Mike Bickle emphasizes the necessity of cultivating intimacy with God through the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25, highlighting the importance of acquiring the 'oil of intimacy' to sustain our spiritual lives. He warns that many believers, particularly leaders, may become complacent and neglect their relationship with God, leading to a depletion of their spiritual oil. Bickle stresses that the call to 'watch' is a call to develop a life of prayer and intimacy, especially in the context of the end times. He encourages the congregation to actively pursue a deeper relationship with the Bridegroom God, as the delay of His return may lead to spiritual slumber if not approached with vigilance. Ultimately, the sermon serves as a reminder that our spiritual readiness and intimacy with God are crucial for participating in His coming kingdom.

Father, we thank you for the Word of God. We ask you to release the spirit of revelation, a spirit of inspiration upon the hearing of your Word. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, Matthew 25, we're going to look at it a second time. We looked at it last week in session four here in the Bride of Christ, Studies in the New Testament. That's the course that we're on right now. And so this is session five. It's the same passage, part two. We're talking about the oil of intimacy, encountering the Bridegroom God with the oil of intimacy. And Jesus is giving the parable, and the focal point of the parable is for them to acquire oil. He tells them to go and get oil, basically, in verse nine. Then in verse 13, he tells them to watch, to live a life of watching, which is the same thing as go get oil. It's just different terminology for the same reality. We're going to read this, verse one to 13. And Jesus is, you don't really understand this passage out of the context of Matthew 24, because Matthew 24 and 25 go together. And so this is a passage that has its greatest application, or its highest application, in the generation the Lord returns. Obviously, it's been a very important passage throughout all of 2,000 years of church history, but it's actually in context to the famous chapter of Matthew 24 about the end times. And what I want to focus on a bit more this week that we didn't look at last week is that he is actually talking to leaders. He is talking specifically to end time leaders. He's talking, obviously, to the leaders of his generation and the leaders for 2,000 years, but he's talking to people in the very hour of which Jesus would return as a bridegroom God. And so he's speaking, I believe, to this generation in a very, very specific way. Let's read it, Matthew 25, verse one. Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to 10 virgins who took their lamps, or their ministries, and they went out to meet the bridegroom. Now, five of them were wise and five were foolish. And those who were foolish took their lamps, but they took no oil. Verse four, but the wise took oil with their lamps. But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight, I call this the midnight hour of natural history, at midnight, a cry was heard. It's a threefold cry. Behold the bridegroom! That's cry one. Number two, he is coming! Number three, get out of bed! Go out and encounter him! Go and meet him! Go out to meet him is cry number three. So there's a threefold cry. Behold the bridegroom! He is coming and manifest power! Take effort! Go out and meet him! Exert yourself to encounter him! Verse seven. Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, give us some of your oil, because our lamps are going out. But the wise said, no, lest there should not be enough for us and for you. But go rather to those who sell and buy for yourself. Acquire the oil for yourself. And while they went out to buy, when they were in the process of acquiring this oil for their own lamps, in the midst of the process of getting it, the bridegroom came. And those who were ready went in with him to the wedding. And the door was shut. And afterwards, the other virgins came also and said, Lord, Lord, open to us. And the Lord said to them, assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you. Verse 13, and here's the message of the parable. Watch. It's another word for develop life of prayer, intimacy. There's a bit more to watching than that, but that's the key reality, is develop a life of intimacy with God. Watch therefore, develop intimacy with God. For you do not know, for, I mean, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming. And so that's the message, that's the central message of the parable. Now I'm gonna give a little bit of review from session four, we're here now in session five, is that Jesus has introduced the kingdom of God as a wedding feast, or it's put the kingdom of God in context to the bridal paradigm of the kingdom, is what we call it back in Matthew chapter 22. And Matthew 22 was his final public message. Matthew 23, he rebukes the leadership of the nation, the Pharisees. Matthew 24 and 25, it's a private message to the leaders, to the 12 apostles. And he's talking about leadership, and particularly about leadership in the end times. Again, I have to emphasize that it has great relevance for 2,000 years of church history, and in the day, and to the very men they spoke it to, but I believe it has its most dynamic and intended fulfillment in the generation the Lord would return as a bridegroom. So his final public message is on the kingdom of God as God preparing, arranging a marriage for his son, and now his final private message, he's speaking to them about the wedding as well. Both parables are about the wedding banquet. Okay, now, in Matthew chapter 24, again, most of you are familiar with this, it's all about the end times. In verse 45 to 51, he's talking specifically, in