In the last chapter, we began to discuss how there is a part the wise women played to attain the oil in their lamps. We also defined that the oil represents our personal intentional heart connection & obedience to the Spirit of God.Another way of saying it is this: the sustaining oil in our lamps comes from, not a mere ‘yes’ to Jesus at an altar call, but a continual, purposeful yielding to Him; it’s a determined choice to obey - a single-minded focus to know Him and love Him more and more, no matter the cost. As we looked at the wisdom required for such longing, we also compared the wisdom of the wise virgins to the wisdom displayed in Proverbs 1:1-7. Here, we looked at length at the importance of the fear of the Lord in gaining such a heart. As we investigated the beautiful instruction of Proverbs 1, we learned much about gaining oil. The wise will have an excess of oil and it comes by:
1) Receiving instruction, warnings, and discipline from the Lord, His Word, and the leaders in our life.
2) Seeking out more and more instruction, knowing it produces life at the heart level
3) Finding and maintaining a heart of humility and submission
4) Learning to embrace the Fear of the Lord
There was another very important connection between Matthew 25 & Proverbs 1:5, that we began to look at, but today, we will pause to study. Proverbs 1:5 doesn’t merely mention the need for increasing in instruction – it says there is a costto attaining it. Proverbs reads:
“5 A wise man will hear and increase learning,And a man of understanding will attain (possess, purchase) wise counsel…”
Verse 5 says that the wise man increases learning even if it is difficult and costly. In fact, in the original language, verse 5 says that a wise person will ‘purchase’ wise counsel. They didn’t just stumble upon it. No - the wisest believer will purposefully and prayerfully pay a price to have true instruction in their life. The wisest person will, in fact, pay a price to be challenged and disciplined!
The Price
Just as the wise will pay a price for wisdom, so Matthew 25 says oil must be purchased:
8 And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9 But the wise answered, saying, ‘No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.’
“Buy for yourselves.” Why did the wise know that oil must be bought by the individual? Because they themselves had already purchased it. They didn’t sell it themselves – they were purchasers of such a gift. As stated earlier, oil is not automatic. Jesus doesn’t wave a magic wand and fill up our lamps: it is purchased. This is an important truth we must unpack. Because Jesus’ forgiveness is so freely given, there is a misconception in the church that we automatically receive every wonderful thing from Him. But scripture is quite clear: while forgiveness is freely given to those who believe on Him, there are things in the kingdom that are very costly and precious that come from much seeking, discipline, and learning – all of which are a type of “currency” in the Kingdom. Let us look at Proverbs once more:
My son, if you receive my words,And treasure my commands within you,2 So that you incline your ear to wisdom,And apply your heart to understanding;3 Yes, if you cry out for discernment,And lift up your voice for understanding,4 If you seek her as silver,And search for her as for hidden treasures;5 Then you will understand the fear of the Lord,And find the knowledge of God. (2:1-5)
As you can see in this passage, wisdom does not simply come because Jesus is in our heart. It is a virtue He possess that must be worked into our nature. Philippians actually says to us, “12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” Read that scripture again: God is in us but His nature must be worked out of us through intentional actions, with much fear and trembling. As Proverbs says, we must ‘cry out’ for it and ‘lift up our voice’ for it; we must ‘seek’ it and ‘search’ for it. Then, when we find it, we must ‘receive it’ and ‘treasure it;’ we must ‘incline’ our ear to it over and over and ‘apply our heart’ to it. This is a whole lot of action on our part! As Philippians says, this is a lot of ‘working out’ what God worked in us. James 1:5 tells us that if we lack wisdom, we can ask God and he will give it to us liberally. However, as we can see in Proverbs, this is not a flippant request, but a heart-direction – a lifestyle built around pursuit of God’s nature. Proverbs promises such a Believer:
6 For the Lord gives wisdom;From His mouth come knowledge and understanding;7 He stores up sound wisdom for the upright…
How do the wise get so much oil on reserve? They have a God who stores up wisdom for them in excess! It is there for the taking for those who will search it out. Once again, Proverbs promises such a Believer... it is not automatic to every believer: only those who will “purchase” it by seeking it diligently through a life of obedient surrender.
