Deo Gloria
Sermon for November 8, 2026
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Matthew 25:1-13
Theme: Keep Watch!
- Because you do not know the day or hour
- Because those who are not prepared will be left out
The teacher gave them plenty of warning. She told her students that their geography reports were due a week from Friday, but Bobby didn’t seem too concerned. No, he wasn’t finished with his report, not by any means. He hadn’t even started yet, but hey, he still had plenty of time. The reports weren’t due for over a week. “Yeah, yeah,” he said to his mom when she reminded him about the report “I’ll get to it;” but somehow he never did get to it. Finally that fateful Friday came. It didn’t really hit him until he walked into the classroom that morning and noticed other students handing in their reports. “Oh, no,” he said to himself, “my geography report! I forgot all about it.” Bobby felt sick inside. What was he going to do? Slowly he made his way up to the teacher’s desk. “Mrs. Johnson,” Bobby stammered, “I…I…forgot about our geography reports being due today. I didn’t mean to, but I guess I did. So mine isn’t quite finished. You think I could I have a little more time to finish my report?”
“Well, Bobby,” Mrs. Johnson replied, “I’m sorry, but last week I reminded you and everyone else in the class that the reports were due today. Remember what I said?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“And if I’m going to be fair, Bobby, I have to treat you the same as everyone else. Everyone else has to turn in their report today, so you do too.”
“But, but, but….”
“No buts, Bobby. You really have no excuse. You knew the report was due and you should have made sure that yours was ready. Now you’ll just have to live with the consequences.”
It’s awful when things like that happen. The teacher gives an assignment that is due a week from Wednesday and when the day comes, you don’t have yours ready. The boss asks for a quarterly report by Friday and when Friday comes, you don’t have it finished. You feel awful inside. You feel sick. You wish you could crawl into a hole and hide.
As awful as that feeling is, it is nothing in comparison to way you will feel on Judgment Day if Jesus finds you unprepared. What are you going to do? What are you going to say? Are you going to ask for an extension? “Lord, could you come back next week instead. I’m not quite ready yet.” I don’t think so. Our Savior has told us plainly that one day he will return, so we had better be ready. We had better take to heart the advice our Savior gives us in the verses of our text and keep watch!
Why? First of all, because you do not know the day or hour. No one does. No one knows the day or hour our Lord is going to come back. Oh, yes, there have been people who thought they knew. Over the years there have been many different people who claimed that they had it all figured out, that they knew exactly when Jesus was going to come back. Some said it was going to happen back in 1918, but it didn’t. Some claimed that Jesus would return in 1975, but he didn’t. Still others said it would happen on December 31, 1999, but they too were wrong. When people make predictions about when Jesus is going to return, they are only guessing, because the fact is no one knows.
“How do I know that?” you ask. Because of what Jesus said right here in the Gospel of Matthew. Back in the previous chapter, in v. 36, Jesus said the following: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Again, just a few verses later he said, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come”(v. 42). And then in the last verse of our text, Jesus repeats the very same warning: “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or hour.” So just forget about all the predictions. Forget about what this book says or what that T.V. evangelist proclaims about when our Savior Jesus is going to return, because they don’t know. No one knows the day or hour.
Does that mean, then, since no one knows when Jesus is going to come back, that we should adopt a careless attitude toward Judgment Day, that as a Christian I shouldn’t be all that concerned about it, that I shouldn’t be prepared? Absolutely not. What do you do when you have to be prepared for something but you don’t know when it’s going to happen? You do like the fire department and you stay ready all the time.
The fire department doesn’t know when a fire is going to break out. It could be today. It could be tomorrow. It could be two weeks from now. So they’re always ready. Their equipment is ready. The hoses are ready. The trucks are ready, so at a moment’s notice, when the alarm sounds, they can go and put out that fire.
The same is true for you and me. We don’t know when our Savior is going to come back. It could be today. It could be tomorrow. It could be three weeks from now, or three months from now, or three years from now. We don’t know, so we always need to be prepared. We need to make sure our spiritual house is in order. We need to make sure that we are ready, spiritually ready for our Lord and Savior to return, because we wouldn’t want to be caught unprepared like the virgins in our story.
As Jesus tells it, ten virgins went out to meet the bridegroom. In Jesus’ day weddings were a little different than they are today. After the engagement ceremony, when the couple was legally joined together as husband and wife, the bridegroom would leave and go back to wherever he lived and prepare their new home. Sometimes that meant simply cleaning the place up a bit. Other times that meant building on an addition or even building a whole new home. So it might be several days, several weeks or even several months before everything was ready. Once it was ready, the bridegroom would send word to the bride that he was coming to get her in order to bring her back to their new place, which is where the reception was usually held.
That’s where we pick it up in this story. The word has gone out: the bridegroom is coming. He’s on the way. And the virgins, who are the bride’s attendants, have gone out to meet him in order to escort him to the bride. But the bridegroom doesn’t come right away. Why we aren’t told. Maybe he got hung up in traffic. Maybe he took a wrong turn and got lost. We don’t know. But whatever the reason it gets later and later and later. And naturally the virgins get tired while they’re waiting, and eventually they fall asleep. Then at midnight the cry goes up, “The bridegroom’s here. He’s coming. He’s coming. Quick, go out to meet him.” But by now there’s one slight problem. While they were sleeping, their lamps have burned low and in some cases even gone out. And some of them—five, to be exact—some of them didn’t bring along any extra oil. “Quick,” they say to the others, “give us some of your oil.”
