Overview

1. You can look forward to the rapture with hope!
2. Your assurance rests on Christ, not your performance
3. Keys to interpreting the parable of the ten virgins
4. Live in joyful expectation of our Lord Jesus’ return

You can look forward to the rapture with hope!

As believers, we have a wonderful hope to look forward to in these end times: the return of our Lord Jesus for us. When it comes to what lies ahead, our heavenly Father has not left us to stumble around in speculation or struggle to interpret every event that happens around us. We only have to turn to His Word to receive instruction and insight into what is to come and what He would have us do.

First and foremost, we are to keep our eyes on the Lord Jesus and His promises.

Throughout Scripture, through prophecies fulfilled, we see time and again that our God is a God of His word. This is especially true in the many prophecies concerning our Lord Jesus. Long before He came to earth, details about His coming had already been recorded in Scripture.

One example is Daniel’s prophecy about the Messiah. In the 18th century, through careful study and calculation of the years in Daniel’s prophetic timeline, Sir Robert Anderson, an assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard, was able to identify the moment our Lord Jesus was revealed as the Messiah—His entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. It is a powerful reminder that what God has spoken in His Word will surely come to pass.

And one precious promise our heavenly Father has given us believers in the end times is the rapture, where our Lord returns to take the church, His bride, away. In 1 Thessalonians 4:17, the apostle Paul writes:

Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Here, “caught up” is translated from the Greek word harpazō, which conveys the idea of being suddenly snatched or taken away. During the rapture, those in Christ who have died will be raised first, and then believers who are alive will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air.

Notice the only condition Paul gives for believers to be raptured when the Lord comes is those who are “alive and remain.” There are no other criteria, such as having a certain level of holiness or obedience. So, beloved, if you are in Christ, you can be assured that when the Lord comes for His church, you are going up with Him!

And what will the Scripture have us do with this wonderful truth?

Therefore comfort one another with these words.
—1 Thessalonians 4:18

The promise of the rapture is meant to bring us believers comfort, not to make us afraid and unsure. Our Lord Jesus is coming for us, and we can look forward to the day when we will see Him face-to-face and be with Him forever!

Yet, there are some believers who have the opposite reaction to teachings about the Lord’s return. Instead of comfort and joyful expectation, they wonder, Have I done enough? Am I holy enough? Will I be ready when Jesus comes?

Your assurance rests on Christ, not your performance

Beloved, just as with salvation, your assurance of whether you will be raptured or not does not rest on how well you perform. It rests entirely on our Lord Jesus and His perfect finished work. When our eyes are on ourselves and our performance, there will always be room for doubt. But when we look to our Lord Jesus and His finished work, we can have true assurance and peace.

In recent times, there have also been more of what some might call “hard preaching”—teachings that place the focus on what we need to do or where we are falling short. We might hear things like, “You’re not holy enough,” “You haven’t done enough,” or “You need to do more.”

These kinds of preaching might appeal to people because the flesh always wants to have a part to play. It wants something it can do, improve, or accomplish. And because we can readily see the areas where we fall short, teachings that keep pointing us back to what we need to do can feed the flesh’s desire to have a hand in our righteousness before God.

While this kind of preaching may sound as if it would produce greater holiness, what it really does is to turn our attention back onto ourselves and our performance. Friend, we don’t need to become more conscious of our shortcomings. What we need is for the beauty of our Lord Jesus and His finished work to be made more clear and prominent to us, so that our eyes are turned away from ourselves and onto Him.

The Bible gives us a clear demonstration of the great difference this shift in focus can make through Peter’s life.

When Peter first encountered Jesus, he was very conscious of the Lord’s holiness and of his own sinfulness. He fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (Luke 5:8).

But after spending three and a half years with the Lord and experiencing His grace and restoration, Peter’s response to Jesus in John 21 was very different. When he realized it was the Lord on the shore, he jumped into the water and swam toward Him. Instead of wanting to get away from Jesus, Peter now couldn’t wait to get close to Him!

Why? He had come to know the Lord’s love and grace toward him and knew that his sins were forgiven.

Now, there can be a tendency to think that the love of God is a basic truth for new believers and that, as we mature in the faith, we need to move on to “deeper” things such as holiness. But as we have just seen from Peter’s story, even a sinner can have a sense of God’s holiness and their own unworthiness. What growing and mature believers need is an ever-deepening revelation of the Lord’s love.

This is why the apostle Paul prayed for the believers in Ephesus, the most spiritual church of his day:

That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
—Ephesians 3:17–19

Paul was writing to mature believers in the church of Ephesus, yet he prayed that they would know the love of Christ more and more. Friend, we can never be too mature for a greater revelation of the Lord’s love for us!

This isn’t to say that holiness is unimportant. As believers, we are called to live holy lives that glorify our Lord Jesus. But holiness is the fruit; grace is the root. True holiness is not produced by becoming more occupied with ourselves and our performance. It is the fruit that flows as we receive our Lord’s grace and become increasingly conscious of Him.