Another passage that instructs us to purchase the costly things of God is Isaiah 55. In this passage, we learn a bit more about the nature of the currency we use in the Kingdom and the passage expounds on exactly what it is we are purchasing. It says:
“Ho! Everyone who thirsts,Come to the waters;And you who have no money,Come, buy and eat.Yes, come, buy wine and milkWithout money and without price.
When we first read this passage, it seems contradictory: you poor ones with no money, come and buy. It’s odd, right? How can we buy anything without money? Yet this is exactly what the verse says: there is no money required for this purchase, no price as we understand in the natural. But note: it doesn’t say, “Don’t worry, ya’ll! We’re just giving it all away for free to you poor folks!” No – it still says that the poor must buy -just not in the world’s system of purchasing. So that is the first thing we must learn: there is a cost.
The Price of Humility: Admit Who You Are
What else do we see in this passage? We see who pays the cost: the poor, the hungry, and the thirsty. Part of the cost we must pay for wisdom & oil in our lamp the price of humility. It’s the cost of having to humble ourselves enough to even admit, “I am poor. I am starving. I am in need.” This is the beginning of repentance, but it is also the continuing posture of mature believers - from the cradle to the grave.Staying aware of our own inability to satisfy ourselves and our own inability to bring anything of worth to the table of the Lord is key to actually being effective in God’s Kingdom. All things are by Him, through Him, and to Him (Rom. 11:36). Jesus taught us to understand that only ONE is good (Mark 10:18), stressing to us that all our self-efforts and goodness are soiled garments (Is. 64:6). This is why He went on to say that those who understand their own lack, their own poverty, their own inability spiritually speaking to be blessable, are the blessed ones who will inherit it all (Matthew 5:3). So, part of the cost we must pay to grow in wisdom and have excess oil is to pay the cost of humility in the deepest places of our hearts by admitting our lack. This means we may have to lose our defensiveness. Lose the right to be heard. Lose the right to our opinion. This means we may have to swallow our pride time after time, not because it’s “the Christiany” thing to do, but because we understand that we may not have complete understanding. We are, after all, flawed, broken people who are poor, starving, and dying for water. When we stay in that place, we position our hearts as ones who are dependent on Christ to be our all in all.
The Price of Humility: Come and Receive
So, part of the cost of humility begins by continually realizing who we are apart from Him. That’s the first downpayment. But we don’t stop there. The next part is this: simply come. Isaiah 55 says:
“Ho! Everyone who thirsts,Come to the waters;And you who have no money,Come, buy and eat.Yes, come, buy wine and milkWithout money and without price.
Come to the One who has the water. Come to the One who has the bread. Humble yourself and come, willing to receive from Him. That’s the next downpayment: just come. Let His word pierce your heart again and again. Come to Him in the place of dependency and truth about who you are and where you are at in every area of your life. It’s not enough to recognize where we are – we must humble ourselves enough to do something about it! This is where many people get tripped up. They may know they are broken, but will they seek out and literally pay for the counseling they need to change and heal? Will they go to their pastor and ask for accountability or discipleship to change? Will we tell our family that we are weak and need a plan in place to grow strong? Most Chrisitains feel fairly safe admitting their lack to Christ, but admitting it to another person? That’s a greater cost. But, in coming to the capable people around us, we areactually coming to Christ. I know that might read as a shocking statement at first glance, but stick with me. Jesus said this mysterious truth in Matthew 25:35-40:
35 …I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’
Part of the mystery of serving each other in the Body of Christ is that whatever we do to one another, we do it to Him. So, we can trust that – if our heart is in the right position – when we humble ourselves enough to come to a member of Christ’s body for help, we are coming to Him to receive. In the parable of the wise virgins, they told the foolish ones to “go to those who sell.” This means that there are wise people around us that can give us the oil of God’s Spirit in forms of counsel, correction, direction, rebuke, and more. The caveat is if we come to the people around us looking for them to be Jesus all the time for us. People cannot always fulfill the voice of the Lord in our life. They will be used to bring God’s voice when called upon, but the daily bread we receive must come from our time alone with God. However, when we surround ourselves with godly leaders and a godly fellowship of believers, we can trust that the counsel we receive from them will be from the Lord. So, to recap – come to Jesus, but not simply in prayer. Take that harder step and come to the people He has put around you to help you grow.