verse 45 to 51, about leadership. Now he's just talking about God-appointed, God-ordained leadership. And whether believers or unbelievers, I believe he's talking to those he has called to the place of leadership because the secular authorities in Revelation, I mean, in Romans chapter 13, are servants of the Lord. They're called, and appointed, and anointed, even ungodly people. They are God's messengers. They are God's servants. And I believe in verse 45 to 51, he's talking about God-appointed leadership in general. And he's saying in verse 45, who then is the faithful and the wise servant who the master made ruler over his household? And he talks to those who, in their God-appointed position of leadership, they walked in wisdom and faithfulness in a relationship with Jesus and obedience to his word. And these are godly men and women, all in all the stratas of society. And they're doing the will of God. And now he's talking about other leaders who were wicked and evil in their hearts. I don't think he's talking about abusive pastors here. I think he's talking about men and women whom he's assigned to places of leadership in his global, you know, the infrastructure of the planet. And they didn't understand, or they did not receive it as from his hand. They used their position of privilege in an evil way. In verse 51, they were cut into pieces and apportioned and appointed apportioned with the hypocrites. And I believe that there is a massive shaming and defaming of leaders. And I don't wanna get into this right now because that's not the focus of this parable here, chapter 25, but I don't believe that verse 51 is talking about, at this point in time, eternal hell. I think he's talking about men in high positions who are suddenly shown forth globally or nationally or regionally as hypocrites, and their lives are reduced to a total shame and they've lost everything they've built and worked for. And they're being manifest and assigned and received as hypocrites. And they're reduced to weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now, obviously, that's what happens in hell as well. But right now, today, there's an unprecedented number of scandals in national and international leadership. And I believe that's gonna happen more and more and more. God's jealousy is being manifest as he's shaking up everything that can be shaken. And one of the arenas of what he's touching is leadership on the planet. Believers and unbelievers, any God-ordained place, he is shaking it up and there's many, many disruptions. Then I believe he shifts now from the place of leadership in general, now in chapter 25, verse one to 13, I believe he's talking about leadership within the church itself now. Because God has many godly leaders in the kingdom that are presidents of nations or companies or businesses, and they're not within the structures of the church itself, but they are within the plan and purpose of the kingdom of God. Now he's focusing in upon ministries inside the church here. That's what I believe he's talking about now. He's talking about ministries that have lamps, that have oil in their lamps. And they go out in chapter 25, verse one, and I don't wanna spend too much time, we did all this last session. It says in chapter 25, verse one, that the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to 10 virgins. Now these virgins are all born-again believers. They're not unbelievers, and they don't lose their salvation at the end of the parable. That's not what's happening at the end. In verse 11 and 12, when he says, I do not know you, he didn't say, I never knew you. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about something related to their ministry, and we'll look at that in a few moments. So he's looking at talking to the kingdom of God. No, no, I'm sorry, I'm missing a key word there. Chapter 25, verse one, he says, then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now the then, of course, the key idea is when is then? Then is when verse 51 is happening. It's when he's cutting into pieces and assigning to the place of the hypocrite leaders in the other realm. Then the kingdom of God is like the ministries are going out as virgins with lamps to encounter the Messiah as a bridegroom God. They're going out to meet Jesus as a bridegroom. And so we find four key points in verse one. They are virgins, they're all believers. They have lamps, and lamps speak of ministries. It's shining light in darkness for others to see as well. Sometimes lamps refers to our personal life, but most times in the scripture, vast majority lamps speak of ministry. They went out to meet the bridegroom. These are ministries that are encountering Jesus as a bridegroom. Now it would be, it may be more comforting to think of them as kind of just real carnal ministries, but there was a time when they were teaching the seminars in the bridegroom conference. They had oil, they had fire in their lamps. They were meeting the bridegroom. They were in line with what God was doing. And that's important that we understand it because the weightiness of this chapter, it's that people that have oil, that have a lamp, that are in the flow, lose it. And that's the power of this parable. And it's happening at the time when other leaders from verse 51 of the other chapter, when other leaders are losing their place as well. So it's not just leaders in society. Leaders in the church as well are gonna lose their place. The first ones are losing it because of scandal, being unfaithful with positions of privilege. But the ones in the church are losing their place of influence because they've lost the anointing upon their hearts. Their hearts have shrank. It's a different dynamic going on here. Okay, in verse two, he says there's two different groups, the wise and the foolish. Verse