What will God do about abusive church leaders?

“The Master Servant”

(Matthew 24:45-51, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, August 3, 2008)

Matthew 24:45-51 ⁴⁵ "Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? ⁴⁶ Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. ⁴⁷ Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. ⁴⁸ But if that wicked servant says to himself, 'My master is delayed,' ⁴⁹ and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, ⁵⁰ the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know ⁵¹ and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Introduction – Beyond timing… Stay awake and be ready.

As we come to the close of this very informative chapter where our Lord uses the coming destruction of the building temple in Jerusalem to talk about the age of the gathering of His world-wide body temple which is just getting going, we have seen that this chapter is not all about the question of when Christ is to return. The only thing that it says about that question is that He will return at the end of the age.

We are told that we need to stay awake and to be ready, instructions that may sound very passive. We imagine someone sitting by the window, looking out into the night skies, and waiting for the sign of the Son of Man to appear in the heavens. That is not all bad. Would that we were all that aware of the coming age and eager for the resurrection of the dead that will immediately take place at the return of Christ. Yet a true awareness of the promises of the age of resurrection will move us forward in action, not star-gazing or date-guessing, but faithful service in accord with the Lord’s calling upon each of our lives individually and together as His church.

The passage before us speaks to us as the Lord’s servants in this age. It certainly has something to say to all the followers of Jesus Christ, since we all need to be aware and active. Yet the disciples that Jesus was physically speaking to that day would soon be commissioned as His apostles, the very first group of church leaders of the new era. It seems very likely that we are supposed to understand something in these verses about faithful church leaders, and particularly about those who are supposed to be ministers of the Word. The concept here is of a servant among servants. Yet the minister also speaks for Jesus Christ, and in that sense, the Master has set him over His household.

The topic of appropriate leadership within the church has already been addressed in this gospel, but it is now being reinforced in this last week prior to the cross. Jesus has been speaking to them about the nature of this temple-gathering age. The gospel is to be preached everywhere, and worshippers are to be brought together throughout the world in what will turn out to be many centuries of suffering love. What the Lord said about leaders earlier in His ministry still holds. The greatest people in His kingdom are not supposed to Lord it over others like people in powerful worldly positions do. This is to be something different, where the minister’s fellow-servants are sons of God in Christ together with him. This is not just a catchy slogan of fake humility, but a real description of people who would be known by the deliberately low title of minister or servant.

The Master and the servants (45-47)

Ministers have a job to do as servants to a King who died on a cross. Our King makes a distinction in these verses between a faithful and wise servant and a wicked servant. The faithful servant is to be aware of his job. What kind of good worker would be clueless about the requirements of his job? Ministers are supposed to feed people. There are others who feed them in terms of their physical needs. These servants of the Word are supposed to feed the Lord’s sheep in a different way. They feed souls with the food of the Word. In Luke’s gospel this is spoken of as giving the other servants their “portion of food at the proper time.” As they serve up the food to others, they get to eat as well, like oxen that are doing their work in the field without any muzzle over their mouths they can eat as much as they desire at any time they want. This feeding the children of the Lord with the Bread of Life from the Word is what our Lord was referring to when He spoke to Peter after His resurrection. He said, “Feed My sheep.”

They are to be serving up a good portion of the Word of God, in a way that it can be received. This means not only preaching the Word, but also reading it publicly, and helping and encouraging everyone to read the Word, to pray the Word, to hear the Word, to think about the Word, and to live the Word. Each of these good things should be done both individually and together, since we need a balanced diet and lots of exercise in order to keep all the muscles of our souls working. Christ should find His ministers doing this when He returns. If He does, He will set such people over all His possessions in the resurrection world that is coming. I don’t know what that will be like, but I know that it is a good thing, because it will be in an age without discord, weariness, mistakes, or sin.

The Master is delayed (48-49)

Sadly, not every minister is good. This is a great surprise in a way. It is a feature of this age that Satan, the Lord’s fallen angelic adversary, sows weeds among the wheat, and some of those weeds end up bearing the title “minister.” The key to their bad behavior is the simple phrase of their hearts recorded in verse 48, “My master is delayed.” Think about this idea. It does suggest the passage of a considerable period of time. We saw this same point in some of the phrases in the earlier verses of this chapter. It takes time for the “birth pains” that Christ predicts. Nations rise and fall over decades and even centuries. It takes many years for false religious movements to come and go. We do not know the length of labor before the full arrival of the resurrection kingdom, but we do know from this and other passages that some of the Lord’s servants will begin to think of His return as “delayed.”

