But we do not want you to be
uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may
not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe
that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will
bring with Him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare
to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are
left unto the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have
fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with
a cry of command, and with the voice of an archangel, and with
the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise
first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be called
up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the
air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage
one another with these words. Now concerning the times and
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. While people are saying,
there's peace and security, then sudden destruction will come
upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman and they
will not escape. But 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. So then 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 drink or are drunk at night.
Excuse me, those who get drunk are drunk at night. 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. For 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. Let
me pray. Lord, we thank You for the great
encouragement that comes through the hearing of these words this
morning. Father, help us to weed out all
the things that we may think or know or have been taught about
this particular passage of text, and to be discerning, to be critical,
to be discriminating as we hear the Word of God and ask ourselves,
is that what it says right there? Does the Scripture teach us these
things in context? Lord, help these who hear me
speak this day to be discerning in that way. Not to just take
for granted that all that I say is accurate or true, but Lord,
trusting that Your Word is true as they measure my words by it.
And Father, by Your grace and power, Lord, guard me that I
may not speak error. Lord, most certainly not willfully,
but God, also, that I may not speak error accidentally, or in rant, or in other means. Father, we thank You that Your
Word gives us the power to salvation. We thank You that Your Word gives
us the grace that is ours in Jesus Christ. We thank You that
Your Word gives us opportunity for a glimpse of Your glory.
We thank You that Your Word gives us the ability to pray, the power
to intercede, the answer against temptation and addiction and
doubt. And Father, as we sit here together,
as the body, help us to be sensitive to the pains and needs of each
other. Lord, thinking of how we can
be available, even if through prayer, most specifically and
importantly through prayer toward each other and each other's lives.
Father, take away any distraction that may keep us from hearing
this truth today. And as we contemplate the coming of your Son to take
us to Himself, Lord, let us have eager expectation of that which
is ours and not fear. no dread, but hope. For that
is why we've come, to praise You because of the hope that
comes through Jesus Christ. And in His name we stand, in
His name we pray, in His name we praise You. Amen. Well, last week we touched in
the text of chapter 4, verse 13, through the end of that,
and I labored over the idea of revisiting some things there
for several reasons. One, as I said last week, that
is where we get the idea of the doctrine of the rapture in the
Bible. It's the only place that we see
anything related to the rapture. And as you saw last week, that's
the context and the fullness of all the teaching of such things.
So that All the things that we know or have been taught through
the ages of our lifetime about the Rapture and the Second Coming
and all of these things and the Great Tribulation as it relates
to the snatching of the church, it's all coming from just that
little bit of text. Now some people argue, and I'll
just say this and I'm going to move on to chapter 5. Some people
argue, well, you know, you've got to be a better student. You've
got to be a little smarter. You've got to be a little more
keen. You've got to be able to read between the lines. Friends, when
I look between the lines, there's white. There's no hidden message in
the Bible. For Paul says all that that was hidden throughout
the ages is revealed in Christ Jesus. So his word is true. And
the only time anything is hidden in the Scripture is when God
allows the God of this world to blind the eyes of unbelievers
so they cannot see and believe. So if there's something hidden
from anyone in relation to the Word of God is hidden only to
unbelievers. So everything that is available
for us to know is clearly shown in Scripture. And if God has
not taught us about it in Scripture, He sees in His infinite wisdom
that we need not understand it. And that some hidden things are
left better to the Lord. And just like the Old Testament
would teach us is that His ways are higher than our ways. And
His wisdom and His knowledge and His insight and His path
And if we trust in the wisdom of God, we will never fail. We
will never find ourselves sitting outside of His will. But when we trust in ourselves,
we trust in our knowledge, we trust in our own ability, we
trust in anything, we have failed to believe in Jesus Christ. And
even as believers, we fail to believe some days. We fail in
our faith, but he who is faithful will be faithful. Even when we
are faithless, Paul tells young, stressed out Timothy with stomach
problems who needs a little wine to keep his stomach settled.
Even when we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot
deny himself. Friends, in Jesus Christ alone
is the only place we find hope. Not in our approach to Jesus,
not in our attachment to Jesus, not in how we work with Jesus,
not in how we know Jesus. As Paul would tell the Galatians,
I was reading through Galatians this morning for some reason,
I don't know why, but I did. And I texted many of you some
good stuff out of that. But he says, don't you know now
that you know Christ, or better yet, that Christ knows you? Holy cow. You see, it's not even
about us knowing Christ, it's about Christ knowing us. But do we know Christ? Absolutely. And so as we look at this text
today, I don't want you to be ignorant. As Paul said last week, or 2,000
years ago, and we read last week, he doesn't want us to be uninformed,
he doesn't want us to be ignorant, he doesn't want us to be ill-informed
about these things. When we die in Christ, we live.
And those who have died in the flesh will be raised to life
in the flesh when Christ comes back one more time to take His
church and to set all things correct under His feet, as Paul
would tell the church of Ephesus. He shall be the reigning, ruling
King as He now is forevermore, and there shall be nothing, there
shall be no thorns under His feet. There shall be no wickedness
left that has not been given recompense. Keep that in mind,
beloved, that there is no sin committed in thought or word
or deed that will not be punished. to the greatest measure of eternity
by the holiness of God's judgment. You hear that? Every sin, every
thought, every word, every gaze, every sick and evil and wicked
and dark desire, every irritation, every frustration, every act
of pride, every mention of arrogance, every sense of greed, every scent
of thievery, every lie, every ounce of deceit will be... What
is the word? It's not even going to be concerted.
