1 Thes 5:1-11: How to Be Ready For Christ’s Return
Main Text:
1 Thes 5:1-11 ESV
1 Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. 2 For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 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. 4 But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. 5 For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. 6 So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. 8 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. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.
Big Idea:
Continuing his discourse on Christ’s return, Paul warns the Thessalonians that unbelievers will be caught completely unaware at the return of Christ. He exhorts the Thessalonians to live in such a way as to always be ready for the Lord to appear. As those who have placed their faith in Christ, their love for Jesus gives them a hope that they can ensure they are prepared for the Lord’s coming. How, then, should we live in order to be prepared — like the Thessalonians — for the second coming of Christ? By utilizing the spiritual armor that already belongs to us in Christ, we can exercise our faith, love, and hope to live as to please God until Christ comes again.
Intro:
Halloween is tomorrow, so you know what that means. Christmas decorations will go up in many stores this week! — if they aren’t already! That’s right, only 56 more days to finish your Christmas shopping!
Christmas movies debate — which is your favorite?
Always loved Home Alone
Kevin was initially caught unaware as to Harry and Marv’s plan to rob the McAllister household. But knowing they’ll be coming back, he is able to put a plan in place to thwart the bad guys in their attempt to steal.
Joke: God has given us tools to be prepared for the day of the Lord’s appearance coming like a thief in the night: the paint can of hope, the nail in the tar of faith, and the icy stairs of . . . Just kidding.
What we do see is this principle:
What you believe will happen tomorrow determines how you live today.
5-Minute Nerd-Out
What Do We Know About the Return of Christ?
Context of 1 Thessalonians –
People are suffering persecution at the hands of their fellow citizens The early Church believed, as has every generation since, that Jesus would soon return for them
Because they believed Jesus was coming back, many believers stopped working completely because they believed it didn’t matter how they lived with Jesus coming back soon.
Like we said, what you believe will happen tomorrow determines how you live today.
Paul probably received word from Timothy all this info about the Thessalonians. He probably learned many of them were also very emotional about the death of their loved ones, which is why he mentions grief in 1 Thes 4 – which we covered last week.
So Paul writes to the Thessalonians to encourage them how they should live until Jesus comes back for His Church. The Greek word often used for the return of Christ is “parousia.” While the word is often translated as “coming” it can also mean presence. So it may not just refer to the imminent return of someone, it can also refer to being in the presence of someone.
NT Wright, or Tom Wright — a brilliant theologian who currently serves as the senior research fellow at the University of Oxford — wrote this about the parousia:
On the parousia:
“So when Paul talks of Christians ‘being snatched up among the clouds’, he is again not thinking of a literal vertical ascent. The language here is taken from Daniel 7, where ‘one like a son of man’ goes up on the clouds as he is vindicated by God after his suffering—a wonderful image not least for people like the Thessalonians who were suffering persecution and awaiting God’s vindication.
And their ‘meeting’ with the Lord doesn’t mean they will then be staying in mid-air with him. They are like Roman citizens in a colony, going out to meet the emperor when he pays them a state visit, and then accompanying him back to the city itself”
This is the historical context for the word, parousia. It was often used, even outside of the Bible, to refer to a respected foreign dignitary coming to your town. Because this was an honored guest, the people of the town would often travel outside the city in order to greet the one they wished to honor. They would then form a celebratory processional welcoming the guest to their city.
This is the idea Paul would have in mind when saying we’d be caught up in the air with Christ. We, the believers who make up the Church, would honor Jesus by coming to greet Him. There would then be a celebratory processional as we make our way to the new Heavens and the new Earth.
Tom Wright goes on to say this:
“We may find it more intelligible to speak of Christ’s ‘appearing’—as Paul himself does elsewhere—than his downward ‘descent’. But his point is that we can be confident in God’s future purposes for those Christians who have died. There will be grief, of course; but there is also hope. There will come a day when God will put all wrongs to rights, when all grief will turn to joy. Jesus will be central to that day, which will end with the unveiling of God’s new world. There, those who have already died, and those who are still alive, will both alike be given renewed bodies to serve God joyfully in his new creation.”
This leads us to our passage tonight in 1 Thessalonians 5.
GK Beale writes there are three main sections to be aware of
I’ve reworded them for clarity’s sake, but we’ll see three things:
1- Christ’s return will be unexpected for unbelievers (5:1–3)
2- We can be ready for Christ’s return by being ready to live out God’s Will for us (5:4–7)
3- Godly living and assurance of our salvation through Christ is of great encouragement to true Christians. (5:8–11)
1. Christ’s return will be unexpected for unbelievers (5:1–3)
1 Thes 5:1-3 ESV
1 Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. 2 For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 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.
vs 2, 3
Those in the house not prepared for a thief and who think they have peace and safety will be surprised by Christ’s coming. The reference is to Christ’s coming itself, at which time the ungodly will be surprised by the final judgment inflicted upon them
Shift to a focus on a pregnant woman: She may think she has peace and safety but is sometimes surprised by the onset of labor pains. In this manner, Christ’s appearance will catch people off guard. Too many people, including those who profess the name of Christ, live without due awareness of God in the ordinary decisions of life.
vs. 3 (from Tom Wright)
But the slogan ‘peace and security’ was also one of the comforting phrases that the Roman empire put out, to reassure its inhabitants around the Mediterranean that the famous Pax Romana, or ’Roman peace’, established by Paul’s time for more than half a century, would hold without problems. That is what Paul is really attacking.
