The 911 Terrorist attacks, the tsunami, more hurricanes in one season then ever before, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and Rita, the Pakistani earthquake, the mudslides in Mexico, fires in California, floods in Bangladesh and China, the war in Iraq, the Asian Bird flu, hundreds of thousands people killed. These are the signs of our times and to many they are the signs of Christ’s second coming. Books on the prophecies and predictions of the end of times are soaring off the book shelves. A search on Google on the words “end of times prophecies brings up 2 million hits. People are lamenting the end of the world looking at the events of our time touting them as the signs. If I have heard it once I have heard it a million times, “The signs are there; people better get ready because Christ is coming back soon.”
And yet, Christ himself said he did not know when this time would come. In Matthew he said there will be wars and rumors of wars, there will be famine and earthquakes that this would be the beginning of the end but they would not be the proof or indicator of the imminent time. In fact he said it would be like in the time of Noah, Matt 24:44 But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
The second coming of Christ will be a surprise to everyone. There won’t be any big fan fair or catastrophic event to announce it. It will come while people are eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, when they are in the field or grinding meal. It will come in the normalcy of the day – we should be more concerned that Christ is coming when nothing is happening then when there are natural disasters and wars happening.
Like the people of Thessalonica we are confused about the end of times. So Paul wrote to the Thessalonians and us to correct our misconceptions. He says it is certain Christ will come and for us as Christians, “children of the light” it will be no surprise when he does come but he says there is more useful things to be doing right now then worrying about when this will happen.
He says first and foremost you need to wake up, that we shouldn’t be sleeping
• Now I would be the first to tell you sleep is a good thing, in fact I need more sleep than I am getting but sleep at the wrong time is life threatening. You don’t want to fall asleep at the wheel, you don’t want to all asleep in the tanning bed, or in the bath tub, running machinery while on the third, shift, in a deer stand we understand that but when it comes to our faith- worse than any of those things is falling asleep in faith
• Paul is talking about having dull and listless faith
• Anglican Bishop Michael Marshall (in American Magazine) once said, “Many so called believers have accepted a “decaffeinated” Christianity. It promises not to keep you awake at night.”
• We have become a society of spiritual sleepwalkers – we claim spirituality, we claim to be ‘children of light’ but we live like we are in darkness. We have been lulled into a sense of stupor. There is no evidence, no proof that we are in the light, we have become careless with our faith and we do things the things of darkness. We live a life of moral laxity and complacency. We have indulged ourselves in a life of spiritual sloth and idleness.
• We have become drunks – drunk with pride, passion, sexual excesses, debaucheries, self conceit, and self gratification. A person who is drunk is out of control and inattentive, indulges in excesses.
• Our faith and obedience to God has taken second, third, fourth or fifth place in our life.
• We are more concerned about our feelings, our wants, needs or our desires than about God. We blame others for a spiritual sleep– the church is just full of hypocrites, I don’t like the preacher, I don’t like what they say, or how they spend the money.
• True wakefulness is based on insight to God, seeing God and his light. It isn’t based on others.
• Being in church, studying and learning scripture is about learning about God
• You can’t sleep in the presence of the Holy Spirit
Be sober
• Not alcohol – to be calm and collect, temperate, of sound mind, curbing one’s passions, demonstrating self control.
• Reject emotional “escapes” and accept responsibility for our actions
• Keep in check self destructive behaviors like addiction, obsessive ness, and emotional outbursts
• Eliminate the need to be manipulative, or overly dependent upon others, or intimating or trying to fix others instead of yourself
• Instead demonstrate and reflect a true desire to grow and mature in Christ
• Fully trusting Him
Be armored with faith, love and hope
FAITH
• Faith, hope and love are a unit, they are the things that will protect you from sleeping and being drunk on darkness. Where there is true faith, love follows and hope is demonstrated.
• Fiery faith – consuming faith, everything else pales, disappears in light of it. For Faith isn’t just believing – it is realizes and accepting the fact that the eye of God is always upon us. That he truly sees everything. When you are tempted to live a life of drunkedness of the dark – ask yourself would you be behaving this way if God were standing there, if you are tempted by ….. ask yourself would you be doing this if God were standing here. Think of the worse moment of your, when you were at your worse, would you have wanted God seeing you. If you had stopped to realize that God was watching you would you have acted that way.
