The Coming of the Lord (III): Purpose

Matthew 24

42 "Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.

43 "But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.

44 "For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.

45 "Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time?

46 "Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.

47 "Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions.

48 "But if that evil slave says in his heart, 'My master is not coming for a long time,'

49 and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards;

50 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know,

51 and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

We pick up from where we left off in The Coming of the Lord (II).

So at this point, we've only reached the halfway point of the Olivet Discourse (spanning chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew). Jesus has outlined the signs and the major events that would announce the destruction of the Jewish temple and the end of the age. He gave us a summary of the events that would take place in the time of tribulation, at the very end of this age, and what would lead to His second coming and how to recognize it.

And then He introduced a special day to us, a day that He calls the coming of the Lord, a day we now call the rapture, as we learned in my last 2 posts. And on that day, Jesus said, the Church saints will be received off of the earth, resurrected and taken to heaven to be with Him. 

Specifically, on the topic of Rapture, we’ve studied the circumstances that Jesus said would surround this day whenever it came, and the manner in which this day would play out. And that was what we’ve covered in the past few days

And today, we’ll look at the purpose of this day. What's God trying to do? What's His intention in bringing about something so dramatic, so mysterious? And in my last post, I did touch on this briefly - in one of the texts that we read from Paul, we actually got one of the reasons why this day has to exist. 

On the day of the rapture, we were told by Paul that all the saints and the Church will receive new, eternal, glorified physical bodies. And we will live in these new bodies forever. And that is one of the reasons why the rapture exists - it is the day we receive a new body.  

Let's jump back there just for a moment. 1 Corinthians 15:50, Paul said this, 

1Co 15:50 Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

1Co 15:51 Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed,

1Co 15:52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

1Co 15:53 For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.

1Co 15:54 But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory.

So, Paul how this rapture moment will work for us in the future. We will see believers who are already dead returning with Jesus to receive their new bodies. And those of us who may still be on the earth in that moment will instantly find our old bodies changed, exchanged, as he said, into a new, glorified eternal body. Now, the old body that we have, Paul says, is corrupt.

Paul calls it corruptible, and the reason is that it is under a sentence of condemnation. It has sin as a part of its very being, and that, Paul says, cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. He's speaking about the moment that we will be raptured, the moment when we leave earth and we enter into the presence of God.

And Paul says that journey cannot happen while we still occupy a dying, corrupt, perishable, sinful body, because if sin were to enter into the presence of a holy and just God on a judgment day, it must be condemned. Justice would require that. So having even just one sin in our nature disqualifies us from entering into the presence of God. 

I want us to remember that Adam committed just one sin. And that one sin is all it took for him to be put outside the garden and outside the fellowship of God. So in order for us to be redeemed and to be welcomed back into the presence of God, He must correct for all the sin that we have. So not only must He pay for the sin that is in our past with the death on the cross, He must also eliminate sin from our nature so that it does not continue in the future. And that correction requires a two-step process according to Scripture. 

First, He must remove the sin of our nature, found in our spirit, in the eternal part of us that lives forever. And then secondly, He must remove the sin nature that is present in our body, in our flesh. The Bible says that both have their own source of sin. So He begins with the spirit.

In the moment that we place our faith in Jesus Christ, the Bible says, our spirit is born again. That is, it is literally made new again by the power of the Holy Spirit. And then, on top of that, the Lord sends his Holy Spirit to live inside of our body to accompany us every day from that point forward, until we receive our new body. He lives in us to give us the knowledge of what God expects us to do, the understanding of how to obey and to give us the strength to crucify our flesh, to put aside the sinful desires that still reside in our body. 

And that's the second half of the problem. Though our spirit now is sinless, made perfect by our faith in Jesus Christ, it continues to occupy a sinful, corrupt, fleshly body. And that's what

Paul is talking about here in 1 Corinthians 15. He says that flesh and blood - meaning our sinful body - cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.

That body is perishable, destined to die, and cannot inherit eternal, imperishable things. And so it is that He must replace this body before we can enter into His presence and occupy the Kingdom. We need something equally imperishable, equally eternal. We need to be resurrected.  One reason for why the rapture happens is that it is our resurrection day, the day we get the new body that we will need in order to move forward in the plan of God into eternity. 