It's going to be destroyed forever and ever and ever. And God's
wrath will be poured out on every sin. No sin will be just let go. Beloved, if you are in Christ
Jesus, all that is due us and that judgment has already been
paid. You see? So we do not have a fear of judgment. We have a fear that God's justice
was poured out in Christ. We have a fear of nothing. We do not have an expectation
of judgment. We have a great praise toward the grace of God. His glorious grace. We praise
Him because He forbeared that for us. He substituted the Son
in place of us. We're not forgiven because God's
just the kind of guy to go, everybody makes mistakes, I just brush
it under the rug. No, He doesn't do that. God doesn't brush sin under the
rug. Those who are His in Christ Jesus, He took our guilt and
He put it on His Son, and He destroyed Jesus Christ in the
flesh. He suffered death, He suffered
burial, He suffered the justice of God's wrath, and He didn't
deserve one ounce of it. Friends, we deserve the due wage
of our lives. When you work for someone and
you work for an hour and then you quit and walk out, by law,
they owe you that hour's wage. The wages of sin is death. And Christ took it for us. And there's no other hope under
the sun. There's no other hope in the cosmos. There's no other
hope under heaven but Jesus Christ. And so when He comes back, we're
not hiding. We're not worried. We're not
burdened. We're not scared. We're not trembling. We're not running into caves
that would not hide us anyway. We are standing ready, rejoicing,
knowing that as we are alive this day, Christ comes and He
has been perfecting us and preparing us for the presence of God for
all of eternity, and that our only hope and treasure is that
we stand in His presence forever to praise Him forever. But woe to those who live in
darkness, as we'll see." Friends, there's hope in that. There's
hope in that. The return of Christ and end
times are forever in the mouths of humanity. Even prior to the
writing, listen to me, prior to the writing of Scripture,
I believe Adam and Eve understood that there was a day when God
would come to restore humanity or His people. Adam never wrote
any Scripture. Eve never wrote any Scripture.
Their children never wrote any Scripture. The first person out
of the lineage of Adam to ever write Scripture was whom? Moses. Thousands and thousands and thousands
and thousands and thousands of years later, Or, you know, four
months later, depending on how old you think the world is. Moses wrote down what was to
be preserved. But even before that time, civilizations
all over the world were writing about the last days. There is
an understanding in the heart of even the wicked and the lost
that judgment comes for wickedness. It is natural. Everyone knows. You take the most vile murderer,
thieving, conniving person that hates humanity and steal from
him. His first response is, you must
pay what you've stolen. How can you steal from a thief? Which wasn't theirs to begin
with. How do you steal from a thief? How do you murder a murderer? Is it not justice? No. Even when God has given the sword
to the government to act on His behalf, to punish wrong and to
praise right, even then justice is not served. Even if it takes
a man's life for the crime he's committed, that is not justice.
That is just a shadow of justice. Justice comes by the hand of
God eternally. Jesus Christ took the eternal
punishment All that was due toward us, due to us forever, Christ
took in six hours. Christ took in three days. Don't think Christ got it easy.
He suffered the full penalty of sin and death. And God vindicated
him and brought him to life, and God has told us He would
bring us to that same life through Jesus. Not just the imputation
of righteousness, but the imputation and the guarantee of life living
in our bodies. But the return of Christ in times
is always in the mouths of most humanity. Every generation, every
historical writing, everywhere you look, there's always this
story of doom, story of destruction, story of judgment. Even in the
paganistic or humanistic philosophies, I would start to say religions,
they're not. We see people talking about, you know, that correction
of the cosmos. Or the plague, as we saw, that
wiped out, what, 60% of the world's population? The bubonic plague? Pantheist and atheist alike.
