Well, good morning. If you would care to turn your
Bibles with me to Matthew chapter 24. The Lord willing, we'll finish up
this chapter Matthew 24 this morning. Before we begin, let's bow together
in prayer. Our Father, we bow in your presence
this morning. How thankful we are by your mercy
and grace to be able to call you our father, to be able to
come before God Almighty and cry Abba Father. Father, we thank
you for your electing, adopting, saving grace that would make
it so that sinful men and women such as we are could be called
the children of God. And Father, I pray this morning
that you would enable us to worship you, to worship in spirit and
in truth, that you might enable us to look into your word and
to see the Lord Jesus Christ, to see his glory and believe
in him and rest in him and run to him, finding him all we need. Father, we're so thankful for
the many blessings of this life that you've given to us and pray
that you give us the right attitude, that we not become selfish with
all the many blessings that you've given us, but that you give us
a generous giving attitude an attitude of living in thanksgiving
for all that you've done for us. Every good and perfect gift
comes from thee. We're thankful. Father, we pray
that you'd be with those who are in a time of great trouble.
We have been blessed above all people, but in this flesh, we
are a poor and a needy people. There's so many who are in great
straits, sickness and sorrow. Father, we pray that you'd heal,
that you'd comfort, that you'd deliver, as soon as it could
be thy will. All these things we ask in that
name which is above every name, the name of Christ our Savior,
amen. All right, I titled our lesson this
morning Faithful and Evil Servants. In this passage, the Lord, I
titled it that because he describes a faithful and an evil servant. And primarily, this passage is,
our Lord is teaching here, describes God's pastors who've been given
the responsibility to rule the church. He says it in verse 45,
who then is a faithful, wise servant, whom his Lord hath made
ruler over his household. The pastor is to rule the church. So this is primarily speaking
about pastors, but as I tell you often, I try to remind you
of this often, every believer is in the ministry. Every believer
here is in this ministry. So this passage describes the
characteristics of a believer who's faithful to do whatever
it is that the Lord's given you to do. The Lord may not have
given it to you to preach, but he's given you something to do
in his service, and I hope that what we'll see in this passage
will inspire us to be more faithful to the servants of our God. Now
you know, everybody in the world, everybody, is God's servant.
Everybody in this world is doing something to accomplish God's
eternal will and purpose. Most people don't know it, but
they're still God's servants doing his will. You know, that
madman over there in Russia, causing so much trouble in the
world, he's God's servant. Just as much as the president
is, just as much as the mayor is, just as much as the dog catcher
is. They're all God's servants. In Russell, they've come up with
this They're going to catch all these feral cats and they're
going to spay, neuter them, you know, and set them back free.
So you don't get, you know, all these, this, this, you know,
population of cats. How'd you like to be the fella
catching cats? That guy's God's servant. In some way, everybody's
God's servant. Most people don't know it, but
everybody is God's servant. But here are the people that
the Lord is describing as servants are people who are in religion.
and they either are or they claim to be serving the Lord. And their
faith, some of them are faithful, some of them are evil. So first
let's look at the description of the good and blessed servant.
Number one, God's servant is faithful and wise. Verse 45 says,
who then is a faithful and a wise servant? Look over at 1 Corinthians
chapter four. God's servants are not perfect
men, but they're faithful. They are faithful. First Corinthians
chapter four, verse one. Let a man so account of us as
of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of
God. Moreover is required in stewards that a man be found
faithful. It's required, it's required
that a steward, a servant be faithful. So God makes his servants
faithful. You know, God's servants are
not faithful. I mean, don't ever look at preachers and think that
they're different than you and on a higher spiritual plane than
you. God's preachers are not faithful because there's something
different about them, you know, and better about them than there
is in everybody else. God's servants are faithful because
God makes them faithful. He makes them faithful. And you'll
see that they're faithful to preach Christ, to preach Christ
alone every single time they preach. They're faithful to study. They're faithful to pray and
seek God's message for you in every surface. And I tell you
why they're faithful to study and why they're faithful to pray.
It's because they know no means sufficient for these things.
We can't do this unless God enables us. They're faithful to depend
upon the Lord because they know their own weakness. They're faithful
to depend on Christ as their righteousness because they know
their own sinfulness. They're faithful to look to Christ
and to follow him because they know if he don't keep them, they'll
wander off. Now that's true of all of us,
isn't it? Not just God's preacher, but that's true of every believer.