But that just leads us to the next question: why does the Lord conduct this day of resurrection in such a dramatic fashion? Why raise the entire Church, not just those who have died, but also those who are still alive? Why make those who have previously died wait for their new body so that they get it when we do, if we're still alive? And why do all of this so secretively? Why have the day be such a mystery, an unknowable day?

And we find our answer to that question in Matthew 24:42. Jesus says, 

Mat 24:42 "Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.

Mat 24:43 "But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.

Mat 24:44 "For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.

So Jesus says that He has designed this day - the day that He calls the coming of the Lord, the day of our rapture or resurrection – to be a surprise so that we will have an incentive to be on alert at all times.

A Greek word that is used here for alert: it means to remain awake or watchful, and it's the command you might give to a night watchman or guard. So it's a call for us to fight against the tendency to be lulled to a sleep, to get distracted, to become complacent, to forget that there is this event coming. And the fact that this day could happen at any time means you can't afford to let your guard down. 

And He uses this example of a man guarding His house from a thief in this parable. And He says, if that man had known the day that the thief was coming, he would get ready for that day. Imagine now for a moment how much differently you would approach security in your own home if you always knew beforehand when you were going to be robbed.

Imagine that it was just the convention of the day that thieves always sent you a calendar invite right before they decided to come rob your house. It was on your calendar. You knew it was coming. Everybody was informed. If that's how life worked, you would not do anything to concern yourself with security until you got that calendar invite, and then you would enact your security plan.

Meanwhile, you might not lock your doors. You'd wait for the calendar invite. When you heard the thief was coming, then on that day, you'd lock everything, activate your home alarm, buy a big dog, put together a neighbourhood watch team, do whatever you needed to so that when that happened, you'd be ready.

Likewise, the rest of the time, the other 364 days of the year, you would have your guard down, because there'd be no reason to have it up. You wouldn't lock your doors. You wouldn't worry about security. You wouldn't need to be alert. You wouldn't need to be watchful. Because there'd be no surprise. 

And Jesus says in verse 44, that is exactly why the day of your resurrection has been left a surprise for everyone. Notice that Jesus says, “For this reason,” we must be ready. He means this: the rapture is going to come like a thief in the night, at an hour that will surprise you. God has planned that moment, the coming of the Lord, in a way such that we have to treat every day as the potential last day we will have on earth.

And that means we have the incentive to spend every one of those days very carefully, thoughtfully, with great concern for what it would do, not only for the glory of Christ and the purpose of the Kingdom, but for our own sake as well, for our witness, for our testimony.

Because if you knew the exact day of your resurrection, if the Lord had chosen to reveal that to us in Scripture, and we all had that calendar brightly colored on our phone saying, “This is the day the Lord returns,” you would take a break from your preparations. Wouldn't you?

You could coast for a time. You could allow your dedication to the disciplines of your faith to fall off whenever it was inconvenient. You could set prayer and study of the Bible aside. You could skip out on gathering with other believers. You could get cozy with your secret sins, because after all, you've got time. You know when you need to be ready, and it's not today. 

Only as the appointed day draw closer will you start to walk with Jesus in a way that anticipated the fact that you're about to see Him face to face. And Jesus does not want us to do those things, for woe to us if we did.

And that's why He is keeping us in the dark about the timing of His return and about the day of our resurrection. In fact, you notice He says specifically that He will come in a day at an hour when we do not expect Him to arrive. It will be a day that no one sees coming.

So we are to remain alert, Jesus said, for this day, waiting watchfully, expecting the Lord to return at any moment, knowing it could come instantly without any warning, in a blink of an eye, and as a result, we don't live every day thinking we're going to have time to get right with Jesus before the day comes.

To all believers: now is the time to obey your Master, and if you delay that obedience, you will be like that unprepared homeowner that He used in the parable. You will be caught off guard and you will lose your possessions.

And that leads us to the final and most important reason why the timing of the rapture remains a mystery for us: it’s because it will encourage us to guard our heavenly possessions. 

Jesus says in verse 45 – 52:

Mat 24:45 "Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time?

Mat 24:46 "Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.

Mat 24:47 "Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions.

