25. The Foolish Virgins Were Not Prepared Because They Thought They Would Have More Time

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Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them…

Matthew 25:3

 

Country music singer Kenny Chesney begins his song “Everybody Wants to go to Heaven” with these lyrics:

Preacher told me last Sunday morning
Son, you better start living right
You need to quit the women and whiskey
And carrying on all night

Don’t you wanna hear him call your name
When you’re standing at the pearly gates
I told the preacher, “Yes I do”
But I hope they don’t call today
I ain’t ready

Everybody wants to go to heaven
Have a mansion high above the clouds
Everybody want to go to heaven
But nobody want to go now

Kenny Chesney, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven

Chesney highlights the attitude of the foolish virgins rather well in his song. The foolish virgins were in the kingdom. They were in church. They heard the word proclaimed. They heard of the glory that awaits God’s people in Heaven with Christ. And their response was, “Not Yet!” “I am having too much fun following my own pleasures on Earth. Perhaps later I will get right with the Lord. After all I want to go to Heaven… just not yet.” The foolish virgins thought they would have time later. Instead, the day and hour of salvation came and they passed it by. At midnight a cry was heard: Behold the Bridegroom is coming!

Looking at the modern church, it is easy to wonder if there are many foolish virgins today partly because of a lack of power, presentation, and persistence to the Gospel call. Is the call of the gospel an urgent matter in our churches? Perhaps we see so few new conversions in our churches because we are not pressing the matter home. Do the foolish virgins consider temporary pleasures to be of value because the Gospel trumpet is barely sounding?

All around us the world is dying. For those with no interest in Christ, the fires of hell are drawing nearer. The eternal punishment of sinners in that place of dreadful and endless torment is closer than it was yesterday. Diseases seem to be multiplying. Hospitals are building new campuses. The graveyards grow ever larger. All the while, the foolish hold on to their mirage of happiness for a little longer. What is the church’s message to a foolish world and foolish virgins? Do we see the urgency, the unrelenting demand from every corner of the Earth, and from God Himself, for the gospel call to sound forth? Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand! Christ is freely offered today but there is no promise of that offering tomorrow. The foolish virgins thought they would have time later. Instead the day and hour of salvation came and they passed it by. At midnight a cry was heard: Behold the Bridegroom is coming!

While foolish virgins are still saying, “Not yet” some Christians object to seeking them out with the truth. Concerned that if they bring the gospel of God concerning Jesus Christ to friends, loved ones, or strangers, they will be considered confrontational, many Christians refuse to go at all. They fear that someone might call them foolish, hateful, or political. In that fear they keep to the perceived safety of their homes and church buildings. I know little of how to respond to such worries other than with the words of Jesus and the Lord through Ezekiel: “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels” (Matthew 8:38). “When I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life, that same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand” (Ezekiel 3:18).

I thank God through the Lord Jesus Christ that He confronted me in my sin and called me to repent and forsake it because it was displeasing to the living God and leading me to the depths of Hell. I praise God that He revealed salvation to me through Jesus Christ my Lord that I might have faith in His blood! If the truth never confronts a sinner then I should have never been saved.

As that young man in the song was confronted by the preacher so the truth of God’s Word confronts us again today. There is death in the world, the flesh, and the devil. The highways of sin and worldliness lead always and only to destruction. But now life has been revealed and offered, exclusively through the Savior who died on the cross and rose the third day in order that His children might live. It is a message that demands a whole new life, a new birth, new allegiance, everything becomes new! It is the message of God unto salvation for such as are being saved! The foolish virgins liked the sound of it, they may have even known it was true, but they loved the world more and thought they would have time later to get right with the Lord. Instead the day and hour of salvation came and they passed it by. At midnight a cry was heard: Behold the Bridegroom is coming!

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Next time: Reasons the foolish virgins don’t care about their souls.

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