Parables No.7 The Midnight Cry

Prepare the way for Jesus to return. In the desert make a highway. Through the wilderness make straight the way for Him.

Where streams of living water may flow. We'll make a highway for the Lord. We'll make a highway for King Jesus.

We'll make a highway for the bridegroom to come. We'll make a highway for the Lord. We'll make a highway for King Jesus.

We'll make a highway for the bridegroom to return. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed as He purifies the lies. And the whole wide world shall see the bridegroom head as the darkness comes to the light.

We'll make a highway for the Lord. We'll make a highway for King Jesus. We'll make a highway for the bridegroom to come.

We'll make a highway for the Lord. We'll make a highway for King Jesus. We'll make a highway for the bridegroom to return.

Let us read together the word of God as it's contained in Matthew chapter 25. Matthew chapter 25 at verse 1. 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, 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.

Sir, sir, they said, open the door for us. But he replied, I tell you the truth. I don't know you.

Therefore keep watch because you do not know the day or the hour. Amen. Now why are we this evening looking at the story of a marriage? Well, it's got nothing to do with William.

I do recall in my earlier years hearing of one of the pioneers of the Assemblies of God Church. Actually, there were two brothers. Their names were Carter.

In those early days of the establishing of the Pentecostal churches in the United Kingdom, it was quite a thing for leaders to be bachelors. Well, one of the two brothers fell foul or sweet, as you please, of a lady. And the other brother was in the States and couldn't attend the wedding.

And so he sent a cable, alas, my brother. The years went by and the bachelor brother, he fell in love, towards the end of his life actually. And again, unfortunately, the situation was reversed and his brother couldn't be present, the marriage being in the States.

So his brother sent him a cable, at last, my brother. Weddings are very wonderful occasions. And here our Lord, towards the end of his ministry, makes reference to a wedding.

And he does so to underline the gravity of the teaching that he has been giving on the kingdom. And the fact that one day the Lord Jesus will return to this earth and he will set up his visible and earthly reign. And so the Lord, towards the end of his public ministry, brings this teaching very much in front of his disciples and those who are listening to what he has to say.

He talks about the second advent in effect and that is affirmed throughout the national church of our country. Every Sunday and virtually every time our Anglican friends with their rich prayer book repeat the words of the Creed. I believe that Jesus Christ is in heaven from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.

Our Lord makes several references to his return. There are some people who, looking at the situation in the world today, are rightly troubled. There are others who, with their trouble, also have a sense of elation because they believe that, perchance, what is really happening is the setting up of the final scene that heralds in the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.

You have never heard me preach from this pulpit, those of you who have run the course of this ministry for twenty years. You have never heard me wax eloquent about Communism or about the Catholic Church in terms of my understanding of prophecy, simply because I am not sure. What you have heard me say many an occasion, however, is that the great struggle, as I see it, at the end time is between the sons of Ishmael and the sons of Isaac.

Religiously expressed, between the Islamic world and the Judeo-Christian world. Now it's interesting what is happening in these days. I don't want to read into the situation, but one would be a fool not to warn a congregation that the days in which we are living are very critical indeed.

We had a gentleman with us this morning in our congregation who had just flown in from Israel. Because he is a very cute observer on the Israeli scene, I spent some while with him on the telephone this afternoon to ask if, from his perspective, he would give me some indication as to what actually happened on Temple Mount causing the death of a number of Arabs. But bringing into the forefront of the political theatre the figure of the ruler of Iraq, who now claims that what you are to see in the Gulf is not so much his struggle to secure Kuwait, but his defence of the Islamic shrines and holy places and his verbal attack upon Israel.

Now, this man has very subtly, according to one Muslim commentator in Bradford, England, gone through a sort of conversion to Islam, always been in an Islamic culture, but never really being a good Muslim. Now it suits his purposes to be such, and so he declares a holy war in which on the pivot is the future of the Gulf, the Muslims, and Judeo-Christianity. I am not saying that this will bring in the return of our Lord Jesus, but what I am saying is that in my lifetime there has never been such a threatening situation in our world, and I have been born in the Second World War and take some cognizance as to what happened in the first.