So instead of looking at yourself and wondering whether you are doing enough, keep looking to our Lord Jesus and keep receiving His love and grace toward you!

Keys to interpreting the parable of the ten virgins

The more we anchor our hearts in our Lord Jesus’ love and grace toward us, the less we will be shaken by teachings that turn our eyes back onto ourselves and our performance. And this is important when we consider some teachings going around today about the end times.

One teaching that has become prevalent recently is based on the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25. It is taught that the five wise and five foolish virgins represent two groups of believers—those who will be raptured and those who will be left behind. This teaching, sometimes known as the partial rapture theory, can leave believers wondering, Will I be ready when Jesus comes? Have I done enough? Will I be left behind?

But as we saw earlier, the rapture is a promise for every believer, and our place in it is not something we earn through our own efforts.

To understand what our Lord Jesus is saying in this parable, we need to interpret it in its proper context. Pastor Prince shared this helpful principle from Miles Coverdale, a 16th-century Bible translator:

“It shall greatly help ye to understand the Scriptures, if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom and to whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstances, considering what goeth before and what followeth after.”

In other words, we need to interpret Scripture in its context. We need to consider who a passage is speaking about, to whom it is being spoken, and what comes before and after it. With this principle in mind, let’s take a closer look at some important clues in and around the parable.

Who is this parable about?

The Gospel of Matthew is written predominantly for a Jewish audience and includes references to certain Jewish traditions, such as the wedding customs of Jesus’ day. The parable of the ten virgins appears in Matthew 25, immediately after Jesus speaks about the end times in Matthew 24, where He referred specifically to Judea, the Sabbath, and “the abomination of desolation” mentioned by the prophet Daniel.

These details point to the strong Jewish context surrounding the parable, which is why we should not automatically assume that the ten virgins represent the church. It is also interesting to note that in the parable, the bridegroom and the ten virgins are present, but the bride herself (the church) is not mentioned at all.

Who are the ten virgins?

While the church has been referred to as a “virgin” (2 Cor. 11:2), Scripture also uses it for Israel. In Jeremiah 31:4, the Lord refers to Israel as “O virgin of Israel!”

There is another important clue in Psalm 45, which paints a picture of a royal wedding and distinguishes between the bride and the virgins who accompany her:

She shall be brought to the King in robes of many colors; the virgins, her companions who follow her, shall be brought to You.
—Psalm 45:14

The New Living Translation refers to these virgin companions as bridesmaids. This clearly reminds us that the virgins are distinct from the bride, and thus, cannot be the church. It is very likely that they are referring to the Jewish people.

What does the oil represent?

So why are five of the virgins called wise and the other five foolish? The key difference is the oil. The five wise virgins had oil with them, while the five foolish virgins did not.

What does the oil represent? Some have interpreted the oil as obedience and concluded that the wise virgins represent believers who were obedient enough to be raptured. But in the Bible, oil is often a picture of the Holy Spirit, and Romans 8:9 tells us: 

Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.

The five wise virgins in this parable are a picture of Jews who will receive Jesus as their Messiah and have the Holy Spirit, while the five foolish virgins are those who don’t. So once again, this parable is not at all saying that some believers will qualify for the rapture while others will be left behind because they were not holy or obedient enough.

Beloved, don’t let teachings about the end times cause you to wonder whether you will be “good enough” to be raptured. As long as you are in Christ, you belong to Him, and your place in the rapture is a settled thing. The Lord’s return is not something you have to fear. You can look forward to it with hope and live today in joyful expectation of the day you will see Him face-to-face!

Live in joyful expectation of our Lord Jesus’ return

And to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.
—1 Thessalonians 1:10

Today, this is to be our posture as believers. We are not waiting for the grave, nor are we to look fearfully at everything happening around us. Like in the Jewish weddings of Jesus’ day, we may not know exactly when our Bridegroom will come for us, but we are to look forward to it with joyful expectation.

And knowing that our place in the rapture is secure should not make us live passively as we wait. Instead, the revelation of the Lord’s love for us and the blessed hope we have should stir up in us a desire to live for Him and to live lives larger than ourselves.

One way we can do this is by serving Him. Service to the Lord is a response to His love, and it becomes our joy. We serve Him because we have first received His love. We don’t serve the Lord to earn our salvation or to make sure we qualify for the rapture.  

Beloved, our Lord Jesus is coming for us. Until then, keep looking to Him, keep receiving His love, and keep letting that love lead you in how you live and serve.

And when He comes, we will finally see the One who loves us face-to-face and be with Him forever. What a glorious hope we have to look forward to!

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© Copyright JosephPrince.com 2026
These sermon notes were taken by volunteers during the service. They are not a verbatim representation of the sermon.