Well, see, that's just Mother Nature correcting all the problems. So even people who don't believe
in any divine attributes of anything, they believe that there's some
kind of correction that takes place. Some kind of judgment that's
going to happen. from the Greeks to the Romans to the Egyptians
to the Assyrians. Everywhere you look, you saw
an end times prophecy. You saw people talking about
what would take place at the end. And friends, we have bought
into those ideals hook, line, and sinker as Christians in our
country. Books have been written, fear-mongering
movies have been produced, stories have been done. I mean, even
H.G. Wells, Heavens to Betsy, on the radio, live. when he acted out his reporting
of the War of the Worlds. Anybody alive during that? I
can't remember what year that was. Any of you children then? Probably
not. But panic set in as national
radio broadcast H.G. Wells and his story, the War
of the Worlds, and it was done in a sense of journalistic writing,
and it told of aliens landing in the earth and taking over
and killing people and shooting laser beams and abducting individuals,
and one thing led to another, and people would come in, and
not at the commercial break, where, hey, today, ladies and
gentlemen, we're bringing you the story by H.G. Wells. They
missed that. And they just come up, oh, my
gosh, there's somebody reporting this is happening. Panic set
in. It was hysteria. It's no different than what we
deal with in times today. Preachers get up in pulpits and
they cause hysteria. Prophecy conferences and prophecy
preaching and prophetic words have been uttered since I was
this high. I remember going to what we call
quote revivals and that's where you invite everybody else's choirs
to come sing for you. And some guy that lives on the
road and he's got nine sermons that he's been preaching for
29 years and they're so amazing. You're thinking, my gosh, if
I could ever preach that sermon. that way. But it scares the living
daylights out of you. For it does not tell of the grace
of God and Jesus Christ. It does not tell you of the majesty
of God's glory. It does not teach you about the
intimacy that God has with His people and the affection He has
for them. It tells you about monsters and beasts and dragons
and torture and Antichrist and all these things. And if you
don't get right with Jesus right now, you're going to be burned
alive and your children are going to be eaten by frogs. I mean,
you know, Who wants to have that happen? Nobody raises their hand. If you want to not have that
happen, stand up and come on down. It's like the price is
right for Jesus. And we do it and we fall for
it. And then what do we do? I mean, how many times have we
talked for 30 days about a sermon out of 1 Thessalonians? How many
times have we gone to our neighbors in the afternoon and said, man,
you know what pastor talked about today in 1 Thessalonians chapter
3 where Paul longed to see the Christians of Thessalonica. Oh
my gosh, I want to have that kind of longing. I want to love
people like that. It's amazing though. But boy,
we start hearing about some dragon coming and burning our babies.
We're going to talk about it for years. And we're Facebooking and tweeting
and spitting and smoke signaling and everything we can do to try
to get people to say, man, you need to hear this. Did you know?
Did you know? Did you know? And they're talking
to who? All the churchgoers. They're not going to their neighbor
and saying, hey, judgment's coming. They're going to their Christians
saying, man, we better pray God subsides and changes this world
and does something before the end time comes or we're going
to suffer greatly. Man, we don't have fear. And
I don't see any of that junk in the Bible, in context. And starting in September on
Tuesday nights, we'll do a reading of Revelation. We're going to
go through 16 weeks, Lord willing, where we read through Revelation
and we understand what it's trying to teach us in principle, theologically,
doctrinally, and most importantly, how we are to worship through
it. It's a rejoicing letter. It's a letter of encouragement.
It's a letter like Paul was saying here, be encouraged by these
words. Encourage each other, brethren, as you know these things.
I don't have to write to you right now about these things.
You know all that you need to know about the coming of Christ.
This is the point. And that's the point. So all
this other stuff, if it's not here and if it's not there, where
do we get it from? We get it from our imaginations.
We get it through cross-references. We get it from the footnotes
of all these well-intended translations. And we get it from money-making
schemes. From about the 1930s on, it became
very lucrative to be an end times fanatic. Left behind. How many billions
of dollars have they made on the books? How many hundreds
of millions have they made in their movies? But they built
a football field. No one gets saved out of telling
them what they already know, that they're judged. You're judged
and you're found guilty. And see, that's a fallacy anyway.
We're not going to be judged. We are already judged. We are
already guilty before the Lord. We're just waiting the sentence. And by God's mercy, because of
the great love with which He loved us, He calls us to be born
again in Christ. We are now in Christ. We are
no longer subject to the wrath of God. For the wrath of God
that is due us has been paid. That's the good news, isn't it?
That's the good news. The other is not good news. The
other is some pretty bad news that has no good in it. But we
like to call it the gospel. And these people in Thessalonica
were worried about this kind of stuff as well. What's happening
to our brothers and sisters who are dying? What's going on? There
probably was a sanctioned group that... There was a group that
was sanctioning this type of teaching that, you know, if you
die, you miss the second coming. We know that because of what
Paul wrote in the second letter that we'll go through as soon
as we're through with this. We're going to go straight through. And I believe that this type
of prophetic teaching that is outside this extracurricular theology is pressing the historical
timeline only to create a deeper ignorance of the truth and only
to create more havoc and more fear and less evangelism. Because
it's not evangelism. Evangelism is the sharing of
the evangel which is good news, the God speak, that which God
is teaching. The good story of Jesus Christ redeeming a people
who could not redeem themselves. This is the gospel. It's not
evangelism to say, you're all dying, thank you very much. Now
what do we do? Well, that's Westboro Baptist
Church. These are these fanatics that
stand out and give people like Jesse a hard time. When we go out and
try to do evangelism on the street, everybody thinks of these people.
They stand out and say, God hates this group, God hates that group,
God hates this group. And the first time I ever saw
them in the flesh, while they'd come to Fremont, California,
I have no idea, but they were there. So I pull in and I come
in there, hey! Brothers! sort of patronizing them a little
bit. And instead of saying, hello sir, how are you? Do you know
the Lord Jesus? Have you been saved from the wrath of God to
come? They look at me and say, God hates you, heathen. Heathen? I said, who, me? How do you know me? You really do know me, because
I am a heathen. I mean, God hates me? How can God love? They didn't want me to get a
word in edgewise. You reprobate, you sicko, you this, you this,
and started telling me sins that I'd never committed. This is
what you are, this is what you are. I said, how can we be saved?
Oh, you can't be saved. God's turned you over to reprobation.