What does it mean to say that the Master is delayed? It means that the wicked minister thinks of the Master as far away, rather than near. How close do you think Jesus is when one of His ministers abuses someone? Though He may be very far from the life of the soul of that pastor, I think that He is very close to the whole situation. I think He weeps at the shame of it, not because He can’t do anything about it, but because it is such a disgrace, and he knows that the man who does such things will be called to account. I think He cares about the victims of abuse, and He is preparing an answer of glorious goodness for them that will heal them for eternity.

The man who says, “My master is delayed,” may mean, “My master is far away,” and then, “My master is dead,” and finally with a shrug of the shoulders, “What master? I am my own master. I can do with these people and these things what I want. I am the master.” If a man begins to forget the nearness of the real Master, won’t he soon forget his duty to the Master’s children? He certainly won’t be feeding them good food. He may beat them with their failures over and over again, adding rules that God never even spoke of. The man who beats the others around him in the church has forgotten what it feels like to be a fellow servant. He eats and drinks with drunkards, filling his life with the next temporary pleasure. He will never have the courage to go to war for anything, because what could be worth dying for. He has become a man dedicated to purposeless living, with no awareness of the life to come. This kind of behavior by a minister of the gospel is the most heinous kind of sin. Much was given to him, especially the precious treasure of serving Christ’s Word to His beloved. Naturally much is required of him as well.

The Master will come (50-51)

God will not stand for abusive ministers. The Master is alive and near. Some ministers may forget that, but they will remember one day. He will come. His arrival will be at an unexpected time. What will He do to wicked pastors? He will cut them in pieces. He will put them with the hypocrites. We all know what is being talked about here. There is a place in hell reserved for abusive and faithless religious leaders, just as there is place reserved for fallen angels who attack the elect just for the fun of watching them hurt. Beings like this will not be in the coming resurrection temple of God, no matter how impressive their many other achievements may seem to be.

The Master’s weeping and gnashing of teeth for you (51)

I don’t like talking about hell. Sometimes I think we say too much about it, and sometimes I think we say things that we don’t really know. Is this one of those times? Why am I so sure that the Lord is talking about hell here? Could it just be suffering or death in this age? Maybe these ministers will die here in this age for what they have done, but they will still be found in Christ in the life to come. The reason why that seems impossible is in verse 51. If you examine the places in this gospel where Jesus talks about weeping and gnashing of teeth, you will see that He is talking about eternal punishment. He’s talking about what we deserve for our sins. You and I deserve hell.

A person who abuses people weaker than him is not acting as a true servant of Jesus Christ. The faithful minister would rather take abuse than give it. In living that way, he is following Christ as the Master Servant. Jesus took much abuse from men for us. What was the cross like? I don’t think that we will every really know, because you and I are not going to hell if we have truly called upon the Name of the Lord. We may be very, very weak, and quite pitiful in the way that we have treated others. Nonetheless, He is the Master. He is very near, and what He says goes. He came that we might have abundant life. So be it. In order for that to happen, He needed to suffer the pains of hell for His servants. Whatever that weeping and gnashing of teeth is that will come upon unrepentant and abusive ministers, Jesus suffered that weeping and gnashing of teeth in His body and soul for you on the cross.

What will God do about abusive church leaders? I think we have some idea, and we turn our eyes away and weep. But what will God do for weak repentant sinners, though abused by men and angels, who trust Him? He died for them. He will not abandon them. There is a new day coming. The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matthew 13:43). The Lord will set faithful and good fellow-servants over all his possessions.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. What are the indications within this passage that the Lord is especially addressing those in church leadership?

2. What image is used to talk about what these servants should be doing? What is your interpretation of this image?

3. What do you make of the phrase, “My master is delayed?”

4. What is the warning given here? Why is it significant that our Lord is the One giving this warning?