Mat 24:48 "But if that evil slave says in his heart, 'My master is not coming for a long time,'

Mat 24:49 and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards;

Mat 24:50 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know,

Mat 24:51 and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Jesus tells us in this parable why it is that we should be ready at all times for His return. And He uses the relationship of a slave to a master as an illustration of our relationship to Jesus. As usual, Jesus is cast as the master here; we’re the slaves. And so, just as Jesus left us for a time as He ascended to be with the Father in heaven, so in this parable has the master left his slaves for a time.

And just as we know Jesus is bound to return one day, so in the parable, the master will come back at some point. And all the slaves in this master's household have duties. They've been assigned to accomplish certain tasks in that household. They do it under the master’s authority. And in some cases you even have slaves who possess additional levels of authority, because their responsibility is to care for the needs of the other slaves in the home. 

Now, while the master is away, he expects these slaves to do their duty. And they are to do the duty that they were assigned as if he was still there. That is, there should be no distinction between how well they serve him when he's in their presence and how well they would serve him when he's gone. Every slave is expected to keep up with their assigned work. And for those slaves who were in charge of the others, they're expected to make sure the work is done and also to care for the needs of the rest of the slaves. 

And this whole operation in this household should just proceed uninterrupted, as if there's been no change in the master's position or his involvement. So why do the slaves remain diligent in the absence of the master? What's their motivation?

Well, it's because they know that one day the master is coming back - probably unannounced - and when he does return, he naturally will take note of what the slaves were doing in his absence, and he will respond to each accordingly.

And that brings us to the main point of the parable: when a master returns to his house, he comes with expectations. He expects his commands will have been obeyed. He expects those who’ve served him will continue serving well in his absence. And those who meet those expectations will be rewarded for their obedience and their service. 

Notice in verse 46, Jesus says there is a blessing for the slave who is doing as the master commanded when he returns, that he be found to be doing what he was told. The slave knew rewards were on the line. And if the slave failed to serve the master well in his absence, then those rewards might never materialize.

Now, in the worst case, you might have a slave who completely rejects the master’s authority. He takes opportunity by the master's absence to completely rebel, and in effect, he becomes the master’s enemy and an enemy of the other slaves. In verse 48, Jesus describes such a slave.

Jesus says, this slave beats the other slaves. He leaves the master's house entirely, and he prefers the company of society's lowest. Now, this slave didn't just lose opportunity for reward. In his case, the master actually punishes him. This slave, Jesus said, will be caught off guard at the master’s return, and he will ultimately be rejected from service, left with the hypocrites, Jesus says. 

So what's the meaning of this parable? Using an example from an experience common to us as we are growing up:

When our parents would leave to go out for an evening and they'd leave the kids at home, and when they left us for that period of time, they'd give us instructions, and if we did what they asked us to do ie. when they returned and found us doing what they asked, then we might expect to be praised or congratulated, maybe even rewarded in some modest way, but that's what would be expected. 

On the other hand, if we neglected our duties and they surprised us at their return, we knew we risked negative consequences. At the very least we knew there wouldn't be any reward. Now, since we didn't know when for sure they were coming back, we were watchful. We were diligent. We had incentive to be ready for that moment by completing our responsibilities, because we knew when they came back there was an implied moment of evaluation.

You know that when the parent or the master or the person who you are under in terms of authority - when they come back into your life at a moment and you've been told what to do while they're gone - they're going to ask, “What did you do?”

They're going to look at what you accomplished. And unless we have some kind of death wish, we want that moment to go well. We want our parents to be pleased. We want Jesus to be pleased. And the surprise of the timing of the return is an added incentive to be sure we're ready. That is exactly the situation Jesus is describing for believers when it comes to the day of the coming of the Lord, or as we call it now, the rapture. 

The purpose of the rapture first is to give us these new bodies that we're going to need for the future eternal life in the Kingdom. But secondly, it's also the moment of our report card with Jesus. The moment of our rapture, the coming of the Lord, is a moment that Jesus uses to evaluate the work of service that every believer has been doing for Jesus in His absence, so that He can reward us for that service.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:5, to the Church, he says, 

1Co 4:5 Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts; and then each man's praise will come to him from God.

