Stage Four, Kingdom People Who Prepare in Advance: Preparation Cannot Be Borrowed
Stage Four, Kingdom People Who Prepare in Advance, is one of the six faces in Kingdom People: 19 Parables, Six Stages — where wise preparation begins. Three parables hold it: people who live like nets, the scribe discipled for the kingdom, and the ten virgins. All three name work that cannot be done later and cannot be borrowed from anyone else.
Once it is assembled, your hand will not fit inside
Some things have to be done first, and there is no way around it.
A hole on the inside is one of them. It has to be bored before the cover goes on. Once the cover is on, no hand reaches in. So the drawing states at what point that hole gets made. It cannot be put off — not because it is difficult, but because the order has passed and the way in is closed.
Miss it on the floor and there is exactly one remedy. Take the thing apart again.
Kingdom People: 19 Parables, Six Stages reads the nineteen kingdom parables in Matthew across six places. Stage Four is where preparing in advance begins. If Stage Three put a treasure in your hands, this is where it is settled how long and in what manner you hold it. Three parables belong here.
The most common misreading of this stage turns preparation into resolve. Steady the heart, make the decision again, and it feels like being ready. But the ten virgins are not asked about resolve. They are asked about oil carried in a jar. A decision can be made on the spot. Oil cannot be produced on the spot.
And there is a second thing. Nobody else’s supply will do.
When the five foolish asked the five wise for oil, the answer was not stinginess. It was that there would not be enough for both. And while they went off to buy some, the door shut. The real reason it could not be borrowed is that by then it was already late.
But one distinction has to be drawn here.
Something having to be done first is not the same as the stages running in order.
Sequence belongs to making the thing, not to the faces of the drawing. A drawing lays all six out at once. So does Stage Four. Preparing is always today’s work, which means this face stays lit while the eyes are opening in Stage One and while you stand before the King in Stage Six.
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Three parables, three different jobs
Three parables belong to Stage Four in Kingdom People: 19 Parables, Six Stages. They are not doing the same work.
The first is people who live like nets (Matthew 13:47–50). A net let down into the lake catches all kinds of fish. The sorting is not done while the net is out. It is done afterward, on the shore, sitting down. And Jesus said this is how it will be at the end of the age. So now is not the sorting time. Now is the casting time. The first thing anyone preparing has to learn is what not to do.
The second is the scribe discipled for the kingdom (Matthew 13:51–52), a parable that ends in two verses. The name is not simply scribe. It is a scribe who has become a disciple — someone standing in the place of learning rather than guarding what he already holds. Every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom, he said, is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old. Out of his storeroom is the whole of it. Nobody stocks a shelf at the moment of reaching for it. There has to be something in there already. You learn a thing in order to bring it out later.
The third is the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1–13). Across thirteen verses, all ten are carrying lamps. Not one of them was kept out for want of a lamp. What differed was the oil carried separately in a jar, and five had thought of it. And there is one more detail. All ten grew drowsy and fell asleep. The parable closes with keep watch, and the wise five slept too. What divided them was not whether they stayed awake that night but what they had taken care of beforehand.
Held apart, the three are a fishing story, a scholar’s story, and a wedding story. Set in order, they are one movement. All three separate what is done now from what shows up later. The net is cast now and sorted later; the storeroom is filled now and opened later; the oil is carried now and burned later. And none of the three can be done after the fact. That is how the three fill one day’s share of what has to be done.
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Why long-time believers stop here
Five of the ten went in. But ten of them were carrying lamps.
It is at that line that long-time believers stop.
Stay in a church long enough and you acquire a lamp. Knowledge accumulates, a role comes your way, people recognise you. It looks like readiness. You are holding a lamp, after all. That is what makes the detail so unnerving: all ten were holding one.
And a second thing lies on top of it, particularly for those who have been in church since childhood.
You got here on a parent’s prayers. Your mother went out before dawn, and you believe you are sitting here today because of it. That is true, and worth being grateful for. But her praying is not oil in your jar.
A spouse’s faith, a parent’s faith, a pastor’s prayers — none of them transfer at that door. Not out of stinginess, but because they are not that kind of thing.
I was late learning this myself.
People live inside communities. You are born into a family, you grow up into friends, you go out into a society, you believe and there is a church. Always alongside someone — which makes standing alone the rare thing.
I did not learn it until past the middle of my fifties, and it started with my health. Only after my body gave way did I see that, apart from the few born with unusual constitutions, the problem had been mine all along. And standing there I learned one more thing: a community can help you some of the way and cannot carry you to the end of it.
Faith turned out to be the same. We receive grace together and we find strength together, and when we stand before God we stand alone.
“Cannot be borrowed” does not mean do it alone. It means there is a place where no one can stand in for you.
Kingdom People: 19 Parables, Six Stages makes the location plain. Stage Four is not where you renew a resolution. It is where you find out what no one else can do on your behalf.
Is the place you are standing a staircase you stopped climbing, or a face you have not yet turned to look at?
In front of that question, holding a lamp proves nothing yet.
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While we are preparing, he is preparing too
The parable of the ten virgins moves on to a closing door.
And the virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut (Matthew 25:10).
Stop there and this is only a frightening story. But ask who else had been getting ready.
The virgins were not the only ones. They did not lay on the banquet. What they made ready was lamps and oil; the table on the other side of that door was set by the bridegroom.
On the night before he was arrested, Jesus told his disciples this:
My Father’s house has many rooms. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am (John 14:2–3).
The same readiness stands on both sides. While we are getting oil ready, he is getting a place ready.
And which came first matters. We have reason to prepare because he went ahead to prepare — not the other way round, as though a good enough preparation could earn the room.
Which is why not being able to borrow oil is not a sentence of despair. It cannot be borrowed, but it can be bought, and the shop has not closed yet.
Stage Five of Kingdom People: 19 Parables, Six Stages is where you love like the Master. Anyone who has finished preparing is left with something: the long wait while the bridegroom does not come. What fills it is the next face.
When the oil was poured into the jar, no one had come yet. But who was coming was already known.