Turn in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians
this time. 1 Thessalonians, the fifth chapter. Paul again writing in this first
letter to the church at Thessalonica, Begins in chapter 5, But of the
times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write
unto you. For yourselves know perfectly
that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For
when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction
cometh upon them. as travail upon a woman with
child, and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in
darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are
all the children of light and the children of the day. We are
not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as
do others, but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep,
sleep in the night, and they that be drunken are drunken in
the night. But let us who are of the day
be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and for an
helmet, the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us
to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who
died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live
together with Him. Wherefore, comfort yourselves
together and edify one another, even as also ye do." Now, the
apostle in both of the texts that I've read this morning makes
a reference to the hope of salvation. The hope of salvation. I know this, I know that salvation
that is in our experience of it, it begins long before our
experience of it, but salvation in our experience of it begins
with bad news. It always begins with bad news. Because it begins with the Holy
Spirit convicting us and convincing us of our sin. Of our sin. You see, He not only
convinces us of our sin, but also of our sinfulness. Of our lostness. I remember hearing
Brother Mahan say many times, if you've never been lost, then
you've never been saved. You can't come back from somewhere
that you've never been. He must convince us of our lostness,
and not only that, of our helplessness. He has to bring us to an end
of ourselves so that we know for certain that we cannot save
ourselves. He may let us try many times. But when He saves us, He brings
us to an end of ourselves, and we are made to be sure that we
are unable to save ourselves. He brings us to a sureness that
God's judgment against sin will absolutely take place. He brings us to that place where
He opens our eyes spiritually. Where He gives us an understanding
of that which by nature we never can understand. Because we are
born, and it is the nature of sin to imagine ourselves as good,
essentially good, and only once in a while do we do some bad
things. But the truth of the matter is,
our case is just the opposite. We are essentially bad. And the only way we keep from
being what we absolutely would be entirely is simply the restraining
grace of God. Hold your place and turn back
to Psalm 53. Because in both the Old Testament
and in the New Testament, We read the same indictment from
God about each and every one of us, you and me and every other
member of our race. Psalm 53 and verse 2, it says,
God looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if
there were any that did understand, that did seek God. Every one of them is gone back
They are altogether become filthy. There is none that doeth good,
no, not one." You see, the reason that we do the things that we
do is because we are the way that we are by nature. You don't have to teach a newborn
child to cry, or to fret, or to fuss. You don't have to take
a child and teach them to lie, or to steal, or to curse, or
anything. They'll do all those things themselves. And only if God is pleased to
teach us. only if He is pleased to have
mercy upon us and reveal to us the truth about how He says that
we are. You see, I can guarantee you
this. We are not the way we naturally
think we are. We are the way that God says
that we are. And He says that all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. And all have sinned because
all are sinners. Now, lest you think that this
is some isolated statement in the Scripture found somewhere
in the Old Testament Scriptures, turn over to Romans chapter 9.
Because in Romans chapter 9, the Apostle Paul, likewise, making
reference To the very passage we just read in Psalm 53, he
has this to say, being led by the Spirit of God. Romans chapter
3, I'm sorry. Romans chapter 3, and listen
to what he says beginning in verse 10. In other words, there's
not something new here, it's the same old reality and truth
concerning all of us by nature. He says in verse 10 of Romans
3, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth,
There is none that seeketh after God, that is, God as He is in
reality. They are all gone out of the
way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good,
no, not one." Now, people always seem to like a universal approach
to the Scriptures. Well, this is one case where
you can make that apply. There is none good, no, not one. And then he goes on with the
description. This is a description of you and me and every son and
daughter of Adam by nature. He says, their throat is an open
sepulchre, With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison
of Asp is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and
bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed
blood. Destruction and misery are in
their ways. And the way of peace have they
not known." In other words, the way of peace with God, they would
not know, they do not know, and they can never find out of themselves. They have not known it. And there
is no fear of God before their eyes. Now that's the state and
that's the condition that God in grace, that God as a Savior
meets in all those He saves. So in truth, the gospel of God's
salvation begins with this bad news. You see, if you have no
bad news, you don't need the good news. But it's a sad thing also that
so many preachers seem to like to leave people right there. They like to leave them, it seems,
always groaning, always bowed down, always broken, Always living
in doubt and fear and sadness and having no assurance. It seems like that they like
to keep people there so as maybe to be able to wield some kind
of power over them. But I'm going to tell you this
this morning. That is not faith. And that is
not godliness. That is simply unbelief. And one example that we find
in the Scripture of this is of a man by the name of Peter who
fell and failed and made mistake after mistake after mistake,
showed himself naturally what he was as a sinner. But he confessed this. He said
to the Lord Jesus Christ, we believe and are sure that You
are the Christ. We believe and are sure that
You are the one and only Savior. You see, that's what the Christ
was come to do. And rather than deny what the
Bible says that we are, rather than deny what we know if we
have an ounce of truth in us that we are, rather than deny
the obvious evidence that we see in others all around us, We are to be found on the one
ground and in the one character before God that He saves. Paul writing to Timothy, he says
this, This is a faithful sage, and worthy of all acceptation,
that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners." Is he talking about himself?