So Paul says, while we sit now in this circumstance today, waiting for Jesus' return, he tells the believer, “don't go around judging your fellow believers in terms of how they live for Jesus or how they serve Jesus or what they're doing for Jesus. Leave that judgment to the master.”

Now, he's not talking here about sin. There is a biblical place for the body of Christ to play, a biblical role for us to play in the lives of each other. When sin is a concern in some brother or sister's life, we do have a role in loving ways to help them move on from sin. He's not talking about that. 

He's saying when you look at someone else's walk with Jesus, how they serve Jesus, where they're calling is, do not judge them with respect to how they should serve Jesus. He says, Jesus will bring to light at the coming of the Lord everything hidden in darkness, and He will disclose the motives of the hearts of men or women who serve Him.

What he's saying is this: in that future day, the day we call the rapture, everything we have done in service to Jesus and the reasons why we did it will be made known and Jesus will disclose these things so that then He can praise us for the things that we did well.

This is an evaluation, or, if we call it what it is - a judgment. It is a judgment for the believer. And Paul says it happens at the coming of the Lord. 

So simply put, there is a judgment moment waiting for every believer, and that judgment moment happens after we are resurrected. Notice Paul says that it is a moment in which each man's praise comes to him from God.

So, what does it mean to be judged as a believer? First, let me make clear this is not a judgment moment to determine if you are saved or if you go to heaven.

The Bible is very clear about how to be saved. It tells us that if we confess Jesus as Lord, and we believe in our heart that He was raised from the dead, we will be saved. That is our salvation. No service, no good work is ever required, because you cannot earn what comes only by grace.

So it is only by faith that we will enter heaven and by no other means. But in addition to that truth, the Bible also says that believers will be judged in a moment following our rapture, following the resurrection, for the purpose of receiving reward, or as Paul just said, praise from God. 

He elaborates on this topic in 2 Corinthians 5:10:

2Co 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

So all believers, Paul says, will experience a judgment in which Christ considers the work that we did for Him while in the body. That's a way of saying, while living in this body, before we get the new one, that service He will look at and consider if it is good or not and He will recompense.

So the word really could just be reward. He will reward the good service. And, of course, He will not reward the bad service. Now, when He says good or bad in that passage, Jesus is not referring to sin or righteous deeds or something of that sort. He's referring to the quality of our service.

And so that begs the question: what constitutes good service? 

Jesus actually gives us that standard in the parable that we just read in Matthew 24. Remember in the parable the master assigned work to every one of his slaves before he left. The slaves did not determine their own assignments. They were required to do what they were given to do, and then they were recompensed or rewarded based on whether they were found to be doing what they were assigned. So that's how we will be evaluated. 

Christ has assigned to every single one of His disciples a place and a role of service in the body of Christ. And some of us have individual assignments to serve Jesus in some capacity over the course of our life. And then there are others who are assigned to take care of the other believers, the other disciples, and that is their principal service in the body of Christ.

You cannot decide your own assignment. You are called to serve Jesus in the station to which you have been assigned, and depending on how well you carry out that assignment will determine how you are rewarded at the coming of the Lord. Your reward does not depend on the type of work you do, because, after all, Jesus decided that. He's the one who made the assignment. So that means everyone has the potential to be equally well rewarded, because it doesn't turn on the role you play or the work you were assigned. It only matters how well you carried out your given assignment.

Back in 1 Corinthians 4, it said that Jesus' judgment will take into account things hidden in the darkness, which is a way of saying service that you do out of view of others. And Paul also said He will judge the motives of our heart, which is a way of saying why and how we went about that service. So, for example, when you enter into your prayer closet at home alone and you intercede for fellow believers, you do that out of view of others. And presumably no one ever knows that it took place. But Jesus knows, and Jesus will take that into account.

An even better thing to understand is this: Paul also said that the results of our service are not judged. Never does Scripture say that the result of our work is taken into consideration, because here again, the success of whatever ministry you take on is also fully dependent on Jesus. He determines the success.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3 and he asked the question rhetorically:

1Co 3:5 What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one.

1Co 3:6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.

So look at the situation that the Lord has established for us in order to give us reward. He gave us our spiritual gifts. He gave us our assignment and opportunity, and He determines the outcome of whatever work we engage in. The only thing that He's asked us to do is to be found doing what He asked.

