1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Amen. You can be seated. Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. Today, we’ll be looking
at chapter 5 verses 1 through 11. Last week, we looked at the
end of chapter 4 and it pairs with the beginning of chapter
5 of our scripture for today. And it’s sort of the, what happens
when I die passage, where are people who are dead in Christ?
So that’s what we looked at last week. Today, we kind of answer
the question of when is the second coming? And as you all well know,
nobody knows, not all the popular authors, not all the people on
TV. If they tell you they’re lying, because what does Jesus
say? Only the Father knows. Yeah, Jesus is gonna get the
tap on the shoulder one day and say, go, bring your people your
reward. And so we wanna think about,
instead of trying to figure it out, which I guess you can’t,
right? What we should be doing. So hear
God’s word from 1 Thessalonians 5, beginning at verse one. Paul
says to the Thessalonian church and to us, Now concerning the
times of the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything
written to you. For you yourselves are fully
aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the
night. While people are saying there
is peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them
as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness,
brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are
all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the
night or of the darkness. So let us not sleep, as others
do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep,
sleep at night, but those who get drunk are drunk at night.
But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on
the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet, the hope
of salvation. For God has not destined us for
wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,
who died for us, that whether we are awake or asleep, we might
live with him. Therefore, encourage one another
and build one another up just as you are doing. Pray with me. Our Lord, we ask that you would
water the hearts of those who hear your word, that you would
do the work of grace necessary in each of our lives, that you
would call in your people who from of old you have named by
name, whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. We
pray that you would seal and edify those who have faith, that
you would build them up and comfort them in their most holy faith.
And we pray that you would give us the light of faith and in
that you would exalt yourself, but humble sinners and that your
mighty will would be done in each and every one of our lives.
This we ask in the mighty and gracious name of Jesus. Amen.
So every day, I suppose, your alarm goes off, or whatever it
is that wakes you up. And you start your day. You look
in the mirror, you brush your teeth, you get something to eat,
you pour your cup of coffee, you feed the dog, you take your
walk, you look at your calendar, your to-do list. You get it all
figured out, but it’s up and at them and something to do,
somewhere to be. And so you take care of those
needs. Maybe you pack a bag with your purse, your backpack, your
lunch bag, whatever it is you need to leave the house and meet
the day. You’ve got purpose, you’ve got
somewhere to be, something to do, and maybe there’s some contingency,
so you grab an umbrella or a change of clothes. Whatever it is you
do, these are all very important, but do you prepare for the day
spiritually? Do you think through, not just
maybe your daily Bible reading or your devotions or the podcast
you put into your ear or the prayers you make, but do you
think about where we are in this world? What are the times? What
are the seasons? What are the things that we will
meet when we go out of the house and into the world? Paul is calling
us as Christians to be sober. He’s calling us to be awake.
These words are echoed in Peter’s writings, 1 Peter chapter 5.
He says, be awake, be sober minded. The devil is prowling about. And so, yes, it’s good to brush
your hair. It’s good to clean your glasses, pack your lunch.
Get your briefcase. Make sure you take your list
of meds to the doctor. Whatever all the things you must
do every day when you go and do the things you do. But are
you aware? Are you prepared for life in
this world? Are you prepared for the the
wicked ways of the devil and his trickery? Are you prepared
for what may come up in your own flesh, your remnant sin in
you? For Jesus himself has said so,
and now Paul is speaking of it. We live in an evil day. We live in a strange time and
season. We live amidst a crooked and
depraved generation and in the midst of a dark and dying world.
And so we need to live out of second coming truths. We need to live in light of eternity.
We need to live in light of that there is something more. And
what is now is nothing like the not yet, but Lord willing soon
to be. No one knows the day or the hour. Jesus says, not even the son,
only the father. But we do know this. We do know
how God calls us to live in light of the immediate second coming. It could be any moment. It could
be any day. Every generation has thought
it would be in their times. Jesus says we are in the last
days. And so for 2000 years, the Lord
has tarried, but he has said, be ready. Remember the parable
of the lamps, preparing for the bridegroom, keep your lamps filled,
keep your wicks trimmed and be ready for behold, the bridegroom
does come. Well, we know how to live in
light of Jesus coming. We know how to live in light
of eternity. We know that our calling is to
be awake. It’s to be sober. It’s to be
confident in Jesus. And it’s to encourage and build
one another up. These are the truths of this
passage. And so we want to think about
how we ought to put those into practice. Let’s think for a moment
about the times in which we live. Someone has recently said in
a very good article, I think it’s been put into a helpful
book, that we live in a time where, say 30 years ago, the
church was respected. And even if people weren’t Christians,
they went to church because it was a respectable thing to do.
