How to Be Ready for the Return [Family Worship lesson in Matthew 24:45–51]

How do we live as those who are ready for the return? Matthew 24:45–51 looks forward to the evening sermon on the coming Lord’s Day. In these seven verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that we live as those who are ready for the return by diligently attending to the life that Christ has appointed for us in His church. (click here to DOWNLOAD mp3/pdf files of this lesson) Summary from the transcript of the audio: the devotional centers on the urgent call to live in constant readiness for Christ’s return, emphasizing that faithfulness is demonstrated not through speculation about end-time signs, but through diligent obedience to the specific duties God has assigned within the church. It highlights the danger of spiritual complacency. The parable of the faithful and evil servant warns that those who fail to steward their God-given responsibilities, especially in the public life of the church, are not merely idle but are drifting into hypocrisy, and the ultimate consequence is hell itself. The message calls believers to live with continual awareness of God’s presence, not only in anticipation of Christ’s return but in the reality of being always before His face.

2025.11.01 Hopewell @Home ▫ Matthew 24:45–51

Read Matthew 24:45–51

Questions from the Scripture text: About what sort of servant is Matthew 24:45 asking? What did his master make him? What is he supposed to do? In what condition is he in Matthew 24:46? At what time? What did His master find, upon returning? What will the master do for that good servant (Matthew 24:47)? What other kind of servant is there (Matthew 24:48)? What does he say in his heart? What does he being to do (Matthew 24:49)? What will happen (Matthew 24:50)? At what time? And what will the master do to that servant (Matthew 24:51)?  

How do we live as those who are ready for the return? Matthew 24:45–51 looks forward to the evening sermon on the coming Lord’s Day. In these seven verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that we live as those who are ready for the return by diligently attending to the life that Christ has appointed for us in His church.

Jesus continues to apply the fact that no one knows the hour of His coming. We are to live as those who are always ready for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. The question then is: how do you live as someone who is ready for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ? And you live as someone who is ready for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ: (a) by doing the tasks that the Lord has given you to do, and (b) by putting to death remaining sin.

For the apostles, Jesus uses the image of a great household, where they will have responsibility as bishops who rule the house and pastors who feed the flock. Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Whatever the Lord has appointed for you to do, when He suddenly appears without warning, He should find you doing the things that are specifically appointed to you, in your life, your family, your community, and especially in the church. 

Church life is the focus of the application in Matthew 24:45-46. To live as someone who is ready for Jesus to return, you should be a member of the church, a joint that supplies something (cf. Ephesians 4:16), speaking the truth in love to one another (cf. Ephesians 4:15), participating in the building of one another up into Christ (end of Ephesians 4:16), not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together (cf. Hebrews 10:25), forgiving one another (cf. Ephesians 4:32), bearing one another's burdens (cf. Galatians 6:2), praying for one another (cf. James 5:16), having fellowship, not neglecting to share, which is a spiritual sacrifice unto God as well (cf. Hebrews 13:16). All these things, He's given to us to do in the church. This is the life that is lived as ready for His return.

He's given us things to do in our family as well. Children are to be honoring parents and interacting  properly with brothers and sisters as equals. Wives, mothers, fathers, and husbands all have their duties. Even those who are alone, when young, have a duty to find new family (cf. 1 Timothy 5:14). And those who are old, and truly left alone, have a duty to trust in God, praying night and day (cf. 1 Timothy 5:5). Whatever season, and whatever providence, our home life is in, the Lord has assigned things to us. And then we have also duties to our neighbor as well. 

But, here, the focus is on our duty within the church. We are not to neglect any duty, but church membership is the Lord's focus here. So, first way to be always ready is to be doing the duty that the Lord has assigned to us. Those who graduate from their church membership duties in this life are kings and priests unto God in the next one (Matthew 24:47, cf. Revelation 5:10), particularly these apostles (cf. Matthew 19:28; Revelation 4:4). 

But if we do not live as those who expect Christ at any time (Matthew 24:48); if we do not always live as if we're before His face, we are in mortal, eternal danger. Jesus calls such church members “evil servants” (verse 48), who are “hypocrites” (Matthew 24:51), having a special portion in Hell. 

It is an evil thing to be distracted from doing our duty, to be lulled into a false sense of fleshly security for sinning: either by the idea either that He's not returning soon, or (as many have ironically done) by the idea that since He’s returning soon, they obsess about signs of His return (which He expressly said there would be none), or engage in a false piety that neglects duty altogether.

The Lord calls one who is distracted from his duty, who doesn’t live as one obeying His commandments for life in the church, “an evil servant.” He might not literally beat his fellow servants and eat and drink with the drunkards. But these represent the fruit we see in the life of someone who neglects a life of service and obedience as that by which God works in us to produce holiness. If we are not participating in the public life of the church, we are neglecting those means by which He restrains sin and grows us in grace.

What He's saying here is not that, as long as you're not beating your fellow servants and getting drunk with the drunkards, you're probably okay. Rather, He’s saying that, if you're not following His prescription for how to live, how to walk with Him, how to be a functioning, healthy member of His church, then you are on your way to being one who beats your fellow servants and gets drunk with the drunkards.

It may not be literal, physical beating. But you may be on your way to being one who is judgmental, or bitter, or gossips about others in the church. You fall into a fleshly way of operating within the congregation. That's the equivalent here of beating the fellow servants. And you may be on your way to living for your appetites: that whatever feels pleasant to your body and to your fleshliness from your old nature—you slouch into doing that instead of delighting more and more in the Lord Himself, instead of having Him as your primary appetite. If we are not living the life of service, and obedience, and participation in the life of the Church, that the Lord Jesus has appointed to us, then we are on our way. to treating the congregation like that and to indulging our flesh like that.

The Master of that evil servant will come on a day when he is not looking for Him, and at an hour that he is not aware of, and will cut him in two, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites (Matthew 24:51). There's a special hell, as it were, for hypocrites—for those who had the name of brother, had the covenant privilege of being a member of the church, but were unconverted. They have two faces. This is actually worse than to not have been a professing Christian. “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” is a reference to hell. And there's a particular portion of it for the hypocrites.

From a wrong theology of Jesus's return, flows a life that departs from service unto Him in the roles that He has appointed—departing particularly from proper functioning in the congregational life, and thus exposing that he is not being sanctified. As a member of the visible church declines and backslides, he is in danger of discovering that he is a gospel hypocrite: one who professes gospel faith on the outside, but on the inside, he is an evil servant that slouches into his sin, and will eventually sink lower than the grave into a special part of hell.

The Lord spare us from that and give us to rejoice that His coming will itself be the sign of His coming, so that we will always be living as we will wish to be found when He returns—remembering that, even now, we are always before Him.

What do you know about the timing of Christ’s return? What has He appointed for you to do in His church? How are you doing according to His appointment? 

Sample prayer:  Father, thank You for this portion of Your Word. Grant unto us, we pray, to heed it by the help of Your Spirit, to live as those who are before Your face, to live as we will wish to have been found when You return. Don't let us backslide, and spare us, O God, that none of us be found, at the last, hypocrites. For we ask it through Christ. Amen.

 Suggested songs: ARP1 “How Blessed the Man” or TPH389 “Great God, What Do I See and Hear”