So, a man or a woman would be a fool who checks through their newspapers or listens to the media in terms of television and radio and does not pause and think, could this be the beginning or the end? How much longer can people with such conflicting political and theological viewpoints, who also command the accumulated weaponry of the twentieth century, how long can they maintain peace? How long before man explodes as he has down the whole course of human history and tries to slog it out with his opposing fellow? Now, in one sense, this does not frighten Christian people, that is, those who plot the course of world history from the Bible and its predictions, those who in a humble and not a pious fashion are committed to the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. I want to make it clear, I do believe, I say this because somebody was questioning this in Worthing not that long ago at a public meeting, at least a church meeting, I do believe in the physical, visible return of Jesus Christ. I do believe that when He comes back He will bring in His government.

I believe that He will cleanse this world of every vestige of sin and He will bring into some purpose which I cannot see now, the universes that God has created. I believe that when the Lord sets up His kingdom, those who are members of it will not be strumming harps on some clouds or even playing classical instruments, though I'm sure music will have part of the new dimension. There will be things for us to do, intelligence for us to use, achievements for us to pursue.

I has not seen, says the Apostle Paul, nor ear heard of the things that God has in store for those who love Him. Take everything that's good and purposeful in this world, multiply it by ten thousand and then multiply it by a million and you have begun to understand just a little of what God has in store for people who have been created in His image and reborn through the shed blood. Of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so here is often in some of these parables our Lord speaks about this end time. And if you bring other scriptures to bear, particularly from the Old as well as from the New Testament, you can also work out a case that His own ethnic people, the Jews, will go through some form of spiritual illumination. And if you read carefully into the Psalms you will discover that even Babylon is referred to and Iraq as giving up her children, or some of them, into the arms of God.

From every ethnic group and from every nation there will be those who will be caught up into the eternal, ongoing purposes of God to live through eternity for His honor and for His glory. Now if what I am saying has an essence of common sense at all, if it is credible in any degree, then whether you are young or you are old, you would do well to hear my words and listen me out this evening and make a response. Because if there is a possibility that the preacher is right, then the whole of your life will be lived differently in the expectation of His coming and with the concept of an eternity for you still to enjoy, dependent on the way that you react to the gospel, the person of our Lord Jesus, the reason for His first advent.

So our Lord with singular wisdom in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew's gospel speaks of His coming and casts it in terms of a wedding. Joyful occasions, weddings, aren't they? Most of the spotlight falls on the bride, but in this particular parable there is no reference made to the bride at all. But there is a great deal of information given us about those female attendants at a wedding, generally known in the twentieth century as bridesmaids.

Bless them. Always look beautiful. Do some sterling service in encouraging the bride.

But you've got to strip yourself of your Western ideas when you talk in terms of the bridesmaids here, these ten young ladies. They've got torches. The possibility is because weddings were a long affair in those days.

They're relatively short now, although sometimes you have to convince me of it when I'm waiting for that bit between pronouncing the benediction here and getting to the reception. It seems to me that photographers have a tremendous ability to take shots from every conceivable angle so that you almost feel that between those two events they could have got the honeymoon in, let alone pose for some photographs. I say that with humour because it's right to record, is it not? Such a great day as a wedding.

But here you've got these bridesmaids, and they are in effect maidens who bring illumination because the wedding will span several days. And a lot of the celebrations, well, they happen at night. Now the Hebrews were good for having a ball.

I mean by that that they're not the doer, sour people that sometimes folk wrongly dismiss the church as being. The Hebrews knew how to enjoy themselves. There are festivals in the Old Testament.

There were great times of rejoicing, of laughter and dance and so forth. And Hebrew maidens would sometimes do a torch dance, and it may well be that that's the background to this Scripture. Or it may be that they were just going to create the illumination as the procession occurred, as the bridegroom comes for the bride and the maidens in attendance are the torch bearers.

