Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group leader podcast. This week the conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Okay, welcome to week four of Snorri's Jesus. We've been looking at the parables of Jesus and their meaning, their application, and their challenge for our daily lives.
And this has been a rich time of discussion within your life groups, looking at the words of Jesus. My good friend and I are a dispatcher of women Esther Chung with us today. How are you doing Esther? Good.
How are you? Good to see you. We're just talking about we're getting near to the next women's night of the recording. Right.
This one is the following March 26th. Yeah. If you want to bring your life groups, it's great. It's a great time to kind of pause and do something different one week of gathering.
But yeah, we're so excited, super expectant. There's like this faith more faith building up to this women's event. And so yeah, everybody there. And each event has a little bit of a different like theme to it.
There is. What's happening with this one? Yeah, that's great question. This theme is called make room and Christine's going to be teaching out of Isaiah and this passage of basically making room more room for the things of God.
And there's this passage about basically a tent in, you know, Jewish, first century Jewish world, there will be tents where they can expand. So she's going to be sharing about how, hey, what are some things that we need to make room for so that we can host more of the things of God. So yeah, I think people that have been holding back or been doubting or questioning and hesitant and fearful, I think God's going to part a ton of faith that night. Yeah, it's really appropriate to you.
Like this time of the year in the church calendar, the Lent season, the journey towards Easter, where many are thinking already about fasting and how do we make room. It's not like, you know, God has done all these things, he's done it. He's published the work of the cross and everything else. But yeah, how do we make more room to receive that to grow our awareness to that by laying certain things now by saying no to other things that we could say yes to more of his presence in our lives.
So even the timing of that's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. And then other things happening in women's room across all the time, we should get rooted celebration coming up this weekend.
That's always such a party. We're going to see so many people be baptized, tons of new life groups come out of the session of rooted tons of new women's life groups are coming out of the session. And then how to study the Bible. This is kind of a big week for how to study the Bible.
We've been running out of the study the Bible here for the last long, it's been years and a half fall of 2020 three. Yeah. Yeah, right. So this is kind of a big week for all things, how to study the Bible with a rooted network resource, many books may not know.
So we have incredible resources that are here. If you think about deep dive, how to study the Bible, a few others that we run here that are through our teachers here, but they're also resources to bless the wider church. So talk about what's happening this week with how to study. Yeah.
I mean, we're officially launching the video teaching and the workbooks through the word of the word of the network. I'm going to say the Bible will be selling them in the bookstore and also the root of network. And just early heads up in the fall will be running how to say the Bible here at Irvine and also at all of our congregations at Irvine. Okay.
We'll be teaching it live. And so we're so excited. I think that it's going to happen again. The whole worship center is going to be filled with ground tables and facilitators.
And so life group leaders, if you have gone through how to say the Bible, we love to have you as facilitators. If you haven't, then we'd love for your life group, either women's life group or maybe the wives joining us for that fall because it'd be right after our teaching series, how to read the Bible. We're giving them a secret or giving them all the information. But only for our life group leaders.
Only for our life group leaders. We're on the street is there's a fall series equipping our church to love reading God's word. And so I love that we're doing this too. That's fantastic.
That's all I love it. So good. All right. Good.
Let's jump into this week's passage. 25, 1 through 13, the topic this week, the title of this week's message is a story about Christ returning. I mean, just talking about that. I don't know how you grew up.
But how did you grew up in an around church? Was this something you thought about? Like the return of Christ? Was this something that was front of mind for you?
Or how have you thought about that? Great question. I don't think it was at my own church, but I would see them in billboards and the street preachers, you know, so I would see it and hear it around me. How about you?
Yeah, I think so quite a bit. I mean, yeah, I mean, there was this might just be more of my brokenness. But there was always like this fear and trepidation of, you know, he's going to come back like a thief in the night, you know, left behind. We left behind.