They're telling me that. I'm glad I'm not ignorant of
the Scripture. That's not good news. That's the bad news. That's the
reason that the good news exists. Because the bad news is certain. Now Jesus Christ as a Savior
is certain. And Adam and Eve were saved by the same grace,
through the same faith, the same gospel, that you and I sit here,
born of God. It is the work of God alone.
And we sit here because of God's grace. Paul has instructed these
saints that the state of those who have passed on before them
in death is actually life. And they will not only live presently
with the Lord, but they will also be resurrected to life.
Now he instructs them, he says this is the how, this is the
state of what death and resurrection looks like at the second coming.
But now we're going to talk about when Christ is coming. And I
guarantee you, if I entitle this message, The Date of Christ's
Return, and I stick it on YouTube, it'll get like 50 million watches.
And 49,999,998 dislikes. And sound bites will come out
of it, and then I'll have a whole channel of heresy. You know, they'll create channel.
People spend thousands of hours working real hard to make people
look really bad. You don't have to look hard,
just play the whole sermon, you'll get some bad out of it. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, now
concerning the times and seasons, brothers, you have no need of
anything written to you. What is he saying? He's saying
right there, number one, look at the emphasis he puts on brothers. Here's the point. Our hope is
in the return of Christ. Our hope is in the work of Christ.
Our joy comes because of Christ. And this world is going to drag
you down. This life is going to mess you up. And the more
you are in love with Christ, the worse the world is going
to come against you. It's going to come against you.
The people who hate us are going to be those of our own household,
those of our own so-called faith, those of our own institutions,
those of our own jobs, those of our own community. These are
the people who are going to start, because they don't want to know
the God of the Bible. They want to know the God of
their own creation. And the God of the Bible says
that I am God, there is no other, all that I do, I do at my will
and my timing, and I am able to do all things, and all things
that I do are righteous and holy and are upright. I have mercy
on whom I have mercy, I put judgment on whom I have judgment, I love
who I love, I hate who I hate, I do what I do and there's no
tongue to say otherwise. but the God of our flesh We like
to take and twist the Bible, and we've got the God of the
flesh that says, oh, the God of the flesh is desperate for
me and cannot stand the idea that humanity has fallen. It
wasn't His intention. Adam and Eve really messed up
the plan of God, and He had to come in quick and in the last
minute save, and He put His pinch-hitter in, Jesus Christ, and there He
is, and He waited. It took Him like thousands of
years to get Him on the scene, and He's just waiting on somebody
to be submissive and said, hey, send Him to me, I'll take Him.
You see how this looks? And the story goes on and on
and on, and the God of the world disguises Himself as the God
of heaven, and then we create Him and we call one the other.
That's blasphemy, y'all. It's the very thing Jesus talks
about in the Gospels. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit
is to accredit the work of God to the work of the devil. to accredit the person of God
as if he were the enemy. Is that not what Satan wants
all along? In Ephesians chapter 6 it says
we don't war against flesh and blood, but against the darkness
and the principalities, the powers of darkness. We are at war with
the enemy of God, but Christ is already victorious, beloved. And we don't need to understand
the day and the time of the Lord, for the day and the time of the
Lord is this day, and it could be this week, and it could be
next year, it could be next millennia, it could be 60 million years
from now, but the Lord's day is not our business. It has never been the business
of the church to discover, discern, watch the times, and see that
the day of the Lord is at hand. For the day of the Lord is at
hand. At all times. Why? Because God does not rest
in time. God is the creator of time. It
does not own Him. Much like our cell phones. We
bought them, but now they own us. Our computers, our televisions.
They own us. Beep! Fall out of the bed. What's that beep? What's going
on on Facebook? I mean, people we wouldn't talk
to if they were in our yard. We're going to see what they're
saying. We're a slave to this stuff.
We just got to know. And then we stand at the grocery
store and we see the people in front of us, you know, in their
bedclothes buying the National Enquirer, and we're going, those
poor people. Let's go home and see what they
wrote about it. Concerning the time of the season,
brothers, brothers, brothers, you have no need of anything
more to be written to you about the time of the coming of the
Lord. This information is not available because all you need
to know has already been told. Christ is coming. It's in His
hands. You are alive even if you're
dead. And if your body's dead, it's
alive too. There it is. Have hope. Be encouraged. And there's a
whole lot of other stuff. What are we supposed to be doing?
Trusting in Christ, praying, loving, fighting, forgiving,
sinning, repenting. I don't read into what it says. Oh, we're supposed to be sinning?
No, but we will. We will fight sin. And when Christ comes back,
there will be no more fight. Praise God. This is all we have. The point
of this text then, in chapter 4 verse 13 all the way through
chapter 5, is to teach us that Christ is returning, and His
promises are sure, and that the time is none of our business,
and that the signs are not ours to see, and that we need to understand
that for everybody, for everybody that does not have Christ as
their Savior, for everyone who does not belong to Him, who has
been purchased by Him, the coming of the Lord will be like a thief
in the night. You see that imagery? You know
what a thief in the night is? Why do thieves burglar at night? Now, they're getting brazen today.
