«　WEEK 4　DAY 3　»

　　Matt. 24:48-50 But if that evil slave says in his heart, My master delays, and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eats and drinks with the drunken, 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.

　　The Lord’s word in Matthew 24 is a parable. Since it is a parable, it must be interpreted. To eat and drink “with the drunken” [v. 49b] is to keep company with worldly people, who are drunk with worldly things, …worldly enjoyment. This is the danger of not using our gift. Once we become a person who keeps company with worldly people, we would not be faithful to the Lord in using the gift He gives us, so we fall into danger. (CWWL, 1979, vol. 2, “Basic Lessons on Service,” p. 101)

　　[To eat and drink with the drunken] (Matt. 24:49) is to drift away further, a further fall from beating the fellow slaves….The worldly people are drunk and even drugged with worldly things. They are stupefied with the present age. To eat and drink with them is to enjoy what they enjoy. In a good sense, when you are beating the saints, you are still interested in the church life…. Because you are so “burdened for the church” and so interested in the church life, you criticize the brothers and the sisters.

　　Once you make the decision to forget about the church, to have no interest in the church, you enter into the loving of the world, and you keep company with worldly people who are always being stupefied by this age. A saint who loves the world has no heart to talk about what elders are good or bad. He may once have been beating his fellow slaves, but now he is fully occupied with worldly enjoyment. He is now eating and drinking with the drunken. Nearly every day may be a happy day to him, and nearly every weekend a pleasant weekend, because he is enjoying the stupefying of the worldly things.

　　The slothful slaves who are not so faithful in the Lord’s commission have an excuse that the Lord is not coming back immediately, that He is delaying His coming (v. 48). As a result, they begin to mistreat fellow believers and partake of the worldly things. Their excuse is that if the Lord would return right now, everything would be solved; they would not have the time to love the world. However, the Lord’s word in Matthew 24 tells us He would not take this kind of excuse. At His coming back He will cut off, or cut asunder, His unfaithful slaves (v. 51). To cut asunder does not mean to cut into pieces. When we were saved, we became attached to Christ, the anointed One (2 Cor. 1:21). Even if we are in a backslidden condition, the Lord will not cut us off. But if we remain unfaithful and slothful, at His coming back He will cut us off from this attachment. He will carry out a cutting asunder between us and Him. We will be cut off from His glorious presence into a place that will be the portion of the hypocrites. The portion of the unbelievers is eternal perdition, but the portion of the slothful slaves is a temporary, dispensational punishment.

　　Instead of making so many telephone calls, use the time to go to contact your next-door neighbor, and give him a rainbow booklet that we have published. If you visited one of your neighbors once every two weeks, continuously, regularly, properly, and with a sincere burden and some prayer, do you not believe this person could be caught by the Lord? We cannot take anything as an excuse. We cannot say that many have been poisoned against us or that our particular area is a place full of Christians. We must ask ourselves how much time we have spent in visiting others with gospel tracts, with the Bible, and with some of the rainbow booklets. If you try this week after week and even day after day, you will see the result. The Bible tells us that the husbandmen, or farmers, should labor with patience, expecting to see the gathering (1 Cor. 9:10; 2 Tim. 2:6). (CWWL, 1985, vol. 5, “The Way to Practice the Lord’s Present Move,” pp. 540-543)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1979, vol. 2, “Basic Lessons on Service,” lsn. 13