And then something California is a hotbed for a lot of sort of that theology, some of that teaching. So yeah, I think it was always in the air and in believing as I still absolutely believe as we all do here, believe in a visible physical return of Christ that he's going to come. But there was always an element of, yeah, just wondering and fear or for some unhealthy fascination with that. Oh, yeah.
You know, this is where people love to get out their eschatology charts and make conclusions about what they see in, you know, news articles and all these things. And we should, we should care. We should look and we should be concerned for what's happening in our time and absolutely. But we can get so hung up on the exact time, the exact hour.
I can't remember who said it. It might have been C.S. Lewis. It usually is C.S.
Lewis who said, you know, sometimes Christians are so heavily minded that they're no earthly good. So we're so like preoccupied with the return of what the world's going to look like and trying to dream up all the scenarios that we forget to just love or we've been placed and love our neighbor and live about the gospel in our life. So yeah, anyway, great. All right.
So in time, it's fun stuff. You could just actually have a lean in conversation about that. Yeah. So I think sometimes that's not discussed in your house.
If that question doesn't do it for you and Esther and I can keep talking about that for a while, what would you do if you thought the world was ending? Yeah. It's a fun, lean in question. You today, if you found out the world was ending, I mean, what would you do?
I would go home and spend as much time as possible by family. Right. Exactly. My thing is that's the thing.
It's so crazy. I've, my first initial reaction to this question was I would run and go tell everybody about Jesus. Right. But I thought about it.
I'm like, if I know, I think I would, honestly, I don't know if that would even work, you know, I don't know. I just hug my kids and hug my husband and just tell them how much I love them on this side of eternity. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to take away from that answer because my answer to yeah.
But yeah, I had these conversations just about how you thought about the end times and the return of prize. Yeah. Maybe how and if that impacted your upbringing. Yeah.
That question doesn't get you generated conversation. What would you do tonight? What would you do today? Yeah.
I love the world was ending. There you go. Yeah. Great.
All right. So let's look at the passage here then. It's Matthew 25, 1 through 13. And a couple of questions to get you started here.
It says Jesus tells a story about 10 young bridesmaids waiting for a young man, a groom. All 10 fell asleep, but only five had prepared enough to wait long enough. So basically 10 young bridesmaids, 10 of them fall asleep and then only five had prepared enough oil to wait long enough. The other five are bringing around oil, where our lamps are going out.
And so the questions here, what do you learn about the return of Christ from the passage? And then secondly, what does Jesus say the man in Matthew 25? Sorry. What does Jesus say the man said in Matthew 25, 13?
And what might that mean to us? So basically, what do you learn about the return of Christ from this passage and what do you see Jesus saying to the man? All right. 25, 1 through 13.
We should read it. Shall we? You got it or I got it. You want to read?
Yeah. Later, the rest of the virgins came. Okay, let's go for that. Okay, great.
At that time, the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the groom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they didn't take the oil with them. But the wise ones took oil in their flasks with their lamps.
When the groom was delayed, they all became drowsy and fell asleep. In the middle of night, there was a shout. Here's the groom. Come out to meet him.
Then all the virgins got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise ones, give us some of your oil because our lamps are going out. They're going to be like, no, there won't be enough for us and for you. Go inside to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.
When they had gone to buy some, the groom arrived. And those who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet and the door was shut. Later the rest of the virgins came and said, master, master, open up for us. He replied, truly, I tell you, I do not know you.
Therefore be alert because you do not know either the day or the hour. All right. Okay, well done. So what do we see here?
What do we learn about the return of Christ from these verses? We need to be prepared. Yeah. Yeah, we need to be prepared.
Also, it was interesting to me that the passage says that the groom was delayed. Right. So he might not show up as fast as we thought he would. Yeah.
You know, what are some things you noticed, you think? Yeah, I think that's right. Delayed like he's not on our own time or on our own terms. I mean, of course, the words of Jesus often repeated.
