Sermon Bible Commentary
Matthew 25:10
Note three sad features of the foolish virgins' case which the text presents..
I. Their Neglect. Having equipped themselves duly for taking part in the wedding march, by kindling their lamps, they omitted to ensure that the equipment should be maintained, carrying with them no oil for their lamps. There they were, at the moment,all right, in a condition of beautiful fitness; had the bridegroom burst upon them at once, over the hill upon the slope of which they gathered expectantly, there would have been no lack in them; they would have swept on brilliantly; but the trial to which his late arrival subjected them they had thoughtlessly failed to arm themselves for. They had not recognised the wisdom of making provision to keep alive the light they bore.
II. Their Unreadiness. Through not having made provision for keeping their lamps alight, they were unprepared to attend the bridegroom; they missed the opportunity of joining the marriage procession, and accompanying it to the feast. "Watch," says Christ, "for ye know not the hour." The grand thing is to stand equipped equipped for entering into and taking possession of whatever shall come. Life is a perpetual advent. The marriage supper is always laid in some guise or other. See to it, that you miss none of the things that are provided; but by preserving and fostering the divine in you "Be ye also ready."
III. Their Irretrievable Loss. In consequence of their unreadiness for that wedding festival, in which otherwise they might have participated, they were shut out for ever. There were the music and the joy, they were not for them, and never could be for them. It is not hinted, by any means, that their lamps never flamed again that in going to buy they found the shops all closed, and were unable to supply themselves with fresh oil. On the contrary, it would seem to be implied in the fact of their subsequent reappearance and then confident application for admittance to the banquet chamber, that they were no longer the bearers of extinguished lamps, but had succeeded in getting them revived and relighted; only they were too late for the feast. It is never too late to repent, to improve, to make a fresh beginning and enter upon a new life few as may be the years that are left for growth and progress little as may be the strength which is left with which to climb.
S. A. Tipple, Echoes of Spoken Words,p. 225.
Observe here.
I. The Description of the Closing-up of the Final Chance. The shut door is the token of the passing away of the latest chance of entry. No one's penitence, no one's prayer, no one's groaning shall any more open it. This sentence tells of the close, the irrevocable close, of one stage of man's being; the shutting-off the great chance of life, as the several chances of infancy and youth were shut off before. That shutting of the everlasting door, it is but the consummation of a line of providences which has been continued from man's birth; it is but God doing what God has always done. God hastens on men's steps from one stage of life to another, each stage coloured and influenced by what went before; each, when past, to be lived again no more. The hand of the clock points to the hour, and lo! at that moment the door is shut.
II. But there is yet another truth symbolled in the shut door. It is the final and complete severance between good and evil, between those who serve God and those who serve Him not, which we read here. Between the lost and the blessed is the impenetrable barrier the iron door, which, once shut, none may open; like the pillar of fire and cloud, brilliant on the one side with gold and jewels to the saved shadowing the lost, on the other, in intolerable gloom. Now in this total and entire separation of the good and the bad, a vast deal is again taught us. Here upon earth the righteous and the unrighteous, the faithful and the unfaithful, are intermingled; the holy exercising an unconscious but certain influence upon the unholy. The wicked if once bidden to depart away from the presence of God, away from the company of saints, away into a world of their own, must, by very reason of their separation from holier beings, themselves year after year sink into a deeper and deeper pit of rebellion and hatred. And this is the second truth which the text intimates. The entire cutting off of the host of the wicked from the presence of the just, the leaving them without, to act upon each other apart from every purer influence, and so to drift farther and farther away from holiness and God; this is the consummation dimly hinted in the words which, even as we read them carelessly, sound big with despair: "And the door was shut."
J. R. Woodford, Sermons on Subjects from the New Testament,p. 14.
Consider:.
I. The exclusion from the marriage supper of the Lamb of the foreign and disturbing element of sin. The higher the degree of spirituality, the greater is the abhorrence and hatred of evil: and the grief at prevailing corruption is one distinguishing mark of the true people of Christ. It is impossible for the Christian to be satisfied with the world as it is. Therefore it is that the believer looketh to the coming of his Lord, which is to introduce a new order, and bring in the new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. What we wish for is, not to be unclothed, but to be clothed upon; to have the sin purged out of us, and the new spiritual bodies imparted to us; to see a new order and a new harmony springing up around us, at the coming of the Lord. Such meaning, then, I find in the words: "And the door was shut."
II. The perfect security of the true believer. Not only are the foolish virgins shut out, but the wise are shut in. I hold the perfect ultimate security of every true believer; of every one who being born again of the Spirit has been made a new creature in Christ Jesus. But, at the same time, this is a fact not always revealed to every regenerate man. And those who grasp it at times, to their great comfort, are oftentimes found to lose it at others. Perhaps the number of those persons, who enjoy the full, unclouded, unbroken sunshine of a perfect assurance of salvation is comparatively small. But with the coming of Christ comes the sense of perfect security; of a condition unalterable; unassailable, eternal. The door is shut upon the wise virgins and so shall they ever be with the Lord.
III. The weary period of watching is over when Christ comes, and the period of unalloyed happiness begins. They went in with Him to the marriage. The Church now is in the condition of a wife absent from her husband. She receives tokens of his affection. He sends her messages from afar; assurance of his love; promises of his coming; but she has not himself and she longs for the time when the weary waiting and watching shall be over. This is the position of the Church of Christ watching now for the Heavenly Bridegroom, expecting His advent, and assured of His love; and yet not able to enter into the fulness of her joy until He Himself arrives, and takes her to His heavenly home.
G. Calthrop, Pulpit Recollections,p. 247.
References: Matthew 25:10. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts,p. 50; J. M. Neale, Sermons for Children,p. 127; H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiv., p. 353; see also Advent Sermons,vol. ii., p. 192; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,6th series, p. 184.