Well, hello, my dear friends. If you would, turn to Matthew chapter 24. As you turn there, I wanna say thank you to the church for having us this morning. It's always a joy to be with you and to worship the Lord together with you. I love the church here. I bring you greetings from Beverly Manor Baptist Church in Washington, Illinois. Please pray for them this morning. Also appreciate the Holbrooks, appreciate Jack's friendship for many years now, and also appreciate that there were coffee and donuts right before service this morning. Jack told me that there was a special thing, and I said, so let me get this right. You ask me if I wanna preach, and then you schedule a special thing so everybody's adequately caffeinated to endure me preaching. Seems wise to me, you know. Our text is actually going to be at the end of Matthew 24, verses 45 through 51. This comes in the middle of a much larger picture, so I really, before we get to the text this morning, I hope you won't mind taking some time to see what leads up to it, because I promise you, there is nothing better than the text in context. And so, this portion of Matthew's gospel, occurs in the final week of Jesus's ministry leading up to his crucifixion. During this week, he goes in and out of the city of Jerusalem every day, but he does not stay overnight in the city of Jerusalem. He's actually likely staying at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in this little village called Bethany. So if you can visualize this, there are two mountains, One is Mount Zion, which the city of Jerusalem is built on top of. Directly across from that is Mount Olivet, or the Mount of Olives. And Jesus goes into the city of Jerusalem every day, and then at the end of the day, he leaves, goes down the valley, up the Mount of Olives, and just the other, over the crest of the Mount of Olives, this little village of Bethany, where he spends his evenings. Now, Jerusalem, as it sits on top of that Mount Zion, The crown jewel of the city is the temple of the Lord, which stands as like the centerpiece of the city. It's on the very pinnacle of that mountain. And Jesus every day has been going into the temple, and teaching and preaching to the crowds in the massive courtyard of the temple. Just glance back, if you would, at chapter 23 for a moment, and you'll see that the description is that Jesus, in verse 1, spoke to the multitudes and his disciples. So he's in the temple, and he is teaching these large groups of people in the temple courtyard. And he is, throughout Matthew 23, making some bold proclamations during that entire day. He's taking the kind of stand for righteousness that will, in fact, cost him his life. He is not avoiding controversy. He is courting the very controversy that will get him killed. In fact, he calls the religious leaders hypocrites, not just once. If you just glance down through chapter 23, you'll see in verse 13, verse 14, verse 15, verse 23, verse 25, verse 27, verse 29, seven different times the Lord Jesus calls out the religious hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees. That's what's happening in chapter 23. Now I just want you to take that Tuck it away into the filing cabinet of your mind, right? Put it in a little file that says Matthew 23. Make sure you know which drawer you put it in, because we're going to pull that back out in a little while. As Matthew 24 opens, the Lord Jesus is on his way back out of the city, and he's leading his disciples out of the temple, down the steps, into that Kidron Valley between these two mountains, and up that opposite mountain called the Mount of Olives. And we would think that the disciples hearing Jesus call the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites numerous times to their face in the temple, that that's what would be on their minds. But the disciples seem to be fascinated instead by the magnificent architecture that they're seeing as they leave the temple. And it was amazing that the way the temple was constructed, there were these massive single stones which it was built with. So for example, there's one historian who says one single hewn stone was 37 feet long by 12 feet high by 18 feet thick. So if you want a picture, two city buses parked right next to each other, a single stone the size of those two buses, and maybe actually about four or five feet higher than that. And so they're remarking about this architectural marvel, and Jesus says to them in Matthew 24 verse 2, Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down. And so those disciples who are just rightly amazed by the structure are even now more stunned by this prospect of its destruction. And so what ensues is sort of this running conversation as they wind their way down into the valley and then up into the Mount of Olives. Verse 3 says Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives, right? So he is overlooking that temple. and his disciples start to quiz him. And so this chapter is called the Olivet Discourse because it's what Jesus is teaching on the side of the Mount of Olives. And to try to put all of it into a, you know, it's a complex chapter, but to try to just simplify it for our purposes this morning, keep in mind that in Matthew 24, the Lord Jesus is answering the questions that the disciples brought to him at the beginning of the chapter. Look at verse three, you'll see three questions. As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately saying, Now in the disciples' minds, they think that's all the same question. Right? They are