What Jesus’s Return Means for Everyday Life


Sermon by Gabe Fluhrer on February 22, 2016 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

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As you’re being seated, please turn with me in your Bibles to Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. You’ll find our passage that we’re studying this evening on pages 987 and 988 if you’re using a pew Bible, 987 and 988. We’ll be studying 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verses 1 through 11. And before we hear God’s Word, let us go to Him in prayer.

 

Lord, You are the One who hides us in the depths of Your love and we come this evening humbled by Your grace and in great need of the Holy Spirit to illumine the Word He inspired. And so we ask that You would do that, that we might grow in our love for You and in our service to this world You have placed us in. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

 

1 Thessalonians chapter 5, beginning at verse 1. This is God’s holy, inspired, and therefore inerrant Word:

 

“Now concerning the times and 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 then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and 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 so 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.”

 

Thus ends the reading of God’s holy Word. May He add His blessing to it!

 

It became known later as New England’s “Dark Day,” and it appears that on May 19, 1780, a forest fire, a thick fog, and an unusual cloud cover converged over most of New England to create a darkness that began right after sun-up and continued the whole day. The house of representatives was meeting in Hartford, Connecticut, and many of the representatives began glancing out the windows because it was too dark to see to continue their business for the morning. Many of them feared that the end of the world had come and began to say, “Adjourn this meeting immediately!” to the speaker of the house, Colonel Abraham Davenport. Well Colonel Davenport knew his Bible well and here’s what he said when asked to adjourn:  “The Day of Judgment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty, therefore, bring candles.” Well today with the end-times mania at an all-time high, many people want to withdraw from everyday life. I remember when I was in high school and not a Christian, I had a friend who had become a Christian who confidently assured me back in the mid-90s that he would never live long enough to see a wife or children because the Lord would return any day now. But Colonel Davenport’s advice simply echoes what Paul tells us here in this text this evening. When Christ returns, we are called to be found living for Him, not withdrawing from the world.

 

And as we come to the conclusion of this study of 1 Thessalonians, we’ve spoken and thought about living in the last days, the time between the two comings of Jesus, His first and His second coming. And last time we reached kind of the apex section of this epistle where Paul begins giving practical instructions on what the return of Jesus means for our grief, how we look at death, how we do grief, and tonight he’s similarly, he takes the second coming of Jesus and says, “Now here’s what it means for everyday life!” That’s the focus of the passage here before us this evening. And the main point to what Paul writes here is very simply this – we learn what manner of life we ought to lead while we wait for Jesus’ sudden return. We learn what manner of life we ought to lead while we wait for Jesus’ sudden return. And we’ll look at this text under three headings.

 

  1. We Will Wait for Jesus’ Return

 

In the first place, we will wait for Jesus’ return. We will wait for Jesus’ return, in verses 1 through 3. Paul begins there by saying, “Now concerning the times and 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.” Paul begins this section the same way he did in chapter 4 and verse 9. He says, “You have no need of anything written to you,” and then he proceeds to write about it. It’s kind of like our modern day way of saying, “It goes without saying,” and without fail, whenever we say that, we then go to say what it goes without saying. It’s a rhetorical device that Paul is using to remind them of the things he’s already instructed them about.

 

When Will Jesus Come Back?

And he says here in very definitive terms, answering the age-old question, “When will Jesus come back?” So if you’ve wondered that for your whole life, if you’ve read books that have confidently predicted the date, here’s the answer, here’s what you’ve been waiting for, here’s what prophecy gurus have written about and sold millions of books and made very big charts about. Here’s Paul’s answer! When is Jesus coming back? What’s the date? He says nobody knows! It will come like a thief in the night. “You have no need for me to write to you about times and seasons because you Thessalonians, you early Christian believers got this right off the bat. You understood that at the return of Jesus no date will be given because Paul is following what our Lord Himself said in Matthew 24:26. Here’s what Jesus Himself said of that. “But of that day or hour, no one knows.” So when somebody says to you, “I know for certain the date that Jesus is coming back,” you can safely ignore them.