And the public square listened to the church. Well, fast forward
into the 90s, probably mid 90s with the political and cultural
shift, the church was tolerated. You know, Billy Graham still
got to go to political events. That kind of thing. It was tolerated,
but not so much. Now in the last 10, 15 years,
the church is just marginalized. It’s put over here. Y’all keep
to yourselves. Keep your beliefs to yourselves. And so the church
is largely marginalized these days. Christians are marginalized.
And so that’s a thing we need to probably get in our minds
and hearts. We’re about 50, 60, 70 years
past, or Europe is about 50, 60 years ahead of us. And so
if you look at post-Christian Europe, you know, the closing
of churches, cathedrals being turned into mosque and nightclubs
and apartment complexes, or altogether being torn down to make way for
modern civilization, that’s fast coming here. And we thought maybe
it would come in the next 50 years or so, But remember 2020,
how things changed so rapidly or even back up to 2015 with
the codification of homosexual marriage. And then the summer
of 2020, all the unrest, all the COVID issues that popped
up. We live in some very strange
times. And so this is nothing strange for Christians of previous
generations. Perhaps persecution is more so
headed our way. It will be more difficult to
be a Christian in the coming years. And so the younger generations
especially need to firm up and get their feet planted on good,
solid ground for what is coming. But we do live in strange times.
It’s not just that it’s an anti-Christian world. It’s not just that Satan
is on the prowl. It seems to be ramped up a bit. But that’s okay, because the
gospel is mighty and powerful. It gets in us like a two-edged
sword and it shapes us. But the gospel can save sinners,
no matter how wicked and what thick darkness they live in. Now, our passage tells us a little
bit about the times as well. It says, while we Christians
are people of the day, Cultural folks are people of
the night and they live in drunkenness. They live in revelry and they
say peace and security, but there is none. And that they’re going
to be surprised, surprised when the sudden labor pains of the
second coming of Jesus and the judgment that follows or accompanies
lands right in them. And then, What will they do? Well, those are the times we
live in. That’s a brief overview, a brief
look at it. You’ve watched the news, you’re
pretty aware of what’s going on. Well, if that’s the culture,
what’s our position? If that’s the culture and the
times we live in, what’s our position? Our position is that
we are in Jesus Christ. Remember the bulk of the end
of chapter four and the first portion of chapter five that
we’re looking at today, the whole thing is, are we always with
Jesus or not? And when we’re dead, are we with
Jesus? And remember I told you last week about being in Christ
and how the dead rest in Jesus and their graves. We are never
apart from Jesus. We are always with the Lord,
whether it’s, living, whether it’s in the grave or whether
it’s already in heaven or for eternity, forever, we are always
with the Lord. We are never apart from Jesus.
And so we are in Christ Jesus. And because of that, we have
the divine warrior’s breastplate. We have the divine warrior’s
helmet of salvation. And so the Apostle Paul takes
that reference from Ephesians 59 that we read just a little
bit ago and says what the divine warrior had to save Israel, we
now have as we are the church militant making our way to heaven,
the church triumphant. And so our position, our grand
position is to be in Jesus Christ. And we have faith in love and
hope. We have faith in the God who saves us through his son,
Jesus Christ. There’s a reference in this passage
to Jesus who died for us. And so our faith is in the substitutionary
life and death of Jesus. He lived the life that we should
have lived, the life that Adam failed to live, the life of obedience. But our faith is also in the
suffering and the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus. And so we
live in the strength and the gifts and graces of Jesus. That’s
where our faith is. And then he speaks of love. the
love we have for one another. Paul has said a number of times
in this wonderful little book, you Thessalonians love each other
with Christian love, with agape, with phileo, you love each other
as Christians ought to. And he says several times, it’s
evident in the whole region of Macedonia, and it’s evident in
the church at Thessalonica, you all love each other well. But
then there’s the word hope, there’s faith, there’s love, there’s
hope. Hope is in something that is
sure and fixed. Sometimes we say, well, I hope
I win the lottery. You know, as we walk out of Rego Mart,
or wherever you buy your lottery tickets, I’m messing with you,
but we say, well, I hope I win the lottery. You may or may not. What is there, like a one in
a bazillion chances, something like that? But when we say, as
Christians, we hope, it’s not a, well, maybe God will, maybe
he won’t. No, he gives us promises. And
those promises we’re told are yes and amen in Jesus Christ.
And so when God gives us a promise, it is firm, it is fixed, and
it is final, and you can count on it. And so our hope is rooted
in the character and the actions and the blessings and the promises,
the track record, but also the future reliability of God. His
strong arm and mighty hand will save us. And so that is our position.
Well, what’s our guide? Our guide is the scriptures.