sure that such catastrophic events that would bring down that temple and separate every stone from one from another, that must be the second coming. That must be the end of time. And so they're wrong. In fact, Jesus begins to answer to explain that in what's gonna happen in just a few decades when the Romans come and destroy the temple, but he goes on to answer their other questions about when will the second coming be? What will be the signs of this and of the end of time? Because they asked all those things. And so, for example, in verse 21, he describes there's gonna be a great tribulation, unlike any seen before in verses, 22 through 26, he says there will be false claims of Christ's return. In verse 31, there's going to be the sound of a great trumpet and the gathering of all the elect. But ultimately the lesson in Matthew 24, toward the end of the chapter, the lesson Jesus teaching begins to change a little bit. He's answered the questions that the disciples asked, but then wisely starts to answer the question that they should have asked. In verses 36-44, he begins to stress the uncertain timing of his return. Who knows when Jesus is coming back? According to verse 36, No one knows, Jesus says, not even the angels, only God the Father. He goes on to say that it will be sudden, like in Noah's day, when the flood came. In verses 40 and 41, the return of Jesus will mean different things for different people. Apparently, Two evidently identical folks, like two farmers working in a field, or two women working in a hand grinder together, will experience it differently. As he says, one will be taken and the other will be left. And the lesson we should learn from it in verse 42 is watch, which means to be on alert, for you do not know what hour your Lord, your master, is coming. And in verse 44, the Son of Man is coming in an hour you do not expect. None of that's my sermon yet. Okay, this is all just putting it into context. It's a very simple overview. This is about the second coming of Jesus in the context. This is about the uncertainty of the timing of the coming of Jesus. And now, so some of y'all have your interest peaked and you're going, oh boy, Jason's gonna preach about the timing of the rapture. Y'all, I don't think I'm brave enough to do that in somebody else's church. And if I was, I would hope I'm not stupid enough to do it from a text where Jesus says, you don't know. Okay, so that's not what we're gonna do this morning. Jesus, though, is the perfect teacher who goes beyond saying, well, here's the facts, and says, well, here's what you should do with these facts. Since he is returning, and you don't know when he's returning, he gives this text. Verse 45. Who then is a faithful and wise servant whom his master made ruler over his household to give them food in due season. Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods. But if that evil servant says in his heart, my master is delaying his coming, and he begins to eat, I'm sorry, he begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with the drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him in an hour he is not aware of, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Y'all know my family and I are on our way home from vacation. We were looking forward to our vacation for a while. Now we're, honestly, we're looking forward to being home. You know how that feels. It's sort of a natural attitude for all of us to count down the days toward this, whatever the next highly anticipated event in our life is, right? So I was doing that, right? Here's three more sleeps till vacation. This is my last haircut before vacation. This is the last sermon I'm gonna preach before vacation. For some folks, being ready for vacation means you've got to do a lot of work. And for other folks, being ready for vacation means pack your bags and just sit back and wait. And vacation's going to come. When you have this hope-filled expectation of some event coming up in your future, that hope fills a prominent place in your mind. And it affects everything you do until at last that time has arrived. Friends. If you have faith in Jesus as Savior, if you believe that He is coming again, that hopeful expectation must be at the forefront of your mind. You're eagerly anticipating the day when He descends from heaven, when you ascend to meet Him in the air, and on that day, your ultimate desire of unity with the Lord Jesus will be fulfilled. But listen. If you express that hope by having your bags packed and sitting back waiting for time to pass, you are going to be in for a rude awakening when the Master comes. When the Lord Jesus says in verse 42, watch therefore for you do not know the hour your Lord is coming. He does not mean have your bags packed. He doesn't mean watch, like stare up into the sky. There's no brownie points or merit badge you're gonna get awarded to whoever the first one is who sees him peek over the horizon. To watch means to be awake, to be alert, to be vigilant, to be active, to have this at the forefront of your mind. And then on our text in verses 45 through 51, he shows that to watch means to work. Throughout Christian history, there have been folks who disregard Jesus's clear teaching that no man knows the times and the seasons, And as a result, they also ignore the command that he makes here to serve diligently until he returns. In 1836, there was a Baptist preacher named William Miller, who in 1836, he published this book on the second coming, insisting he had decoded all the secrets of scripture