Wake up Time 1987

Reading from Matthew chapter 25, verse 1 and following. Then the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to ten virgins who took their lambs and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise.

For when the foolish took their lambs, they took no oil with them. But the wise took flasks of oil with their lambs. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.

But at midnight there was a cry. Behold the bridegroom! Come out to meet him! Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lambs. And the foolish said to the wise, Give us some of your oil, for our lambs are going out.

But the wise replied, Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you. Go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came.

And those who were ready went in with him to the marriage. And the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came, also saying, Lord! Lord! Open to us! But he replied, Truly I say to you, I do not know you.

Watch therefore. Keep watch. Stay awake therefore.

For you know neither the day nor the hour. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. But at midnight there was a cry.

Behold the bridegroom! Go out to meet him! Up to this point, all ten virgins were doing fine. There was delay, so they took a nap. But when wake-up time came, there was a sudden and quite unexpected separation.

The five who were ready went into the marriage. The five who were not went out to get oil, and they never got in. Perhaps Jesus was a little too harsh here.

It just kind of jars us 20th century types. Maybe we could improve on the parable a little bit. Make it a little bit more merciful.

After all, isn't Jesus merciful? And give it a more modern ring. So the foolish virgins went to buy oil. And when they came back, the door was shut.

So they pounded on the door and said, Lord, Lord, open to us! From within the doorkeeper hollered, Too late! Too late! But the bridegroom said, What do you mean, too late? It's never too late! Open the door and let those virgins in! That makes it a much happier ending. And it's certainly more in keeping with the atmosphere of the world, including the Christian world in which we now live. The only problem is, it is not true.

To the real world. That's not how it works in the real world. In the real world, when that door closes, it never opens again.

And we have such a hard time, all of us, with this message which runs through everything Jesus ever gives us. That when wake-up time comes, there is a sudden separation, which is called judgment. See, and the reason grace was so meaningful to Luther, and to Augustine, and to St. Paul, and to so many other people, was that they first understood judgment.

Grace is absolutely meaningless to people who have no sense of judgment. But there is a sudden separation, and that separation is made on the basis of what we did with the life we had. And so the householder goes off on a journey, and when he comes back, the servants are gathered together and they give an account of what they did with the money he gave them before he left.

Those who did something with the money get more, and enter into life. The one who did nothing with his money loses even what he had, and is banished to the outer darkness. When the king comes in his glory, all nations are assembled before him, all history is brought before the throne, and now again there is a separation.

And he separates them one from another, as a shepherd separates sheep from the goats. I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink.

I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. And they enter into life, inherit the kingdom that is prepared for them from before the foundation of the world. I was hungry, and you gave me no food.

I was thirsty, and you never gave me drink. Stranger, you didn't welcome me. Naked, you didn't clothe me.

And they are banished to the outer darkness. And we know in our bones that when Jesus tells us that that's how it is in the real world, he's telling us the truth. Yet we have such a hard time dealing with this conception, the concept of a separation, of a wake-up time.

And we normally just shrug it off. Final judgment? No doubt there will be a final judgment, but that's way off beyond the sunset. Death? My death? If Jesus doesn't come back in the meantime, I'm going to die.

But I got some time, yeah. Then there are these little wake-ups that come along, like alarm clocks in our daily life, all the time. Little alarms that go off, that wake us up.

A crisis comes, and I find myself reaping something of what I sowed. God is speaking to me in that. Now the thing about the foolish virgins, the reason they missed out at the final wake-up time was because they didn't listen when those wake-up calls kept coming to them all through their lives.

They carried no oil in their vessels with their land. They weren't wise. No wisdom.

They didn't stay awake. They were not alert. The wise virgins had oil in their vessels.

They were alert. They stayed awake. They were wise.

And so the foolish virgins didn't listen when the stock market crashed. It'll bounce back. Didn't listen when the economy fell apart.

When a war broke out. When a strange plague began to sweep the land. Didn't listen.

And then when they finally arrive at the place where they have to listen, it's too late. Now the most powerful wake-up time we can experience this side of our own death is when Jesus breaks through the complex of our cluttered minds and says to us, Wake up! That's exactly what He was doing as He traveled the roads of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem, healing in the synagogues, preaching and teaching in the temple. He was waking up slumbering spirits.

The hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear, those who wake up, shall live. Who were the disciples? The disciples were simply men and women who woke up, who responded to that call, got up and trimmed their lamps and followed the bridegroom with some oil in their vessels. They stayed awake.

They kept with it. Now the Spirit of the Lord continues to move among His people, calling them to wake up. Example, Revelation chapter 3, verse 1, And to the angel of the church at Sardis write, The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars, I know your works.

You have the name of being alive, but you are dead. Awake and strengthen what remains and is on the point of death, for I have not found your works perfect in the sight of my God. Remember then what you have received and heard.

Keep that and repent. If you will not awake, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you. Is this an unkind word from Jesus? Is this too harsh? These are the most loving, the most life-giving words that Jesus could possibly speak to that church.

What can be said to a people whose minds and spirits are asleep but wake up? What else can you say? There's a chorus, a beautiful chorus that we sing sometimes at Sunday school opening and sometimes on Wednesday nights, I believe. Open our eyes, Lord. We want to see Jesus.

We want to reach out and touch him. Show that we run. Open our ears, Lord.

