The difference between the wise women and foolish women (Matthew 25) was revealed by the coming of the bridegroom. That is, it was revealed in the crisis moment. During the days before the wedding or the night leading up to the start of the feast, few would have noticed that five women had adequately prepared for the bridegroom’s coming and five had not. But suddenly the bridegroom came, and the difference was immediately obvious. The same will happen when Jesus Christ returns. Many who have considered themselves true children of God will be shown they are not, and many who have perhaps not even been regarded as His children will be revealed as believers.
How are you to know whether you are in one camp or the other? One answer is whether you are faithful in serving Jesus. Another is whether you are serving others because of your love for Jesus. If the return of the Lord Jesus Christ and the division it will cause will bring out the true condition of those who profess Christianity but are not actually born again, is it not also the case that their condition may be revealed by lesser but, nevertheless, real crisis experiences now? If this is so, you can anticipate the results of the final judgment by the way you react to the problems that come into your life day by day.
Here is how Andrew Fuller put it: “Nothing will more correctly reveal what is in a man than the coming upon him of some crushing and unlooked-for crisis. Let it be temporal ruin by the failure of his calculations or the disappointment of all his hopes; let it be the entrance of the death-angel into his home and the removal from it of his nearest and dearest earthly friend; let it be his own prostration by some serious illness which puts him face to face with his dissolution, and forthwith the extent of his resources is unfolded, and it is at once discovered both by others and by himself whether he is animated by unfailing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and sustained by the grace of the Holy Spirit, or whether he has been deceiving himself, all the while relying on some other support.”
Look back upon the past and analyze your experiences at such testing times as these. We have all had them. We have all heard already, in some form or other, the midnight cry, “Behold, the bridegroom comes”; for in every such surprise as these, Jesus is coming to us. How did we meet Him then? Did our lamps go out? Or were we able to keep them burning brightly? If by any such event we discovered our utter helplessness, let us go to Christ now, that He may renew us by His Holy Spirit, and prepare us for that last solemn crisis when the archangel cries out over the grave, “Behold, the Bridegroom comes,” and everyone rises to stand before His Judgment seat.
Maranatha!
(mar-uh-nath-uh – “Our Lord Comes”) Pastor Steve can be reached at PastorSteve@MaranathaBibleChurch.org