Labor Day, a time thought by many to be summer’s last hurrah, was originally established to honor those whose work made this country great. But the goodness of labor is not just celebrated because we’ve decided to set a day aside. In creation God made our work good when God commanded Adam to tend the Garden. Despite the Fall, work is still good, yet for many of us the sweat on the brow, the thorns and thistles which our labors produce are reminders of our first parents’ sin. Yet being a good employee is still important. At least it is vital to anyone wishing to advance in life. I recently came across a list of the “Laws of Work”. Here are a few of the important principles of employment:
While this holiday weekend grew out of a commemoration of labor, our passage this morning offers us a beneficial examination of how our entire Christian life is seen as a position granted to us by God. Using the analogy of a servant whom a master promotes while he is away, Jesus forces us to look at our entire lives, our vocations as well as our avocations to determine if we reflect a faithful, watchful response to Christ’s Second Coming. Having concluded His discourse on His return by telling us that His coming will be a surprise, He now further describes how His people are to prepare for that surprise return.
THE GOOD WORKER RECOGNIZES THE MASTER’S AUTHORITY This worker is described as faithful and wise. Being faithful, he is loyal, trustworthy, respecting the master’s mandate. He is also described as wise. This kind of wisdom refers to intelligence and creativity. This term is used of the wise man who knew well enough to build his house on the rock in chapter 7 and is translated as shrewd in Matthew 10. The worker’s faithfulness and wisdom is evidenced by his response to his new position. Evidently the worker has already shown himself gifted so that the boss puts him in charge of the other servants in the house, seeing to it they get their food at the right time. In doing this job well, this servant fulfills the ideal of watchfulness which is the recurrent theme from Matthew 24:36 through 25:13. Last week we began answering the question: “What does watchfulness entail?" To be alert for the Lord’s coming is to be faithful in the task He has set you at. You look for the Lord’s return not in looking to the sky, but in serving at the table. What is the work He has given. How do we apply this? Some have seen this passage as referring to ministers. Peter thought this as we see in Luke’s account, where he asks the question regarding these end time events. In 12:41, “Lord are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?” Perhaps Peter was hoping that the command for watchfulness was applicable to others and not to the leaders. Weren’t they doing enough already? But Jesus’s answer is rather vague: this is applicable to each and everyone of us. There is an application for Christian leaders. They are to feed their people God’s Word. But one should not restrict the application of the sermon just to them. We are all set to serve God by serving others. Just as much as we are called by God to salvation, God calls us to a vocation. He places us in areas of responsibility, each of us, whether that be overseeing business, households, children, or studies. Do you know what your household is? Do you know what it is God has set you over, what He wants you to be doing when He returns? Notice whose household it is; it belongs to the Master. Where God has placed you is not what you own, it is what you are a steward over, what you are responsible for. God has delegated to you and me the responsibility of nurturing others. The household may be just that - as Christian fathers nurturing their children, seeing to it they understand the faith, and likewise mothers caring for the household, doing what God desires of them. It may be your job where you earn a salary; it may be that you are a student. The Christian concept of vocation fits in here well - wherever God has placed you to honor Him, you are to be a faithful servant. What is the response to work well done? “It will be good...” Literally - he will be blessed. We’d say, "There’s a promotion in store." That is not the kind of response I’d expect. The reward for faithful service is the opportunity of serving in a higher and more responsible place. I’d expect to be told to take it easy and rest. We have been so often taught that the heavenly reward is heavenly rest that we can at first be taken aback to learn that Jesus’s frequent way of referring to heavenly reward is heavenly responsibility. The perk is not a vacation in Hawaii, but more work to do. Again, work is good. Eternal life is not a Lazy-Boy and a big screen TV with an infinite number of channels. This is the last Beatitude in the Gospel. For all the blessings on the Sermon on the Mount - this final one tells us what God’s response will be if we are doing what He has given us to do. Notice what it does not say. It is not saying, “Blessed is the servant who is found in prayer and Bible study.” God’s favor rests not on the one doing the seemingly spiritual activities, but in the mundane acts of everyday life. THE WICKED WORKER REJECTS THE MASTER’S AUTHORITY The evil servant begins well. He is promoted just like the other; he has demonstrated some qualities the master likes. But notice how Jesus describes these two. He is not talking about two different servants here. He is describing two possibilities - faithfulness and unfaithfulness; both are possible for the one servant. He is talking about every Christian. This wicked servant is the person who professes faith, who for all appearances is a believer. What is the difference between the two kinds of responses? The response depends on the attitude the servant has about the return of the Lord. There are tremendously powerful consequences, big implications when one begins with that little self-deception: “My master is staying away for a long time.” His fundamental error begins as he thinks the wrong thoughts. His thinking governs his actions. His belief in the delay of the master causes him to believe that he will not be held accountable for his actions. The lie he believes is that delay is the same as cancellation. This is an all too common response to long delay in Christ’s Second Coming. Peter, in his second letter, reminds his readers that people will laugh at the thought of Christ’s return since it has been so long. First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this `coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. 