It doesn't get much easier than that - when you're not responsible for determining what to do or for determining what comes of the work. We all are being judged solely by obedience and effort and the intentions of our heart. That is a judgment that has been tipped in our favor, the scales are on our side. It's even the case when you engage in some form of ministry that fails utterly - even in that case, the Lord credits your effort and your intentions.

Now, flipping that around for just a moment, it must also be true, then, that the way to lose reward is simply not to serve, not to try, or perhaps not to try with pure motives. We can't be like that slave that you saw at the end of the parable that pretended the Lord's never going to come, and therefore he thinks he can do whatever he pleases in the meantime.

Jesus wants us to think differently. He wants us to serve Him diligently, first, for His glory, but then, secondly, for our own reward. And that's why He's keeping the day of your rapture a secret, because it ensures you will be incentivized to be ready for that report card moment. 

Think of the rapture as being a tad like a pop quiz. That is, you can't know for sure when the test is coming, so you have incentive to study for it every day. And when you don't know when your judgment is coming, you have incentive to serve Jesus well every day. And so when He does return, you will be found doing what He asked you to do. So by keeping the day a mystery to us, here's what Jesus is effectively doing: He is helping us maximize our eternal reward. 

Now, if you're hearing this and you're saying to yourself, “Well, I don't even know what He's asked me to do. I don't know what I've been assigned.” Well, if that's you, then you're realizing right now you may not be ready for that day, because if you don't know what Jesus has called you to do in service to Him, then it's unlikely that you're doing it.

And if you're not found to be doing what He's asked of you when He comes, how will He reward you? So the first step in serving Jesus is to know what He wants you to do. And that just begs the next question, of course, which is, “How do I find out what He wants me to do?”

And the answer to that is a little simpler than you might imagine: you pray for His guidance, and you step out in some direction, and then you expect Him to steer you to where He wants you to go. That is how it works for every believer.

The apostle Paul, for example, did not wake up one morning and decide to be the apostle to the Gentiles. Paul was arrested on the road to Damascus by a bright light, blinded, sent to a man who would then teach him a little bit about what it meant, later sent out into the desert of Arabia, trained by Jesus for three years. The point is, Paul had to get there, too. But he had to take a step. He began walking with Jesus, and the Lord showed him where to go. 

And that is what we do as a Christian to find our place in service to Jesus. We pray for guidance, we start moving, and we expect Jesus to steer us. If we're chasing the world or we're living for ourselves or we're making excuses for why we can't obey Jesus, we are spiritually speaking a stationary object, and therefore we should not expect to figure this thing out, not under those circumstances, because Jesus doesn't force His servants to serve Him. He just doesn't reward the absence of service. 

And you know your test is coming. You know the coming of the Lord is around the corner. You know it will surprise you. So you want to be found ready. So start moving. It's as simple as picking a target and seeking to serve Him in that opportunity. Now, look, you may pick the wrong target, so to speak. You may seek initially to serve in some area that is not the one Jesus ultimately wants you to do, but you'll know that soon enough. You will begin in service and Jesus will steer you. 

Abraham from the book of Genesis was told by God, “Go to a place I will show you.” That is inherently a statement of steering. He didn't say which direction. Abraham may have started walking east. He didn't know. But as he walked, God steered him and put him in the right place eventually

You’ve got to walk. You’ve got to do. You’ve got to serve. You’ve got to try. So how does any Christian find their place of service? By stepping out in service and letting the Lord direct you. 

And this is probably why the Lord saved this topic for the end of His discourse. Never mind the fact that His disciples never thought to ask Him about this day, because they didn't know anything of it. But more than that, He puts it at the end, because this is the one and the only day that Christians should be thinking about.

I mean, it's interesting to see that the signs of the end of the age are upon us and to know that the last days are here, and it will be important for those who ultimately live in tribulation to recognize the signs of Jesus's second coming, but Christians who live now are not in either of those groups.

We don't need to worry about the end of the age. We won't be here to see it finished, and we certainly don't need to worry about the judgment that comes in tribulation. We're not appointed to that wrath.

The thing that we're supposed to be interested in, the thing that we're supposed to be focused on, is the moment of the coming of the Lord, a day that could happen at any time, a day that will be our judgment moment. That's supposed to be our focus. 