He follows it immediately with this, "...of whom I am chief."
He came into this world to save sinners. So that God not only
brings the sinner down, brings us to an end of ourselves, shows
us, convinces us that we are not good in ourselves, that we
can't save ourselves, that there's no way that we can establish
a righteousness that He will accept, but He doesn't leave
us there. Those He saves, He doesn't leave
them there. He makes His gospel to be to
them what the very name and word gospel means, which is good news. In other words, the Bible not
only tells us and shows us that we are sinners, the Bible is
glad tidings to sinners. And He convinces us that the
salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Savior, who is God
come in the flesh, the just God and the Savior, He convinces
us that this salvation is a free and sure and eternal salvation
from all our sins in and by Christ alone. Not Christ plus. Not Christ in your reformation.
Not Christ with your assistance. Not Christ with your addition.
He convinces us that all salvation from our sins is in the Savior
and by that work that He accomplished. In other words, it's in one outside
of ourselves. It's in one other than ourselves. You see, the gospel would not
ever be good news or glad tidings if it was simply, as so many
seem to preach in our day, a matter of a self-help message. You help God, He'll help you. You do for God, He'll do for
you. You give to God, He'll give to
you. But nowhere in the Bible do we
find anything like that at all. What we find is that salvation,
as Jonah confessed it from the belly of the whale, salvation
is of the Lord. And salvation, according to the
Apostle and all throughout this book, salvation is all of grace,
which means it is totally of unmerited favor from God and
nothing of ourselves. Paul says this, "...not of works,
lest any man should boast. For we are saved by the free
grace of God." And grace does not depend on anything done by
us, or anything not done by us, or anything felt by us. Grace
depends only on God. But since it is our fallen nature,
just like our parents Adam and Eve, Sin is a part of our fallen
nature to imagine that we can do something to please God. We'll be busy all the time just
like they were when they fell, sewing together these fig leaf
aprons and making coverings for ourselves, imagining we stand
covered before God, when even in those we're still just naked. Naked sinners. And they were
never saved by anything they did. They weren't saved by that
fig leaf apron any more than Cain was saved by his offering
and gifts of the works of his own hand. They were saved, and
the picture of it is in that God saved them by what He provided
for them. You see, we don't even know what
it is to be saved. until God reveals it to us. God
is holy. God hates sin. God must punish
sin. And we'll just imagine that we
can please Him simply because we don't really know Him. We
don't know what He requires. But when He reveals to us our
inability to please Him, He reveals to us how He has pleased Himself. How, as the prophet says in Isaiah
53, in the Lord Jesus Christ, the pleasure of the Lord has
already prospered in His hand. You see, God not only requires,
but He gives what He requires because He alone can give it,
which is the gift of righteousness. And He assures His people, everyone
that He saves, that Christ is that one true Sabbath and all
who are saved by Him rest in all that He is and in all that
He's done. And that's what the Scriptures
reveal. Listen to the Apostle in Romans
15. He says, "...for whatsoever things
were written for aforetime, were written for our learning, that
we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have
hope." Hope. Now, if there is ever a misunderstood
word in our language in light of the Bible meaning of it, I
don't know of one that's misunderstood anymore. Because when we use
the word hope, we think more in terms of, I wish. I don't
really have any real expectancy that this will happen, but I
wish it would. I didn't buy a lottery ticket, but I wish I'd win the
lottery. That's not what hope means in
the Bible. The hope that is set forth in
the Scriptures, the hope of salvation, is an expectancy. That is, those
who have hope in the biblical sense, they have an expectancy
that is founded and grounded not in ourselves, but in God. That's what the psalmist said.
He said, why art thou cast down, O my soul? Hope thou in God."