and determined that the Lord's return was going to be in the year 1843. And then later, he got more specific. The day would be October 22nd, 1844. Well, most people ignored him. but thousands, and I mean hundreds of thousands believed him. And as that day approached, they started quitting their jobs, giving all their possessions away. Many of them literally sat on the rooftop of their house waiting for the Lord Jesus to return from the sky. It should not surprise you to find out the Lord Jesus did not return on October 22nd, 1844. That event or that non-event became known as the Great Disappointment. But I'm going to tell you, it should not be called the Great Disappointment. It should have been called the Great Relief. Because their greatest disappointment would have been seeing the Master return to find them doing nothing productive. That's what Jesus is teaching here. In fact, when the Apostle Paul writes to the Thessalonians in 2 Thessalonians 3, 6-13, he's speaking of some folks who were so convinced that the Lord Jesus' return was only moments away that they, at that point in time, stopped working. They were idle and he wrote to them and condemned that and said to such, and for the rest of you do not grow weary in doing good. This parable at the end of Matthew 24 teaches the same lesson. Simply, if you have faith in the Lord Jesus as Savior, you believe He is coming again, your life will reflect that belief as you live in faithful service to Him until He returns. So let's walk through this parable together in four parts. First, I want you to see the master's command in verse 45. He asks a question, he says, who then is a faithful and wise servant whom his master made ruler over his household to give them food in due season? To set up this parable, to sort of put this parable into motion, Jesus issues a question and then sets up two hypothetical answers to respond to it. Who is a faithful and wise servant, Jesus asks. And you can almost picture many of his disciples on the side of the Mount of Olives wanting to raise their hand going, me, me, it's me, I am. But instead of accepting volunteers, Jesus issues parameters of what faithfulness and wisdom look like. And so he asks us in verse 45 to picture a household. And this household has a master, it has a lord, it has a ruler. And this master has slaves. The word for servant here is the word doulos, and it means bond servant. A servant in bonds. One whose own will is in submission to the will of someone else. Many times it is rightly translated slave. And one slave in particular is given a special assignment in verse 45. Jesus says the master makes him ruler over his household to give them food in due season. So in short, this servant is being given work to do while the master's gone. He's given work. I mean, he is a slave after all. Even though he is assigned a task that sets him with some authority over the household, The ultimate authority is the master himself. And so as this master leaves, he leaves this task with his servants to be diligent, to be a good steward over the master's household by, you can see in verse 45, giving them food in due season. In other words, looking over the other people in the household in order to provide for them as they have needs. The parallels here should be evident. The Lord Jesus is our master, and he has left for a time, and he has left his servants with the task of being good stewards over what is his. We shouldn't even be surprised that that task includes more than just be careful in how you care for yourself, but also includes watch, making sure that you care for others. Now understand, no single parable reveals every aspect of truth. And so in Sunday school class this morning, we talked about Matthew 25. Jesus is going to develop this further. He continues these kingdom parables, and for example, in Matthew 25, 14, he begins the parable of the talents. One servant gets five talents, one servant gets two, one gets one, and he teaches good stewardship in whatever you have been given to do. So understand, this is not to teach that each one of us has been given the exact same responsibility and the same work, but the point is to say that the Lord Jesus has left you with work to do, he has left you as a steward over what is his, and you have to serve him, and to serve him also involves caring for others. So you can be a pastor, a Sunday school teacher, you can be a church member, a father, a mother, a husband, a wife, a soon-to-be husband or wife. You can be a business owner, an employee, a student. Y'all, you can be a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker. It does not matter what specifically it is that you were given to do. As a believer, you are a bond servant of your master Jesus, and you have been given stewardship of his property. Everything you have in your life is his property. Everything that you attach yourself to, that you hold dear, everything that maybe even holds sway over you is under his feet. It's all his property. You have nothing but what he has given you. After all, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. So right now, I am standing in his pulpit, in his building, using his time preaching to his church from his Bible while daring to breathe his air. And all of that has to be used, it has to be submitted to service to him. And nothing you have is exempt from this calling to serve Him faithfully with what He has given you to be a steward over. So if you can teach, teach. If you can sing, sing. If you can encourage, encourage. If you are a believer, you know that He has freed you from sin, but He has bound you to Himself. Think about this, we know whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That word Lord means master, right? If you've called on him for salvation, you are recognizing him as Lord, him as master. You have entered his service to serve him and his desires. So as a bondservant of Jesus, your life and your affections, your future, Your time, your work, your possessions, all of your desires, your marriage, your family, all of it has to be used to serve him. He owns you. So do you want to be a faithful and wise servant? Jesus explains how. Look at the wise servant's work in verses 46 and 47. Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Assuredly, I say to you, he will make him ruler over all his goods. I love how Jesus does not here give a detailed description of the wise servant's work. He just says the master returns, and when he comes, he finds him so doing. In other words, the master returns and finds him hard at work. Not perfect, but diligent. In this first hypothetical situation, Jesus teaches that if a disciple of Jesus lives faithfully and wisely in expectation of the Lord's return, that disciple is going to be rewarded. Y'all, this is a difficult truth for us to really wrap our minds around adequately. We get rewarded for doing what was expected of us. Back when I was a... Newspaper editor, our company got bought out by another big media company. And the new ownership group had a different way of evaluating employees. And I find myself sitting down with the human resources director who has this checklist of every area of newspaper life and wants to check a box that says, needs improvement, meets expectations, or exceeds expectations. And I thought, this is stupid. I asked, don't you think everybody can improve? Well, yeah. Don't you think everybody who can improve should improve? Yeah. Do you expect that? Of course. Like, then you can check every box for every area of life. Everybody needs improvement. Everybody, if they're improving at all, is meeting your expectations. If they're not improving at all, they need improvement, which is what you expect. And the only way to exceed expectations is actually to do what you expected them to do to begin with. And the HR director is staring at me. And I know in his mind, it's like, I could fire him. Thankfully, I did not get fired. Although I do think that I set up the HR director to expect that I would be a pain every year at my annual meeting, I met expectations. In the Christian life, as servants of the Lord Jesus, you are never going to get an exceeds expectations. You can't do it. Also, on the other end of things, the Lord Jesus is not handing out participation trophies like a reward just for showing up and doing nothing. In another text, Jesus gives a similar teaching and he tells of the servants that here's what your attitude should be. And he says in Luke 17, nine and 10, He asks, does a master thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded to him? I think not. So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, should say, we are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do. In other words, the best we can do is just what we've been commanded to do. We're not to get arrogant and high-minded and full of ourselves. And yet Jesus, in this text, he promises there are rewards for those who faithfully and diligently serve him. Your reward is not something that you get because you exceed expectations. We're rewarded because, y'all, the Lord Jesus always exceeds expectations. We don't deserve this, and yet he's willing to reward us eternally. He's willing to reward us forever as his servants. And I wanna make sure you catch this in the text. Look at verse 47. When the master returns and finds us serving diligently, we'll be rewarded, and what is the reward? The reward is greater opportunities to serve him. The servant who was made ruler over the household in verse 45 is given stewardship of even more in verse 47. This is the reality that you need to embrace. Do not grow weary of serving the Lord Jesus because you were saved to always serve the Lord Jesus. If you don't like the idea of being a slave to the good master Jesus now, eternity with him is probably not for you. In fact, Revelation 22.3 describes that eternal city and says there's no more curse. The throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it and his servants, his doulos, his slaves shall serve him eternally, forever. Y'all, my fellow slaves, if we could just embrace the joy of what it is to completely and wholeheartedly serve the Lord Jesus, we would not only enjoy it, we would enjoy it forever. Forever. But that's not the only option, for sure. Because look at the evil servant's actions in verses 48 and 49. Says if that evil servant says in his heart my master is delaying his coming and begins to beat his fellow servants and eat and drink with the drunkards, just stop there for a second. We use the term eschatology to describe the biblical teaching about end times. Not all of us agree about eschatology, and that's all right. Some think that the rapture will happen before the tribulation. Some think it'll happen after the tribulation. There's all kinds of views on eschatology and a lot of room to have good-natured arguments. You can be wrong however you want to be wrong. I'm okay with that. But I want you to just listen closely to verse 48, because what makes this servant an evil servant is not bad theology. Flawed eschatology, being