While people go after the world systems and the world’s ways,
or they follow the voice of Satan, we listen to the voice of Jesus.
We understand the times. We understand our position in
Jesus, but we understand our marching orders. And so we saturate
our lives with scriptures. I love how our confession of
faith says, sort of the three types of scriptures. There’s
more than this, but it says we should embrace God’s promises.
We should tremble at his threatenings and we should yield obedience
to his commands. And so we look to the scripture
to be our guide. And we look to the scriptures
as they’re read and preached, as they’re taught to us, as the
church makes disciples. We look to the scriptures in
our own private reading or listening. We look to the scriptures to
give us discernment. And that discernment helps us
interpret the times. We look to the scriptures to
help us take every thought captive and make it obedient to Jesus
Christ. We look to the scriptures to help us test the spirits to
see if they are of the Lord or of this world or of the powers
of the Prince of darkness. And so our guide is the scriptures. We’re given a uniform as well.
We’re given the armor. of God himself. Ephesians 6 will
tell us to put on the whole armor of God. And it’ll go through
each of those pieces. We get two pieces here. You get
a handful more. I guess you get a better deal
in Galatians or in Ephesians. But Paul here is saying we get
the breastplate of the divine warrior. We get the helmet of
salvation. Now, remember, When David went
out to fight Goliath, he was given Saul’s armor, but Saul
was little, or David was little, Saul was big. The armor didn’t
work. And I think there’s a bit more
to that. We don’t need the armor of a man. We need the armor of
a divine man, a savior, whose armor has been worn. It has been
battle tested. And when we wear it, when we
lay hold of it, when we lay hold of the salvation, the faith and
the hope and the love and the blessings that we are given because
of our position in Jesus Christ, we have every tool necessary.
And go back to our guide. Our guide is the Bible. And I
believe it’s Peter who says, everything we need for life,
Everything we need for godliness is laid out for us in the scriptures.
Some of it is plain. It is explicit. Do this. Don’t
do that. Be awake. Don’t be asleep. Be
sober minded. Those sorts of things. Those
are commands, but we can also find wisdom in the Bible. I don’t
know if y’all caught it when we were reading Isaiah 59, but
there were some phrases that sounded like the first couple
of chapters of Proverbs. Did y’all catch that? And so
as you read your Bible, as you follow your guidebook, and as
you lay hold of the uniform, the defensive pieces of battle
armament that God gives us, the divine warrior’s own pieces of
armor, we stand more and more ready to discern the times, listen
to the correct voice and live the proper way. And so what’s
the command? What is the summary of what God
tells us through Paul in Thessalonians, the letter to the Thessalonians?
Well, it’s a threefold command. Let us not sleep. Let us keep
awake and then let us be sober. And then a subset of being sober
is using the helmet and the breast piece God gets us. What does
it mean to not be asleep? Well, you know what it is to
doze off. You know what it is to be heavy eyed and you know,
your body just sags and you can’t, you can’t make it. And so you
fall asleep. God has given us, Seven days,
six to work and labor, a day of rest. But every night, there’s
a dying and a rising isn’t there. There’s a being asleep and awake.
There’s a death and a resurrection in our daily cycle of living. And Paul says sleep is for the
night. But for those who are not awake,
as it were, spiritually, they use the night for revelry, for
drunkenness, and they are unaware that Jesus is coming and there
will be a judgment. It’s much like the days of Noah.
Remember for a hundred years, Noah and his sons gathered and
cut and hammered and nailed or whatever, pegged, I don’t know,
and built the ark. And for those hundred years,
what did the people around them do? It’s not a cloud in the sky.
There is no rain coming. There is no judgment coming.
And so the days of Jesus, the days of Noah and our days are
like that. We look to the cross. We look
to the arc of our salvation and people are saying, peace and
security. There is no God. This is a material world that
everything we see came from something. And it morphed into what we see
today. And it’s going to evolve and change more. And there is
no higher power. There is no God who’s involved. This is all
there is. And man is the highest order
of creation. That’s what you hear all around
us. And now the individual, the self has risen to the throne
of this world. And the command here is don’t
be asleep. Like those sleepers, I think
Paul says at the end of Corinthians, O sleepers awake. We need to
be people who are awake. And that’s the second command.
First one is let us not be asleep, unaware spiritually of what’s
going on, but let us keep awake. You know, I don’t know, a couple
of years ago, was it, everybody was telling us you got to be
woke, got to be woke, whatever that means today. I’ve always
taken it to mean just to be aware of social and culture things.