• To put on faith is present tense it means to continually, always put it on. To do everything in faith, in the presence of God, as God would have it, in obedience to him. Doing what he would have us to do no matter what
• When we live in faith we don’t understand everything and we struggle with questions that we will neer be able to answer but our faith covers it
LOVE – hearts inflamed with love, burning love, love of God and others
• Love is the first action, it is the control of faith
• It keeps faith from becoming fanaticism – terrorist
• It covers all relationships, stresses and divisions – and should bind them up – so that love is the controlling factor. So what is do is not out of anger, bitterness, revenge but out of love.
HOPE
• Hope is grounded in Christ’s atonement – what he did for us
• Confidence in his promises
• Hope that one day when the second coming comes – you will be with him – you don’t have to fear Armageddon or the end of times, you don’t have to work about, let your mind be consumed by its coming because you have on the helmet of hope of salvation
• Hope isn’t something might happen- think it might, playing the odds but it is expectancy of what will happen Hope is that which is anticipated and looked for.
• Not fear or dread but the joyous anticipation of that which will happen – the Second of Coming Christ
And then Paul says -- Here’s the proof of whether you are wearing the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of hope
• Encouraging and building up each other – in the church. (love covers taking care of others- mission and ministry) Is there proof in your life? Is there more episodes of you speaking highly of others in the church, lifting them up and encouraging them or more proof of you tearing them down, speaking ill of them, cutting them down, criticizing them, blaming them. Do your actions prove you are a child of the light or that you are living in the darkness?
Several years ago Johnny Carson had Billy Graham as a guest on his show. At one point there was a lull in the conversation and Johnny said, "You know what Billy, I bet if Jesus ever came back to earth, I bet we’d do him in again!" Billy Graham leaned forward in his seat, and said, "In the Bible we read that Jesus predicted that He would return to earth again. But the first time He came in love, the next time, He’ll come in power-no one will DO Him in!" Knowing that He is coming is more important than when He is coming.
Wake up and Be prepared for his coming – Be sober, Be armored with the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of hope. Be encouraging and building up others and you will have no reason to fear or wonder about the second coming of Christ.
Police got a call one morning from Dennis Quigly, the owner of a motor home. Dennis had been inside his motor home when he heard weird noises from outside. Apparently, a thief was trying to siphon gas from his vehicle. (Siphoning is when you transport liquid from one place to another, usually using a rubber hose.) You gotta suck on the hose to get the liquid moving, sometimes getting a mouthful. This thief sure got a mouthful - of sewage! He’d sucked from the wrong tank. Police found vomit on the ground beside a young man who was curled up in a ball. No charges were pressed cuz Dennis thought the dumb thief had suffered enough
Self-control is a set of behaviors which:
Accepts the reality that the only thing in life which you can successfully change and control is yourself.
Keeps in check all self-destructive, addictive, obsessive, compulsive, irrational, and unacceptable behaviors.
Gives you a sense of personal mastery, autonomy, and competency over your own life.
Is under your control and power to direct and orchestrate with no need for interference or manipulation from others.
Makes you the master of your own destiny because it keeps in check those barriers and obstacles which are a threat to your overall success in life.
Is a middle ground between perfectionism and laxity in self care.
Results in your life having a balance and focus by helping you to cope with new challenges in life as they come.
Helps you to keep your over-emotional responses in check or moderation.
Helps you to open yourself up from nonfeeling or pulled-in emotions so that you can have a healthy emotional life.
Is the foundation for healthy coping and contributes to your accepting personal responsibility for your life.
Keeps your life in moderation, helping you to avoid extremes in any direction.
Is the focus of the efforts to let go of the uncontrollables and unchangeables in your life so that you can concentrate on yourself.
Eliminates the need for you to be manipulative, helpless, fixing others, intimidating, overdependent or a caretaker of others.
Helps you to be detached from others and to keep your relationships in a healthy balance of give and take.
Reflects your inner desire to grow up into a mature, responsible adult.
In San Francisco, a man, wanting to rob a downtown Bank of America, walked into a local branch and wrote, "this iz a stikkup. Put all your muny in this bag."
