Times & Seasons

I have to give credit to my daughter Scarlett for the opening illustration today. She asked what I was preaching about this week, and when I told her, she said, “Oh, like the movie Home Alone!” I erased what I had written, and went with what she said.

Because one of the greatest Christmas movies ever has got to be Home Alone. I’m not suggesting it’s the best movie in terms of it’s moral excellence or it’s depiction of a healthy family. I’m just saying, based purely on entertainment value, it’s at least top three for best Christmas movies of all time.

So in the movie, an extended family goes off to Paris for family vacation. 15 people flying to Paris, with 4 adults flying first class and the kids and teenagers in coach. I asked AI this week how much it would have cost to make that trip from Chicago to Paris in 1990, and it was near $35,000 just for the airplane tickets. Adjusted for inflation, today that would be $86,000 – JUST TO GET THERE! That’s a vacation most of us are just never taking. We don’t enjoy the movie because it’s relatable.

But the premise of the movie is that when everyone leaves for Paris, 8 year old Kevin gets left behind in Chicago. At the same time, a pair of thieves called The Wet Bandits roll into the neighborhood looking for places to rob. They had learned that Kevin’s family would be gone, so this house was going to be an easy target.

Kevin learns about their plans, and of course the best part of the movie is where he prepares for them by setting traps everywhere. And when they show up, they get quite a surprise and we get quite a few laughs. It worked so well that they made it into a franchise with 6 movies overall, each one about kids being left to defend their homes from criminals or something similar.

That movie plot perfectly fits Paul’s language here in 1 Thessalonians 5.

Last week, the Thessalonians misunderstood what happened to a Christian when they die, which Paul corrected at the end of chapter 4, and now today we’re looking at misunderstanding number two regarding the second coming of Christ. And that is that the Thessalonians started saying, hey, if we could just know when the Lord is going to return – if you know when that day of judgment is going to happen, then you will be able to be more prepared for it.

The same as Kevin knew the Wet Bandits were coming at midnight on Christmas Day and was able to prepare for them, if Jesus is returning tomorrow or next year, or in 15 years, it’d be nice to know what kind of timeline I’m working with so I can make sure I’m ready.

Who of us in the room hasn’t thought of that at least on some level? Believers all throughout the past 2000 years wanted to know when Jesus is coming back. Why? You may get a lot of different answers on that question, but I would guess it all boils down to “I want to make sure I’m ready.” I want to make sure I’ve covered all my bases. I want to make sure I’ve repented of everything. I want to make sure that my house is in order.

I was meeting with someone earlier this summer, and I asked them – if you died today, what is your confidence, your assurance that you would go to heaven? And he said NONE! I’ve done too much wrong, and there are still too many things out of order in my life. I need to do better before I would be confident I go to heaven.

But I bet there are a lot of you even who walked in here this morning thinking the exact same thing that guy did. That if you really were honest with yourself, you’d say I hope the Lord doesn’t return any time soon – I’m not ready. I haven’t lived a good enough life yet to where I would say I’m confident I’m going to heaven.

And for that reason, I think this text is very valuable and timely for us, because as Christians are watching the larger economic and political climates changing so rapidly today, things like AI and robotics advancing at breakneck speed, the infiltration and rise of radical Islam around the world, major earthquakes, volcanoes that have never erupted suddenly becoming active – there’s a lot going on, and people are always poring over Daniel and Ezekiel and Revelation to try and understand – hey, is this it? Is this what we’re waiting for? Is the beginning? The Middle? The end? Jesus said pay attention to the signs – are these the signs?!

So if you’re in that camp, curious about the Lord’s return and increasingly alarmed at the pace the world is going right now, your concerns are real. You’re not crazy. And you’re near the back of a very long line of people who have wondered the same things. And maybe you can identify with the Thessalonians, where you would say too – If I just know how soon the Lord is going to return, it’ll help me get ready.

We’ll work through the text verse by verse this morning and see how Paul is going to address that. Then we’ll wrap up with how in the world we should manage our expectations and our confidence and our awareness in these last days. But before we do that, please join me in prayer, and we’ll dive in.