The reason men and women live in such a state of obvious hopelessness
in this day in which we live, hopelessness that gives rise
to everything we see that goes on, the reason that they live
in this hopelessness is because they do not have this genuine,
real, good hope of grace. I love the word hope. You say,
how can a sinner who is sinful in the sight of God, who has
violated God's law, who cannot establish a righteousness himself,
how can we have hope? The hope of salvation. Well,
the Bible calls Christ our hope. Our hope is based not only on
the plain promises of God, which make up this promise essentially,
the promise of free salvation and eternal life to all who look
to Christ alone. I know this. I've spent enough
years of my life trying, reforming, Turning over new leaves. It goes
on, on ad nauseum. But I never had hope. I'm talking
about in the face of danger, in the face of death, in the
face of sickness, laying there on your bed at night, by yourself. You have no hope. Because you're always looking
to sell for hope. Or you're always looking for
things to give you hope. You're always looking for fun
to make you happier. You're always looking for something
other than the one thing that truly gives hope. And that's
the Lord Jesus Christ. He's hope. And He gives us His
Word. Through these things that he
reveals to his people in this book, he says that we might have
hope. Hope. In John's epistle, in 1
John 5, he says, These things have I written unto you that
believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that
ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of
the Son of God. How can we as sinners have hope
when we find out that salvation is all of grace? When we find
out that salvation is not of our works? When we find out that
going about trying to establish our own righteousness will never
raise our standing in God's sight? When we find out that salvation
is a gift? A gift. So when preachers say,
you know, well, we believe salvation is by grace, but that's not a
gift. Because a gift has no conditions. And one of the things that men
Reduce salvation from being a gift is to say something like this,
we believe that salvation is all a gift, but it's conditioned
on faith. No. A gift is not conditioned
on anything. As a matter of fact, the truth
is, faith is a part of the gift of salvation. He has to save us all by Himself. He has to save us all by His
grace. Peter writes this, he says, "...Wherefore,
gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end
for the grace that is brought unto you at the revelation of
Jesus Christ." In other words, what Paul is saying here in the
light of the end times and the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ
is that when Christ comes, guess what He'll come bringing to His
people? More grace. More grace. We never get to a
place where we don't need grace. We never accomplish anything
in life as a believer that we still have somehow risen to where
we don't need grace anymore. It's going to be grace in Christ
from A to Z and everything in between. It's not grace plus. It's not grace
but, and there will come a day, just as both of these passages
have described, when the wickedness of men, when the vileness of
men is unleashed for men to show exactly what they are. If you
want to know what you are, apart from God's grace, just watch
the evening news. You say, how can a man kill five
people? How can a man wound another six
or seven people that he doesn't even know them? He does it apart from God's grace.
And let me tell you something, if God lifts His hand from us,
from me, right now, I'd do the same thing or worse. That's right. I remember reading
years ago about two men who were standing, talking to each other,
and all of a sudden they looked and a man was being led by the
authority, he was being led to the gallows where they hung him.
And one of the men said, oh, I wonder what awful, terrible
thing he did to warrant being hanged publicly like that. And
the other man said, I don't know. But there goes me, but for the
grace of God. You see, the Lord in this book, He does not
paint a rosy picture of His people by nature. He shows us what we are in ourselves. He teaches us our weakness. He shows us our sin. But it is always in order to
show us His salvation. We're always just like old Peter,
sinking in the water. Always sinking when we take our
eyes off the Lord Jesus Christ. Always crying out like he did,
Lord save me or I perish. I'm as weak humanly speaking
today as I was the first hour that I truly believed. But the
hope of salvation is the grace of God in Christ because of this. Here in 1 Thessalonians 5. In verse 8, he says, "...but
let us who are of the day..." In the light, we see things as
they are. People who are in darkness, they
don't see things as they are. The light of God is in Christ
who is our light, and the light of God is in His Word. He says,
"...but let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the
breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of
salvation." Why should we have a hope? Why
should we be able to wear this head protective gear, if you
would, spiritually, this helmet of salvation, the hope of salvation? He tells us in the next verse.
For, or, because, because God hath not appointed us to wrath,
but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ. There's only
one way. There's only one reason that
any sinner could ever have hope of salvation. And it is never
because of anything they do. It's because of something God
has done. It's because that God, before they ever sinned, before
they ever were born, appointed them to salvation. Appointed. Now that's an interesting
word. It means to place. It is something in which you
and I are totally passive. A point. You see, by nature we
want to be told, like the man, what must I do to be saved? How could we ever be saved by
our doing when everything we do is tainted with sin? It means to appoint, or to place
into a position, or to ordain, or to put, or to purpose, or
to set forth. So what does he say? God hath
not appointed us to wrath. I'm not going to face the wrath
of God. And it won't be because of a decision I made, It won't
be because of a trip I made into baptismal waters. It won't be
because of any of these things. It's because of God not appointing
me to wrath. That's what Paul says writing
in Romans and talking about men like Abraham. He says this, blessed
is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." Now, what does
that mean? I really want to know what it
means, because it says, blessed is the man in this case. To not
impute sin to a person means to not charge them with their
sin. Do not put their sins to their
account." But then he says this, blessed is that person to whom
God imputes righteousness, or charges to their account righteousness
rather than sin, without their works. So here's a person that God saves. that He determined to save on
this basis. And that's all He saves. They
are those people that He did not impute their sins to them,
but rather imputed or charged, as the word means, to the Lord
Jesus Christ. So why is a sinless man being
put to death on a cross of justice then? Isn't it amazing how everybody
wears crosses and talks about the cross and all that? And so
very few have one clue as to what was actually taking place
there. Why would God put to death, and He takes full responsibility
for it, please the Lord to bruise Him, why would He put to death
a man who of Himself had no sin? Because rather than charge the
sins of His people to them, He charged them to the substitute.