While standing in line, waiting to give his note to the teller, he began to worry that someone had seen him write the note and that they might call the police before he even reached the teller window. So he left the Bank of America and crossed the street to Wells Fargo.
After waiting a few minutes in line, he handed his note to the Wells Fargo teller. She read it, noticing all of his spelling errors. She quickly surmised that he wasn’t the brightest light in the harbor.
Then she told him that she could not accept his stickup note because it was written on a Bank of America deposit slip and that he would either have to fill out a Wells Fargo deposit slip or go back to Bank of America.
Looking somewhat defeated, the man said "OK" and left. The Wells Fargo teller then called the police who arrested the man a few minutes later, as he was waiting in line back at Bank of America.
It’s strange that the same thing happens to us spiritually. When we first come to know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we realize that God has deposited something very valuable in our lives and that we should protect it at all costs. We realize immediately, that there are somethings that we need to avoid, and other things that we need to plunge right into if we are to become what God has for us.
God imparts to us His word that can produce all kinds of changes in the way we live, in the way we see things, in the way we react toward others. It shows us how to avoid a lot of pain and hurt in life. And at first we value it, because we know the key to having a life worth living is wrapped up in those words. Our spirits which were once dead in sin, are now alive and responding to the word of God and people see a change, and we feel a change.
Only we forget, that somebody is not happy with the way we’ve chosen to live. The Bible says that Satan is a thief and it is his intent to steal that which God puts in our hearts. In the parable of the farmer planting seeds, there were some seeds that fell on hard ground, and immediately the birds of the air came and ate them up. Jesus said, " those seeds are like those who hear the word of God and do not understand it, and the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their hearts."
Satan steals from us every time we come to church or Bible study or pick up the scriptures to read. The Spirit of God convicts our hearts to do, or to not do something and before we can get the change in place, the devil has removed the thought from our minds and convinced us that God never said such and such a thing.
The devil is a good thief. He watches us closely to learn our weaknesses. He knows what our schedules are. He looks carefully to see where we place our treasures. He’s patient, in that he does not feel as though if he doesn’t break in and get your spirit today, it will forever be lost to him. Just like I stopped locking my car, he knows that we will start leaving things unlocked in our spiritual lives that will make it that much easier for him to come in and get what he wants.
Remember a good thief is hard to detect. It’s not hard to detect Satan, if we’re willing to follow God at any cost. If we’re not willing to follow at any cost, we compromise by calling the things of Satan the things of God and refuse to admit, the negative impact they have on our spiritual lives. They are like the seeds which were sown by the farmer which fell in among the weeds. The weeds choked the plants as they grew thereby causing them to produce no fruit. We need to examine ourselves individually and as a church and ask what is it that is choking the fruit that God wants to produce in our midst.
see, you can see his steps before he has the chance to sabotage you, if you want to. All you have to do before you react is to ask, is this going to lead me closer to God if I respond in this matter. Is what I’m about to do clearly against what it written in the word of God? These two questions will eliminate about 95% of the devils trap. The devil played his whole hand with Eve. "Did God say you couldn’t, if he did He was lying?", "You will have a good time if you do, and nothing bad will happen."
Now some of us would like to know the time that all of this is going to happen so that we can be ready for it. The thing about the Master Thief, is that no one knows when he’s coming. He’s just served notice that He is coming. He’s been about as patient at this thing as you can be. Now some are saying, "we’ve been hearing about Jesus coming for the longest, if he was really coming, he’d be here by now." The only reason that Jesus has not shown up is that He loves us, and doesn’t want to see all of us who are on our way to hell, to end up in hell.
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief.
Everybody is going to be convinced that today is not the day that the robbery is going to take place
The only way that you can become unproductive for Jesus Christ is to make the decision to just go to sleep and leave everything in God’s hands. God you change me if you want something changed. It doesn’t work that way. God told us to put on and to put off. He’s given us the power to change, but He’s not going to force us to do it. If we choose to go back to sleep, we pay the price.
He says there will be some who will lull you into a sense of stupor saying: Peace and safety when destruction comes.
For the Christian, we will welcome the coming of the Lord, while those who have rejected Jesus will fear the day.
