<p>12:45 <i>But if that servant- </i>The parable of Mt. 25:26,30 likewise features two types of servant; the &ldquo;faithful&rdquo; servant s.w., and the equivalent of this &quot;servant&rdquo; is the &ldquo;wicked and lazy servant&hellip; the unprofitable servant&rdquo; (25:26,30). That servant who did nothing is paralleled with the servant who proactively got drunk, thought his Lord delayed, and beat his brethren. Despite all that bad behaviour, the real issue was that he did nothing positive for his Lord. So often, the fellow servants are effectively beaten because of the sins of omission, inaction, refusal to stand up for the abused.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p><i>Shall say in his heart-</i> The Bible knows nothing of a personal, cosmic Satan. Rather the real adversary is presented as the human heart, and therefore a huge amount of attention is given to the state of the human heart and the significance of our self-talk. Nobody consciously says &lsquo;The Lord is delaying, great, now I can drink and abuse my brethren&rsquo;. But the Lord puts His finger on the self-talk that goes on in our deep subconscious, and He does so in the context of warning against having a specific date in mind for the second coming.</p><p><i>My lord delays his coming- </i>There is no turning to atheism or rebellion against the Lord, but rather the root cause of the misbehaviour is placed by the parable upon the man&rsquo;s mentality that because he knows the date of his Lord&rsquo;s coming, he can just ensure he&rsquo;s behaving properly when He comes. And this is the purpose of the parable- to challenge that idea and explain why the date must be left unknown by us. This is the same idea as the foolish virgins not taking oil with them in the next parable. The idea is simply that the foolish take no oil because they are certain they know the day and hour of the bridegroom&rsquo;s coming; whereas the wise recognize that they do not know the exact day and hour, and therefore act accordingly by taking more oil in case there is a delay. This is exactly the point being made in the Lord&rsquo;s teaching at the end of Matthew 24. Those who are convinced they know the day and hour, for whom the idea of flexibility or delay in the Lord&rsquo;s purpose is anathema, are in fact those who fall asleep and are caught unprepared.</p><p>The Lord Jesus / bridegroom &ldquo;tarries&rdquo; (Mt. 25:5), the same Greek word translated &lsquo;delay&rsquo; in &ldquo;my Lord delays His coming&rdquo;. The Lord&nbsp;<i>does&nbsp;</i>delay His coming- the man&rsquo;s mistake was in acting inappropriately because of this. God&rsquo;s judgments likewise &ldquo;waited&rdquo;, or delayed, in Noah&rsquo;s time (1 Pet. 3:20)- presumably for the 120 year period of Gen. 6:3. In a similar way, the judgment on Nineveh preached by Jonah also delayed- it came in the end, but their repentance meant that it delayed at that time.&nbsp;In the first century, all things were ready for the Supper- supper time had come. But the start of the supper has been delayed 2000 years by Israel&rsquo;s rejection of the invitation to participate (Lk. 14:17). The evil servant misbehaved because he thought the Lord had delayed and therefore he could misbehave, so long as he got his act together at the time of the Lord&rsquo;s coming. This parable is therefore an explanation of why we must recognize that we don&rsquo;t know the date of the Lord&rsquo;s return; if we do think we know it, then this will lead us into misbehaviour. Those with a determinate, black and white view of God and His prophetic style have often shown us the truth of this parable. They thought the Lord would return at a certain date, or once certain conditions had been fulfilled. These things happened, and the Lord didn&rsquo;t come- and their behaviour went seriously downhill.&nbsp;</p><p>Moses' sprinkling of Israel with blood and then going away for forty days (the period of probation), returning after a perceived delay to a people lost in revelry with only a faithful minority, must point forward to our Lord's ascension to the Father's presence after the blood sprinkling of the cross, and His subsequent return. The Lord's words here suggest he read this incident along these lines: &quot;That evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delays his coming (cp. &quot;Where is the promise of his coming?&quot; and the people feeling Moses had delayed to return); and shall begin to... eat and drink with the drunken (cp. &quot;the people sat down to eat and drink&quot;, 1 Cor. 10:7); the Lord of that servant shall come... in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder&quot;- recalling the Levite's sudden massacre of the people on Moses' return. If the return of Moses from the mount is indeed typical of the second coming, then it would follow that the majority of the new Israel will be unprepared at the Lord's return also.