I’m pretty aware of it and it’s terrible. Um, Now it’s become,
you’ve got to accept that ideology or you get marginalized. That’s
really what it’s become. Well, I think Paul was the first,
you know, they stole it from him. He’s saying, be awake, be
aware of the times, but aware of what you are in Christ, what
you have in Christ and what you are commanded to do in Jesus.
So let us keep awake. We need to live during the day
with our eyes open. We need to live during the day
with our hearts. discerning the times. We need
to hate what is evil. We need to hold fast to what
is good. We need to let God define what is true and good and beautiful
and praiseworthy and acceptable. And so we need to not be asleep,
but we need to be awake. The third command is to be sober.
And I think the best way to think of this Say you’re getting up
and you’re doing whatever it is you do to get ready for the
day. And you know, you brush your teeth, you brush your hair,
you do whatever you do. We guys and girls and some of
us have hair, some don’t. We shave, we whatever, all those
things. But we need to get ourselves
ready for the world we’re about to walk out into. And that’s
where the sober mindedness comes in. One of the great theologians
of the Reformation said it’s a spiritual soberness. We’re aware of the world and
everything in it. We’re aware of the effects of
sin, but we’re also aware of Christ and what he’s given us
when we come to him in faith. And we have all the riches of
heaven to furnish and to equip us to live the Christian life,
even the armor of the divine warrior. And so we think of those
things. We are aware of all the true
things. But we are aware of the ultimate
goal, the ultimate end of life, and we’re sober. Now, there’s
a really good distinction that I think we have somewhere in
our bulletin. And it goes something like this. When we enter into
the sanctuary or the fellowshipuary or whatever this is now, a curtain
is drawn at the prelude. And that curtain that is drawn
is a drop, a separation between what is profane and what is sacred. And we need to have in our mind
a distinction that this is a profane world. And sometimes as Christians,
we’re pretty happy, pretty quick to adopt it. We’re pretty happy
with taking the gospel of Jesus and blending it with the American
dream and saying, you know, God wants me happy. No, he wants
you to have joy, right? And that joy may come through
suffering. He doesn’t care about your happiness. He does. You
get the idea. But we’ve wed the gospel with
the American dream. God wants me happy, healthy and
wealthy. That’s the preaching you hear in today’s world. Where’s
the preaching of suffering and thy dross to consume, thy gold
to refine and the heat of the fire and the sliding into home
plate, so to speak, worn out and weary, but in the arms of
Jesus. That’s the reality of the Christian life. Look at the
Apostle Paul. Look at Jesus himself, the way of the master is also
the way of the servant. But as we are sober minded living
this Christian life, we are fully aware of every danger and toil
and snare, but also aware of the grace that will get us safely
home. And so as we get ready for the
day, physically, also spiritually, there’s a weightiness, a separation
in our minds and hearts between the profane and between the sacred. And we began to remember, as
we edge towards the door and grab those things before we walk
out the door, that we are children of the heavenly King, bought
at a great price. And yes, we are marching to Zion,
but we are staying on the narrow path. We’re not, as Bunyan would
say, getting into the trappings of Vanity Fair or into the slough
of Despond or into any of the other dangers that would attract
the Christian away from walking the Christian life. And so as
we walk the Christian life, there’s a final thing that we’re commanded
to do as a church. That’s to encourage one another
in these things. Sounds like last week, doesn’t
it? Encourage one another and resting in the grave in Jesus
and rising one day in Jesus. But today we’re called to encourage
one another. And there’s a little addition
to build each other up in these truths. And what are these truths? These truths are we live in wicked
times where people are asleep and they’re drunk and they say
peace and security. We live in a time where we know
who we are in Jesus, what our marching orders are, the reality
of things around us and above us, but also in us. And we’re
to not be asleep, but to be awake and to be spiritually sober,
putting on the breast piece, of the divine armor, the helmet
of salvation. And all the while as we’re walking
in the throng to heaven, encouraging one another and building one
another up and not losing heart because of the darkness that
is around us. Let’s do pray together. Lord,
we remember that your people of old have always been on the
march and on the go, but you’ve always given them your light,
your pillar of fire by night. and your glory cloud, your presence
by day. And we thank you that we have
that in Jesus. We thank you that we have that
in the inward gifts and graces and presence and indwelling of
the Holy Spirit. And Lord, while we live in strange
times, help us to be confident, secure, intentional, prepared,
and help us to march with a sure and steady foot to the heavenly
city and to gather a few people along with us who see the gifts
and graces of Jesus and want to march with us to that place
where we will behold him forever, worshiping him and giving him
praise for the redemption that is ours through his obedience
and his blood sacrifice. Help us now to think on these
things and to live out of these things, we pray in Jesus’ mighty
name, amen. We want to sing to God a song
of the church militant soldiers of Christ arise, so let’s stand
and sing 575.