• I always looked forward to my father coming home from work, UNLESS I was in trouble, then I dreaded it!
Almighty God,
you sent your Son Jesus Christ
to be the light of the world.
Free us from all that darkens and ensnares us,
and bring us to eternal light and joy;
through the power of him
who is alive and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
What if the war in Iraq, the earthquakes and famine, the disease and the tumult happening around the world are not only connected, but a sign of even more catastrophe ahead?
Natural and man-made catastrophes have always been a part of human history, but when they occur, they often inspire such "End Times" prophesies of destruction. In a sense, the message Has No Horses brought to the Cheyenne River Sioux isn’t that different from ones I’ve heard from my Seventh Day Adventist cousins, or from pop-culture prophets who have brought terms such as "tribulation," "Armageddon," "rapture" and "millennialism" into the vocabulary of many. As a child growing up in the height of the Cold War, these made me want to change my ways out of fear of God’s wrath, symbolized by mushroom clouds. Today, terrorist attacks and killer viruses Today I wonder whether that’s part of the role played by terrorist attacks and killer viruses: inspiring a kind of "fear factor" faith.
Is my faith based in part on such a "fear factor"? Can fear motivate someone to be a better Christian? And what does it mean to be a "good Christian" in the context of these frightening events?
We could say that being a "good Christian" involves taking the scriptures seriously. The collect assigned for this Sunday remind us that the scriptures are "written for our learning" and pray that we may "hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them." If we had taken the scriptures seriously throughout our history, maybe we would not have seen such pain in every generation inspiring prophesies of doom.
Such prophesies are more popular than ever now: a Google search on the words "end times prophesies" brings up nearly two million hits. People are worried about the future -- about their future in particular. I don’t believe that God is calling us to indulge these worries, though. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Thessalonians we really cannot predict the "the day of the Lord" which "will come like a thief in the night" (1 Thessalonians 5:2), and Jesus asks us, "can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? (Luke 12:25). We are not called to a "fear factor faith," but to a life based on the Gospel, on Good News. We are called to love God, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. And this is the message of Matthew’s parable. We are to spread the Word and to live the Word in the world, not in fear.
If you are always ready, can you be “overtaken like a thief at night” by “the day of the Lord”? Are you always ready? Almost ready? Dozing a little?
2. With false security concerning death at one end of the continuum and constant dread at the other, where would you put yourself? Explain.
Don’t be lulled into a false sense of peace and security. Instead have a tranquil anticipation of the future.
Those who are in Christ will not be overtaken by the Day of the Lord, like those in the dark. We will not be caught unaware.
Paul is apparently replying to a question from his correspondents concerning "the times and the seasons," that is, the precise date of the parousia, which Paul’s original preaching had led them to expect imminently. Paul rejects the inference. There is one thing they need to know: the end will come suddenly (cf. Mark 13:32 and Acts 1:8).
Despite these warnings of Scripture, however, curiosity over the date of the end has continued to exercise the minds of Christians ever since, and ignorant and unscholarly fanatics claiming to know the date of the parousia can always win a ready hearing
The Christian must always live on tiptoe, as if the parousia were coming at any moment.
But there is more to it than "as if." In a manner typical of his teaching (cf. Rom: 13:11-14), Paul insists that the end has in some sense already come. Christian believers are already children of the light and the day. The imperative is based on an indicative: Be what you are, children of the light and the day. Here is the final answer to the fanaticism of parousiac excitement. It is not a matter for idle curiosity but one of living here and now in the power of the future that we have already begun to participate in through baptism
Paul has just told the Thessalonian Christians that, at the end of the age, both the faithful who have already died and those still alive will ascend to heaven to be with God for ever. Now, he says, concerning when Christ will come again, you are well aware that he will come suddenly and unexpectedly ("like a thief in the night", v. 2). Others who are lulled by the "peace and security" (v. 3) will be separated from God for ever ("sudden destruction"), as suddenly as a "woman" comes into labour; God’s condemnation of them will be inescapable.