 

The Bible tells us we will never know the date, and that’s why Paul uses these two metaphors to describe to us what the return of the Lord will be like. Did you see what he did there? He said it will be like a thief in the night or like a pregnant woman going into labor. Now both of those are still applicable today, aren’t they? Those aren’t outmoded. Think about it! If you knew what hour your house was going to be broken into, you would have made sure you were there to defend your house. But that’s what makes thievery so cunning. That’s why it’s so difficult to defend against it. It happens when we least expect it! And even with all our modern medical advances, no one still quite knows when a woman’s going to go into labor. We’ve all had that experience of thinking of a friend or maybe even our wives were having a baby and you’re waiting and you’re waiting and it’s past the due date and you wonder when it’s going to happen. And Paul’s point of using both of these metaphors is very simple. He says, “Think about them. Both can occur at any time and both generally happen when we least expect it.” And he says that makes them apt metaphors to describe for us what the return of Jesus will be like.

 

Are you ready to meet Him?

And notice what else he adds there in verse 3. “People will be saying, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come from which they will not escape.” Did you see that strong language Paul uses here? Describing the return of the Lord he says for a lot of people it’s not going to be a happy day; it’s going to be a day of sudden destruction and judgment, and it will happen when you least expect it. People will be, as Jesus said, marrying and giving in marriage. People will be getting ready to hit “send” on an email to work perhaps. People will be getting ready for school, going through their normal morning routines, and then Jesus comes back. And that’s why Paul writes this here. There’s a note of holy urgency to this text, isn’t there? There’s a note of, “Are you ready to meet Him?” That’s the question that all of us have to settle here tonight before we leave.

 

And let me say this, you may have sat on the fence for years about Christianity. Let me speak directly to you covenant children who sit here tonight who have yet to profess faith in Jesus. Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to come to the Lord. And maybe you attend here regularly and you’ve never gotten off that fence. Jesus tells us very simply and plainly there are two and only two kinds of people in the world and Paul just echoes Jesus here. There’s the saved and the lost. We don’t like that today. We don’t like one or two choices. But the Bible is so clear on this point. You’re either with Jesus or against Him, and if you’re against Him, even if you admire Him and you say He’s a great guy, He’s a great moral teacher, He never came to give that as an option for us. He never came and said, “Boy I hope people really admire My moral teaching.” He came and said, “You must follow Me wholeheartedly, or not at all.” And so what this text calls for tonight is an immediate decision on your part to believe the Gospel because it could happen at any moment. And we have to ask ourselves, especially as good Presbyterians, “Do we really believe that? Do we really believe that Jesus could come at any moment? Do we even think about it in the course of a normal week?” If you’re anything like me, as I was studying this text this week for the multitude of other things going on, I realized how long it had been since I’d thought about Jesus coming back. We get lulled to sleep; Paul’s going to talk about that more in a moment. But here’s the question tonight! Have you believed and repented? Have you trusted in Jesus alone to save you from your sins so that this day will not catch you like a thief in the night bringing you to utter ruin for eternity? Paul is anxious for everybody here to know for certain that you are saved. Isn’t that amazing? The Gospel tells you that you can leave here tonight and know for sure that when Jesus returns you’ll be with Him forever. That’s great news, and only the Gospel can give it to you. So we’ll wait for Jesus’ return. It can happen at any moment.

 

  1. What to do while we wait for Jesus’ return.

 

But then Paul, in verses 4 through 8, tells us what to do while we wait for Jesus’ return. What to do while we wait for Jesus’ return. Look at verse 4. “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 then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and 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.” So Paul begins in this section then saying, after he said, “You’re going to wait. It’s going to happen when we don’t expect it” – “What do you do in the meantime?” Paul and Jesus and everybody in the New Testament, none of them say, “Withdraw from the world and wait for an any-moment rapture.” They say, “Get on about your life and be ready.” That’s the Biblical teaching on what to do while we wait in a nutshell.

 

Remember Your Identity

And Paul says here, he says first of all, “Remember your identity.” That is what he writes there. “You are not in darkness brothers; you are of the light.” In the Bible, light is a metaphor for God, so to be a child of the light, to be a child of day as Paul uses these metaphors here, means to be somebody who belongs to God. And notice again the sharp contrast he draws. You’re either a child of the day or you’re living in darkness. And darkness simply refers here to that world system opposed to God. Two and only two options – either with Jesus as a child of light, child of the day, or opposed to Him as a child of darkness. He says, “This is what you are. Be reminded of who you are in Jesus. You belong to Him. You should not be afraid.”