three and four, he describes it, the wise and the foolish. And he boils it down in a very, very simple way. It's seemingly too simple, but it's not too simple. Wisdom is defined as taking our oil, verse four, taking oil first and lamps second. That we are preoccupied with getting our own life in God. Oil speaks of the, I call it the oil of intimacy. It's, or the anointing of the Holy Spirit that enables us to encounter God at the heart level. It's the oil upon the heart. It's the processes, the internal processes of the heart encounter with God. In verse four, the wise ministries are the ones that are looking at oil first and they're looking at their lamps, their public influence second. But in verse three, it's opposite. The fools are the ones that are preoccupied with their lamps but they didn't worry or concern themselves with their oil because they've got a little bit of oil and that's good enough to, you know, it's a good enough for the show to continue. And Jesus reduces the whole equation or the whole evaluation of the end time ministries to fools and wise based on one overarching reality. What was the primary focus, the preoccupation of their heart and their lives? He says, if their preoccupation is first, their lamps. It's not that they don't care about oil. They just don't care about oil first. And so the oil runs out. If you don't make oil the primary occupation, it does go out. The oil supply runs low. And he said, those ministries that take their lamps first and their oils is a secondary thing. It's not a non-issue, it's just a second issue. And when it's second, it becomes a critical issue in a short amount of time. There's more people at IHOP losing their oil because of busyness. I mean, they got the IHOP name tag and everything. And yet that's not the same thing as stopping and cultivating the place of encounter at the heart level. And so it seems a little simplistic, but I think it's very, very appropriate and very discerning that Jesus says wisdom and folly in the end times in ministry will come down to this distinction right here. Those that acquire oil and those that do not acquire oil. I believe there's gonna be a great revival. It's gonna build stronger and stronger in numbers and in power and in magnitude, culminating in Jesus returning as King, but not just King, as Bridegroom King. It's a Bridegroom King. And so there's a great Bridegroom revival. You'll let me just coin that phrase. It's the most unique revival in all of church history. It's a revival that's never, there's no precedent for it at any time in history where the ministries, the apostles and prophets and all the ministers will be preoccupied with the issue of Jesus and his power as a Bridegroom. In other words, the love relationship, the restoring of the first commandment to first place. You shall love the Lord your God. The issue of love from him and then flowing back from us, back to him will become the primary issue of the end time ministries. And of course, when we receive the anointing of God to receive love from him, it takes God to love God. The anointing to receive love and the anointing to return it, it always overflows in love towards other people. It is impossible to get in the grace of God where we're receiving, we're feeling, we're understanding that we are loved. And that receiving of being loved, the feeling of being loved, it always, I know always is a big word, it always, if we continue in the grace of God, if we continue to receive the grace of God, it responds, I mean, we respond by it awakens a love flow in our heart back to him and that always overflows in love to people. Sometimes I talk to folks, they go, well, you know, you're talking about the first commandment, what about the second commandment? I go, you get the first commandment established, the second commandment is automatic. A tenderized, lovesick human spirit will always love the unlovely in the human arena. You get a man or a woman flowing, love flowing from God and love back to God, they will look at people so radically different than they do without that. It is the foundation of the second commandment. And the two working together is the critical missing element in the Great Commission being completed is the love dimension. We talk about the prayer factor and that's really true, but really it's the two great commandments. When the two great commandments are operative in the church, the Great Commission will be completed. But I believe the key to the second commandment is the first one and that is actually the deficient one. It's the oil on the heart because it tenderizes the human heart. It makes the human heart very tender. Okay, now the primary message of the parables, verse 13, let's look at that. It says, watch therefore, watch therefore. It's the call to develop watchfulness. Now again, the call to watchfulness is a call for the whole body of Christ, but he's talking particularly to leaders. From chapter 24, verse 45 to chapter 25, verse 13, he's talking about leaders in general and then he's talking about leaders in specific with ministries in the church. He's calling them to watchfulness. He's talking to the people in this room right now and to those with ministries, which is the whole body of Christ actually, because it's not just people with public ministries. Maybe your ministry is one-on-one. Maybe your ministry is in the street or in the neighborhood. So don't think of it as having to have a public ministry to have a ministry. Okay, now watchfulness. I'm gonna give you five points that I believe are a part of watchfulness. I don't have these written on the notes. I mentioned these last time, but I'm just gonna go through them again. Number one, watchfulness has intrinsic in it being watchful, being careful to give our full attention. Watchfulness has in it