2 Peter 3:3-13 As the wicked worker believes the lie of the long delay, that faulty belief translates into faulty living. He is callous: he begins beating his fellow servants. He abuses his position of authority, forgetting that he too is a slave. He begins to act in a way he perceives masters are supposed to act. He is carousing. Life is one big party; his work has ceased and the fun now begins. But that is all that is happening - it just begins. The verbs used here speak of an action just getting under way when the master returns. He is caught in the act. What Jesus is saying is, “You have forgotten that you are a servant and that your life is service and have begun to think you are a master, the master of your own time, the master of your resources, the master of your gifts and abilities. So you are designing and living your life the way you want to live it rather than the way God wants you to live it, and in that day, when He comes, you will stand under the wrath and curse of God because the life of faith is a life of faithful service." The problem is that a distant Lord is no longer Lord. There is no compulsion to watchfulness. As his hope is deferred, his life is delinquent. Loss of hope eats away at the moral structures which enable him to function morally. Where spiritual sensitivities die, social services wither away. Sociologists comment that the rise in violent crimes by younger and younger victims is directly linked to the loss of a sense of accountability which, in turn, is a loss of hope. While hope is foundational to the Christian life, for many of us it is an appendage, a fine elective for the elderly or a theological speculation dealing with far-off issues. But we see here that Christian hope, or its absence, determines the way people treat people here and now. Since this wicked worker has denied the authority of the master, he will be punished. It hard for us to read this account and recognize that our Lord is speaking about Hell. But in Matthew’s gospel, of the 148 stories, no less than 60 treat the final judgment or refer to it. The reality of punishment is very much a part of the gospel. Here the wicked servant is cut in two. This may refer to an actual draw-and-quartering. Given the fact that he is cut in two and then placed with hypocrites where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, some scholars believe the cutting in two to be a severe beating. But this cutting in two is that he is, literally, dichotomized. He is cut in two; he is assigned a place with the hypocrites because he has long been two faced. He rose to his position in the household as a faithful servant only to be directed by his own desires when he had the chance and thought he could get away with it. His life is a dichotomy. We hear much discussion regarding the seeming possibility of separating private from public. To so dichotomize our lives and believe that such were possible is to institutionalize hypocrisy. The wicked servant may have run the household like a well-oiled machine. Others may have done their jobs to the tee; but the complaint against this servant comes because he believes his private treatment of the other servants, his own pleasure-seeking lifestyle, has no bearing on his performance. He is sure that the master will never find out. We can never adopt the poisonous lie that what we do behind closed doors is separate from what we are inside. Our private reasonings affect our public behavior. What we do in private says far more about us than our public demeanor. When the facade falls and I say to myself, “My master is away,” then you know what is in my heart. The place he is assigned to is a place of weeping, of inconsolable, never-ending wretchedness, and utter everlasting hopelessness. What is more it is described as a place of grinding or gnashing of teeth. What is described here is both excruciating pain and frenzied anger. It is a place of torment, but the tormented are refusing to be repentant. Gnashing teeth is a wrathful response to punishment. What we see here is something we must deal with if we want to understand grace. When we construct a faith that is absent of judgment we make grace very unreal. We dis-grace grace when we ignore the reality and finality of God’s judgment or pretend God would never be so harsh. If there is real judgment, then God’s salvation by grace is all the more real. Christ describing the harsh reality of judgment is love incarnate, for He tells us the truth of our final end if we live without ever dealing with our own sinfulness. The gospel frees us to work, to serve. Gospel freedom is not a freedom to personal pleasure without a thought to what God desires or what He will think upon His return. It is a freedom to live in such a way that gives Him pleasure. Whatever gives Him pleasure, should likewise please us. Let me conclude with a similar reminder by the Apostle Paul, who dealt with end-times confusion among the Thessalonians. In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul reiterates what Jesus has said in Matthew 24: Don’t sweat the day of the Lord’s return.
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