PRAYER

As Bible scholars study the scriptures, and try and understand what God is doing across the thousands of years of human history, there are two main views people arrive at to help try and make sense of how God is working in the world and what’s coming next.

One is called Dispensationalism: Imagine the whole Bible is like a really long story where God has different ways of working with people at different times, kind of like how a school teacher might have special rules just for recess, different rules for the classroom, and still different rules for being part of the school play. Dispensationalism is the idea that God split history into a few big “chapters” (they call them dispensations), and in each chapter He gives people a new job or test—like being innocent in the Garden, following the Law with Moses, or living by grace now with Jesus. Most dispensationalists believe we’re in the “church age” right now, and one day God will hit “next chapter” with big events like the rapture, a seven-year time of tribulation, and Jesus coming back to rule for 1,000 years before everything becomes brand new forever.

The other view is something called Covenant Theology. Covenant theology is like saying the whole Bible is one big love story held together by promises (covenants) He makes with His family, where he says, “I’ll be your God, you’ll be my people, and I’ll save you,” and He keeps making that same promise in different ways: first with Adam, then with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and finally the biggest and best promise with Jesus. All those promises are really one giant promise that gets bigger and clearer until Jesus comes and keeps it perfectly.

Both views believe Jesus is the Messiah, that he was fully God and fully man, lived a perfect life, died for the forgiveness of sins, rose again on the third day, and that he is coming again as King and Lord and Judge. Both views are helpful ways of looking at human history even if neither view is perfect. But if you strip everything down to the bare bones structure, the Bible really only identifies two ages. The present age (which Galatians 1 calls evil, often referred to as darkness) and the age to come (the age of the Messiah, which is referred to as “light”).

Look at this prophecy from the High Priest Zechariah, right before Jesus was born:

Luke 1:78 Because of our God’s merciful compassion, the dawn (light) from on high will visit us 79 to shine on those who live in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. He puts himself in the shadow of death. The age of darkness. But with the birth of Jesus, the light is starting to shine.

John 1:1–12 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.

Here’s the apostle Paul in Galatians 1:3–4 “Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.”

Even in the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19–20 “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

And of course, that’s where so many of our questions and the questions of the Thessalonians lie. Okay great. When is that!? We want to know so we can be ready. And frustratingly Paul kicks off chapter 5 with this in verse 1: 5 About the times and the seasons: Brothers and sisters, you do not need anything to be written to you. And like I said last week, we are all thinking, no Paul, that’s where you’re wrong. We need details, brother! We need timelines. We need you to write LOTS of things to us so we can KNOW which view is right, and so we can be ready for the return. But Paul says, no, you don’t need me to write more things to you. You already know very well what you need to know.

Verse 2 For (because) you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. 3 When they say, “Peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

Paul is borrowing language from Jesus here. Matthew 24:43 “But know this: If the homeowner had known what time the thief was coming, he would have stayed alert and not let his house be broken into.”

Now, notice in these first couple of verses that there are two groups of people Paul is talking to. In verse 1, it’s “brothers and sisters.” That refers to fellow Christians who belong to the family of God, who, we learned in chapter 1:10, have been rescued from the wrath to come. In verse 3, the object changes from “you” to “they”. YOU don’t need anything written to you, because you know very well the day of the Lord is coming unannounced. You, like Kevin, are ready. THEY will have an inescapable sudden destruction coming on them like a thief.

So who are “they”? Those who have not believed the gospel. Those who live in the darkness of spiritual and moral ignorance. Those who live with a false security, a deceptive sense of peace. We could probably come up with a lot of reasons for this false sense of security, but here’s a few from scripture:

The apostle Peter warned us about this in 2 Peter 3:3–4 “Above all, be aware of this: Scoffers will come in the last days scoffing and following their own evil desires, saying, “Where is his ‘coming’ that he promised? Ever since our ancestors fell asleep, all things continue as they have been since the beginning of creation.” The attitude is that if Jesus is real, and he’s really coming again, then where is he? Everything is doing what it’s always done. Nothing has changed for 2000 years. What’s the urgency now?