Some people just like to bust into houses in broad daylight
with people sitting there, because they're willing to take lives
for stuff. I've even thought about putting
a sign on my thing. Don't kick the door. Don't kill me. Nothing
is worth it. Take it all. Just ring the bell.
Yeah, I was going to kill you, but can I have your stuff? Sure. Nothing's worth dying for. No
stuff. You know, church, that the coming
of the Lord is going to be like a thief in the night. You're
saying, Christ? What does that mean? Christ's
return will be sudden. Thieves, when they come down the road
to your house and they're coming down your driveway, they don't
have their big radios playing, on the road again. They don't
have the radio, the bass booming. I mean, you know, they don't
shoot firecrackers and do like the old western, just start doing
all sorts of stuff so that you know they're coming. Oh my gosh,
there comes the bandits. We better hide. No, they park
way down the road, they wait till it's night, they wait till
they know you're asleep, they've probably watched your house already,
and they're gonna wait until you're unaware, and you're sitting
there vulnerable, and you're slippies in your robe, or you're
asleep in your PJs. Maybe they're listening outside
your window, and they hear, there's time, let's go. And they're gonna
bust in the window, and you're gonna wake up to, and they're
gonna be upon you, they got you. What are you gonna do? You don't
know, it's gonna take you like three seconds to figure out what's
going on. And it's going to come that quick. The coming of Christ
is going to be like a thief in the night. You wake up and someone's
upon you. And there's nothing you can do.
Big macho man. Oh, I got shotguns. Then get
up and get them, buddy. Yeah, if you hear him coming
down the street, oh, you can be ready. But you wake up and
he's looking at you? Oh, wait a minute. Let me get
to the cloth. Just a minute. Are you gonna sleep with the
shotgun still won't be fast enough? It's not gonna be fast someone
tips you Christ is gonna come just that fast. No one's gonna
be it's not like the earth's gonna go And then the skies and
the angels gonna say here he comes here. He come boo. I mean,
you know Jesus has come. I mean, it's not like that The Scripture talks about the
transformation of the saints, those who rise from the dead
will be transformed in the twinkling of an eye. This is like blink,
wow. We're in this world, blink, new
creation. We're in this world, blink, judgment.
We're in this world, blink, everything is set anew by Christ. God created
the cosmos with age and six days and all that was in it with a
conscience. with ability, with organization. You don't think He can set it
all straight in half a second? I mean, it was just a big task?
That's why He had to sleep on the Saturday? That wasn't a big
task. It was no task. Why did He take
six days? I don't know. Maybe He was hesitant
to just speak men into being all of a sudden. No, that's a joke. If I were there, I'd be like,
everything's looking so good, why mess it up? But that was
his intention, that he would be a redeemer. He created the
world with redemption as its purpose. You see that? What do you mean? Let there be
light so I may redeem it from darkness. God did not lose, did not fail,
He purposed before there was ever time for there to be a redemption. And so He created the universe
so that He could redeem a people. And His coming again will be
sudden. And for most people, they will
not expect it, nor do they care about it right now. And see,
that's the point that he's saying there in verse 2. You yourselves
are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like the
thief in the night, and verse 3, while people are saying, there's
peace and security. I'm alright. I'll get my life
together. There's nothing going to happen
to me. What Jesus? What God? This invisible thing,
this is what unbelievers do. And it says, then sudden destruction
will come upon them. Like labor pains come upon a
pregnant woman and they will not escape. Now, I cannot empathize
with that. I've seen it and I praise God
I wasn't in it. But labor pains, I mean like,
okay, oh this hurts, oh my goodness, it's no mistaking. I haven't felt it, but I've watched
it. Like 11 times. It's like my wife liked to go
into labor three or four times for each child. 72 hours later. It's sudden, it comes on, it catches
you off guard. You weren't expecting it. You
knew it was coming, but you weren't really prepared for it, and all
of a sudden, whoa, what is that? The closest thing I can think
of is when I've had these nerve problems. You're laying there,
you're chilling, and all of a sudden, somebody stabs you in the back.
You're like, what in the world came upon me? The reprobate, the wicked, the
lost, the coming of Jesus Christ is going to be so sudden, it's
going to catch them off guard. They're going to say there's
peace, there's security. Friends, our entire world thinks
that they're at peace. The entire world thinks that
we're at peace. And they think we're at peace
when we're banning all violence, when we're outlawing all bigotry,
when we're overcoming people that we hate because of their
creed, or their color, or their religion, or their morals. See, I'm not just talking about
America and other places. We just make peace. If we can
just control the evil, we'll be at peace. And then that which
is evil then becomes normative. One of my children asked me three
days ago, Dad, back in the day, were people just nicer? I said,
no, people were secretive. I said, if you were caught sleeping
around and having an affair outside of marriage, you were shunned. Not by the church, by everybody.
Oh, you know, the other people who were doing the same as you,
but nobody knew. They've shunned you. Well, I think I'm just going
to worship the devil for a living. Oh no, not in this town. They'll
burn your house down. Now, hey, whatever feels right. Go for it. Whatever you identify
as. However you think you ought to
live. Go for it. We're at peace now with our freedoms. We're at peace now with our bodies.