 

Stay Awake Spiritually

Then he says there after he reminds them of who they are, he says in verse 6, “Stay awake spiritually; stay sober spiritually.” He uses again metaphors – sleepiness and drunkenness. Why does he use these metaphors? He’s got a point! Well think about what happens when you first wake up. There’s a rule in our household that nothing of any importance gets discussed before the first cup of coffee, for very good reasons! Neither one of us are coherent before that first cup of coffee! And think about somebody who’s drunk! They’ve lost all control of their senses, they stumble around blindly and say stupid things, and Paul says, using those metaphors he says, “Think about how the world affects you.” And if you want to know one of the best ways to read the book of Revelation, this is it. John is writing a pastor’s letter in the book of Revelation saying to them, “Beware of the world.” Paul is saying the same thing here. He’s saying, “The world can lull you to sleep and make you feel like a drunken person. You can become drunk on the idols of the world and spiritually sleepy, leading to being unprepared for when Jesus returns.”

 

Now notice what Paul has done here in these verses. In the previous section he taught us about those who were physically asleep, dead, but spiritually awake, with Jesus forever. This section he reverses it. He teaches us about those who are physically awake but spiritually asleep. They’ve been lulled to sleep by the world and its idols. And if you don’t think this is a temptation for you or for me, let us assure you it’s a very real, everyday battle that we are all fighting, every one of us here. There’s always the pull to have more of the world and less of God every single day, especially here in the prosperous West where there is so much around us that makes us forget about spiritual things. We are being lulled to sleep, becoming drunk on the idols of the world, and forgetting the spiritual mission on which God has sent us in this world – to be salt and light, to be vital, living Christians among a dark and dying world. That’s Paul’s point!

 

Be Protected by Faith and Love

And what does he tell us to do? He says, “We’re not like that. Those who do these things,” and he uses the metaphor again and says, “The world’s going to go its own way. It’s in darkness; it’s in drunkenness. Don’t be like that.” And then what does he say to do? “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.” Now if you’ve read anything in the New Testament you know that Paul was a good Jew before he became a Christian. So therefore he’s ransacking the Old Testament to draw on imagery to teach us how to live in the last days. Specifically, he’s quoting Isaiah 59 and verse 17 right here. Isaiah 59 and verse 17 is in the background of this verse and it’s fascinating – we’ll come back to that in a moment. Isaiah describes God as this warrior who puts on this breastplate and this helmet. He says, “This is what Yahweh is like.” Paul picks up on that language and says, “You must be like that, brothers and sisters.” And the armor here is specific. Notice what he says there! He says we belong to the day, “having put on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of hope.” Faith, hope, and love – Paul’s favorite three Christian virtues. And what does a breastplate do? He’s thinking of an ancient warrior. It protects your heart. It protects a vital organ. What do faith and love have to do with that? If you want to stay spiritually awake and spiritually sober, Paul says your heart has to be protected by faith and love. You have to have a faith in the truth of the Gospel that is working itself out as we saw a few weeks ago in loving one another in the body of Jesus and those outside. That’s how we guard against spiritual drowsiness and worldliness that poisons us and makes us drunk.

 

Have Hope for a Helmet

And then he says you have for a helmet, hope. What kind of hope is Paul talking about? The only kind of hope that there is that is certain – the hope of the Gospel. The hope that Paul is speaking here is not the hope-so attitude that so many of us use that word in reference to today. “What time are you going to be home from work, honey?” “Well I hope I’ll be home around 5.” What does that mean? “Well I probably won’t be, but I’m going to try.” That is not how the New Testament uses that word. It uses it as a confident expectation of something that is absolutely going to happen and has just not happened yet. And Paul says that’s how we guard our minds. We have that hope of Gospel truth protecting our minds against the lies of the world. We must have our minds protected. We’ll go back to that again in a moment.

 

  1. Why we will Wait for Jesus’ Return

 

In the last place, the third thing we see here is why, why we will wait for Jesus’ return, beginning at verse 9. “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so 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.” You see, the question now is this – “If this is all true Paul, if this is such a danger to become spiritually drowsy, to become spiritually drunk on the idols of the world, what hope do we have? You speak about hope, Paul, but how are we going to know if we’ll make it to the end?” And if you’ve been a Christian for any time at all, there has come a point or there will come a point when you will feel like giving up, when you will feel like cashing your chips in and saying, “This is not worth it.” And people do that and walk away. How do we know we’ll make it? Why will we wait for Jesus’ return?