And it's true that in order to see Jesus, God has to open our eyes and our ears. But once God has opened our eyes and our ears, and we allow them to get dull, then it's not open our eyes, Lord, one more time, 50,000 times open our eyes and open our ears. No.

Then the Lord says to us, wake up. And so we read in Romans chapter 13, verse 11. Besides this, you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

The night is far gone. The day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling in drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its lusts. It was this passage that awakened Augustine in the late fourth century. Augustine was a young man.

His mother had spoken to him again and again and again about Jesus. He wasn't getting it. He struggled.

He thought. He read books. He studied.

He argued. He did all kinds of things. But this particular night, he hears some child off in the distance in this garden saying, pick it up and read.

Pick up the book and read. And he takes that as a word from God and he picks up the book of Romans, which was in some form there right in front of him. And he began to read this passage and through this passage he woke up and he came into the kingdom of God.

Ephesians 5, 14. Therefore, it is said, Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead and Christ shall give you life. Specifically, what is God telling us to do when he says, wake up? Three things.

When God says, wake up, it means, first of all, open your ears. It means, secondly, open your eyes. And it means, thirdly, get up and move.

First of all, wake up means open your ear. The first thing that's addressed by God when he tells us to wake up is the ear. The hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear shall live.

Those who hear, who open their ears, who respond, who wake up. Often, these days, the honking and the wailing of a distant firetruck merges with our dreams as we're sleeping. How many times does that happen to you? You know, we're dreaming away and we hear this thing and it all mixes up in our dreams.

You know, something's going on. And then there comes a point when this honking and wailing of the firetruck becomes so loud that you realize that's not in your dream, that firetruck. It's in front of your house.

You jump out, look out the window and you see the flames. This is exactly what the Lord is going to be saying. Wake up.

Wake up. Listen to me. Open your ear and hear what I'm saying to you.

See, do you believe that Jesus has a word, Jesus has a word for you today that's addressed to your situation exactly where you are? Are you hearing it? This is the issue. You know, if there is no clear word coming to us that addresses us where we are exactly in the circumstances where we find ourselves right now, it is not because Jesus isn't speaking to us. It's because we're asleep.

If we will wake up and open the ear, we will hear a word from Him. Wake up secondly means open your eye. Awake, oh sleeper, and rise from the dead and Christ shall give you light so that you can see.

Now when we find ourselves sometimes in the morning trying to pull ourselves together, you know, come out of it, wake up, you know, it's like you can hear what's going on and yet you're still only half there. The next thing that needs to happen is to open the eye. Even if it's dark, somehow when you open the eye, even if you're nearsighted or farsighted or whatever, opening of the eye helps the mind to focus and now you begin to see.

Precisely this is what the Lord calls for when He says wake up. Open your eye and see the path in front of you. See the road I've opened for you to take.

Thank God for all the times He has opened our eyes for us so that we can see what door to go through, what road to take. But many times, many times, and perhaps right now, the way is very, very clear. He's done everything possible, everything meaningful so that we can see His presence in our circumstances and know that He's guiding us, but we have to open our eyes.

For instance, if you're married, the man, the woman who's your husband or your wife, a gem, a gift right from God, but you don't see it. You don't see it not because it's not obvious, but because your eyes are shut. And the Spirit says, wake up and see what you have and start giving thanks for it.

And how many times all of us have complained about, show me what my ministry is, Lord. We hear this again and again. We all say it.

Where is my ministry? It's right there. Right where we are. Every one of us, in our present circumstances, there are people who need to hear a word we have to give, who need what we have to offer them, even now.

And we're saying, Lord, where do you want me to go? And the Lord says, I don't want you to go anywhere. I want you to open your eyes. See the harvest field, where you are.

Those people that I've surrounded you with, look. And if I want you somewhere else, I'll get you there when the time comes. And finally, wake up means rise up and move.

Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, whom Christ shall give you life. Rise from the dead. Get up and do something.

Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, hallelujah, praise God, thank you, Jesus, shall enter the kingdom of God. But he who does the will of my Father, who is in heaven. And he isn't asking for drama and heroics.

He's calling for simple, down-to-earth action. He says, I will seek the lost. I will bring back the stray.

I will bind up the cripple. I will strengthen the weak. In our present circumstances, we don't have to look far from the past to see the lost, the stray, the cripple, the weak.

They're all around us. How much richer and deeper and more wonderful will be our worship of God when we enter into the work of the shepherd. Even if today we say, Lord, I will go.

I will go. I will get under the yoke with you. In your name, I will seek the lost, bring back the stray, bind up the cripple, strengthen the weak.

When we do that, he will lead us to those sheep without a shepherd and give us all the power we need to help them. But at midnight, there was a cry. Behold the bridegroom, come out to meet him.

Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps and the foolish said to the wise, give us some of your oil for our lamps are going out. But the wise replied, perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you. Go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.

And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast and the door was shut. Afterward, the other virgins came also saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he replied, truly I say to you, I do not know you.

Stay awake therefore, for you know neither the days nor the hour. In order to be ready for the awesome, fearful, and wonderful wake up time, which waits at the end of the age and also at the end of our lives in these bodies of flesh, we need to respond to the wake up call which is upon us now, right now, from the Lord Jesus, in which he says to us, open your ears and hear what I have to say to you. Hear me saying to you now, follow me.

Open your eyes and see the open door which I have now set before you. Rise up and move into the work which I have given you to do. Let's wait upon him now in a period of silence.

Let the Spirit of God just speak to our hearts.