Walking in the Light

1 Thessalonians 5:6-8 ESV

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.

We’re continuing in our series of messages today concerning the Day of the Lord, and in our sermon this week and in our sermon for next week, we are going to be taking a shift and go from talking about the particulars of that great Day to talking about the preparation that we as Christians must take in order to be ready when that great Day comes.

Now, when the Bible speaks of being prepared for that Day, what it refers to is recognizing that it will indeed occur and therefore living your life in recognition of this by investing more in your eternal life than in investing in the temporary life that you now live.

Now, those who take their sin seriously and who take their need for salvation seriously do so by trusting not in themselves or what they think they can do to impress God, but by placing their trust in Jesus, trusting that the blood that He offered on their behalf is not only good enough to save them and prepare them for that great Day of the Lord, but that it is the only thing that can save them and prepare them for it.

But for those who do not take their sin seriously and who do not take their need for salvation seriously, they see no real need to deal with their sin and the consequences that are attached to their sin.

But just because they feel as though it doesn’t need to be taken seriously and therefore is not something they should really think or care about does not keep them from suffering the eternal consequences of their depraved nature.

It kind of reminds me of a friend of mine who refused to listen to his doctor’s advice. This friend of mine had severe diabetes and his doctor told him that his diabetes was so severe that if he did not begin to take his advice seriously, he was going to start losing some of his limbs very soon.

Well, my friend didn’t want to hear this, in fact, he said that the doctor was full of it. And because this was how he felt, he remained on his junk food diet.

I don’t think it was even a month later that he had to have two of his toes amputated. But still, he wouldn’t listen to his doctor’s advice and so about a month after having his two toes amputated, he had another one of his toes removed. But he still didn’t listen to his doctor’s advice so just a few weeks after having his third toe removed, he had to have his entire leg removed from the hip down.

Now at that, he began to take his doctor’s advice a little bit more seriously, but a few months later and he was back to his old habits. By this point, the diabetes even began to affect his heart, yet he still wouldn’t listen.

Then about two months after he really began to experience issues with his heart, I stood in the ICU at St. Mary’s Hospital with his wife while he took his last breath at the age of 50…

It was almost as though the doctor was urging him to wake up, but he just opted to stay sound asleep.

He was urging him to wake up, but he opted to stay asleep… That is how Paul describes unbelievers and the coming of the Lord in the first part of our reading when he says:

1 Thessalonians 5:6a ESV

6a So then let us not sleep, as others do,

Now, in what comes before our reading, as we had worked through what we had worked through last week, we spoke of how the return of the Lord is imminent, which means that the Lord could literally return at any time.

And because that is the case, Paul hammers home the point here in our reading that we need to be living our lives in light of the fact that the Lord’s return really could occur at any time.

He tells us, “let us not sleep, as others do…” The “us” found in our reading is referring to those who believe and have been saved by the grace of God. While the “others” found in our reading refer to those who do not believe and thus have not been saved.

The Lord has told us in His Word that He will return imminently, so we should live like it, being wide awake. But those who are not saved are described here as sleeping. In other words, they don’t take the warning seriously and just live as if everything is going to continue like it is now, forever.

But Paul tells us as believers to not reason and act the way that those who are unsaved reason and act.

And if we look at the second half of this verse, we read how he tells us as born-again believers to act, when he says:

1 Thessalonians 5:6b ESV

6b but let us keep awake and be sober.

Now, once again, the “us” here is referring to believers, so, while “others” that is, non-believers, sleep, we, “us” are to be awake and sober.

To say that one is “awake” in this sense means to recognize the inevitability, the legitimacy, and the seriousness of the Lord’s imminent return. So, as believers we are to be aware, to be awake, to recognize that when the Lord said that He was coming again, that He truly meant it. And because He truly meant it, we ought to live like He meant what He said.

And we as believers are to also be “sober”. Now, when Paul uses the term “sober” here, he doesn’t necessarily mean not being under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Now while we certainly should not be under the influence of such substances, what he is saying here in saying that we as believers are to be sober is that we are to have our wits about us.