I tell you, no one knows the day or the hour, but there is in a very real sense, like he is coming back. He is coming back and what is that going to look like? I mean, I love that the imagery of a wedding and of a wedding feast. I mean, we are the bride of Christ that he is ultimately coming to return for his bride, that there's going to be a culmination of heaven meeting earth coming together.
And it's going to be a joy of celebration where heaven and earth will meet together. We will be united with Christ. We will see him in a real visible physical sense. But there's also there's a real warning.
There's a warning here about being prepared and waiting. And even the declaration that not all will receive receive him and what will prevent people from receiving him? Well, there's a preparedness, there's a responsiveness. There's a sense of being preoccupied with other parts of your own life.
And there's so many things that can preclude us from missing out on receiving him. And even, you know, there's a return of Christ and I mean, you hear this language about like a door being a door being shut. But he's going to return. He's going to reveal, reveal himself and he's going to welcome home all those that put their faith and trust in him.
And so I think the passage is wanting us to focus on Jesus is coming. We should be prepared, but we also should be preoccupied with the wind and where in the house. Just the assurance of that he that he is coming and prepare yourselves for that. That's got anything else to do in the passage itself?
Well, the question for the look down at what does Jesus say to the man in Matthew 25, 13, and what might that mean to us? And he replies, I do not know you, you know, and so I think what Jesus will see as a measure of whether someone's welcomed into the kingdom of heaven or not is their knowledge and relationship with him. Right. Yeah.
So that's the word, you know, often in the biblical sense it's there's intellectual head knowledge, but there's a relational, spiritual knowledge of a knowledge that moves from right head and transforms us in its relational and its intimate and it's, I know him, I hear him, I know of his voice and the way that you can tell it to the point of even last week's message about what it looks like to know him is to put it into practice is to have a word bear fruit in our lives. So it's not just a one time intellectual, a sense of, yep, I know him, that's it, but like their life bears fruit in that relational knowing of him to you, right? So that's good. All right.
Let's move into the lookout section here says why is it so tempting to focus on the particulars of when Jesus will come back and what is most exciting about the possibility that Jesus could come back at any time? What's most exciting and then what's most exciting? Yeah. What's tempting and what's exciting?
Yeah. I think the temptation is I think we love a sense of control and so knowing a sense of when and how and where it almost gives us the illusion of like, we can calculate, okay, if he's coming 30 years from now, I want to spend 10 years doing this and then the next 20 years doing this. But it maybe got not disclosing the specificity of the time is like maybe each day of faithfulness of just living it out is not meant to be over calculated, but just stewarded and faithfully lived in. Yeah.
I don't know. And then the most exciting about the possibility of Jesus coming back at any time is that man, if we, and I wrestle with this a bit, but my hope is that if I love my relationship with Jesus right now, my hope would be that it would be even more exciting to see him in person. Yeah. But sometimes because we do not see him, that idea of him coming back and us interacting with him, it could feel kind of its faith, right?
We don't know what that's like, but my hope in my prayer is that I'd be just excited to see him in person and flesh in all of his glory and his love and his grace, then because I'm blown away by it now, like how much more? But I do need to do some practicing in my faith, some meditating and reflecting to get to that place of excitement because the question to say, what is most exciting, you know, but how about you? Yeah, what's tempting? I love your word about control.
I think that's also I haven't really thought about that. Why is it tempting to focus on the particular is when Jesus will come back? I think that's I think that's true. I think it's control.
I think it's trying to make sense of a world around us. I think it's a coping distraction, even as well. And I think, yeah, a world is in disarray and there's brokenness and there's not only rumors of war, there are wars. There's fractions all over the place in the world.
And I think the temptation is, okay, this all has to make has to make sense. And ultimately, we'll and it's part of God's sovereignty and everything else. But I think that can be a distraction part of that too. What's most exciting?
I mean, just the revelation story about when he returns, there'll be no more weeping, no more sorrow, no more death, a limelight down with the lamb. I mean, all the wrongs will be made right. That's exciting. And I think it's also exciting that whereas Jesus came the first time, in humility and obscurity, the creator allowed himself to be formed through creation through a moment that's amazing.