the idea, the call to special carefulness and attentiveness. That's number one. It's not casual. And this is a giant point because many people are casual about the issue of oil in their life. There is no issue that demands my attention more often than the issue of watchfulness to get oil in my life to keep it. It is a daily. A daily maybe is exaggerated to say I think about it every day, but it's about the way I spend time and money. It comes down. I am constantly having to trim back the way I spend time and money so I can acquire oil. Because if we spend time and money in just sloppy ways, our oil, the measure of oil will go down in our lives. We spend time, particularly time, but time and money are so dynamically connected. There is no area in my life that disturbs me, that is assaulting me more than this issue. My time and money, particularly my time, and I think it's true for most of us, our time, it gets away so quick. It's like I got it down and it's clear and it's in focus, and 36 hours later, it's already off track again. It's not a small thing that the word watchfulness is the word Jesus used. It's not casual. There's a high attentiveness, and this is probably one of the major points where people miss it. They don't assume it takes this kind of effort. I have been one that has very carefully, and I can't certainly claim 100%, but in a high percent for 30 years, I have very carefully been a time manager since I was 18 years old. I've been adamant about the way I spend an hour. I've cared about that for 30 years, and it is still tremendously challenging to keep my schedule and my time focused right. I never ever get to the place where that battle is done. I mean, I care about this so much, and tomorrow it will sneak up on me again to go the opposite direction of where I'm supposed to be going. So watchfulness is first, it's not casual. It demands carefulness daily, near daily attentiveness, our schedules. Number two, watchfulness is talking about the subject of encountering God in intimacy. The subject of encountering God in intimacy is within the theme. It's the major theme of watchfulness. It's not just watching our time, but it's attending to the movements of our heart, connecting with God's heart. In verse one, it says they go out to meet the bridegroom. Verse six, they go out to meet the bridegroom. Verse 10, they're ready to meet the bridegroom. It's three times, it's the issue of meeting or encountering the bridegroom is critical. It's the main idea of watchfulness. Verse one, verse six, and verse 10, the main idea, they go out to meet him, they encounter him. The bridegroom encounter dimension is the core reality of a life of watchfulness, of watching and praying. Number three, cultivating a spirit of prayer. I believe it's more than intimacy. I believe it's more than watching the movements of my heart and God's heart and seeing that they consciously go together. I feed my spirit with the word. It's more than that. There's a spirit of prayer. I believe there's a place of intercession. Doesn't have to be publicly on a microphone that we do so often here, but it's the place of the spirit of prayer, getting ourself in sync with God's heart in prayer, not just the intimacy prayer, but actually praying for the things God cares about is a critical part of watchfulness. Already, I don't want to be too negative, but most believers are about 0 for 3 right now. On these, the fourth one, and I'm not trying to be negative at all. I'm just, I want us to be realistic about it. Most believers I know are very casual about the way they spend their time, their free time. They like the idea of encountering God, but they don't really take time and spend time to actually do it much. The spirit of prayer is something that is something they hope they have one day, but it's not a present reality today. And these are critical points of watchfulness. Number four, cultivating perseverance and holiness and obedience. It's critical. We are watching. It's an anointing for wholeheartedness. We're watching that we don't get off the path and let the little foxes destroy the vineyard. It's a spirit of carefulness about the areas that diminish the anointing of God on our hearts. I mean, many believers, of course, have deliberate planned on areas of compromise in their lives. They actually are planning on doing it next week. It's on their schedule. They feel bad about it, but they know they're probably going to do it and they're kind of setting it up. It's inconceivable. Many believers live like that. And it's actually opposite of the grace of God. But I'm not talking about just deliberate disobedience. I'm talking about carefulness, paying attention not to step into even the shadows. It's a spirit of watchfulness, carefulness about obedience. The pressures are going to escalate the closer we get to the coming of the Lord. Sin will become more powerful in our society and it's allurement and enticement. Living in careful obedience is absolutely critical. In Ezekiel 36, one of the great fruits of the new covenant is it makes people careful in obedience, careful in their thought, word and deed, careful in what they say, what they think and what they do. They're careful in their obedience. That's a part of watchfulness. And fourth, I mean, fifth, watchfulness has to do with, I call it anointed observation, prophetic understanding, looking at God's activity globally and catching the sense of its significance to the end times. There's a spirit of watchfulness. I'm thinking of, I don't mean, some people watch everything so careful. If three cars go by, they think one's the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Everything is symbolic in every issue. So I'm not talking about that. We're trying to get some people free of that. I'm not talking about trying to read