We depend on the Lord because we know our own weakness. We
depend on his righteousness because we know our own sinfulness. We
look to him and follow him, depend on him to keep us because we
know we'll wander off if he doesn't keep us. And God's pastor is
also faithful to seek your good, not his. That's one of the big
marks that separate a true prophet from a false prophet. God's pastor
is faithful to seek your good, not his. He's not trying to get
something from you. He's trying to give something
to you. He's trying to preach Christ to you so that you'll
believe him. He's not trying to make a name for himself. He's
not trying to make a ministry for himself. What he's faithful
to do is exalt the name of Christ every single time he preaches.
I appreciate that so much about Brother Henry and his ministry. He was faithful to exalt the
name of Christ. He wanted you to know Christ. And that's what I try to do for
you. I want you to know Christ. He's faithful to do that. Now,
all of us are not pastors. Most of you, if I ask you to
fill in and preach, you'd faint. You wouldn't come. We're all
not pastors. But God's given you something
to do in his service. Well, whatever the Lord's given
you to do, be faithful to do it to the best of your ability.
And whatever it is God's called you to do, he'll enable you to
be faithful to do it. Whatever it is, if it's leading
the singing, give it all you got. If it's giving, if it's
attending the services, give it all you got. If it's cleaning
the building, if it's cutting the grass, I came up this morning,
well, boy, this grass looks great. I'm so glad I don't have to do
that. That's a service. If that's what God's given you
to do, do all you've got. If it's teaching a class, if
it's whatever it is. And I'll tell you one thing I
hope all of us are faithful in. In praying. Pray for each other. Pray for your pastor. Ask God
to bless the services. We've got Bible school coming
up here in just a couple weeks. It's such an important time. Let's pray about this, that God
will bless this time. Seek God's blessing in prayer.
and be faithful to serve others, not look to get served. Be faithful
to help one another, to promote others, not yourselves. And I
tell you what, you'll be a blessing and you'll get a blessing if
God will enable you to do that, to be faithful. Verse 46, the
Lord says, blessed is that servant, whom his Lord, when he cometh,
shall find so doing. That servant who's faithful to
do what God's given him to do is blessed. Look over at Galatians. Chapter six. Galatians chapter six. Verse nine. Now, let's not be weary in well
doing for a new season, we shall read if we faint, not just a
faithful in well doing. Don't don't quit. I thought about
Winston Churchill. Don't give up. Don't ever give
up. Just be faithful to do what God's
given you to do. God's servants are faithful.
And God's servants are wise. Now again, when we're talking
here about preachers, this wisdom is not something that's inherent
to preachers. They're somehow smarter than
everybody else. Often, the opposite's true. But
the Lord gives his preachers wisdom. And it's wisdom to know
the scripture. It's wisdom to see Christ in
the scriptures, and it's wisdom to be faithful to preach Christ
always, to preach him from the scriptures. That passage we read
in 1 Corinthians chapter four, Paul said we're stewards of the
mysteries of God, the mysteries. Well, if you're gonna preach
the mystery, you're declared the answer to a mystery, God's
gonna have to give you wisdom to do it, isn't he? He gives
his servants wisdom to do that. You know, the gospel is a mystery
to the natural man. It's a mystery that natural man
cannot understand, cannot love, and cannot believe. It's a mystery
to the natural man. But the answer to the mystery
is so simple. One reason this is such a mystery
to the natural man is overcomplicated. The answer to the mystery is
very simple. It's Christ. And that's why we faithfully
preach him. The wise man is faithful to preach Christ and Christ alone.
The answer is always Christ. How is it possible that a sinner
can be clean and holy in God's sight? Only in Christ, only in
Christ. How is it that sin can be purged? How's that possible? It's only
by the blood of Christ. Only his blood can cleanse us
from all of our sin. We must be regenerated by the
spirit, the spirit of Christ and given a new nature in order
to be clean and holy and purged. Here's the question nobody's
asking in religion. How can God be just and still
justify the ungodly? And we gotta know the answer
to that question. That's the only way God can save a sinner, if
he can still be just. How can God be just and holy
and remain God and still justify the ungodly? There's only one
way. It's in Christ our substitute. when the father made his son
sin for his people. He took the sin of his people
off of them, and he put it on his son. And his son became guilty
of that sin, and the father slaughtered him in justice for that. And
in exchange, he made his people the very righteousness of God
in him. Justice is satisfied, because
there's been death for sin. Now God's just and right to show
mercy to sinners, to justify the ungodly, because he sacrificed
their substitute and their place. Now that's the wisdom that we
use to preach the gospel. And do you want to be wise? Every
believer is wise. Every believer. God's made you
wise enough to trust Christ. The wise man built his house
on a rock, didn't he? The wise man trusts Christ, the
rock of ages. That's the wisdom God gives all
of his people. Do you want to be seen as wise?