Who are these maidens? Well, in the way that Jesus teaches it, and particularly when you dip back to the past parable, it seems as though they must represent the ones who followed the Lord Jesus Christ. And as for the bridegroom, well, that's none other than himself. Now it's a bold assertion that he makes in this parable implying that he is the bridegroom.

Why? Well, you see, the Jehovah's Witnesses will fall asunder at this point. You say, what do you mean? Well, in the Old Testament you sometimes find that God describes himself as the bridegroom. Hosea 1 to 3 you get an excellent illustration of this.

You find it also in the prophecy of Isaiah. Here is the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is fulfilling the role of God on earth. And so he speaks of himself as a bridegroom, and he's coming because it's a great day.

It's the day of his second declaration as to who he is. And there should be those who are in attendance, everything prepared for the most momentous occasion that history has ever known. So with that sort of scenario I can start to give you very quickly the first of five points which I deduce from this parable.

And the first thing is this, that the church visible is not necessarily the church spiritual. What do you mean by that you say? Well, look, here there are two groups of girls, ten girls all together. You wouldn't know that there were two groups, would you? I mean, if you had a photographer there, let's say that somebody in Jerusalem has got a photographic studio, their expertise has been hired, and there they are to take pictures of these women.

You wouldn't know the difference between one and another. Not cosmetically, they all wear the same dress. Doubtless they all look beautiful.

But there is a distinction. When the crisis hour comes, then you discover that five of those girls are prudent and five of them are foolish. Have you noticed, you who follow these evening addresses on the parables, how often when our Lord relays parables and He speaks about His followers, He uses terms which if you saw the actual thing that He was referring to, there would be a measure of confusion.

What do you mean? Well, take the sheep and the goats. Go to where Max and Francis have been, not so much in Nairobi, but move out to Turkana. See the sheep and the goats from the vantage of some MAF or AIM plane.

And it's very difficult to work out what distinguishes the sheep from the goats with the untrained eye of a Westerner. Take the wheat and the tares. Take the good steward and the bad steward.

Take these women folk. What makes the difference? Well, the difference is seen when the crisis comes. And so with the church, you see, here we are, 400, 500 people.

Can we say that we're all the church? People outside would say, they are the church, they've gone to church. But don't you understand, when Jesus refers to the church, He is referring to those who have a personal commitment to Him. Not all the bridesmaids were proper bridesmaids in the sense of being prudent.

Some were extremely foolish. And it was only when the crisis came that you were able to distinguish between the one and the other group. There's something else that I think hits you immediately when you look into this parable, and that is that there will be a delay between the first coming of our Lord Jesus and His second appearance.

The bridegroom was a long time in coming. They all became drowsy and fell asleep. It has been known to happen in church services.

Not so much bridegrooms coming, the bride sometimes can delay, but people becoming drowsy and falling asleep. Our Lord makes reference to the fact that when He is taken from this earth, that is after His crucifixion and resurrection, there could be an enormous amount of time before He actually returns. In the ninth verse of the previous chapter, He spells out the scenario.

He says, Then you will be handed over and be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of Me. And verse fourteen, this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations. And then, then the end will come.

Our Lord recognizes that there will be a distancing in time between His first appearance and His second appearance. And if you're the sort of person for whom that creates a problem because you're an immediate man, you want fulfillment yesterday, then you'll be in difficulty. As the church has been in difficulty down the centuries, there have been some who, as a result of the return of our Lord being delayed, have been filled with incredulity.

That means unbelief. You remember Peter when he's writing in the second epistle that bears his name. He speaks of those who say, Well, everything's been just as it was.

This Jesus, He's gone ten, twenty years. You're an old man now. He used to talk about His returning glory.

Where is He? Things continue as they always have. Men and women, that's being said today increasingly, isn't it? Where is He? And explanations have been engineered by Mother Church in terms of trying to neutralize the statements of our Lord as to His physical and visible return. And they say, No, He comes at Pentecost, or no, He comes at conversion.

There is a sense in that is right, in which that is accurate. But there is in the teaching of our Lord this promise that He dangles time and time again, tantalizingly, in front of the disciples that He will come. And He will bring history to its own consummation.