We're at peace now with our philosophies. We're at peace because we're
all together to freely think and breathe and live exactly
the way we want to live. It's all about love. The Lord
have mercy. It says, "...they will all say,
Peace and security, then sudden destruction." You hear that? It doesn't say a warning. It
doesn't say some hard times. It doesn't say, you know, a little
bit of grief. It doesn't talk about a flood,
that we rebuild the city, but we bury a bunch of people we
cared for. It says destruction. At the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ, all who are alive will be subject to eternal damnation
and wrath that is due them at that moment. Those who are dead
will be waiting, and in that moment, with the rest of all
the reprobate, they are in judgment forever. For us who should have
been in judgment, but who Christ paid for and bought, we will
see no judgment. We'll forever live in the state
of mercy, grace. And we will worship. Friends,
I don't think there'll be any greater worship than that day
of Christ's return. And we love Him greatly right now. And we're
like, oh Lord Jesus, knock the roof off this thing and take
us home today. I would love it. But the Lord
is faithful and patient. And there are many and many and
many He will bring into the fold before He comes again. And we
would worship I want to just dance thinking about that, really. But when we stand there and we
see the judgment that has escaped us, we will worship all the more.
You ever think about that? We will worship all the more,
for we know that we, like the rest of humanity, were once blind,
once unable to see. But God gave us eyes to see through
the hearing of His Word. And now we see. Gave us faith
and now we believe. Destruction comes. And look what
it says, the last phrase of verse 3. They will not escape. They will not escape. Remember how I talked about in
the beginning that everywhere you look throughout all of history,
there's always been last times and end times and judgment in
the mouths of humanity? You know why? Because God has
made it clear that judgment is inescapable. But we lie to ourselves. When
we live in sin, we say, well, other people are doing it, I'm
okay. They agree with me. The Bible, Paul says several
places, he says that those who condone such things are guilty
of doing such things. Oh, it's okay, let them have
their way. That's wicked. That's why church discipline
is a gracious reality. If I am your brother and I am
stepping into sin, if you love me, you will not want me to step
into sin. For those who are spiritual will
restore me with gentleness and kindness and carefulness. Because I will not escape judgment
if I am not in Christ. Friends, there's no condemnation
for the saints, even when we sin. There's no condemnation.
There's no judgment pending against us. There are consequences, and
there is discipline, and there is correction, and there is repentance.
And it hurts! But we are not lost, unless we
just walk away from the truth that we never had. We walk away
from the grace that was never ours. We reject the Savior that
we know is, but we just don't want Him to lord over us. See,
that's what unbelief is. We know that judgment's coming,
but we suppress the truth of the judgment. This is Romans
1. We suppress the truth of the judgment of God. How? Not we,
but they. By acts of unrighteousness. I
know that judgment is coming for me. I know that I am due
the justice of God. I know that I'm a sinner. I know
that I'm evil. But everybody that I know does
what I do, so I feel in good company. And I'm going to continue
to do these things, because the more I do these things, the less
I think about the judgment that's coming. And then God, it says in Romans
1, turns them over to a reprobate mind to do that which is unnatural,
and He gives examples. Homosexuality, sexual debauchery,
thievery, drunkenness, malice, envy, all sorts of wickedness. And everybody together suppresses
the truth of God by unrighteous acts, and they just continue
to try to push it out of their mind. It's like if you're worried
about something and you decide, well, you know what, every time
I think about this, I'm going to get up and I'm going to do a little
dance and sing a little song. And you just do a little dance
and sing a little song and you'll forget about thinking about these
things that burden you. Does it make them go away? No. Well, I don't want to deal with
this, so I'll just take a little drink. Or I'll watch a little show.
Or I'll find joy someplace else. Acts of unrighteousness. And
after a while, those don't work. You go to deeper things and deeper
things. None of them ever satisfy. Even when we discern in our sin
and in our wickedness in a lost state, even when people discern,
wow, I'm completely lost. If God does not give them eyes
to see the beauty of the grace through Jesus Christ, they cannot
come to faith. How shall it be? that they shall
escape the judgment of God that comes in an instant. Look at
verse 4, "...but you..." See, this is the gospel. "...but you
are not in darkness." Brothers, sisters, that word there is not
gender specific. It means siblings. Sometimes
it is, sometimes it's not. Depends on what? The context.
Brothers and sisters, you're not in darkness for that day to surprise you
like a thief. Think about the imagery there.
For the world, for the lost, they're in darkness. They cannot
see the thief. They do not hear the thief. And
it comes upon them in a very quick manner and it seizes them
and takes all that they have from them. It ruins them. And they are in the darkness,
and they cannot see. But you're not in the darkness, beloved.
You're not in the darkness, so therefore the thief doesn't surprise
you. The coming of the Lord, then,
in this metaphor, does not surprise you. The coming of the Lord is
not going to catch you off guard, because you're not in darkness.