</p><p>&quot;The Lord (Jesus) is not slack concerning his promise (to return- of Jn. 14:3,18,28), as some men (in the ecclesia) count slackness&quot;, but is longsuffering (2 Pet. 3:9). The Greek for &quot;slack&quot; here means 'delay'; this is assurance that God is not 'delaying' as men dilly-dally in the execution of their plans, but is rather postponing this for a good reason. There&rsquo;s an allusion here to Is. 30:17-19, which records how Israel would suffer for their sins, but then God would wait for a certain time until they cried to Him in repentance, before bringing about a time of blessing on the earth based around the Lord's presence in Jerusalem: &quot;One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one (Dt. 28 language)... until you are left as a tree bereft of branches (how Paul describes what happened to Israel in the first century, Rom. 11)... and therefore (i.e. because you are such sinners) will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you, and therefore will He be exalted (through your repentance), that He may have mercy upon you: for the Lord is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for Him. For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: you shall weep no more (the language of Is. 65:17-25, quoted in 2 Pet. 3:13): He will be very gracious unto you at the voice of your cry (of repentance):&nbsp;<i>when</i>&nbsp;He shall hear it, He will answer you&quot;. Not only is God delaying the Kingdom until there is repentance in Israel, but such is His&nbsp;<i>mercy&nbsp;</i>that He will not bring it about until such repentance. His purpose should not be seen, therefore, just in terms of the cold equation 'Repentance in Israel= second coming', but the supreme&nbsp;<i>mercy</i>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<i>love&nbsp;</i>which this arrangement shows should be appreciated. &quot;And&nbsp;<i>therefore</i>&nbsp;will He be exalted&quot; Isaiah comments- by those who understand these things. Rom. 11:32-36 is a marvellous example of this.</p><p><i>And shall begin- </i>The idea is that only soon after he has begun his misbehaviour, the Lord comes. This highlights the point that because the man was sure that he knew the exact time of the Lord&rsquo;s coming, and that time was not right now,&nbsp;<i>therefore</i>&nbsp;he did these bad things. The whole point of the parable is to explain&nbsp;<i>why</i>&nbsp;we do not and should not ever think we know the date of His coming. For it is this which is portrayed in the parable as the root reason why he begins beating the fellow servants and being self-indulgent, mixing with the unbelievers rather than the believers.</p><p><i>To beat the menservants and the maidservants- </i>Smiting the fellow servants is related to keeping other company- with the drunken. It could be that this parable is intended to have a specific latter day fulfilment, in that it speaks of the last few days or little while before the Lord&rsquo;s return. For the evil servant has only just begun to beat, eat and drink, when his Lord comes. The &lsquo;smiting&rsquo; might suggest that the evil servant joins in the persecution of the Lord&rsquo;s servants which will be ongoing in that final period of tribulation.&nbsp;</p><p>The idea of the steward of the house smiting the fellow servant is referred to by Paul (in the Greek text) in 1 Cor. 8:12, concerning&nbsp;<i>wounding</i>&nbsp;the conscience of weak brethren. Paul's vision of the latter-day ecclesia was therefore that materialistic elders would act with no thought as to their effect on the consciences of the flock, and thereby many would stumble. The Lord&rsquo;s only other reference to fellow servants is in Mt. 18:28-33, where the deeply indebted servant &lsquo;beat&rsquo; a fellow servant who owed him a relatively small amount. The beating of the fellow servants may therefore be intended to be understood in terms of refusing to forgive, and demanding what is due.</p><p><i>And to eat and drink and to be drunk</i>- His duty was to feed his fellow servants, but instead he became obsessed with feeding himself. The Lord spoke of &lsquo;eating and drinking&rsquo; as characterizing Noah&rsquo;s world- and also Lot&rsquo;s world (Lk. 17:28). There&rsquo;s nothing wrong with any of the things Noah&rsquo;s world were doing in themselves, but they were indulged in to the point of obsession. The man called to go in to the ark and care for those within it had instead gone outside into the world and engaged with them in their way of life.</p><p>The man himself becomes drunk; he is influenced by the company he now keeps. He is alluded to in 1 Thess. 5:3-7, where the picture is graphically created of a man who has been hard drinking for a whole evening, now at home stupefied, late at night. It is then that the thief comes; whilst dimly aware of his coming, the man is quite unprepared to meet him and keep his (spiritual) house intact. This will be the tragic position of those who through belief and practice are unready for their Lord. It seems that a materialistic eldership, uncommitted to the real needs of the household, indifferent to guarding the house, will contribute to our latter-day apostasy as a community. And note the correspondence between those who are harsh on their brethren being those who are also caught up in the things of the world. The drunken servant starts to beat the fellow servants, using a Greek word which means to punish. This creates the picture of a worldly ecclesial elder over-disciplining others, whilst himself being guilty of the same things. He is transferring his guilt onto others, and punishing them with the punishment he subconsciously knows he deserves. No wonder there will be so much friction and disunity amongst spiritual Israel of the last days.</p>