Amos 6:1–7 “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion and to those who feel secure on the hill of Samaria…You dismiss any thought of the evil day and bring in a reign of violence. They lie on beds inlaid with ivory, sprawled out on their couches, and dine on lambs from the flock and calves from the stall. They improvise songs to the sound of the harp and invent their own musical instruments like David. They drink wine by the bowlful and anoint themselves with the finest oils but do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph. Therefore, they will now go into exile as the first of the captives, and the feasting of those who sprawl out will come to an end.” Another reason is the belief that there is no such thing as hell, judgment or eternal torment. Many people today simply believe when you die, you just die, and you certainly shouldn’t expect to have to give an account for how you lived your life, or grieve over your own sin. So one of the whole reasons we are where we are today as a country, from LGBTQ ideology to spiritual abuse in the Church is because we’ve abandoned or ignored the reality that God judges sin.

The world also has a false sense of security because they believe we have gained the technology to save ourselves. We’ve got enough insurance, we’ve got guns, we’ve got firewalls and passwords and money. We have plenty of gas, plenty of food. We’ve got DoorDash to bring it to us. We’ve got all of our bases covered. Now – I am not bashing any of those things. Nothing wrong with DoorDash, insurance, or guns. I’m just saying, they often provide a false sense of peace and security when we ask them to be our saviors and our defenders in times of trouble.

There’s one more reason for false security that’s a lot more subtle. It’s called religion. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day would have been leaders in this category. They were insanely religious, yet walked in spiritual darkness as much as the pagans of the surrounding nations. They were just as blind as the people worshiping actual idols, and yet thought that they were in the light. In Jeremiah 6:13–15 “...From prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated my people’s brokenness superficially, claiming, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they acted so detestably? They weren’t at all ashamed. They can no longer feel humiliation. Therefore, they will fall among the fallen. When I punish them, they will collapse, says the Lord.”

It is the deadly attitude of pride that gives a false sense of security. And it’s bad enough in worldly culture. But it’s twice as deadly in the church. When we stop being ashamed of our own sin, and can no longer feel the humiliation of the Holy Spirit calling us to repentance, it makes us feel untouchable. Like we’ve arrived. And it’s during that false sense of security, Paul says here in verse 3, that destruction is going to come suddenly, like labor pains catch a woman off guard, and she leans on the table to catch her breath for a couple seconds. The emphasis is not on the pain, it’s the suddenness, AND the fact that giving birth is now inescapable.

4 But you, brothers and sisters, are not in the dark, for this day to surprise you like a thief. 5 For you are all children of light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or the darkness. 6 So then, let us not sleep, like the rest, but let us stay awake and be self-controlled. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night.

There are three reasons a thief comes at night:

Darkness. You don’t see them coming. This darkness Paul is talking about is not physical darkness where you need a flashlight, but a darkness of the heart – a spiritual and moral ignorance, a willful deadness (Brown, Fausset, Jamieson, VI.467). Jesus told Nicodemus in John chapter 3:19 that the judgment against the world that condemns people to hell is that even though light of Jesus is right now shining in the world, with spiritual enlightenment that shows them the way to eternal life, they prefer to live in spiritual darkness because they don’t want to be exposed.

A thief prefers you to be sleeping. It’ll be a lot easier to take your stuff if you are not awake. In this case, verse 6, “Sleep” is worldly apathy to spiritual things (Brown, Fausset, Jamieson, VI.467). People who are asleep in apathy just don’t care about the things of God. They might even sit in church, week after week, year after year, decade after decade, but they are never moved by the love of God. Never really seek him beyond a few songs and a sermon on Sundays.

If you are awake, verse 7, a thief will have a lot better success if you are intoxicated. Not in control of your faculties. Not thinking correctly. Operating in a reality that isn’t real. There’s a reason country singers sing about beer-goggles. Ugly people get a lot better looking when you have beer goggles on. That may be somewhat funny in a country song, but being intoxicated by the cares of the world keeps you in spiritual darkness, and keeps you from being ready for the judgment of your soul.