 

Election

Paul gives three simple reasons here. Verse 9 – election. God has not destined us for wrath. Do you want to know how practical the doctrine of election is for the Apostle Paul? When he wants to give pastoral comfort, he reaches in his grab-bag of theology and says, “This – election. You were chosen by God. It’s His doing. The only reason any of us cross the finish line is because it’s all of grace from start to finish.” He brings us right back to grace here and says the reason we will wait in expectation as the world goes on, as things seem to get worse, is because God chose us. We didn’t choose Him! He came and chose us and destined us for salvation. It is as sure, as certain, as who God is Himself. That’s what God always does! When He wants to reassure His people He says, “If you want to know how sure your salvation is, look at My holy, faithful character to you. That’s how sure and certain it is.”

 

Atonement

The next thing he says after election – verse 10, “our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us.” He goes right to the atonement. Why will we make it? Why will we persevere in the last days between the comings of Christ? Because Jesus atoned for our sins. That means that your everyday life must be seen through the lens of atonement, through the lens of Jesus’ perfect sacrifice for us on that cross two thousand years ago to remove all our sin, all our guilt, so that we have nothing to fear when He returns; nothing. We’ll be with Him forever! We ought to confidently expect the return of Jesus precisely for that reason because we’ll know we’ll be with Him. There’s never a shadow of a doubt for the apostle because of Jesus, because of what He did on the cross for us. My friends, do you love the cross of Jesus? Isn’t it an amazing reality? The sinless Son of God taking upon Himself your sin and my sin so that whether we are awake, Paul says, alive, or asleep, dead, we have the hope of resurrection because of Christ’s atonement.

 

Encouragement

And then Paul concludes here where he did in verse 18 of chapter 4. He says, “Encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing.” Notice what he’s said here! He says a healthy body of believers is one that is theologically and doctrinally informed, but they’re not just that. So often in our circles we can be just that. Paul says that doctrine that informs our life inevitably, and without fail, leads to a changed life that happens corporately and together. It happens among a body of believers. A healthy body of believers takes the great truths of the Gospel and uses them to encourage one another, to build one another up. Paul says they were already doing this. And this only happens in the church. We’re not going to get that from our friends who aren’t believers because they don’t share our hope; they don’t share our worldview. The only place we can, when we feel like giving up, go, or the only place we ought to be able to go when we feel like giving up, when we feel like this is too much to wait for Jesus, is the church where we find encouragement and building up of one another through the truth of the Gospel.

 

What do we do with all this? We’ve said Paul always applies the truth. Let me say two things by way of application. First, I mentioned that Paul quotes Isaiah 59:17 and he says, Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, is this divine warrior who puts on this armor. And then he applies it to believers. The question for us is, “How can he do that?” And the answer is – Jesus. He’s the divine heavenly warrior. It’s interesting in the Greek tenses here that Paul uses, it speaks of a past completed action – You’ve put this armor on! When did we put that armor on? The moment we became united by faith and by faith alone to Jesus Christ. He’s the one who’s fought that battle in our place. He’s the divine heavenly warrior Isaiah prophesied who came into space and time to put that armor on in our place, to make sure that faith, hope, and love will always be certain for His people. He’s that divine heavenly warrior! He’s the one we look to when we wonder if the armor is enough. Paul says it absolutely is enough because it was prophesied in the Old Testament, and fulfilled by Jesus Himself in the New Testament.

 

Become What you Already are in Jesus

So here’s Paul’s command to us! Without fail in all of his letters he says, “Become what you are. You are this, you’ve put on the armor, you have it; now become it!” And we want to say, “Which one is it, Paul?” And he says, “Yes! It’s both! You are this and God is bringing you to become this, and therefore you must become what you already are in Jesus.” Friends, there’s nowhere else in the world that teaches that, nowhere. Nowhere says Jesus did it all and now we simply are guided by the Holy Spirit as we walk in obedience to God, that that’s God’s doing from start to finish. No, everything else says you’ve got to earn that armor. You’ve got to show yourself worthy. Only the Gospel says, “Jesus is worthy and therefore you’re wearing the armor already.”