You are prepared for the coming of Christ. You are longing for
that coming. You are looking for Christ is
not coming like a judge to you, but a Savior, a friend. Christ is coming for His bride. He is the husband. Andros, the
head, that's what husband means. And the head who dies for its
body, that the body might be holy, is how husbands should
love their wives. Redemption did not come by Christ
coming out of the ground and said, how dare you kill me? Bow or perish. I mean, everybody
would have bowed. Christ died for His church. And then for some crazy but wise
and infinitely divine reason, Christ purposed, God purposed
that others who are His sheep would come to the fold through
the hearing of His Word. What word? The word of God, that
Christ died in our place. You might say, I don't know anybody
who wouldn't want to hear that story. Well, share the gospel. And start making a tally mark
of everybody you share it with, ones who respond positively,
and ones who are like, I don't want to talk about this. And
this over here on the left side, you have to flip pages. I'm not talking about sharing
with, Lord bless ya, God bless ya, Christ bless ya, God is good,
amen, all the time, all the time, God is good, I mean, you know,
across the produce aisle at the shopping mart. I'm talking about confronting
the reality that all of us in our humanity are doomed to destruction
justly by the Father who is holy and we deserve eternal death
and damnation. We deserve to be rightly condemned
because we are evil. But God in His mercy and His
love for us because He is that kind of God, because He created
us, For that purpose, gave Christ to suffer in our place and raise
Him from the dead, so that we too may have hope that Christ
has satisfied our justice, satisfied our judgment, satisfied our debt
against God, and has promised to raise us not only to life
spiritually, but to life eternally. Do you believe in Christ, dear
neighbor? Well, I don't know. I don't like,
and I'm not a religious guy. I hear that a lot. I just haven't
found a church that's right for me. Because you're not of the
body. And the word is, there's a famine
for the word of God in this world. We should put a map up here and
instead of being a map of missions, we'd put a map of like-minded
congregations. There'd be like five spots in
the state that we know of. Why? Because they're small. Nobody's
heard of them. Because even when you tell them
of the great mercy of God and the fact that the God of heaven
came to earth and died in their place, they don't want to hear
it. Because that gospel cannot come
to the natural ear. And it cannot be received by
the natural heart. You might say, what can I do
to help them see? Nothing. Because the Lord knows I've tried.
The Lord knows I've tried. I spent
most of my childhood, my high school days, convincing people
of the reality of the gospel through apologetics. And it was
the biggest errand of foolishness that I've ever spent. You are not in darkness. That
day will not come as a surprise for you, like a thief. 4, verse 5. You are all children
of light. You are children of the day. You are not of the night or of
the darkness. Isn't that amazing? How does
that work? Of course, you know, Colossians
1 comes to mind. Verse 13, it says, He has delivered
us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom
of His beloved Son. He's transferred us from darkness
to light. What text comes to mind, though,
is John 3. John 3, 16, one of the most recognizable
texts of the New Testament in the entire world. It's placed
in every sporting event I've ever seen. It's plastered on
placards in Orlando at the site of that massacre, that awful,
murderous massacre that sent 49 people, most likely, to judgment. Fifty, because he died too. John 3, 16. We see it on the backs of cars.
We see it on bodies. We see it on bumper stickers.
We see it on airplanes. We see it everywhere we go. We
see it in rallies. That in Philippians 4.13. We see John 3.16, but John 3.16
doesn't end until verse 22. Did you know that? The thought
starts up here Now there was a man, and it goes
all the way down and says, have been carried out in God. That's
the end of it. But specifically in verse 16,
for. For what? Let's look up. How can I have life? That's the debate because Nicodemus
comes and confesses life to Jesus. I know that you are from God. And in everything that Nicodemus
was, he's inquiring as to whether or not Jesus is Messiah. They
pretty much know that He's from God. Is He Messiah? Is He prophet?
We don't know. We can speculate. But in all
sense, we know that Jesus hits right to the point. You think
if I am who you say that I am, or think that I am, that you
have eternal life, that you are in the kingdom. No, you're not.
It's because you know I am Christ does not make you the kingdom. does not give you the kingdom.
You cannot enter because you profess Me. You cannot
see. You must be born of God. Now that's a difficult thing.
That's not good news, y'all. How can you be born of someone
in your own efforts? You can't. The Spirit blows where
it wishes. It does what it wants to do.
Let me teach you some things in the natural world, Nicodemus.
You're a very learned man, the teacher of all Israel. Let me
show you these things. Listen, here it is. The wind will blow
and it will do. I just don't understand. Don't
be perplexed. You don't understand earthly
things. How can you understand heavenly, spiritual things? Only
the One who has come from heaven can tell you of heavenly things.
And just as Moses raised the serpent in the wilderness, so
must I be raised up and all who believe would not perish but
have eternal life. And I could talk for three hours
on that context. I could do some little monologues
on all the different people that looked and believed and exercised
some sense of faith in that serpent in the wilderness and looked
and died anyway. Why? Because I know the heart
of man. Isn't that what the end of chapter 2 John says? No one
had to tell Christ what's in the heart of man. He knew all
men. Now there was a man. Let me show
you how this plays out. That's what John's gospel is.
