The Day of the Lord

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
I think that most of us know the name of Harold Camping—the religious broadcaster who twice last year predicted the end of the world. What you may not know is that he did the same thing in 1994. Of course, he is not the only false prophet of the end times. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have predicted the end of the world half a dozen times in the last 100 years. Hal Lindsey said it would end in 1988. Joseph Smith of the Mormons predicted it and got it wrong as did Ellen White of the Seventh Day Adventists. And so it goes all the way back to the time of the apostles despite the plain and simple words of Jesus: that no one knows that day or hour of his second coming.

But while the day and hour is unknown, our Lord’s return in glory to judge the world—what the Bible calls “the day of the Lord” --is certain.

Jesus promised that he would come again to take us to heaven. At his ascension the angels promised that he would return in the same way he left. And we heard from the apostle Paul last week that, with the voice of the archangel and the sound of the trumpet of God, Jesus will descend from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise from their graves.

And so, if we cannot know the day and hour of our Lord’s return and if we do not need to know it, what do we need to know about the day of the Lord? Paul writes:

Concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

Christians do not need to know anything about the specific timing of our Lord’s return because what we do know is enough: that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. These are the same words that Jesus used to talk about his second coming—that it will be sudden and unexpected. And that’s all we need to know about the timing-- because that knowledge is more than enough to be prepared for that day—a day of destruction that the world around us chooses to ignore. Paul writes that:

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.

The great danger of the Harold Camping’s of the world is that they lead people to ridicule the second coming of our Lord and ignore or explain away the signs of his return and remain unprepared to face the judgment of God.

Before that day, Jesus says that there will be wars and rumors of wars—that nation will rise against nation—that there will be earthquakes and famines in various places—that lawlessness will increase and false prophets will lead many astray. And so it is -and so it has been- since Jesus spoke these words and prophesied these signs.

That’s the point—that at any time we are to be expectantly looking for our Lord’s return and we are to view the world around us through that lens of final judgment and eternity—not explaining away the signs or expecting that the next peace treaty or economic upturn will establish heaven on earth—but that Jesus is coming again to make a new heaven and a new earth by destroying all that is broken and evil in this one.

The day of the Lord will be a day of destruction. That may not sound like good news—and it’s not for those who are opposed to God—but it is good news for God’s people for justice will be done.

The day of the Lord will be a vindication of God and his ways and his people and the judgment and destruction of evil. According to the prophet Zephaniah, those who live by violence and fraud will be punished. Those who have misused power to oppress the weak will kneel before the Lord in submission. And those who have lived for wealth and material things will see them destroyed.

No one who has opposed the Lord and his ways and his people will escape destruction on the day of the Lord. The Bible knows absolutely nothing of a second chance after the Lord’s return for those who have rejected him up until that day. Zephaniah pictures the Lord searching high and low and seeking out every dark place where his enemies might hide to make sure that none of them escapes the judgment he brings. But we who live in the light of Christ have nothing to fear from that day. Paul writes:

You are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.

How often do we shake our heads at the sinful foolishness of the unbelieving world—at the things that we read in the paper and see on the news and hear on the radio-- and wonder to ourselves: why on earth do they live the way they do and think the things they do and value the things they do? It’s as if we see things completely different from those who don’t share our faith. And of course, in many ways—that’s true.

The Bible says that those who don’t believe in Jesus are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God and in their ignorance and hardness of heart give themselves up to sensuality and every kind of impurity.

But we are not in darkness. The light of Jesus Christ has shone into our lives and opened our hearts and enlightened our minds. When Paul was converted to faith in Christ the Bible says that something like scales fell from his eyes—a vivid picture of what is spiritually true for every Christian.

We are children of the light who know that Christ is coming again and that this world as it is will not endure that day and we are called to live our lives in light of the knowledge—ready for Jesus’ return at any time. Paul writes:

Let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night.

It’s self-evident that Paul is not talking here about the physical sleep which God gives that refreshes our bodies-- but spiritual sleepiness that keeps us from being awake and ready to meet the Lord when he comes again—what the prophet Zephaniah called “complacency”—the notion that-- as things are now, so they always have been and so they always will be, and so there is no need to expect or do anything different.

That is absolutely untrue! We have been spiritually awakened to look for the dawn of the day of the Lord and we must not hit the spiritual snooze-alarm and fall back into the self-satisfied warmth of spiritual slumber.

Neither must we let anything dull our minds to the realities of that day. Paul distinguishes between sleep and drunkenness—both of them happen in spiritual darkness—but there is a difference. Spiritual complacency is a part of our flesh. We have to fight against the temptation to let the Lord’s return fall to the back of our mind.

But drunkenness is something else. It is the intentional choice to make use of that which dulls our spiritual awareness. For the people of Zephaniah’s day it was wealth and so long as they had plenty of money they thought they had nothing to fear. Many people have that same trouble today.

But it’s not only money that dulls our spiritual awareness. Alcohol and drugs and pornography and the press of daily life and the constant need to be entertained can also dull us to the need to constantly repent of our sins and be renewed in our faith in Jesus. Anything that dulls our readiness for the Lord’s return needs to be put aside so that we can instead be filled with those things that make us spiritually aware and awake. Paul writes:

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.

The image that Paul uses here would have been familiar to anyone living in the Roman Empire---Roman soldiers marching through the streets, prepared for battle, their armor flashing in the sun. The Christian likewise is to be prepared for the spiritual battles that will most definitely come as we wait for the day of the Lord by daily renewal in faith, hope, and love by hearing God’s Word and receiving Holy Communion.

These three Christian virtues constantly appear together in Paul’s letters and there’s a reason for that: they encompass the entire Christian life.

Faith directs our eyes to the past and the accomplished facts of salvation history. Jesus Christ the promised Messiah entered into the world in a particular moment in history. He died on the cross under the rule of Pontius Pilate and rose again three days later. Who he is and what he has done is the content of our faith—and because we are looking forward to his return—he is also the hope for our future.

Hope directs our faith to the future and the promises that still remain to be fulfilled—Christ’s return and the resurrection of the dead—and a new creation.
Far, far from being afraid of the future and fearful of God’s judgment, we look forward in hope to a future that is filled with every blessing of body and soul because God’s faithfulness in the past is our assurance that our hope will not be disappointed.

And because Jesus is the content of our faith and our hope for the future he is also the one who guides and directs our lives right now in the ways of his love.
We don’t know when Jesus will come again but we do know what he wants us to be doing in the meantime—loving one another in the same way he loved us—doing good to our neighbor and forgiving those who hurt us. This is the way we are to live until the day of the Lord when we receive the fullness of salvation. Paul writes that:

God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.

Moment by moment throughout history God has been carefully, wisely, lovingly ordering the world so that we could come to faith in Jesus and endure in faith and so receive the fullness of salvation. We are the reason that God sent his Son into the world—that believing in him we would be saved.

Much too often we think of salvation only in terms of forgiveness of sins—and certainly it is that! But it’s everything else that comes from being forgiven and right in God’s sight: it’s having peace with God and the assurance that he is with us and a life filled with joy and purpose. But salvation also extends beyond this life into eternity.

That God has saved us by the death and resurrection of his Son means that we have been restored to what God wanted for us in the beginning—a life with him as his children that even death cannot end. Salvation means that God will restore everything broken by sin—that there will be a new heaven and a new earth—that we will enjoy perfect fellowship with God forever.

The Day of the Lord is the culmination of God’s saving work. It is not a day of wrath for us that we need to fear-- but the day of salvation when the fullness of what Christ has done in his dying and rising will be ours forever. May this Good News of our Lord’s return grant us courage to live as God’s people!