wrong about the timing of the rapture and Christ's return, that doesn't qualify someone as a wicked slave. An evil servant, according to Jesus, the evil servant has a heart problem. He says in his heart, so it's not just reasoning, he has no evidence to base this belief, but he reassures his heart, my master is delaying, is coming. When I was a kid, my mother had the unfortunate habit of using two phrases that were basically designed to ensure that I would be a horrible child. We see how I blame this on her, right? If I was misbehaving, which I would do in any number of unique and interesting ways, she would almost always say first, oh, just keep it up. And second, boy, wait till your father gets home. I'm like, are you kidding? I would love to keep it up. Especially if I get to wait until dad gets home. I would love to wait till my father gets home to experience consequences. But of course that's stupid thinking because eventually dad gets home. I mean there should be a Bible verse about that. And of course there is, it's Ecclesiastes 8 verse 11, because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. In other words, because we don't answer for our bad behavior right away, we're just gonna live like we're never gonna answer for that bad behavior. So this evil servant who has a heart problem, Specifically, Jesus says, lives in denial of the master's return. He tells his heart, the master delays his coming. And then what we get is this vivid picture of what life looks like when you live like you will never have to answer for your actions. Because sin frequently begins with the lie that you're never gonna have to face the consequences. After all, the master didn't come back last year, he didn't come back last week, he didn't come back last night. I bet he's not coming back today, maybe not tomorrow. I can act how I want and there's never gonna be a concern for consequences. Verse 49, Jesus describes that action as he says he begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with the drunkards. Can I just summarize his actions for just a moment when you think about this evil servant? First, he mistreats others. The command of the master was to be a good steward over the household and remember to give them food in due season, to care for those others as they have needs. This was a call to serve the master by serving others. And instead, this wicked slave takes to beating his fellow slaves. Second, he engages in self-indulgence. If you follow along with the imagery of this parable, this wicked servant was to maintain the household and provide food for his fellow servants. And what's he doing instead? Jesus says the only thing he's giving them is a good beating. And he's eating and drinking with drunkards, right? The household's food supplies are getting wasted as the self-indulgent servant parties the groceries away. Third, he is denying the command of God. Drunkenness is forbidden in scripture. It is the epitome of selfishness, right? If the faithful and wise servant was diligent, drunkenness is the opposite of Diligence, it is to not be careful and not be thoughtful and not be on guard. It's to lose care, to lose thought, to abandon all caution. It is a sin that leads to more sin. And God has been clear about this. And so this evil servant is denying God's commands. If we wanted to summarize how to live as unfaithful, foolish, and evil servants, it would be a pretty simple list of things to do. Be so self-indulgent that your own desires are greater than the needs of others. Regard others as so unimportant that you practice indifference, exploitation, or even abusiveness towards them instead of deeming everything under your control as being provided by God, and accepting you have a responsibility of stewardship for it, just esteem everything as your own, just there to serve you in your own selfish desires. And reject God's clear commands, confident that you're never gonna have to answer for that disobedience. Because all of this happens in the mistaken belief, or really the unbelief. that tells his heart. The master's not gonna return while I'm in the drunken revelry with my buddies. The master's not gonna return and seeing me beat and abuse the other servants that he loves. The master's not gonna make me answer for how I've managed his property that he's put under my control. This is the same thinking that you and I embrace when we maintain sinful habits, patterns of sin, as if we will never answer for that. Y'all, that is living like we think the master's never gonna return. But, keep it up. You just wait. Because the master will return. In the first part of the parable, he finds the faithful and wise servant hard at work and rewards him, but the parallel or the contrast is the wicked servant gets found out. Look at verses 50 and 51. The master of that servant will come on a day when he's not looking for him in an hour he is not aware of and will cut him in two and appoint his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This foolish servant's selfishness, his unkindness, his disobedience gets exposed when the master returns and comes on a day when he's not looking, he's not prepared, he's not aware. And there is no reward for this servant. In fact, Jesus says in verse 51, he gets hacked in two. In fact, pay close attention to verse 51, because what we find out about the wicked servant in verse 51 is that such people are bound for eternity in hell. This is not just a matter of, well, if you serve Jesus faithfully, he's going to reward you. But if you