I tell you what, be faithful to do exactly what it is God's
given you to do. God's servants are wise and they're
faithful. A second God's servant is to rule God's church. He says
in verse 45, who then is a faithful and wise servant whom his Lord
has made ruler over all of his house household to give them
meat in due season. Now God's pastor rules the church.
You know, he rules the church in making decisions about how
we do things and when we do them and those kinds of things. But
I'll tell you, a man is a fool who does not get input from people
in how we, you know, when we run the church. We needed a new
roof. We do finally have that scheduled,
by the way. We need a new roof on this building.
I didn't have the first clue about how to get this done. I
tried to do some stuff to get it. It just wasn't accomplishing
anything. I asked Alec, Harold, can you
take care of this? In two days, he had it done.
He knows about that stuff. I don't. Show some wisdom. Ask for some help from somebody
who knows what they're doing. We're going to spend money on things
here in the church. I talked to some of the men about
it. Make sure we're all on the same page. It's easy to lead
and rule God's church if you gain respect to people. And you
know how you get the respect of God's sheep? Preach Christ
to them. If you're faithful and wise to
preach Christ consistently, every service to God's sheep, you'll
have their respect. I mean, this thing is, It's not a dictatorship. We talk
about this rule. It's not a dictatorship. It's
not ruling God's people with an iron fist and telling you
how to do everything and how to live your life. I visited
with a couple one time who'd been in reformed religion, and
their pastor and their elders did surprise visits in the house,
you know, to make sure the mother was being the right kind of woman
and the right kind of mother and right kind of wife. You know,
the kids were all, you know, in subjection and these surprise
visits. That's foolishness. It's just
utter foolishness. Peter says, we're not lords over
God, over God's heritage. Here's how God's pastor rules
the church. It's by faithfully and wisely
preaching Christ. feeding God's church. He says
here that we're to give God's household meat in due season. And we do that by preaching Christ.
He's the sheep food. He's the meat of the gospel.
He's the green grass of the gospel. Just keep preaching Christ. And
people sometimes will ask, how do you discipline the church?
What's your church discipline? And what they mean is you have
some sort of board that centers people and disciplines people.
You know what church discipline has done? Preach the word. Just preach the word. Teach the
word line upon line, precept upon precept. Eventually you'll
answer every question. Every question. And when we only
preach Christ, God's people are gonna be saved. Their hearts
will be comforted. They'll be edified and taught
and grow and know what they should do. I'll tell you what else happens
when we only preach Christ. It produces peace. It produces
peace. You know, it's amazing how well
God's sheep get along when Christ is the only issue. Even God's
sheep can kind of get crossed ways with one another and get
in disagreements with each other when we have a bunch of different
issues. We start picking at this and we start picking at that.
But if Christ is the only issue, God's sheep are going to get
along. Because you have to agree on Him, don't you? You have to
get along with each other if you're both looking to Christ.
If you're both looking at Him and trusting Him and seeing His
glory. If we just preach Christ only, it'll produce peace. You're just not going to have
to worry about this discipline issue because everybody's going
to get along if Christ is the only issue. Now God's given the
pastor the responsibility to lead and to rule the church.
And that's primarily done by making sure Christ is preached.
When I'm preaching or somebody else preaches, if I have somebody
come here and preach, you can just bank on this. I already
know what they're gonna preach. They're gonna preach Christ.
We guard this pulpit carefully for that very reason. God's given
the pastor the responsibility to lead, to rule the church.
And God's given the church the responsibility to obey. to obey, not just him, but obey
his message. Let me show you that Hebrews
chapter 13 Hebrews 13 and verse 17 obey them to have the rule over
you and submit yourselves for they watch for your souls. is
they that must give account, that they may do it with joy
and not with grief, for that's unprofitable for you. Now, it'll
be well with your soul if you obey the gospel that we preach.
And how is it that you obey the gospel we preach? Well, the command
of the gospel is to believe. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. It'll be well with your soul
if you obey that message and believe on Christ. That's what
we're after. I mean, this is what, it's that
God will bless the preaching of his word to give faith to
God's people. And I mentioned this a minute
ago. Here's something else I hope you're faithful to do, is to
pray. Pray for your pastor. In verse
seven or Hebrews 13, Paul says, remember them which have the
rule over you, who've spoken unto you the word of God, whose
faith follow, considering the end, the goal of their conversation. Consider what is the goal of
their ministry. Well, the goal of their ministry
is that God will bless his word and give you faith in Christ.