Incredulity is one reaction. Another reaction might well be lethargy. What does lethargy mean? Well, it means in effect what these bridesmaids or some of them engaged in.

As a result of the delay of the bridegroom, well, they're asleep. They haven't taken the necessary precautions. There's nothing wrong with them dozing or nodding off.

What is wrong is that they never in any way pre-planned. They didn't ensure that everything would be ready immediately at their fingertips when the bridegroom came. And I find one of the hardest things – are you hearing me? – one of the hardest things to understand in Worthing when sometimes our church, particularly at memorial services, is filled with civic dignitaries and intellectuals and ordinary artisans who rarely come into a church.

I find it difficult to understand why so many of them never even consider the end and what is going to happen. And then some have the audacity to accuse the Bible pulpit of evangelical churches as being filled with obscurantists, those people who don't think. My friend, it's not that we don't think.

For some people the problem is we think too much. The advent has been delayed, and the only reason, says the apostle Peter, why it's been delayed is because it is not God's will that any should perish, but He would have all – Muslim and Jew, black and white, rich and poor, western and eastern – come to a knowledge of Him and of the lordship of His Son. Well, the second coming of Christ will be a surprise to many.

Look at that sixth verse. At midnight the cry rang out, here's the bridegroom, come out to meet him. I'm sure it wasn't pronounced with the intonation I gave it.

It should be fortissimo, it should be loud, it's the town crier, Hebrew style, here is the bridegroom. Weddings are joyful occasions, aren't they? Emotions run high. Sometimes people weep, sometimes they laugh, as one person quipped on one wedding occasion, the bride was crying and the bride's mother was crying and even the cake was in tears.

It's conflicting emotions at weddings, but by and large the bottom line is they're joyful. That's why it doesn't really matter a fig how long the photographer takes. This is the day, above all days, in the estimate of most people with the exception of the day of their salvation.

It's the midnight cry. But unfortunately, five of these young girls were in great difficulty because they hadn't made preparation. And our Lord says that when He comes again it will just be the same.

And this I find very humbling if not humiliating. There will be those who've been in evangelical congregations and they seem as though they're part of the true church, but they're not. They've listened to addresses by the cartload, they've been counseled, they've had Bibles given them, they've been to Sunday school, they sat on their mother's knee and heard the gospel.

But when the bridegroom comes, they won't be ready. It says, Jesus, in the forty-fourth verse of the previous chapter, He will come at an hour you do not expect Him. The farmers, they'll still be farming.

The politicians will be politicking. The investment people will still be trading their gas shares or their electricity shares. Younger people will be engaging in trivial pursuits and older people will be thinking of retirement but not about eternal life.

In a day when you don't expect, the cry will come like the cry of the Hebrew announcing the appearance of the bridegroom, come out to meet Him. And then there'll be embarrassment. And the embarrassment will in no way be mitigated by any of the wise endeavoring to minister to the foolish.

Because there are some things in this world that cannot be transferred. You're responsible for trimming your own wick, so to speak, for preparing your own lamp. A well-soaked torch will burn for fifteen minutes.

If there's no oil, then it will burn just for a fleeting second and then it will die. And here is the situation as the crisis now starts to distinguish between the prudent girls and the imprudent girls. The one says to the other, give us of your oil.

Why? Because we didn't take any precautions at all for this event and we are singularly embarrassed. And the suggestion is, well, you go to the bazaar and see if you can find some shop that's still open that were we to give you our oil now, well, we could not function as we should. We would not be able to engage in the torch dance.

We would not be able to give illumination for the procession. We cannot help you, for if we did, it would be at the expense of our own ministry. Preparedness is not transferable.

A lady I love dearly came to me at the end of the service this morning. She didn't have to tell me what she wanted to say, I could read it. She was crying anyway and tears sometimes communicate more to me than words.

I've been speaking, those of you who weren't present, let me tell you, I've been speaking on parents in pain because their children have not followed the course in life that they themselves, the parents, plotted. And I'm sure that this lady, if she could, would a thousand times be saved for her boys. And that goes for many beloved older friends in the tab and some of middle years who are concerned about their kids.