meaning into every encounter with every person and the numbers on the car and the speedometer. Oh, it must be lined up 777. Well, it has to sooner or later. If you keep driving it, it was 666 too about a month ago. So what's that mean? So I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a prophetic understanding, anointed observation, a growing awareness of what's happening on the global scene that it is significant to God's end time strategies. The nations are lining up. God is preparing his eschatological purposes or building. And the reason I say that on a number of occasions, three or four of them, but one very, very prominent one in Luke chapter 19, verse 41 to 44, Luke 19, 41 to 44, Jesus told, rebuke the nation of Israel because of their inability to see what was happening and connect it in that eschatological sense or in the prophetic sense of their own day. They could not read the events and make any sense out of them. Even though the events were biblically, they were prophesied in the Old Testament prophets, they could not read, they could read the weather patterns, but they could not read what was happening right in their generation. I'm talking about the broad strokes of what God was doing very definitively. They could not see it. Watchfulness has that element as well. Watchfulness isn't just one of these five. It's not just a spirit of prayer, of which is one of the most deficient things in the body of Christ. Right now in the Western world, it's a spirit of prayer. It's not just growing in intimacy. It's not just careful obedience. It is prophetic understanding. It's watching with anointed observation. And it's being careful about our time. It's being watchful. Stewards, those five things together, I believe, give us at least the core reality of watchfulness. Not that there couldn't be a sixth or a seventh principle involved in that too. My point being is this is where oil is developed in the context of those five things I've just said. And the pressure I feel as a shepherd in the body of Christ is how few people are actually living a watchful life in this hour right now. It's gonna change before the Lord returns. He will have people watching and praying. But right now, the church in the West is hardly in a spirit of watchfulness. And surely the ministries are not in a spirit of watchfulness. There's a correlation between the body not doing it and the leadership not doing it. The point of this parable is to call them to watchfulness in verse 13, to the place of encounter. Okay. Okay. Last week, we talked about three principles in this parable, and there's many more, but three that I highlighted. Number one principle that is highlighted in this parable is God's delay is longer than we expect. God's delay is longer than we expect it. And when God's delay is longer, many of God's people get off track. They get tripped by mundaneness. They get tripped by the pressure or the trial that they're in, or they get overcome in a temptation because the delay is long from the break-in, the revival, the promise, in the place of the delay. And that's one of the messages here. They get lost, one again, in the mundaneness of life. If they just get lost, they get off the track because of the routineness of life. They cannot hold steady. Many people lose their watchfulness because of that. The delay's overwhelming. They're waiting for the revival. It's not just the delay of the second coming of the things they're believing for, and they lose heart, and they just get, the weeds grow up and choke out the seed. Others, it's in the pressure, and there's just so much pain and waiting and waiting, and they just lose their way. And others, the temptations just get bigger and bigger, and they lose their way. So point one is they lose, the delay is longer, and they lose their oil because they were not counting on the delay being that long. The second principle we looked at last week is the delay is not just longer, it's more challenging. It's more difficult. It's longer and more difficult, and they fall asleep in the negative sense. Although falling asleep in this parable is not negative. The delay is more challenging. And here's why this is important, is because many believers just assume oil is something they will develop. They will just cultivate oil. But the delay is more challenging than most people pay attention to. They do not take serious the powers and the forces that bear down on the human heart, and the delay actually is more challenging. It's not just longer, it's harder. It's harder to keep the oil, and many people are not signing up for a marathon run with rigor in it. They're signing up kind of at the excitement of a conference where everything's gonna be exciting, and we're gonna do the bridegroom thing, and it's gonna be cool, and they totally underestimate the challenge and the difficulty of the delay. Not just the length of it, the difficulty of it. And the third point of this parable is, it's a very, very powerful point of this parable. That's why we're hitting it again just for a minute, though we took quite a bit more time on it last week, is that there is a point that you can go too far, and you don't escape the damage of neglect. That's one of the big points. The door was shut in verse 10. The door was shut. There is a place, a born-again believer, who, verse one, had oil, had some an intimacy, they had lamp, they had fire in their ministry. They were meeting the bridegroom. They were into the bridegroom. Not only they went to him, they taught at the bridegroom conferences. But to the shock of their life, their neglect resulted, and they went too far, and they could not escape the loss. There's real damage that really happens. And here, it's not talking about losing salvation. That's not what he's talking about. There are believers