Sermon Tone Analysis

Pre-Introduction:

At this time, we invite any children who desire to join my dear wife for a children’s service to follow her where you can hear a wonderful bible lesson and sing some uplifting songs about Jesus.

For those joining us online, you’re listening to the joint Services of the First Baptist Church of Westminster.

This is Co-Pastor Walker bringing the Sunday Morning message entitled “A Tale of Two Servants.”

We invite you to follow along with us in your Bible in the Book of Matthew, chapter 24, and verses 43-51.

Introduction:

[Start Low]

A. Get Attention - Striking Statement:

Title = misnomer.

Should be “A Tale of One Servant with Two Possible Destinies”

OR “Choose Right or Lose Big-Time”

B. Raise Need - Illustration:

Is your eternal destiny secure?

Are you living for Jesus, or yourself?

There’s only two choices on the shelf . . .

C. State Purpose-

MO - Consecrative/Doctrinal

SO - I want my hearers to understand the importance of eternal destiny and decide to believe and serve Jesus and His people in love rather than dismiss His words and face eternal torment.

D. Orient Theme-

Theme - The Tale of One Servant with Two Possible Destinies:

Thrust -

The faithful & wise receives eternal reward (vv.

43-47)

The foolish incurs judgment & eternal punishment (vv.

48-51)

Main Thought:

Believe Christ’s Words: be faithful, wise, & blessed

Remain in unbelief: be foolish, self-serving & perish

Sub-introduction:

Immediate context: signs leading up to the consummation of all things and Christ’s return in power and great glory; deceivers, persecution, birth pangs, tribulation, antichrist, abomination of desolation, fulfilled prophecies, Daniel, great tribulation and the time of Jacob’s Trouble, false messiahs and false prophets, lightenings, thunderings, earthquakes, signs in the heavens and on the earth, cosmic shakings, the nations in mourning, the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, the great harvest at the end of time; then Jesus illustrates and applies His doctrine with various parables, of the Fig Tree, of the certainty of His coming but the uncertainty of its timing, of the characteristics of the end times as were the days of Noe, and of the suddenness of judgment to come on the inhabitants of earth, some will be taken away in judgment, and others will remain to enter His Kingdom, which brings us now to a series of more parables, two of which we will look at today, that of the Goodman, and then of the Slave with Two Possible Destinies.

Body:

I.

The Faithful & Wise Servant (Matt.

24:43-47)

[Go Slow]

A. Is Ready (Matt.

24:43-44)

1.

The Parable of the Goodman (v.

43)

“but” - adversative

“if” - 2nd class (contrary-to-fact)

“know this” - imperative

“goodman” - house + despot “husband” or “homeowner”; 2nd amendment

“watch” - v. 42

“broken up” - digged through

2. The Principle: Be Prepared (v.

44)

Illustration: “Prepare to meet thy God.” “Therefore be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt.

24:44).

I heard a minister tell how he as a boy tried hard to weigh one hundred pounds.

He could weigh ninety-five and ninety-six but he could not reach the coveted hundred mark.

One day he stepped on the scales and, to his astonishment, went way over the mark.

He gave a yell of triumph, but just then he heard a chuckle behind him and looked around to discover that his older brother had put a big foot on the scales.

I know something better than that.

God had a mark that I could not reach, but my Elder Brother, the Lord Jesus Christ, did not merely add His weight to mine; He put Himself in my place and God reckons me righteous in Him, because as a convicted sinner I received Him as my Saviour and rest in His finished work and perfect righteousness.

So it is He Who is coming Who prepares me for His coming.

In the Christ Who came I am ready for the Christ Who will come.

[Dennis J. Hester, ed., The Vance Havner Notebook: Sermon Excerpts and Illustrations (Baker Book House, 1989), 107–108.]

“therefore” - inferential, emphatic

“be ye ready” - imperative

Ready to die:—A ship in a port, with all its provisions and sails and men on board, is in one sense of the word, “ready”—ready for sea; but it may not be “ready” in the sense this text enjoins.

Its sails must be in their places, its anchor must be up, every man must be at his post: then it is actually ready for the ocean and its storms.

Let the command come, and in a minute or two it is disengaged from the fastenings that held it, lies down to the breeze, and without hurry or alarm is gone.

And this is the readiness our Lord has here in His mind—a state of actual readiness, preparedness of mind and heart.

(C.

Bradley.)

[Exell, Bib.

Ill.]

“for” - causal

“cometh” - futuristic present stressing certainty

Quote - “Spiritual ‘readiness’ is the stepchild of vigilance.”

~ Grant Osborne

Illustration: BE READY

Be ye also ready.…

Matthew 24:44.

Not only ready for His coming or ready to die but ready for anything—ready to give an answer for the hope within us (1 Peter 3:15), ready to preach the Gospel (Romans 1:15).

The Christian should live in a state of constant readiness to live or die, to spend or be spent.

Ready to die and therefore ready to live.

Ready to live and therefore ready to die.

Paul had only two days on his calendar, “Today” and “That day.”

The Christian who is right and rich and radiant is ready, come what may!

[Vance Havner, All the Days (Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976), 28.]

B. Is Reliable (Matt.

24:45-46)

1. Be a Burden-Bearer (v.

45)

“Who then” - rhetorical

“faithful” - attribute of being trusted

“wise” - word order gives greater weight

“household” - TR therapeias - CT inferior oiketeia; emphasis on nourishing at a prescribed time (i.e.

like a nurse administering on a schedule); consider Noah providing for the 7 who would feed the entire Ark of animals (800+ animals per person).

“to give” - purpose

“meat” - provisions

“due season” - prescribed and proper timing

2. Be Blessed (v.

46)

“blessed” - makarios - Beatitude

“servant” - doulos - slave

“his lord” - subordination

“shall find” - eureka

“so doing” - as he was assigned

C. Will Be Richly Rewarded (Matt.

24:47)

“Verily” - amen

“make him ruler” - cause him to stand over

“all his goods” - everything the Master possesses; inheritance

Application:

Have you enlisted yet?

Are you Christ’s?

If you have believed on Him, then you have been redeemed, and purchased with His blood.

He then owns you, and as the hymn writer put, “Oh Jesus, Lord and Savior, I give myself to Thee, for Thou in Thy atonement, didst give Thyself for me!