If you could transfer your own spiritual grace to their account, if you could take your oil and say, Here, the bridegroom has come, now dip your lamp into my oil and you'll be okay. But you can't do it. As a pastor I can persuade, I can teach, I can pray, I can cry, but at the end, that's all I can do.

I can't make you ready. If I could, I would. A thousand times.

So many people here in the tab would also agree. These five foolish girls did not take precaution. And when the bridegroom came, they're full of embarrassment.

And at that point nobody else can help. No, they replied, there may not be enough for both of us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourself.

After the bridegroom returns, there will be no second chance. Did you hear that? Now here our Lord, because He's using a parable, He takes leave of the story in terms of its literalism. Because I don't believe that there was any Hebrew wedding where if somebody was delayed in attending a marriage, that the door would be shut.

There's a bit of Sheffield coming out in that. The door was shut. Here these Hebrew maidens came along and their embarrassment had been at a high degree.

And they hammer on the door and there is no way in which response will be gained, at least not a positive one. Look at verse eleven, later the others also came. Sir, sir, they said, open the door for us.

But he, the bridegroom replied, I tell you the truth, I don't know you. I can find few scriptures that are more horrific than that. Now this wasn't just a casual statement that our Lord made, was it? I mean He's been saying things like that and giving warnings about those who will be in His kingdom and those who won't.

Almost since His address on the Sermon on the Mount. He spoke of those who said, Lord, Lord, we did this in Your name and we did that in Your name and so on and so forth. And yet He says in verse twenty-three of chapter seven of Matthew's Gospel, I never knew you.

Away from me, you evil doers. The Apostle Paul says that the Lord knows those who are His. And yet here is the situation where people are knocking on the door and asking, let us into your kingdom.

Take us with you into the marriage feast. And He's saying, no, I won't. And yet it was Jesus who said, I know my own by name as He refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd.

The Good Shepherd knows the sheep. The sheep know Him. They hear His voice.

He knows who they are. Here is the Lord God who is said to be in such a friendly relationship with Moses that the Old Testament writer indicates, I know Moses. I know Abraham.

I know David. And yet, depart from me. I don't know you.

The door is shut. Now look, this is the Lord Jesus talking. I wish I could say that it was different, but it isn't.

I mean by that, I wish I could say that there was a second chance that when you get beyond this earthly scene, for beyond it you will go. There is no way in which your life will end at death in terms of your immortal being being extinguished. There is no further chance beyond the grave.

The door was shut. Now is the day of salvation. Now God commands all men everywhere to repent.

And that's what modern man, with all his genius, refuses to do. He raised his fists in the face of this God. And he says, no.

I don't believe. What he means is, I will not humble myself. But maybe there are those here this evening of more thoughtful disposition and tender heart.

You don't want to be in the visible church, full stop. You want to be in the spiritual church. You don't want to be as imprudent bridesmaids.

You want to be as the wise. You want to be prepared for what is yet to be. How do you prepare? Oh my friends, it's so classically simple.

So simple a little child can understand. You simply come to the Lord Jesus and you say, Lord you died on that cross, that old rugged cross for my sin. I give that sin to you.

And with the gift comes my repentance, my anguish that I cause such pain. Now Lord, fill me with your Spirit. The oil of your Spirit.

That indispensable ingredient that cannot be passed from one person to another. But is absolutely essential for someone to enter into your kingdom. Make me yours, born again, a Christian, a believer, a disciple.

Call it what you will. But let me be yours. And ready for the day.

When the call is heard. When the trumpet sounds. And when the Lord, like a thief in the night, returns.

To bring to a full stop the human saga. And to reintroduce the eternal, spiritual and holy element. Back to this world.

And to restore the universe to its pristine. Edenic condition. If I never preach another word in this pulpit.

I hold it on your account. That you have heard somebody tell you. That this Jesus will return.

As saviour or as judge of the world. Amen. All God's people said.

Amen. And the saint shouted. Hallelujah.

Let's say the grace to one another. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. The love of God.

The fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Be with us all. Evermore.

Amen. Amen. Amen.