First Presbyterian Church
Wichita Falls, Texas
November 13, 2011
SOME ‘GET IT’ – SOME DON’T
Isaac Butterworth
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 (NRSV)
1 Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. 2 For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 When they say, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape!
4 But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; 5 for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. 6 So then, let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; 7 for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.
They say, ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you.’ But it’s not true, is it? Suppose your house is invaded by termites that are eating away at the studs and beams and rafters, and you don’t know it. Suppose you are on an extended trip but you left water boiling on the stove – and you’ve forgotten it. Suppose you have an allergy to some food you love, but you’ve never made the connection. Suppose you are at a party with strangers and you have a piece of food on your teeth – only you don’t know it.
Not knowing what you need to know can, in fact, hurt you. This is true not only in the regular course of day-to-day living. It is also true in the spiritual realm. God once said through his prophet Hosea, ‘My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge’ (Hos. 4:6).
Here in 1 Thessalonians, Paul describes two kinds of people. One we might call people of the night. They live in the darkness. The other he calls ‘children of the day’ (v. 5). They live in the light.
Light and dark are very useful words. We easily associate them with good and evil. In Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader says to Luke Skywalker, ‘Give yourself to the dark side,’ and he clearly means to win Luke to the cause of evil.
But it’s not just good and evil that come into view when we think about light and dark. It’s understanding and the lack of it. It’s knowing and not knowing. Some people ‘get it’ – that is, they grasp reality – and some don’t. They live in a world of illusion and self-deception.
In Ephesians 4:17, Paul speaks of those who ‘are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart.’ In 1 Corinthians 2:14, he says that ‘those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand because [such things] are spiritually discerned.’
In short, what you don’t know can hurt you. In his prayer to the Father on the night before he died, Jesus himself defined eternal life in terms of knowledge. ‘This is eternal life,’ he said, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’ (John 17:3).
Now, let’s come back to our text for today – 1 Thessalonians 5. Here Paul is writing to the ‘children of light,’ to the ‘children of the day.’ These are the people who know God. These are the people who are not darkened in their understanding. These are the people have the ability to discern spiritual truth. If anybody ‘gets it,’ these people do.
But it’s like he has to remind them. ‘We are not of the night or darkness,’ he says. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober (vv. 5f.). It’s almost like they might have forgotten.
I forget sometimes, don’t you? I forget what I know. I forget that I belong to the day – and what do I do? I start slumming around in the night. My lamp flickers, and I find myself stumbling in the dark. But Jesus said, ‘Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light…. Those [however] who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them’ (John 11:9f.).
Now, here’s the contradiction that Paul addresses in 1 Thessalonians: children of the day acting like children of the night, those who been awakened slipping off into slumber, people who know – but forget.
I’m talking about clouded thinking, what someone once called ‘stinkin’ thinkin’.’
• We know that God is our treasure. We have that much light. But we forget it somehow, and we look to everything else in this world in a desperate search for fulfillment.
• We know, in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, that we belong – body and soul, in life and in death -- not to ourselves but to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ. We have that much light. But we forget it somehow, and we give ourselves to everything else in this world in a desperate search for security.
• We know, in the words of Francis of Assisi, that ‘it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.’ We have that much light. But we forget it somehow, and we return to thinking that ‘it’s all about me’ and that ‘what I want is the most important thing in the world.’
• We know that we’re actually here for others, but we forget it. And we think that they’re here for us. Our vocabulary becomes punctuated with the first person personal pronoun: ‘I deserve, I am entitled, I want, I need.’
And we are sleepwalking! To use Paul’s metaphor of drunkenness, we are intoxicated with ourselves.
‘But,’ Paul says, ‘let us’ not do that! ‘Since we belong to the day,’ he says, ‘let us be sober,’ and then he says this. He says, ‘Let us…put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation’ (v. 8).
Here he shifts to the metaphor of dressing ourselves. He tells us to put on the attire that will protect us from our ‘stinkin’ thinkin’.’ A soldier dresses for battle, and so does a Christian. ‘Night is coming,’ Jesus said (John 9:30). The darkness assaults us. So we put on our breastplate and our helmet – a breastplate to protect the heart, the seat of our affections, and a helmet to protect the mind, the place where we know and understand, the place of discernment and wisdom, the place where we ‘get it.’
This breastplate Paul talks about: it is not made of some material substance that you and I can hold in our hands; neither is our helmet. Paul says elsewhere, ‘We do not wage war according to human standards, for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds’ (2 Cor. 10:3f.).
Our breastplate is faith and love: faith, by which, in the words of the Larger Catechism, we ‘not only assent to the truth…of the gospel, but receive and rest upon Christ’ (Q. 72); and love, which is ‘patient; …kind; …not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude’ (1 Corinthians 13:4). By such things we protect our heart and secure our affections, so that what we desire is not this world and its cheap substitutes, but rather God’s best.
And our helmet is hope. Hope is the confidence that the future God has promised will, in his time, become a reality. By such hope we protect our thinking, so that we do not become deceived by the world and its false promises. Rather, ‘we walk in the light as [God] himself is in the light, …and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin’ (1 John 1:7).
Whenever the Scriptures speak of clothing ourselves the way Paul does here, I think of what he says in Galatians 3:27, where he writes, ‘As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.’ That’s what it means to be baptized. It means that we are clothed with Christ and we are dressed for living in the light of day. And that’s what it means to ‘put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.’ It means to put on Christ. It means to be reminded of our baptism…every day.
And, this morning, as we baptize Carsyn, Bidde Hetherington will ask God for just that. She will pray in our behalf that he will ‘remind us of the promises given in our own baptism,’ that he will ‘renew our trust in’ him. As we baptize Carsyn, then, you may want to do this: You may want to visualize yourself doing as Paul says to do. ‘Put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.’ ‘Put on the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Rom. 13:14). Dress as ‘children of light and children of the day’ (1 Thess. 5:5).
Because your baptism – and Carsyn’s – isn’t just a sentimental adornment to an otherwise preoccupied life. It is your identity. It is your uniform. In this case, ‘clothes do make the man…or the woman,’ as the case might be. This is the only life you have to live. Dress for the occasion.
And live your life like you know who and whose you are and where you’re going. Don’t wander around in a fog of confusion. Don’t stumble in the darkness. Remember: What you don’t know can hurt you. So, the prophet Hosea says, ‘Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord’ (Hosea 6:3). ‘God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (v. 9). Do you ‘get’ that? Some do – some don’t. Be sure you’re one of those who do.