Jesus is coming back like a thief in the night in terms of the fact that His return will be unexpected and sudden for all of us – Christian or not. We can’t do anything about the timing. But there is something we can do to be ready for his return. How should we live as we wait for this unexpected moment?

8 But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled and put on the armor of faith and love, and a helmet of the hope of salvation.

First, you have to make sure you belong to the day. You do that by repenting of your sin. Repent of trusting the things of this world, and being spiritually lazy. Repent of being drunk on the things of this world and loving the darkness. Give up your efforts to be a good person; trust in the work of Jesus – the only good person who ever lived. You don’t have to have all the answers. You don’t have to over complicate things. You don’t have to figure out all the logical angles and have understood all the deepest mysteries. The Holy Spirit will lead you day in and day out. Just trust Jesus the way a child trusts their parent.

Secondly, be on guard against your own flesh. Twice Paul tells them to Be self-controlled. That’s the language of telling yourself NO. We’re coming off of a 3 day fast from earlier this week, and one of the purposes of fasting is to strengthen that NO muscle. You know what I mean? Being hungry is a good thing. It’s a natural desire to have food. There’s nothing sinful about stopping to eat lunch – in fact, we can even eat and drink to the glory of God. But in fasting, we practice saying no to GOOD things so that our self-control muscle is stronger when it’s time to say no to EVIL things. One of the ways you know a person is filled with the Holy Spirit is when they are self-controlled. So, now that we are children of light, we have to stay spiritually alert and on guard against the desires of our flesh. And thirdly:

Put on the armor of faith and love, and a helmet of the hope of salvation. And this isn’t the first time Paul talks about faith, love, and hope. Back in chapter 1, verse 3, he wrote “We recall, in the presence of our God and Father, your work produced by faith, your labor motivated by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Notice those same three virtues again. These are the things that guard us as we wait for that day of the Lord to come.

Some translations are more specific, and say the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of the hope of salvation. “The helmet and breastplate defend the two vital parts, the head and the heart. The head needs to be kept from error, and the heart kept from other loves and sinful desires (Brown, Fausset, Jamieson, VI:467).

So faith pulls us up toward God and leads us to serve him, and be people of prayer, and kill the flesh because of what he’s done for us. Faith is vertical – it keeps us in close relationship to Christ (Larson, 9:70), and trusts his finished work on the cross, and rests in his incredible love for us.

Some of you may have come here today with very little faith and a lot of doubts. The book of James in the Bible describes doubt like standing up in a canoe during a storm. If your faith isn’t anchored in Jesus, the waves of life will toss you around and have your lunch. So if you’re feeling that tug in your heart, that something needs to change in your life, I invite you to just come on up to an empty chair on one of the front rows, and someone will be there to pray with you as we close out in singing.

Others of you came in today full of faith. You’ve tasted and seen that God is good. You’ve been delivered from sin. You’ve been rescued from hell. You’ve been filled with the Spirit of God, and your faith guards you against the attacks of the enemy. Don’t get tired of doing good. Keep going! You might be sensing even right now, a nudge to go pray with someone or ask how they’re doing. Be obedient to that.

Because the other part of the breastplate is Love – the horizontal part. It sends us out toward other people, serving them, walking with them, building each other up – even when it’s tough; Even when they don’t return the love. John Stott says it like this: If we're really born again, it can't just stay inside us doing nothing. It has to yank us out of our selfish, me-focused bubble and turn us toward God, toward Jesus, living in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, and toward caring about the people around us. Otherwise, the "new birth" doesn't really mean much (cf Stott, 29-30).

If you are carrying any bitterness or even hatred toward someone, today’s the day to forgive. Start by looking at the cross, seeing your own sins and failures nailed there, forgiven. Then release that bitterness to Jesus. If you’re carrying jealousy, envy, you don’t like that someone else is succeeding where you wish you were doing better, today’s the day to release it to Jesus.