don't serve him, you're going to lose some of those rewards. That's not the contrast here. Jesus makes this clear, stunning contrast. You serve Him faithfully and you'll be rewarded because He exceeds expectations. And if you don't, you can expect eternity in hell. We know this. Because in essence, this person was never a believer. This servant had a heart problem. He didn't believe in the master's return. Jesus is speaking of eternal consequences in verse 51, because first off, nobody survives getting cut in two, but this guy, Jesus says, gets cut in two and then told where to go. Second, the place he's appointed is a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. That is the way in the Gospels Jesus consistently describes eternity in hell. And third, Jesus says in verse 51, he has appointed his place to be surrounded by the other hypocrites. Okay, reach back into that file cabinet in your brain, pull out that folder that says Matthew 23 and open it up. What did we learn about Matthew 23? Jesus had spent this entire day over in the temple calling the Pharisees and Sadducees and scribes hypocrites. Jesus spends a great deal of time in Matthew's Gospel, especially addressing hypocrisy. He uses this Greek word, hupokrites, which means a theatrical performance, a stage actor. It's somebody who puts a mask on in order to disguise who they really are underneath. The disciples listening to Jesus teach this parable would have had zero doubt about what he was saying when he says the sinful servant gets appointed a place with the hypocrites because they're sitting there on the Mount of Olives overlooking that temple and the words of Jesus from throughout that day are still echoing in their ears. Earlier in that day, you can go through Matthew 23, you'll see that Jesus told those religious leaders, you're hypocrites because you tell others they're not fit for the kingdom of heaven, but you're not going there either. You're hypocrites because you devour widows' houses even while making the show of your long, eloquent prayers. You're hypocrites who will travel half the world over just to make one convert, and in the process, you make him twice the child of hell as yourselves. You're hypocrites who will pay tithes of table spices like mint and anise and cumin and you will ignore the greater matters of the law like justice and mercy and faith. He says you're hypocrites. who are like cups that are clean on the outside but filthy on the inside. And if that's not enough, he says, you're hypocrites like whitewashed tombs. You go into some nice cemetery, it might look beautiful and pretty on the outside, but you start opening things up and it's full of nothing but rotting, decaying dead man's bones. And now privately, he's telling his disciples that every servant every slave who says that they serve the Lord Jesus as master, but they don't do the work that he gives them. They live in self-indulgence. They're indifferent or even abusive towards others. They reject God's commands and live like the master's never gonna return. If that's you, Jesus says, stop pretending you're his servant. Get in line with the rest of the hypocrites. Just take the mask off. The central message of this Olivet discourse, the lesson Jesus taught from the Mount of Olives as he's overlooking the temple, is that you have to serve him faithfully because everything's his. He's your master. You love him. You obey him. But as he's sitting there on the top of that Mount of Olives overlooking the temple, he's not done. Within a few days of this sermon, the Lord Jesus is going to be crucified over in Jerusalem for sinners. He's going to be buried. He's going to rise from that tomb alive forevermore. spend more days after his resurrection teaching his disciples just like this until the day comes where he finally leads them to the crest of the Mount of Olives where he taught this message. He leads them there and he ascends into heaven to take up the seat at the right hand of the Father. And now we're living out the message that he taught there in that place. His faithful servants are awaiting a day when He will return the same way that He left. In fact, the Bible teaches that there is a coming day when His ascending is going to turn into the place of His descending. Zechariah 14 tells us that His precious pierced feet are going to touch the top of that Mount of Olives and that mountain is going to split apart and the nations are going to be judged and they will all tremble because the Lord will be master and king over all the earth. What's He going to find you doing when He comes? The difference between the faithful servant and the hypocritical servant gets exposed in how you live in the expectation of his return. Jesus died to purchase you with his blood. He purchased us from slavery, but he purchased us, he owns us. We're to serve Him, we're not to serve ourselves and our lives and our future, our hopes, our families, our churches, our jobs, our possessions. All of it is His. We're just stewards of it for a brief time. It all has to be used in His service. If you believe that he lived for you, if you believe that he died for you, that he rose again, if you know that he owns you because he purchased you with his blood, if you believe that he is coming again for you, then be the faithful and wise slave who serves him in expectation of that return. When Jesus opened this parable, he opened it with a question. Who then is that faithful and wise servant? When you look at this parable, where do you fall in that question? Thanks.