It's humble. It's beautiful. The second time, scripture is clear when he comes back, it's not that. It's not that.
It's like, this isn't Jesus writing in the town of the donkey. This is Jesus writing out on a horse of a sword of fire. And it's like a conquering king. That also terrifying, but it's also exciting because it's so visible.
You're not going to be able to miss that. It's going to come and you're going to see that. And then of course, the reunification with people that have been lost, people that are asleep, scripture talks about, talks about right now, have been raised first. The dead and gris will be raised first.
I mean, that's amazing. And then just to imagine what heaven on earth is going to be like, like the story is that we just float away in clouds and some heavenly place disembodied souls. The story is coming to where we're going to be united with him and heaven's going to be united with earth, like on earth as it is in heaven. What is that going to look like?
Unbelievable. So yeah, you can go down all kinds of roads down there and it could be lots of questions. There could be fear, but I think ultimately the overwhelming sense is just the anticipation and joy in that prayer of Miranatha. Yeah.
All right. All right, Esther. It's always fun to do it podcast with you. All right.
Look at how might you live your life today to prepare for the day when Jesus returns. So Eric talks about this quite a bit within the message about man, I'm going to live with intentionality. I'm going to be prepared for his turn return, but I'm not going to be preoccupied with the details surrounding it. So I'm prepared, but not preoccupied.
He's got that great quote from Martin Luther. There are two days on my calendar this day and that day, whatever I have guys in front of me for this day and the day that he's returning. So how might your life today, how might you live your life today to prepare for the day of the Jesus returns and then take a moment. What does that one say?
I'm going to be prepared for God to help you live your lives wisely today in light of that day and Christ. So that's a general prayer as you close that group. So what would you say? I have to offer you self or encouragement for your life or pleater to lead this question out.
Yeah. How might you live your life today to prepare for the day? I think I would live. I mean, if I'm going to, and this is so embarrassing to share to because if I'm going to live the rest of my life worshiping Jesus, I ought to be doing it now.
And I don't mean by just Sunday, but man, I was like a mom to young kids and like, it's so hard for me to sometimes pause and turn my affection for Jesus, but I'm going to be doing that for eternity. Yeah. You know, and so I think, yeah, what would I do now? And because there's a unique worship that has sorrow, that has pain mixed that is offered to him on that side of eternity, it's just going to be pure, you know, because there is no pain and no sin.
And so I think I would, I think I would worship. I would, yeah, I know it sounds so simple, but, and I wouldn't find my identity in anything other than worshiping him. Yeah. It's not about what I accomplished today who, you know, praise me today, who I impress today, you know, but did I worship?
Yeah. You know, yeah, how about you? Yeah, I think in general it's just be a massive inventory of my time. Yeah.
The time I spend on petty things, time I spend on holding on the things, the time that I spend on things that don't really matter, that don't have eternal weight and value, that might be fun in the moment, whatever. But it's like, this isn't, this isn't really add, add to be turned into what God is doing. So I think, yeah, I would pick an inventory of my time and think about, okay, where am I giving the best of myself and most of myself? And is that contributing towards, you know, what God is, how is renewing the earth?
And what am I doing right now? A new creation, you know, a new humanity, a new heaven and new heaven. How am I joining him in that now? And how are the things that I'm doing now, the way that I'm creating, the way I'm relating to others, how are those things that are going to scan the new creation and the things that aren't like, why do I give so much time to that?
And let those things go. So, yeah, really good. So good. All right.
Well, good conversation. Yeah, live groups get it this week and then again, great week, a celebration, pray for us and pray for all those that are transitioning into brand new life groups. There's going to be, I believe at our services this weekend where we're a graduate's present. So pray for that.
Yeah, we're looking forward to a great, great week and a great discussion looking at this incredible, incredible together. All right, guys, thanks for time. We'll see you next week.