Staying Awake, Sleeping, and Rising Matthew 25:1-13

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Today is the 3^rd Last Sunday of the Church Year. The theme of the lessons on these last Sundays of the Church Year is End Times.

Today we’re going to talk about Staying Awake, Sleeping, and Rising.

Amos says, Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! That’s the Last Day, or Judgment Day, or Resurrection Day, or the Day of the Christ’s Second Coming; they’re all the same day.

Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?

Now that’s depressing. Indeed it is… for those who pretend, but don’t really believe.

The Lord says, I despise your feasts… take away from me the noise of your songs.

The prophet was addressing the hypocrisy of some of religious people and leaders; they were engaging in a kind of fake or false religion.

They had all their religious rituals and festivals given to them in the Old Testament; and they good as intended. All those practices were meant to point to the Messiah, and the salvation he brings.

But they were abusing and corrupting them. By their false practices, they were taking advantage of the weak, and fleecing the poor. They were getting rich and powerful by abusing the people and corrupting the ministry God had entrusted to them.

In the end, their dishonesty was keeping the truth and love of God from the people.

It’s a terrible thing to withhold the greatest gift God has to give us, the gospel, the message of his love and salvation for the world. But that’s what they were doing, with their corruption and neglect, and it angered God.

This was intended to be a wake-up call for them, to repent and change their ways and their hearts before it was too late.

This is a wake-up call for us, too, that we don’t fall into hypocrisy and neglect of the Gospel; that we don’t think that all there is to following Christ is doing a few rituals on an occasional Sunday, singing a couple hymns and saying a couple prayers, but not allowing the Word of God to enter into our hearts with the Holy Spirit, and change us into the likeness of Christ.

The sin in us and around us, always tries to convince us to fake our way through this Christian life; but following Christ is a 24/7 way of life. By faith, the Holy Spirit is in our heart every minute of every day, helping us to repent of our hypocrisy, and embrace a more genuine way of following Christ.  

 In our Gospel today, Jesus Himself gives us a wake-up call in the Parable of the Ten Virgins.

10  young women, bridesmaids or bridal attendants, were waiting for the groom to come with his friends to the house of the bride, and then they would all walk  with dancing and singing, in a grand procession back to his home, or to wherever the wedding would take place.

The lamps were probably torches, because it says they trimmed them. The torches would have material at the end with oil poured on it to help it burn. When the fire went out they would trim off the burned material and add more oil. 

While the bridesmaids were waiting for the groom to arrive, they fell asleep and their lamps burned out. They woke up when the announcement was made by the groom’s attendant that the groom was coming soon.

Half of them had run out of oil for their lamps, so they had to go buy some. They needed be carrying lit torches to be a part of the procession, and to be allowed into the wedding. Doing this kept out the wedding crashers.

While the 5 girls were gone buying more oil, the bridegroom came to collect the bride and her family and friends, so the 5 girls missed the grand procession. By  the time they got to the wedding place the doors were already shut, and at that point they wouldn’t be opened for anyone.

The wedding feast in this parable is symbolic of heaven. The groom is Jesus, who will come back to earth some day, gather his people, and bring them back to heaven with Him.

Jesus says, Watch, therefore, for you know neither the day or the hour, when he will come again, and end all this, and start a new world in heaven.

Don’t fall asleep in your spiritual life. Don’t let the fire go out, so to speak, the Holy Spirit, the true faith in you.

Don’t take a break from following Christ, to experience a worldly way of life, because you may miss him. If He comes again while you’re following something else in the world rather than Him, the doors of heaven close on you, and you’ll miss your only opportunity to enter.

Just as the wedding party could only enter the wedding hall in the company of the groom, so we can only enter heaven in the company of Jesus.

So live according to the Psalm, “Open for me the gates of righteousness; I will enter and gives thanks to the Lord. The is the gate of the Lord through which the righteous will enter.”.

We enter the Kingdom of God at Baptism, and remain in His Kingdom of Grace by faith. To think. “I’ll just wait until near the end of everything to enter the Kingdom of Grace, but until then, I’ll live in a kingdom of worldliness”, that doesn’t work.

That’s how you miss the mark, and the door to paradise is closed to you.

Jesus wants you to live in the joy of His Kingdom. So believe, love, and serve Him 24/7, and  you will rejoice forever!

Our Epistle today also uses the context of a 1^st century Jewish wedding, as if Jesus is the bridegroom coming from His home in heaven to meet His Church, and take us to live and celebrate with Him in heaven.

¹³ But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, those who die in faith, that you may not grieve as others do, who have no hope.

While we may grieve our departed faithful loved ones, in the sense that we miss them dearly, still, believing the Gospel, we can do so with hope, not just looking back at what was, but also looking forward what will be, a happy reunion with them.

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. That’s the faithful departed whose souls are now in heaven. And that will include us if we die before Christ comes again.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. Like a groom coming for His bride, Jesus will come to take us home; the archangel, Michael, will be His attendant, announcing his arrival to earth, along with the sound of heavenly trumpets.

And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

When we die with faith in Christ it’s as if our bodies lie down and fall asleep while our souls are taken to live in heaven. Then when Jesus comes again on the Last Day, he’ll bring our souls, with him from heaven, he’ll raise and glorify our bodies, and then with body and soul rejoined, we’ll live and rejoice in heaven forever.

The faithful who are still alive on earth on the Last Day won’t have to die. Their bodies will instantly glorified, as will the bodies of the faithful who are raised from their graves. Then the Lord will lift us all up to him in the air, as a wedding party  meeting the groom, and we’ll process into Heaven with him, with sounds of joy.

Therefore encourage one another with these words, Paul says.

We need this encouragement, not just to comfort us in our grief, but also to keep us faithful, spiritually awake, so that we don’t get distracted by all the temptations around us, and end up losing sight of the primary goal of life, which is more life, and better life, eternal life and love and joy.

So stay awake in your spirit; sincerely repent and truly believe; and stay alert in the Word. Love God and serve one another, until the Bridegroom, Jesus, comes, to take you to your home of joy.

Until then, may the peace of God which passes understanding, guard your heart and mind, in Christ our Lord, who is coming soon! Amen.