And hope keeps us moving forward toward the day Jesus comes back, knowing that we have a glorious inheritance coming our way in the kingdom of heaven. If you recall the text last week, this word hope isn’t wishful thinking. Paul calls this the helmet of (the confident expectation) of salvation. “Our head is the control center of our life; it processes our thoughts and emotions; it analyzes life.

Maybe you’d admit you’ve let the advancements of the world, or the study of end times really rattle you. Maybe you’d admit your mind is a dark spiral, and is easily overwhelmed by the evil that is all around us. Paul says in verse 9, to encourage each other with the fact that God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation.

So having this confidence that when Christ comes for us, we will be saved…protects our thinking from being overwhelmed by the evil around us. Jesus is going to come rescue us, and we will live with him forever. That reality guards us in times of persecution, temptation, weariness, and all other dangers that come from living in a hostile environment (Larson, 9:70).

Faith, love, and hope. It’s what guards us from the attacks of the enemy, and it’s what makes us ready for the sudden return of Christ.

Back to the beginning – some of you maybe came in here this morning saying, you know, I hope the Lord doesn’t return soon – I need to be a better person for a while before I’m ready for that, and let me just speak to you for a second. First of all, the fact that you’re concerned about the Lord’s return is a great sign. The unbeliever is asleep in bed, not concerned in the slightest. So the fact that you’re even concerned about heaven is a good thing. Secondly, that you recognize your sinfulness is also a good thing. But here’s the deal: The cross of Jesus says you’re a lot more sinful than you even realize. By saying you need to do better, you are admitting you don’t even meet your own standards of what deserves heaven – much less God’s. On our own, because we’ve broken his standards of holiness, we stand guilty before a holy God. We deserve his wrath. But, if a judge condemns you for your crime, yet someone else steps in willingly to carry out your sentence, what happens to you? You go free!

The good news is that the cross of Jesus also says you are more loved than you could ever dare to imagine. God proved how much he loved you by sending his Son to take your guilt on himself, and stand under the wrath of God so that you wouldn’t have to! You don’t get into right relationship with God on your own goodness. You get that relationship on HIS goodness! You don’t have to make yourself better in order to be ready – Jesus has already made you ready by the washing and regeneration of his Holy Spirit! If the Holy Spirit is bearing fruit in your life, you don’t have to worry about death. You don’t have to be afraid of sinning unintentionally. You don’t have to be afraid that you will follow Jesus all your life, only to be hung out to dry at the end.

Paul is writing to this little church to say, the reason that you don’t need to be overly concerned about the times and seasons of the Lord’s return is because you are children of the day! You don’t need to fret about or argue over whether the end times are pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, pre-mill, a-mill, post-mill – the reason you don’t need to live in fear of persecution or AI, or need to figure out what’s coming next – Verse 9, simply encourage each other with the fact that through our Lord Jesus Christ, God did not appoint us to wrath, and he is not going to subject us to sudden destruction. He’s already saved us through Jesus, so that both in this present evil age and in the next, we are alive together with Christ!

And, whether Dispensationalists end up being right and God raptures Christians before the tribulation, or Covenantalists are right and God delivers us through tribulation; whether Dispensationalists are right and God works differently with Israel and the Church, or Covenantalists end up being right and Israel and the Church are part of the same family tree – either way we can be confident of two things: Through Christ who died for us, 1) we will never be under the wrath of God, and 2) we will live together with him! Philippians 1:6 “I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

SOURCES

David Brown, A. R. Fausset, and Robert Jamieson, A Commentary, Critical, Experimental, and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments: Acts–Revelation, (London; Glasgow: William Collins, Sons, & Company, Limited, n.d.)

Leon Morris, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1991)

John R. W. Stott, The Message of Thessalonians: The Gospel & the End of Time, The Bible Speaks Today, (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994)

Knute Larson, I & II Thessalonians, I & II Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Holman New Testament Commentary, (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000)

Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996)