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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Dave Steward

The Wedding Crashers

Or the word of prayer if you would join me.

Dear Heavenly Father, it's so good to be with the Advent Hope family again, albeit through Zoom.

And Lord, I'm sure there's old friends, but also some new faces that I have not met before.

Lord, it's so exciting to get to know your church family and we'll have all of eternity to do that.

Lord, this is an important message that you've put on my heart today.

And I pray that as we look at your word, that it would actually change our hearts, transform our lives, so that we will not be the same people as when we started with this message.

Lord, your word imparts power, it begets life.

And so we're asking your Holy Spirit to speak to us, each of us individually.

We know that your spirit is alive and well, and so Lord, please put your words in my mouth And may all our hearts prepare and receive the message today in Jesus name.

Amen So my sermon title is called the wedding crashers.

You know, when it comes to weddings, there's basically 3 types of people, 3 groups of people, those that are invited to the wedding, those that are not invited to the wedding, and then there's the wedding crashers.

In the summer of 2006, I had the incredible experience of spending a week traveling through Israel with a couple of friends.

We rented a car, we were not on a study tour, but we traveled through Israel, and it was such a rich experience.

And on Sabbath, we actually attended the Jewish synagogue that was just outside the old city of Jerusalem.

While the rabbis were conducting their worship service and they were singing songs and reading from the Torah and having their prayers.

I noticed that there was a non-rabbi sitting up there with them.

He was going to be married the next day and he was up there to receive the blessings of the rabbis.

I was intrigued as I looked closer at the man.

As I studied his face, he looked very familiar to me.

I mean, here we are in Israel and I'm from California.

But as the more I looked at him, the more I knew I recognized him from somewhere.

And I just had to remember where it was and then it finally hit me.

He looked like a psychiatrist from New York City that had lectured at a death penalty conference that I had attended in San Luis Obispo just a few months before.

He was actually lecturing on how to defeat mental defenses in death penalty cases.

Well, my curiosity got the best of me and I just had to know if he was the man.

So I boldly walked forward and whispered to him and it wasn't a big deal because there were people coming and going the whole time that would go up and talk to him.

So, you know, at some point I walked up to him and I just asked him, I said, Sir, are you a psychiatrist?

And he goes, Why, yes, kind of surprised, kind of taken back.

I then told him that I recognized him as being a lecturer at that death penalty conference I had attended.

It was so wild bumping into him in Jerusalem while he's getting ready to tie the knot the next day to a Jewish woman.

As my friends and I left the church, the psychiatrist's future mother-in-law and sister-in-law actually followed us out and wanted to know what our connection was to this man their daughter was going to marry and sister was going to marry.

They were curious about what our connection was.

Well, we exchanged pleasantries and I told him how I knew or recognized him.

And then we lingered around for a couple of minutes.

What do you think we're really hoping for?

We were hoping to an invitation to an authentic Jewish wedding in Israel.

We didn't have a close enough relationship with the bridegroom.

You know, for my own wedding, I helped my wife Nina with much of the planning.

It was a lot of work, but I loved every minute of it because I loved her so much and I was so excited to get married.

But you know what the hardest chore was by far?

The hardest chore was trimming down the guest list.

My wife wanted a small wedding, I wanted a big wedding, and really the rate limiting factor, how many people we invited, was the size of the reception venue at my friend Eric Anderson's house, just behind Loma Linda University in the hills there off Anderson Street.

He had a beautiful place, maybe some of you have been there.

I know he's hosted a lot of Advent Hope potlucks in the past, but he graciously provided his back porch for our wedding reception.

But he only had room for about 250 people.

So that's what limited the size of our wedding list.

And it was really, really hard trimming down that list.

I mean, it really, you have to go through this difficult process of really searching your heart on who is closest to you.

The hardest part was eliminating names of those who weren't as close.

More acquaintances perhaps than friends and that was tough.

You know Jesus also told a story about a wedding for his friends.

And today we're going to look at the parable of the 10 virgins, also known as the 5 wedding crashers.

So by way of background, the parable of the 10 virgins, in only a couple of days, Jesus is gonna be separated from his disciples and crucified according to Matthew 26 verse 2.

So he's sitting with his disciples on the Mount of Olives in Matthew 24 and 25.

It's kind of an interesting contrast with Matthew 24 and 25.

In Matthew 24, Jesus gives the signs of his coming, but in Matthew 25, he talks about the preparation for his coming.

In Matthew 24, Jesus relates the events in the world, Whereas in Matthew 25, he's describing the condition of the church.

In Matthew 24, Jesus is telling what's going to happen out there, but in Matthew 25, he's talking about what's happening in here.

And as we transition from Matthew 24 to 25, it's getting dark.

And in the distance, Jesus and his disciples are watching a house lit up with a party that's waiting for a bridal procession.

You know, at a Jewish wedding, the groom would go claim his bride from her father's house, and then with great delight he would bring her to his house.

Now the wedding party had a very exciting job to do, and that was they were to lighten the path to the bridegroom's home.

Now this wedding procession that they were watching in this party gave Jesus the perfect parable to illustrate the preparation for the second advent.

If you want to turn with me in your Bibles, Matthew 25 starting in verse 1.

Matthew the first gospel chapter 25 verse 1.

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto 10 virgins Which took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom So these all 10 are called virgins, which means they all profess a pure Christian faith They all 10 have lamps which means that they possess the Word of God.

According to Psalm 119 verse 105, it says, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

So they all have the truth and believe the truth.

So they're all looking forward to the second coming of Jesus They all look the same on the surface so far but then the next verse reveals a stark difference verse 2 says and 5 of them were wise and 5 were foolish They looked Just the same on the outside but they are just the opposite.

Verse 3 says that they that were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them.

And I believe that the 2 key words in the whole passage are the words no oil.

But verse 4 tells us the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

So what is it that distinguished the wise and foolish virgins?

It was the oil, which begs the question, what does the oil represent?

Well, as good Bible students, I'm sure you could direct me to Zechariah 4, 2-6, that talks about the olive oil that they used to fuel the lamps in the 7 lamps, temple lamps, that illuminated the temple.

That illustrates, as Zachariah says, that God's work advances not by might nor by power, but by my spirit.

So the oil actually represents the Holy Spirit.

Now in the Old Testament sanctuary, the oil accomplished what 2 things?

Number 1, it actually kept the lamps burning.

So we are to be powerful witnesses that because we have a relationship with Jesus can can point others to Christ.

The second purpose of the oil in the Old Testament sanctuary was used to consecrate the temple as well as the priests of the temple.

Now there's a holy priesthood now where the priesthood of all believers.

And so oil represents a Christian being truly consecrated to God, set apart for a holy purpose, a total commitment to Christ.

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The Wedding Crashers

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