But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the men servants and the maid servants, and to eat and drink and to be drunken; the lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him asunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.—LUKE xii. 45, 46. BUT why with the unbelievers? The man had not disbelieved that he had any Lord at all; he had only believed that his Lord delayed his coming. And why was he to be put with those who do not believe in him at all? This is a very fearful question, friends, for us, when we think how it is the fashion among us now, to believe that our Lord delays His coming.—And surely most of us do believe that? For is it not our notion that, when the Lord Jesus ascended up to heaven, He went away a great distance off, perhaps millions of miles beyond the stars; and that He will not come back again till the last—which, for aught we know, and as we rather expect, may not happen for hundreds or thousands of years to come? Is not that most people’s notion, rich as well as poor? And if that is not believing that our Lord delays His coming, what is? But, you may answer, the Creed says plainly, that He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God. Ah! my friends, those great words of the Creed which you take into your lips every Sunday, mean the very opposite to what most people fancy. They do not say, “The Lord Jesus has left this poor earth to itself and its misery:” but they say, “Lo, He is with you, even to the end of the world.” True, He is ascended into heaven. And how far off is heaven?—for so far off is the Lord Jesus, and no farther. Not so far off, my friends, after all, if you knew where to find it. Truly said the great and good poet, now gone home to his reward: Heaven lies about us in our infancy.