went and hid my town in the earth and lo, here you can have what is yours. Well, this man What had he done? What was the difference in him? And the other servants. He had defined God. He said this is what God is like, he's harsh, he's unfair. He expects us to, to, to make things out of something when he doesn't give us anything to work with. Well, the other two sermons did not feel like that. They felt like God was a giving, loving God, and they knew that God gave them these things, and they worked with these things, and they increased, but this man hid his talent. But the key is that we should fear. We should fear to have a wrong concept of God in our in our minds and define what God is instead of trying to understand fully what God is and His mercy and his desire and his true personality. And so he's given us his book, his word, and we should study it. Over and over and be thoroughly familiar with it, let it be a guide for our life and try to comply and let the mind of God dwell in us. See, the first Uh, the virgins, God did not know them. The second one, the man with the talent, he did not know God, and so our desire is to know God thoroughly. The 3rd parable in Matthew 25. Christ returns the earth. And here he's taking the people on one side and say, OK, you people get over here and you people get over here. It says all the nations, the Lord separates them. And you know when this process is going on, the wheels are turning in people's heads. Why? What's happening? Why am I on this side and why is he on the other side? What's happening? And then God speaks to the people on his right hand. Look at verse 34. Then the king shall say unto them on his right hand. Come, you blessed of my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world. For I was hungry and you gave me meat, for I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in, naked and you clothed me and I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison. And you came unto me. And these sheep will scratch their head and say, well, when did all this happen? I do not remember seeing you in person. And he said, in as much as you have done it to the least of these, you've done it to me. Now Feeling is, my thinking is that they had desired deeply to show Christian
love, and they had taken this book and made it a part of their lives and will not let the love that's described in I Corinthians chapter 13 be a part of their mind and heart, and they extended it to everybody, especially their family. Listen, I was hungry. I was clothed. I was naked. They provided the physical needs for their family, and when they do this, they did not think of it as doing it to God, they were just showing love to other people, and then they extended these things to strangers in the form of visiting and spiritual comfort and helping. So just a normal part of Christian living, but then, The trumpet sounds for those on the on the left hand side, verse 41, and then he shall say unto them on his left hand. Apart from me, you cursed. Into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. And they tried to justify themselves. Lord, Lord, when did we do this? When did we see you naked or thirsty or hungry, and we did not administer to you. In other words, I get the idea, they were very willing to do religious service to God. They probably prayed, they probably read their Bible, and they probably went to services and did a lot of religious things and supposing that they were uh. Religious and this was the essence of religion, and not like it says in James, true religion and undefiled is to visit the Fatherless and the widows and keep yourself unspotted from the world, that true religion is in our relationship to other people. So we should fear, we should be alarmed in this day and this is our day of alarm, this is our day of preparation. The Christian living. And our relationship to other people and tending to the needs of other people is what God looks at and God judges us on as he comes. He's going to look at the way that we show love and concern for other people. When Israel heard the trumpet sounds, the big, long, low sound, it was a sound of terror and a sound of alarm, and I'm sure some were terrified, but I'm also sure that some As brave soldiers knew that the enemy was approaching, knew that this was the time to act, and they had prepared themselves mentally, spiritually and emotionally. They grabbed their weapons and they began, they were ready to fight and ready to die. Now we have God's talents that he's given us. We have God's word, we have information, we have his spirit, we have understanding, and we can prepare now. Our day of preparation is now, and we should have a bit of alarm and a bit of fear in us this day because Christ is coming and he's coming soon. And if we are prepared, we are going to hear like the sheep heard, come you blessed, but my Father, and here at the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.