Well, then the best thing that you can do for your pastor and
for yourself is pray for your pastor. Pray that the Lord give
him a message for your heart in the next service. It really
is amazing. We forget that, don't we? And
then, you know, the Lord lays a specific burden, a specific
need on our heart, and we start to pray and ask the Lord, send
a message that will bless my heart. And he does. Why don't we do this every day?
Boy, this flash of something in it, we forget. But pray that
the Lord give the pastor, give whoever's preaching a message
for your heart. Pray that the Lord will keep
the pastor faithful. Give him some wisdom. to only
preach Christ to you, always. Pray that the Lord will not let
him get off on tangents, you know. Now, the pastor has been
given the rule in the church, but you know, every believer
has some rule, has some influence over something, over somebody,
particularly you parents. I tell you, you take this responsibility
to rule your home the way you're supposed to. Take it seriously.
Do it faithfully. Rule your home. Be the authority
in your home. I'll tell you one thing. This
is a thing that's gotten in habit in the world, is asking your
children, dad, do you want to do this? Tell them to do it. Tell them
to do it. Be the authority. Teach them. Teach them right from wrong.
Teach them the right attitude to have. Use your authority to
bring your children to the worship service, to worship God. Show
them an example in your authority. Just like the pastor is to set
the example of faith and following Christ. Show your children an
example of what it looks like to live believing on Christ and
trusting Christ and following him. Take every opportunity throughout
the week to point your children to Christ. We don't just have
to talk about the Lord on Sundays and Wednesdays. Take every opportunity
to point your children to Christ. I tell you this, we cannot save
our children any more than I can save any of you. I could just,
by some sort of oratory skills or some sort of salesmanship,
I can't convince you to trust Christ. Only God can give you
faith in Christ. But we can't save our children
either, But I tell you what, we sure can point them to Christ.
We sure can make sure that they're under the sound of the gospel.
I can't save any of you. But I sure can, I can make sure
that Christ is preached to you. Because if Christ is preached
to you, that's how God's gonna save his people. All right, number
three. God's servants all have the same
reward. Verse 47. Verily I say unto you
that he shall make him ruler over all of his goods. Now, you
know, it could be that if you're faithful in a small thing, the
Lord will give you more responsibility, just give you more responsibility.
We do that in business and on the job, don't you? Nobody starts
out being president of the company. You start out as an entry-level
position, kind of work your way up. And God may do that for us. You're faithful in small things,
he'll make you faithful over more things. But listen. Don't
be faithful so that the Lord will bless you. Don't be faithful
so that the Lord will give you more responsibility. You know,
I want to be a big shot, so I'll be, you know, responsible and
faithful in these things, and the Lord will make me responsible
in more things, and I'll be a big shot. Everybody will see me and
think, yo, I'm somebody. Don't do that. Be faithful and
do the right thing, because it's right. Just because it's right. You know, we don't want to be
faithful so that the Lord will bless us, give us more, you know,
that's works. That's works. The blessing we're
talking about here is the blessing of grace, the blessing of grace. Salvation is by grace and it's
all of grace. The blessing is the blessing
of grace and God's going to give all of his people, every servant,
everything he has. He says here that, He'll make
him ruler over all his goods. He's gonna give them everything
that he has. The Lord's gonna give his people
all of his grace, and all of his love, and all of his mercy,
and all of his righteousness, and all of his holiness. He's
gonna give his people, every servant, every believer, absolutely
every blessing that God has for a sinner. One's not gonna get
more than the other. They're all gonna get the same.
And in heaven, God's gonna give all of his people all of His
presence and all of His glory. He's gonna make all of them just
exactly like our Lord Jesus Christ. See, there are no degrees of
glory. If you have everything, you have everything. And God's
gonna give His people all that He has. Now you think of that. Our Lord is so gracious and so
generous It makes his people want to be faithful. Doesn't
his mercy and his grace and his generosity to you, doesn't that
make you want to faithfully serve him? Doesn't that make you want
to do everything that you can do in his service? And if you
think, well, God's gonna give me everything anyway. God's gonna
give all of his servants everything. And it doesn't matter what I
do. It doesn't matter if I'm, you know, responsible for little
things or big things. It doesn't even really matter
how faithful I am. If I'm God's servant, he's gonna
give me everything. So it doesn't matter what I do. If you think
that, this last point probably applies to you. Here's the fourth
thing. Beware of and avoid the evil
servant. Verse 48. But, and if that evil
servant shall say in his heart, my Lord delayeth his coming and
shall begin to smite his fellow servants and to eat and drink
with the drunken, the Lord of that servant shall come in a
day when he looketh not for him and in an hour that he's not
aware of and shall cut him asunder and appoint him his portion with
the hypocrites. There should be weeping and gnashing
of teeth. You see this evil servant, he's
not motivated by grace. Grace doesn't soften his heart.