Here's the large discourse, or here's the large expression,
here's the discourse with an individual that proves that. For God loved the world in this
way, that He gave His only begotten Son, that, I'll use your word,
whosoever, Whoever so believing has not perished, will not perish,
but has eternal life. Right now, presently, if you're
believing, you have eternal life. Whoever are those so believing
in Christ Jesus has eternal life. But whoever those whosoever believeth
not... What does that mean? Whoever
is so not believing in Christ has not eternal life, but is
condemned already. You see that? For this is the
judgment. Verse 18, whoever believes is
not condemned. Whoever does not believe is condemned already
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
And this is the judgment. Here we are back in 1 Thessalonians
5. This is the judgment that light
has come into the world, but people love the darkness rather
than the light because their works are evil. You are not in darkness, beloved. You are not children of darkness
if you are in Christ. You are children of God. You
are children of light. So that it is clearly seen, we
come to the light. We come to Christ. We believe
on Christ. Why? So that the world and the
powers and the principalities of darkness, who are the enemies
of God in the spiritual realm, can see very clearly, this is
Ephesians chapter 3, the manifold wisdom of God. And the salvation
of those who come to the light, those who come to the light prove
that God is working in them. So that their praise is only
to God. That the works that they show
are not for people to say, look at their faith, look at their
belief, look at their acts, look at their Christianity. But it
says, look at their Savior. That's what Jesus teaches here.
That's what Paul is reiterating to these Thessalonians who heard
that message and believed on Christ alone. And they were saved because God
in His graciousness preached to their ears through the Word
and they believed that Christ was their only hope. And friends,
that's a daily thing. Our believing is ongoing action,
present action. Always believing. And it's a
battle. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's not. Sometimes
it's like, I don't think I'm a Christian at all because I
just can't stop doing this, or I'm frustrated, or I feel bad,
or this is going on in my life. Oh, where's my faith? It doesn't
matter. Where's the faithfulness of Christ? And we trust in Him. We believe in Christ. We put
our hope in Christ. We trust in Christ. And that
is not of our own doing, but is the gift of God. Jesus teaches
us that. For those who do not come to
the light, they don't come, because their darkness shall be exposed.
But those who come to the light do so that it may be clearly
seen that His works have been carried out in God. We are not
in darkness because God has carried out His works in us. Church, hear that. You're in light not because of
that moment in time when you believe, but because of Christ
and His faithfulness. You have eternal life not because
you're doing everything right according to the Scripture, because
you're not. You're in Christ because He found
you and He snatched you out of darkness. Now you belong to Him. It always begs the question here.
This is where I get really irritated. The first time I preached against
this, I was 22. I didn't even know the terms,
but I didn't get called back to this place until I was 40. But the lie of the devil often
teaches us that we've got to get our lives in order, in order
to be saved. The enemy teaches us, because
it's natural, isn't it? Okay, faith alone, and what else? Paul says anything else is no
gospel. You're in the light, beloved,
because you've been purchased. How do I know I'm purchased?
You believe in Christ. You are His. You have faith. Rest in that. What about what I did yesterday
and I was so angry with my neighbor and I cursed him out? Repent. It's God's work and you go over
there and make reconciliation. That's no bearing on your salvation.
I just can't forgive him. Well, the Bible says those who
are forgiven can forgive, but you know, maybe. Just maybe we're going to have
to pray for you so that you can have peace to forgive. But not,
oh, okay, you're not born of God. Oh, you're not a believer. You're not a Christian. What
about that log in my eye? I can't even see your unforgiveness.
I can't even find your neighbor. Oh, I knocked him out when I
turned my head to the right. Sorry. That's how I see things. This is what we go through. Friends,
we are in Christ even when we sin. I'm not saying, now just go sin!
Paul says, not a chance. That's not the way grace works,
that we can just go, sin, sin, sin, happy, happy, happy. God
loves us all. Listen, God has created us to be free from sin. So let's not hold ourselves condemned
for that which God has forgiven us and condemned His Son for.
Yeah, we work, sometimes we grieve, sometimes we're disciplined,
and we work together, and sometimes we isolate ourselves, and we
suffer a little bit further by ourselves. But ultimately, it
is in the hand of God. God is our Savior. God is our
Father. We are children of light. He
has delivered us. We are not of the night. And we have no fear of the judgment
of God. So friends, we have joy. We rejoice. You might find yourself this
day, you go, I just, gosh, I'm so uncertain. Good! Be uncertain. Be uncertain of
your salvation and now be certain of your Savior. Now that's a
play on words and it may not make sense. but quit trying to
work out your security and trust in the one who gives it to you.
You ever prayed like this, God? I'm so far away from you. I feel so distant. I feel so
lost. There's no hope for me. Father,
if you have not saved me in Jesus Christ, I'm hell bound. Have
you ever prayed that? I've prayed that in the last
six months for myself. Because you have some of those
moments. You're like, The only fruit I find is thorns and thistles. Sanctify me, Father. And the
Lord will show us through His Word, that's exactly what I'm
doing, child. Stand up. Holy. Holy. This forgiveness that comes
through Jesus Christ is the only hope we have. And
as we take to the Lord's table in just a few minutes, that's
what's supposed to be on our mind. His body was broken. His blood was spilled. And in
John 6 when he talks about being filled not of the bread that
perishes, friends, that juice and bread that we take is a perishing
fruit and a perishing grain. But it's to remind us of the
sufficiency of the all-filling body and blood of Jesus. And
it's to remind us of the forgiveness and the cost of that forgiveness
that God the Father gives us. And it's to remind us of how
we ought to relate to each other in the works of God to be able
to forgive each other.