And Jesus ends with this topic in chapter 24 because it's what He wanted on top of mind for His disciples. It's the next thing scheduled in the plan of God for this age. Before any of those other things really get going, the timing of the rapture will come first, and that's what we should be focused on.

So use your spiritual gift, whatever that is. Serve your brothers and sisters in the place where He has put you. Live with eyes for eternity, knowing that this is how you please Him, and render Him service with an expectation that He pays attention and will reward you.

And most of all, Christians, get ready for the Lord's coming, because you know it can't be that far, and you don't know it can't be now. And even if you should die before that day comes, you will still be evaluated on the day of the coming of the Lord. You'll just come down with the saints who are already with you in heaven, because as the writer of Hebrews says, 

Heb 9:27 And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,

And Peter tells us in his first letter that the judgment process begins with us. Peter says in 1 Peter 4:17, 

1 Peter 4:17 For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?

Peter says that judgment comes to the Church first, and he's referring again to the moment of our resurrection, to the rapture. And he says we must be ready for that moment. We get ready by being diligent in our service to Him while we await.

And then he says if God is willing to judge even those who are His, what would we imagine He will do to those who disobey the Gospel? What kind of judgment will they see in their day?

Here again, in what we've learned, the rapture will come first, then tribulation, and then the judgment that God appoints at the second coming of Christ. So, judgment for the Church first, then judgment for the unbelievers later.

In that parable we just studied, Jesus actually includes one slave who represents that second moment of judgment, the one for unbelievers. That's the slave who left the master's house, and he is, in that parable, a picture of the fate of unbelievers.

Now this parable can be a bit confusing at this point, because that unbeliever in the parable is another slave (and we know the slaves were representative of believers in the Church). And we start to wonder, “How can a believer be put out into hell?” etc.

But remember, in parables, it's not uncommon for characters to be exposed at some point as frauds. That's often the point of the parable, and in this case, the actions of this one slave ultimately reveal that he was never truly under the master’s authority. 

For example, he left the master's house to go consort with drunkards. That's a way of showing that he was never truly a member of that household, of the master's house, and he rejects the master’s authority, and does not want to be a part of the master’s family. In fact, he beats the other slaves that are in that household, which is a picture of persecution, demonstrating this slave is an enemy of the other slaves, just as the world persecutes the Church.

And those details tell us this man was not truly a slave. Never at any point was his heart truly given over to the master. And once the master was out of view, it was easy for him to revert back to his true nature. He was an imposter who had no relationship with the master. 

And so when the master returns, He judges that man harshly, as you would judge an enemy. He cuts him into pieces, Jesus says, and assigns him a place with hypocrites, a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. That is a Biblely way of saying hell or the lake of fire to be more specific. It's the home of all who would reject the authority of Jesus, and their judgment will also be sudden and unexpected.

Just like the way the rapture impacts the Church, an unbeliever will have no warning, that is, generally speaking, for the day of their death. Some might see it coming, but even then they're not exactly sure. And so unbelievers would also do well to be ready.

Serving Jesus can take effort. Yes, and it can be an investment of time, of course, but being ready for His return simply as a matter of being believing - that's the easiest thing you could ever do. It only takes a moment, just takes faith in Jesus Christ.

If you are a believer, you have now in front of you the roadmap to be prepared for your rapture. It's not about results, and it's not about status. It's only about effort and consistency. It's only about having an intention to serve and to doing what you can in the days you have. But if you have not known Him as master, if you have not made yourself a part of this family by faith, well, then, that is the prerequisite to service. 

You cannot serve a master you do not know. You cannot be rewarded for being a part of a family that you do not belong to. So with faith first you may enter into the family of God by recognizing that your sin has separated you from Jesus, and will do so eternally if you do not allow Christ to pay the price for that sin by placing your faith in His sacrificial death on the cross, and by recognizing that by His perfect life you can be credited with the righteousness required to enter heaven, that by your faith He will give you a new perfect spirit, sinless forevermore.

And one day, a day soon to come, He will give you a new, perfect eternal body that will never die again, all because of His grace. And placing your faith in Jesus is no more difficult than simply acknowledging these things.