Grace doesn't move his heart. And since this evil servant,
he's not motivated by grace. He's not softened by grace. The
thing that motivates him is the law. Grace doesn't motivate him,
but the law does. And to the natural man, boy,
he looks real religious. He looks very admirable. And
you know why? Because the natural man is legalistic
too. He's impressed with this guy,
you know? This evil servant is probably a very moral, very strict
person. And since he's motivated by the
law, everybody thinks everybody else is just like them. The evil
servant understands everybody is just like him, and the natural
man is just like him. Since he's motivated by the law,
he uses the law to motivate other people. The law is his message.
And he uses the law like a stick to beat people. Instead of preaching
grace, instead of leading sinners to Christ, he tries to drive
them with the stick of the law. And he'll usually have a pet
law or something that he really likes. He's probably not gonna
try to use the whole law of God, because nobody can do that. But
he'll pick one that kind of appeals to him, that he thinks he can
keep outwardly. And since he can keep it outwardly,
that's the stick he's gonna use to make everybody else try to
do the same thing. Unfortunately, the standard is
he's trying to make everybody as good as him. Instead of as
good as God. He's using the stick of the law
to do it. And you know, he may not even use the law of God.
He may be like the Pharisees of old who got the traditions
of the elders that they add to the law. It could just be some
standard of conduct, you know, that he likes. It's some rule
of morality, some rule of conduct. And he says, oh, a believer has
to do this. If you're a believer, you have
to do this. Or if you're a believer, you'd never do this, you know.
So he's beating the sheep. He's beating the sheep. Instead
of leading them to Christ, instead of leading them to the green
pastures and leading them beside the still waters, he's beating
them. And he wants people, his goal is himself. He wants people
to honor him. He wants people to think, you
know, how strict and moral and religious he is. instead of honoring
Christ. He wants people to follow him
instead of following Christ. Very dangerous, isn't it? Now,
like I said, he's an outwardly moral man. When the Lord talks
about him drinking here with the drunken, he's probably not
out there getting drunk on wine all the time and living in a
big party atmosphere. This is what he's doing. He's
getting drunk on the wine of power. power over people, to
get people to do what he wants them to do. He's drunk on the
wine of self-righteousness. You're righteous by what you
do, what you don't do. He becomes drunk on it. Now this man is
an evil servant. He's not God's servant. He's
an evil servant. And the Lord says here, he's
going to deal with him. He's going to come in an hour that he doesn't
expect it. He's not looking for the Lord. Well, he's going to
come when he's not looking for Christ because he's not looking
for Christ. He's looking out for his own gain. He's looking
out for his own reputation. He's looking out for himself.
The Lord's going to come and deal with him. But if we just
faithfully serve Christ and we faithfully worship him, I can't
do anything about those evil servants out there. I sure don't
want to become one. I don't want us to become one,
do you? If we're just faithfully serve Christ, worship him, and
worship him out of love and thanksgiving, not because we're trying to get
something from God, but just because God's to be worshiped.
We worship him out of love and thanksgiving, thankful for God's
grace and God's mercy to us. We'll just naturally be faithful
to serve our generation, to preach Christ, to talk about Christ,
to be looking for him. And that lets us look forward
with great anticipation for the Lord's return. I don't know when
the Lord's going to return. It could be He'll come back a
second time. Or it could be He'll come for
us in death. The day that I die, whether the
Lord's come or not, that's the time He came for me. Well, until
that time comes, I sure would like to be found looking to Christ,
wouldn't you? Trusting Him, seeking to be found in Him, trying to
be a blessing to God's people, trying to make it easier for
God's people. This life's hard. It's hard. Wouldn't you like
to make it easier for some folks? You know how you make it easier
for God's sheep? Remind them about Christ the Savior. Let's
talk about Him for a little bit. Let's talk about His grace and
His love and His mercy, His power to save, His power to keep, His
power to comfort, His power to lead His people. He'll not fail
His people. But when you start talking like
that, the heart starts to swell, doesn't it? Oh, what a Savior. If God just let us see him as
he is, there's just no way in this world we won't be faithful
servant, because we'll be drawn to him. All right. I hope that'll
be a blessing to you.