Don’t put your hope in the government, don’t put your hope in the military. Yes, we want a strong gov’t and a strong military — but as Christians, that’s never to be our hope. Our hope is always and only in Jesus.
2. We can be ready for Christ’s return by being ready to live out God’s Will for us (5:4–7)
1 Thes 5:4-7 ESV
4 But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.
5 For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. 6 So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night.
vs 5 (from Tom Wright)
For reasons that now become clear, Christians are daytime people, even though the rest of the world is still in the night.
Example of int’l flight and jet lag — our bodies are confused after travel Example: often waking up at 2 or 3am in Ukraine at the beginning of our trips. While it’s still dark outside, my body is telling me it’s day time and I need to get up.
Well, says Paul, here you are in the middle of the world’s night—but the spirit of Jesus within you is telling you it’s already daytime. You are already children of the day, children of light. God’s new world has broken in upon the sad, sleepy, drunken and deadly old world. That’s the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus, and the gift of the spirit—the life of the new world breaking in to the old.
As Christians, we no longer belong to the old world. We belong to the new world in Christ! You are wide awake long before the full sunrise has dawned. Stay awake, then, because this is God’s new reality, and it will shortly dawn upon the whole world.
The main point of 5:5–7 is being alert and self-controlled. This is explained the metaphors of light, darkness, and drunkenness.
Why the metaphor of light?
John 8:12 Jesus calls Himself the Light of the World. What does light do? It brings illumination. Illumination brings revelation.
So Jesus comes to bring illumination in the darkness, revealing what happens in the darkness — the things that should not be.
And then Jesus comes to bring revelation to the world — Paul calls Jesus the image of the invisible God in Colossians 1. Jesus reveals to us the invisible things of God. You want to know what God is like? Look at the God-man, Jesus Christ.
So when Paul calls followers of Jesus “children of the light” there’s a double-meaning. We are identified as being WITH CHRIST, and we are people who live life with a knowledge of God’s revelation of what He calls us to do in life.
GK Beale said this in his commentary on 1 Thessalonians:
“. . . Darkness includes notions of spiritual ignorance . . .” and this leads to people living with disordered desires. We mistreat people in order to benefit ourselves. We prioritize meeting our own needs or filling the emptiness in our own souls by using others, often times at the expense of the relationships that truly matter most.
Remember: What you believe will happen tomorrow determines how you live today.
“The Thessalonians have become enlightened and are able to evaluate Paul’s instructions as being true, so that they are alert “to live in order to please God” because they have become part of the new creation in Christ.”
So Paul is encouraging the Thessalonians, and likewise us!, to live in the light, to live in order to please God because we know that Jesus is coming soon, and we want to be ready for it! Rather than being caught asleep, we are to live with an awakened, an enlightened, and an illuminated mind. All of which is available to us because of Jesus.
But Paul uses a second metaphor.
Like sleepy people, those who are drunk are not alert. If a thief comes into someone’s house who is drunk, the thief can get away with quite a bit before the drunk person sobers up. Paul says one can be spiritually drunk.
GK Beale says it like this:
To be drunk spiritually is to [absorb] too much of the world’s way of looking at things and not enough of the way God views reality. To be intoxicated with the world’s wine is to be numbed to feeling any fear in the present of a coming judgment.
“Awake,” or as other translations might say, “alert,” in 5:6 literally means “watchful” in the original text. So God’s people must pay attention to how they are living so that they do not become morally careless and are not caught off guard when Christ returns. . .
Both watchfulness and soberness are a contrast with the condition of drunkenness in which people are unable to exercise their faculties properly and cause harm to themselves. We are to be watchful and self-controlled because we have already become partakers of the revelatory light in Christ and of the new creation, which empowers us to be careful about how we live. Though darkness is around us, we walk in the light of God’s revelation, which serves as a shining beacon to prevent us from stumbling into potential moral pitfalls lying in our path. Paying attention to such revelation enables the saints to live in a state of moral and spiritual preparedness for Christ’s unexpected return.
Let that sink in. How often do you feel like you fail God? If you’re like me there are so many times where there’s a way you wish you would live, there are decisions you wish you would make. And yet when the time comes you don’t do it. You give in to temptation.
Paul is letting us know that right now we have available to us everything we need to live the way God wants us to live! Because the day of the Lord is coming like a thief in the night and we want to be ready for it!