 

Think Biblically

So what does it look like to do everyday life while we wait? First, think Biblically! The urgent need for the church today is for us to think Biblically. The only way to stay awake, to stay spiritually sober, is to daily put yourself under God’s Word. And when you think about it, it’s very simple in one sense, the Christian life, right? Not easy but simple to understand – read your Bible, pray, stay spiritually awake and alert as the Word informs you everyday renewing your mind. Now if we’re not in the Word, if we’re not having our minds constantly adjusted by the truth of God’s Word, we will fail; all of us. None of us is strong enough to resist the pull of the world. And friends, it is magnetic, is it not? Haven’t you felt that this week? Boy it seems so much easier to not be a Christian, to not have unpopular opinions and viewpoints and say things like, “Jesus alone is right and the only way to heaven.” And it seems so much easier to run into the world’s ways. The only antidote is to think Biblically, to have the Scriptures saturate our minds, to study it for ourselves and to put ourselves under it at every turn.

 

Watch Daily

Second, watch daily! Think Biblically; watch daily! That’s what we are to do. What is Biblical watchfulness? It doesn’t mean you’re looking out your window for the return of Jesus every day and not doing anything else. Biblical watchfulness rather refers to the fact that you are on guard 24/7. Every song, every advertisement, every TV show, every movie gets run through that Biblical grid so that we can understand what’s being sold to us. I think many Christians would be fascinated to learn that George Lucas was very candid in 1984 when asked; “What he made the Star Wars movies for?” What was the purpose? He said very clearly, “To introduce Buddhism to the West.” The force, all of that is all Buddhist teaching, very, very common Buddhist teaching. It doesn’t mean you can’t watch Star Wars. It does mean you understand, especially if you’re watching it with your children when they say things like, “Only Siths deal in absolutes.” That goes against all Biblical teaching. We run that through a grid! We think Biblically and take every thought captive, and see where we’re being sold the bill of goods in our day to day life. We never get to take a break, that’s why we have to have armor on, that’s why we have to go to Jesus daily for strength. We’ll dry up without Him, without the Spirit’s work in our lives.

 

Encourage Constantly

Last thing – encourage constantly! Think Biblically, watch daily, encourage constantly. One of the ways, if not the main way we become Biblically watchful, is by coming and gathering here together. Remember we talked a few weeks ago, we need each other desperately. We need, when we come together, not in a cultish way, but as we come together and the Spirit works in the church, and we begin to encourage one another with the Gospel, things will change. This is a little truth outpost in a world that pulls us away from the truth. And only the church can give us that. We ought to be those who use our speech to encourage one another because the church is the place where real life happens. It is a place to escape the lies of the world and see reality for what it really is. Only here, only under the preaching of the Word, Christ calls us to be those who encourage one another with the truths of the Gospel.

 

Why does this all matter? What’s at stake? Consider the case of William Miller! Millerites, a cult that arose in the mid-1800s. William Miller was born in the early 1800s and was converted during the great revival times in the northeast. And if you know anything about those revivals, they were not theologically very sound. They were anti-Calvinist, anti-Reformed; they believed in the unfettered exercise of man’s free will and William Miller bought it all. Well a few months after his conversion, he began to teach after reading the book of Daniel with no training whatsoever, that Christ would come back in either 1843 or 1844. He was eloquent, he was bright, he was young, he was dashing, he was a good speaker – people began to listen. Finally, he settled on one date, October 22, 1844. Now then the financial panic set in, in 1839, and even more people began to follow Miller. They were absolutely certain his date was right. And on the dawn of October 22, 1844, many people in New York, in New England, Massachusetts, stood on mountaintops, high hilltops, some went to cemeteries in hopes of anxiously awaiting to see their loved ones raised from the dead, and the day dawned and it got to be noon, it got to be 3 o’clock, it got to be 4 o’clock, and it got to be midnight, and October 22, 1844 came and went. And cynicism set in, in that region. It was after that time that the northeast began to be known as the “burned over district,” where there was little influence of Christian culture, there was little Gospel true revival going on, and a large part attributed to what became known as “the great disappointment.”

 

And if you’ve ever wondered about these things, you hear this even today, people giving dates and times, the one thing they have in common is they’ve all been wrong. And therefore, there’s been many great disappointments throughout church history, but we have a hope according to Paul that will never disappoint. So don’t worry about what day Jesus is coming back. Instead, listen to what Paul says here and live as children of the day until that great day in which we will not be disappointed as we wait for Jesus, our Savior. Let’s pray!

 

Father, thank You so much for Your Word which teaches us truth about what’s happening next. Help us to wait patiently, to think Biblically, to encourage constantly, and to watch daily. We ask this all in Jesus’ mighty name, amen.

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