all over the body of Christ that really lose their opportunities in God, their full destiny. They can be forgiven. They can be restored back to God loves them, and they love God. Absolutely restored in that. But people lose decades they cannot make up for. And we know about God coming to, again, to restore the heart in love and worship, and our worship can be restored, our love. But we cannot make up for decades lost in negligence and selfishness. We cannot make up for that. The damage is real. The door of the full destiny is really shut, and they really lose real opportunity. The door of blessing is missed. And that's one of the things that people are not aware of as they read this parable in this chapter here, that the door of opportunity is really, really lost, and we cannot be recovered. Our life in God can be recovered, but not lost years. And that's, nobody likes that. Nobody likes that, but that's actually true, though. If we just decide we're gonna just coast for 10 years, and we think that when we stand before the Lord, somehow that 10 years in the name of grace will rebound to 10 years of fruitfulness, and it will just land fruitful, and say, praise God, isn't it good that we will stand forgiven, and we will stand in a position where God loves us, and we love God, and that's real, but the 10 years is really lost, and it really impacts. It really impacts our life as a whole. That's one of the other messages here. Now, one of the backgrounds to this parable is it's not spoken in the parable, but it's clear as one of the back, I mean, as one of the points in the parable. It's that the Hebrew weddings, in a Hebrew wedding, a celebration continued for several nights in a row. And if the family had money, the celebration may go for six, seven, eight nights in a row. A wedding celebration was not a one time where they got married at two in the afternoon, they had the reception, they had the party, that was it, but they would have the celebration for two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight nights. It all just depend on the situation and the finances, but it was a multi-evening celebration. That's what's going on. That's a critical part of the story. And I've studied the Jewish weddings pretty energetically over the years, and it's a testimony that many of the commentators will bear witness to that reality. And so what is going on in this ceremony? I mean, what's going on here? It's not that they are losing access to Jesus, but they're losing opportunity in the grace of God to participate in every dimension of the celebration. That's what's going on here. So let's look at verse six. And at midnight, a cry was heard. And behold, here's the cry, the bridegroom is coming, go out to meet him. The bridegroom is coming, go out to meet him. Verse six, that's a threefold cry. Number one, that the Messiah is a bridegroom. Number two, he is coming. And when he comes, there's consequences to his coming. When Jesus comes in power, things do not stay the same when he comes in power. When the power of God is manifest in a greater way, there's a new zeal of God that's manifest. When the power of God begins, our shadow begins to heal the sick, then the communion table will strike dead, liars will be struck dead. When there's a new dimension of the power of God, there's a new dimension of God's jealousy as well. And when it says, behold, he is coming, the level goes way up, the stakes go way up. The coming break in of God's power, actually, when the power of God comes in the revival we're believing for, many ministries will be ruined and shipwrecked in the process of that, because the requirements of the jealousy of God will go up so much higher, many things will be exposed, and many elements of ministries will be set aside. I mean, the elements will cause the ministries to be disqualified and set aside in the race. So when it says, he is coming, we go, yay, the power of God's coming. There will be people struck dead like it, there will be many people disqualified when the stakes go up higher and the requirement is higher. The idea that he is coming seems great until we figure out, find out who it is that's coming. It's the famous movie, I was actually too young to really pay attention to it, but I think it was the 60s, it was the famous movie, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. And there was a surprise visitor, and it wasn't what they were expecting. Guess who's coming in the revival? The jealous God is coming, and he is gonna set so many things into order, and it's going to disrupt many, many, many things. So message number one, verse six, he's coming as a bridegroom, a God with burning desire. Message number two, he's coming with power. I mean, he's coming, there's manifest glory, and there's consequences. Things will not stay the same when he visits in power. Things shift when he shows his power. And message number three, it says, go out to meet him. Get up, change our lifestyle, exert effort, make pains, rearrange our lives, go out to meet him, go out to meet him. And that's the third message here. And that's what the Lord is calling us to. The Lord is calling us to the lifestyle of go out to meet him. And that's what he's calling us to here. And so I wanna call us to this right now, to this place of getting our lamps filled in and going out to meet the Lord. I'm gonna just end with that, this cry to go out and meet him. And so you can just read the rest of the parable just on your own. He's calling us to watchfulness. I'm gonna go ahead and call the worship team to come back up. He's calling us to a place of watchfulness. He's calling us to a place to get oil in our spirits. He's calling us to a place to stand up and begin to proclaim this with clarity and with power. Oh, good, you're up there. Good, let's stand.