Tom Wright:
Most people take ordinary and sensible measures to protect against theft; they do not sit in their houses, looking out the window with a gun, waiting for a burglar to come. To do so would paralyze our everyday lives. Christ will come in similar manner as a thief, but our reaction is not to sit around every moment of our lives with a Bible in our hands, looking out our windows, and waiting for him to come at anytime. That would paralyze us. Just as there is an ordinary and sane way to be ready for thieves, so there is a reasonable way to be ever ready for Jesus’ coming.…
Revelation 19:7–8 explains that the church will make itself ready for Christ’s coming by wearing “fine linen, bright and clean,” which is then interpreted to be “the righteous acts of the saints.” To “keep our clothes on” and always to be ready for Christ’s return means that we keep on doing those righteous things that please God.
So how do we keep our spiritual clothes on, as Tom Wright suggests here?
1 Thes 5:8-11
8 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. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.
11 Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.
3. Godly living and assurance of our salvation through Christ is of great
encouragement to true Christians. (5:8–11)
Particular clothing often identifies a person’s profession. Police officers, soldiers, doctors, and mail carriers are all identified by their unique clothing. Moreover, some people could be injured if they did not wear attire appropriate to their profession. For example, a hockey player could get hurt if he wore a doctor’s white coat during a game. Paul argues in the remainder of 5:8 that those who profess Christianity must also possess the clothing suitable to that “profession” or risk being harmed.
The language here is interesting, though. if one has become truly identified with Christ, then one has already put on the armor. The picture is of a soldier, who, after having been clothed with armor, must now be watchful in order to conduct battle and to avoid harm.
Hence, the latter days have begun, and the Thessalonians must be watchful as they wear their armor of faith, love, and hope in order to fight and protect themselves in the midst of end-time trials and conflicts with the realm of darkness.
Without faith, love, and hope God’s people will suffer harm by the ups and downs of life. As “children of light” you have already been clothed with the armor. That is, although Christians have been clothed with the armor of faith, love, and hope in Christ, they need to grow in these virtues and in their identification in Christ.
Paul is encouraging them to become what they already are in Christ and to grow even more in him.
Is that an encouragement to you? It should be! If you’re anything like me there are times where you just feel defeated. Times where everything feels like it is against you. But if you ever feel any faith, any hope, any Christ-like love then it should be an encouragement to you that you are still awakened to the things of God!
Two types of soldiers on the battlefield: the ones totally at peace? They’re dead. The ones battling, struggling, fighting against fear and doubt and struggling to find courage, they’re alive to the battle! So be encouraged and remember what future glory awaits us!
Because what you believe will happen tomorrow determines how you live today.
So the way to be ready for the return of Jesus is to live a life of trust in God and his promises. If we are “uninformed” about what God’s word says and we are not living in close relationship to him and his word, then catastrophic events like the death of one we care for can harm us (4:13). We must love each other by encouraging one another in our faith in order to build one another up in our common hope.
True saints are able to obey God because they have renewed natures enabling them to do so. The explicit connection between being a part of the new age (“children of light”) and being able to obey God’s commandment made in 5:8: But since we belong to the day and light has begun to dawn upon us, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love and hope. The point of these two sections of Scripture is to be self-controlled.
Paul’s point, then, is that the way one should expectantly wait for Christ’s return is not by trying to calculate the time of that return nor by being carelessly unaware of one’s relationship with God but by thinking and living like a genuine Christian, characterized by faith, love, and hope.
For Paul, a righteous lifestyle is the best way to prepare for Jesus’ return, which leads him in 5:9 to reflect on the deeper basis for such a lifestyle.
Paul says in verse 9 that God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation, which will be through our Lord Jesus Christ. Together Jesus’ death and resurrection are the basis of the rescue and salvation of people: he died, receiving God’s wrath for his people, then conquered death through resurrection. Faith (5:8) is the means by which people are able to identify with Christ’s death and resurrection and benefit from his redemptive work.
Therefore, Paul wants to give the Church an awareness of matters pertaining to Christ’s return in order that they know God and his ways and what he expects of them. They do this to achieve the great goal of pleasing God, whether it be in the midst of history or at its very end! We need to pay attention to God’s word in order not to be ignorant of God and his ways, as the world is ignorant. To whatever degree we are uninformed about what the Bible says, then to that degree we are “unclothed”, walking in spiritual darkness and stumbling because we do not have sufficient light shining on our path.
(From NT Wright)
vs. 9-11
He began the letter with the trio of faith, hope and love (1:3), and that is how he draws it now towards its conclusion. Faith and hope are the breastplate, to ward off frontal attacks. The hope of salvation is the helmet, protecting the head itself. Underneath it all, as always in Paul, we find God’s action in Jesus the Messiah. In verse 10 we hear again the basic Christian creed: he died for us and rose again. That is the main defense against all that the dark world can throw at the children of light.
Paul’s main message: hold fast in faith to the gospel message, and you will find in it all the comfort and strength you need.
Remember: What you believe will happen tomorrow determines how you live today.
The Gospel is the very message that gives us hope for the future. Jesus has already told us how it all will end, and like Jack said over and over last week, when that day comes you want to be riding with Jesus.
When we believe Christ is returning for His Church — just as He said He would — it affects how we live today. So put on faith, love, and hope. Be ready to ride with Jesus.