Then, in vv. 4-8a, he exhorts his readers to moral vigilance. Being "children of light", (i.e. united with Christ, the light of the world), they will not be surprised by Christ’s second coming. So let us not become careless and sinful ("fall asleep", v. 6) as others do, but let us be prepared. Let us have the sobriety of people who have peace of mind through trust in God. Sleep and drunkenness are attributes of children of darkness, those who ignore or oppose God’s ways.
We are, (here he uses a military image) to possess the Christian virtues of "faith" (v. 8), "love" and "hope" - the certain hope of "salvation"; these virtues protect us from evil. For God has pre-ordained ("destined us", v. 9) that we are saved through Christ rather than being damned eternally ("wrath"). Jesus rescues us from sin, so that, whether we are alive ("awake", v. 10) or physically dead ("asleep") when he comes again, we will live with him in heaven. Finally, he advises his readers to "build up" (v. 11) each other, to support each other spiritually: here he sees the church as the temple of God under construction; the builder is God, and Christians can participate in the work.
"pregnant woman": This is a common Old Testament prophetic expression for the suddenness, precariousness, and inevitability of the Day of the Lord: see Isaiah 13:8; 21:3; 37:3; Jeremiah 6:24; Hosea 13:13; Mark 13:8. [NOAB] [CAB] [NJBC]
salvation": i.e. all the benefits of life in Christ, present and future. [CAB]
Like a thief in the night. That is how St. Paul describes the coming of the day of the Lord. It sounds a little strange associating theft with something as wonderful as the Lord’s coming. Paul’s obvious meaning for his faithful in Thessalonica is that the Lord will come when least expected. The wise thing for them to do is to be ready for the Lord at any moment in life.
On second thought there may be something to be gained from the image of the thief in the night. Jesus did take away our sins and he did take away the sting of death. Those are the very things all of us would love to have taken away from us.
But let’s get back to the main theme of the readings for this Sunday. We need to be ready for the Lord. How can we do this? By being busy with the Lord’s work.
Self control
Moral preparedness or unpreparedness will not keep us from our salvation for our salvation is secure Vs 10 because it comes through Christ. We need balance between future anticipations and present obligations.
Building up one another was Paul’s favorite way of talking about church growth. “just as you are doing”
God did not appoint us to suffer wrath.???
Inattentiveness to spiritual priorities is utterly out of keeping for those who will not be subject to the coming day of wrath.
There will be an absence of forewarning.
Live a lifestyle free from moral laxity.
• The passage assumes that the readers have heard about the Second Coming of Christ. They have no need to have anything written to them about it (verse 1).
• The passage also assumes that Paul’s readers knew that the date of the Second Coming was known only to God. Paul’s teaching strongly echoes Jesus’ teachings in Luke 12:39-40.
• The coming Day of the Lord, mentioned in verse 2, calls for sober behavior. They are people upon whom the light of Christ shines, children of the day; they are not as those who have seen no light. Since they belong to the day, they are encouraged to "put on" the attributes of daytime people — the breastplate and helmet. Similar military metaphors are found in Ephesians.
• The fact that the Day of the Lord is coming and they are children of the day is a reason to encourage one another.
• Notice in this passage, as in last week’s passage, the emphasis is not upon a "great escape plan" for believers only, but upon responsible living in light of the grace we have received from God.
all moments of mere chronology become questions of the moment of insight, of the self-understanding that is true wakefulness
I don’t think, friends, that I need to deal with the question of when all this is going to happen. 2 You know as well as I that the day of the Master’s coming can’t be posted on our calendars. He won’t call ahead and make an appointment any more than a burglar would. 3 About the time everybody’s walking around complacently, congratulating each other— "We’ve sure got it made! Now we can take it easy!"— suddenly everything will fall apart. It’s going to come as suddenly and inescapably as birth pangs to a pregnant woman.
4 But friends, you’re not in the dark, so how could you be taken off guard by any of this? 5 You’re sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand. 6 So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s keep our eyes open and be smart. 7 People sleep at night and get drunk at night. 8 But not us! Since we’re creatures of Day, let’s act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.
9 God didn’t set us up for an angry rejection but for salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ. 10 He died for us, a death that triggered life. Whether we’re awake with the living or asleep with the dead, we’re alive with him! 11 So speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you’ll all be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind. I know you’re already doing this; just keep on doing it.
1 Thess 5:1-11 (MSG)