To say that we are to have our wits about us means remaining calm or alert, especially in a crisis, and we know that the coming of the Lord means an end to what we know of and are accustomed to in the world. It means the complete purification and remodeling, if you will, of the world.

Now, for those who are not saved, this is not good news, rather, this is very, very bad news for them. It will spell an end not only to the world that they live in, but an end to them as well. And I can vividly remember before I was a believer that just the thought of the second coming of Christ scared me to death. It scared me because I knew that it would spell the end for me, because I wasn’t right with the Lord.

But the believer has no reason to fear the return of the Lord, for while the return of the Lord may be bad news for the non-believer, when it comes to the believer, this is very good news, in fact, it is the best news.

Yes, it will be an end to the world as we know it, but that will be a great thing, for the world as we know it is certainly far from perfect and in desperate need of improvement.

And furthermore, what it means for us as believers is that it won’t be the end of us, rather, it will be the beginning of an eternity with bodies that don’t fade, with minds that aren’t clouded with anxiety or sadness, and eternal fellowship with the God Who redeemed us, and all in a perfected creation.

Because of this, Paul tells us to be soberminded, to think clearly on it and to not be afraid but to be thrilled at knowing that the Lord comes quickly and imminently.

You see, for while the non-believer belongs to the spiritual night and greatly fears the prospect of the Lord’s return, we as believers belong to the day. We have nothing to fear and everything to look forward to. And because that is the case, Paul exhorts us as believers to live out this reality.

We see this in verse 8, the last verse of our reading, where it says:

1 Thessalonians 5:8 ESV

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.

You see, while non-believers live out their lives here in this world according to the flesh, getting the most out of this life in order to fulfill their own selfish pleasures because they know that this life is all that they really have, the believer is to live out his life in this world in preparation for the world to come.

The non-believer lives out his life in spiritual darkness, doing those things which are in accordance with that darkness, storing up spiritual treasures here on earth.

But the believer belongs to the spiritual day, in spiritual light. And Paul tells us why we belong to the day here in the second half of this verse. We belong to the day because we as believers have put on the breastplate of faith and love.

Saying that the believer is wearing a breastplate is signifying that the believer is protected from the attacks of the enemy. Now, we all know that as believers we receive frequent attacks from the enemy. But the wonderful reality is that none of these attacks will ever cause us to permanently abandon the Lord. We as believers are protected from that.

And we received that breastplate that will keep us ever in the grace of God when God granted us the gift of faith. This means that before we ever came to believe on the Lord, the Lord gave us as believers, chosen in Him, a new heart that was capable of and willing to turn to Him and trust in Him. And once we received that new heart, we were given the gift of faith and thus willingly believed on Him.

And because we as believers have been given this gift of faith, that faith then outwardly manifests itself as love. Love for God, love for our brethren in the faith, and love for people in general.

And that love then manifests itself in a changed life. A life that is recognizable to others, but most of all, a life that is noticed, that is felt by those of us who have been changed by God.

And so, our salvation has been accomplished, our new heart has been given, the ability to love and serve God has been given, these things have already occurred.

Now what we as believers have to look forward to is the full manifestation of our salvation, namely, new resurrected bodies in an eternity with Jesus.

This is why Paul says that the believer has put on for a helmet the hope of salvation.

Now, we’ve said several times in sermons past that the biblical definition of hope is a reality that has not yet been realized. And as we said, the hope of the believer is the putting off of our mortal bodies and the putting on of our eternal bodies.

Thus, the believer is to live his life in this world with this hope in mind, being soberminded, preparing ourselves, looking forward to this with anticipation and looking to the heavens longing for the coming of the King.

Beloved, let us live our lives in this world believing and knowing with absolute certainty that this world as it is, is not our home. Let us store up our treasure in Heaven by living out the reality that our home is in the world to come!

Amen?