“Sorry,” the others reply, “there isn’t enough. Go down to the hardware store and buy some for yourself.” So off they run. But while they’re gone, the bridegroom comes and fetches his bride and takes her back to his home where the celebration begins. By the time those foolish virgins buy their oil and find their way to the groom’s house, the door is already shut. And even though they knock and plead to get in, they don’t get in. They’re too late.
The bridegroom in this story, of course, is Jesus, the Lord of the Church, the Husband of the Church, the one who loves his people, the one who loves you and me so much that he willingly laid down his life for us to redeem us from sin and death and to make us his own. Having betrothed himself to us through his suffering, death and resurrection, Jesus has returned home in order to prepare a place for us, a beautiful place in the Father’s house. When everything is ready, he has told us that he will come back for us and take us to be with him, that we also may be where he is. (John 14:2+3) But we don’t know when that’s going to happen. And in the meantime we’ve been waiting, and waiting, and waiting. For almost 2,000 years God’s people have been waiting for their Savior to return. And he still hasn’t come.
And while they wait, it’s easy for God’s people to start getting tired, to become weary of waiting, to lose their sense of urgency, to start slacking off in their state of spiritual readiness. Oh, yes, they still believe in God, at least they say they do, but they don’t go to church very much anymore. You know, maybe Christmas and Easter, for a wedding or the funeral of a friend, but that’s about it. Rarely, if ever, do they come to the Lord’s table to receive the Lord’s Supper. They just don’t have time for church. You know, so many other things to do. Or maybe they do go to church on a somewhat regular basis, but their heart isn’t in it. They sit through the service. They listen to the sermon (as long as it isn’t too boring). They mumble through the hymns and the prayers, and the sooner it’s over the better. It just doesn’t mean much to them anymore. All they’re doing is just going through the motions. Read their Bible? Are you kidding? They haven’t opened their Bible in years. Personal devotions? Sorry, don’t have time for that. Or maybe they’ve even gone so far as to let down their guard against sin. Instead of resisting temptation and fleeing from sin, they’ve cozied up to it, allowing it to creep into their lives and take hold of their hearts. And slowly but surely with the passage of time, their lamp goes out. Because they failed to feed their faith, because they failed to supply the oil it needed to keep on burning brightly, the light of their faith sputtered and flickered and died.
And then one day Jesus returns, the heavenly Bridegroom finally does come. Oh, oh! Now what? Like the virgins in our story, such people will be in a state of panic. All of a sudden they will want to have faith again. They may even ask others to share some of their faith with them, but it doesn’t quite work that way. Each person has to believe for himself. A wife cannot believe for her husband. A husband cannot believe for his wife. Children cannot believe for their parents. Grandparents cannot believe for their grandchildren. Each person has to believe for himself. The problem, though, is that by then it’s too late, too late to rekindle one’s faith, too late to get ready to meet the Bridegroom.
On the other hand, those who are ready, those who kept their faith burning, those whose faith in Jesus is still alive and strong and burning brightly–they will accompany the Bridegroom into his home, into the Father’s house. There they will enjoy the honor and distinction of being guests at the greatest wedding banquet in the history of the world, the wedding banquet of the Lamb. And then the door will be shut. And even though they may come and knock and plead to get in, those who were not prepared will not get in. Their opportunity has passed. Their time of grace has ended. Instead they will be left outside in the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Have you heard the story about the three demons, the three apprentice demons who were coming to earth to finish their apprenticeship? It seems they were talking to Satan one day and the first one said, “I know what I’m gonna do when I get down there. I’m gonna tell ‘em there’s no God.
Satan answered, “Well, that may work on a few, but not all that many, because deep down everyone knows there’s a God.”
So then the second demon said, “When I get down there, I’m gonna tell ‘em there’s no hell.”
“Well,” Satan replied, “you can try that if you want, but it probably won’t deceive that many people because deep down they all know there is a place of punishment for those who reject God.”
So then the third demon stepped forward. “You know what I’m gonna do?” he said. “I’m gonna go down there and tell ‘em there’s no hurry.”
“That’ll do it,” Satan said. “That will bring many to destruction.”
Friends, don’t be foolish. Don’t be deceived by Satan’s lies. Don’t fall into that trap of thinking you’ve got all kinds of time to get your spiritual house in order, that you can wait another 5 years or 10 years or 20 years or 40 years before you have start thinking seriously about getting prepared for eternity. By then it may be too late. We don’t know when the heavenly Bridegroom will appear, but we do know he will. So keep watch.
Don’t let down your spiritual guard, either, as you wait for his coming. Don’t allow yourself to become sleepy or sluggish or careless when it comes spiritual matters. Don’t take your faith for granted, thinking perhaps that you could never lose it. Don’t allow the fire of your faith to burn low or to burn out. Don’t allow your faith to be snuffed out by Satan or by sin. Make sure your faith has an adequate supply of oil. Take every opportunity to come to God’s house to worship your Lord and to hear his Word. Take every opportunity to come to the Lord’s table to be assured of your forgiveness and to be strengthened in your faith. Read God’s Word at home for your own personal benefit. Do it regularly. Do it often. Resist the devil and his temptations and look to God’s Word for guidance and strength. Do everything you can to keep the fire of your faith burning brightly, to stay spiritually ready until the heavenly Bridegroom comes. Keep watch! Amen.