The Price for What Satisfies: Hunger & Thirst Rightly
We also see this truth in this Isaiah 55: what we hunger and thirst for is what we ‘buy.’ We see in the following verses, that many people hunger and thirst for things that do not edify; they spend their money on things that lead to more lack:
2 Why do you spend money for what is not bread,And your wages for what does not satisfy?Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,And let your soul delight itself in abundance.
We can all fall into the trap of “spending” our life on things that do not truly satisfy. From the way we spend our money to the way we spend our time, many things in life have no substance or true significance. Moses penned in Psalm 90:12 – “Teach us to count our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” I’ve heard this verse explained in a song called,Life Means So Much, by Chris Rice: ‘Every day is a bank account and time is our currency. So, no one’s rich, nobody's poor - we get twenty-four hours each. So how are you gonna spend? Will you invest or squander? Try to get ahead or help someone who's under?’
In other words, we each can ‘spend’ our lives how we will – and some will squander it by chasing after money or happiness or success, while others will do what Moses said we can do: gain a heart of wisdom by spending our time here on earth intentionally seeking God’s best. But it all comes down to what we crave the most. Jesus said in Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” We must train our heart to hunger and thirst for the things that truly satisfy: the fruit of God’s Spirit. His love, His peace, His patience, His Kindness…when we eat of His ways, we grow hungrier and hungrier for more and, at the exact same time, find deeper and deeper satisfaction.
Isaiah continues in 55 much like Proverbs did – showing us the cost to be truly satisfied comes as seeking, longing, and searching out God’s ways out over our own:
Seek the Lord while He may be found,Call upon Him while He is near.7 Let the wicked forsake his way,And the unrighteous man his thoughts;Let him return to the Lord,And He will have mercy on him; (55:6-7a)
Here we see the Spirit saying to the poor, hungry ones, “You must seek Him out! Give up your rights, give up your opinion, give up your ways – and learn from Him and you will be satisfied!” Our God is not unkind in asking us to pay the price of humility – he never asks us to do something that He himself hasn’t already paid.
Lest we think that the concept of purchasing costly Kingdom things is only an Old Testament one, let us look at that same passage in Philippians we looked at earlier in this chapter– the one that tells us to work out our salvation, begins like this:
5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. (Phil. 2:5-8)
If anyone paid the price of humility, it is our Lord. He set the example of ultimate obedience. He paid the greatest price for us. But now He asks us to follow His example. Now let us look at, not only at what Jesus did – let us look at what Jesus himself said:
34 When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 35 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. (Mark 8:33-35)
Here we see that Jesus asks us to pay the same cost He was willing to pay: the cross. If we want to ‘come after him,’ meaning ‘follow His example and pattern of fellowship with God,’ then we must pay the price of self-denial even to the point of death. That is no small request! That is no small price. For all His parables and poetic language, Jesus still spoke plainly when He walked this earth, and here we see the plain truth that there is a cost for being like Him. But even as a great reward awaited Jesus after the cross, the Father has promised those who are poor enough in themselves to lay down their own lifes to know Christ, will be rewarded in glory. "Well done, good and faithful servant" awaits us on the other side of our cross. If we will humble ourselves now, Christ himself will lift us up in the presence of His Father. What a reward that will be!
Reflect: Take a moment and ask the Holy Spirit to show you areas where you may need to die to your own opinion. Ask Him to show you self-reliance, self-assurance, and self-deception. Ask Him to show you areas where you are currently doing a good job being "poor in spirit" and areas where you are not. All of this will produce oil!
Comments