And that's what He's doing on that cross. He's dying in their
place. He's, as the Apostle says, burying
their sins in His own body on the tree. And God imputes to them. the very righteousness of God
in Him. That's grace. He has not appointed
us to wrath, but to abstain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ. Not appointed us to salvation
through our decision or something that we do or something we improve
in, but by our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us. Was He a great teacher? Absolutely. Was He a perfect example? Absolutely. Was He a martyr? Absolutely. But none of those things, none
of those things deal with the wrath of God against our sin. There's only one way that that
sin can be dealt with, because God says, the soul that sinneth
shall surely die. The wages of sin is what? Death. And either I've got to
die that death, which is an eternal death, or one that God has appointed
and accepted in my place must die for me." That's His Son. And so we come to the Bible with
all our natural thinking. But I've heard all my life that,
you know, you've got to live good if you want to go to heaven.
You can't live good enough to go to heaven. A sinner's life
is just this, a sinful life. No. One way. Through Christ and Him crucified. But you see, that's the good
news. You say, why would you want to tell us again and again
that we're sinners? Because I pray that the Spirit
of God Put you on that ground in your own mind and understanding,
so there you can find mercy from God. He has not appointed us to wrath. But He has appointed us to salvation. To obtain salvation. I don't
know if you noticed in our text we read in 2 Thessalonians 2,
13 and 14, he said, in the light of all these who reject God,
he said, but thanks be unto God for you, brethren, beloved of
the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation. It's God's choice. It's God's
appointment. It's God's salvation. It's God's
Savior. So we're left with nothing to
boast about. We have no ground upon which
to brag or imagine that in ourselves we're anything, because we've
been appointed to obtain salvation. That's a long way from being
given a chance to be saved, isn't it? That's what people hear nowadays. We believe God's given everybody
a chance to be saved. Show me that in this book. No,
He's appointed a people to salvation in Christ, and they're everyone's
sinners, or they wouldn't need to be saved. He's going to bring
them. to know and to believe the truth
as it is in Christ, that He is the All of salvation. That the only righteousness that
we'll ever have is that righteousness that God imputes to us in Christ,
and the only sin He ever knew was that sin that was imputed
to Him, whereby He hanged on that cross and died. He saves all His people by Himself,
by His grace, and by His Son, and His sufferings and death.
And no other way. They're not good, but God counts
them as good in His Son. They're not righteous in themselves,
but they're righteous in Christ. They can't do enough works to
be saved. They don't have to. They've been
saved by His grace. They've been saved by His work,
by His blood, by His life. And there is no other salvation.
They are appointed not to wrath, but they are appointed to salvation
through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that whether we wait, or whether
we sleep, we live in Him. We live in Him. We live in His
salvation. And therefore, we have hope.
Let me read you just another verse. Paul writing in Romans 5, In
verse 8, he says, "...but God commendeth His love toward us
in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, much more
than Him. Being now justified by His blood,
we shall be saved from wrath through Him." Is God a God of wrath? Well,
sure He is. Cover your eyes and your ears
to read this book and not see that. Is He going to come and
display His wrath against everyone outside of Christ? Absolutely. That's what He's telling in these
two passages. But His people have no fear of
His wrath. Because they know that the wrath
that was due their sins fell on the head of their Savior hanging
on that cross. And he said, it's finished. Absolutely,
perfectly finished. So what do we do? That's always
a question. Well, if God saves us by His
appointing and by His choosing us and by Christ dying for us,
and if it's all of grace, what do we do? I know what I'm going
to do. I'm going to thank Him. I'm going
to praise Him. Like somebody walks up and gives
you a thousand dollars. Are you going to stand there
all day and wonder or not if it's real? Are you going to stand
there and wonder whether or not it's good or this and that other?
I'm not. I'm going to spend it. I'm going
to enjoy it. It's a gift. It's a gift. One day a man and his wife, You
probably wouldn't remember them except for the one thing that
they are famous for. They had a son by the name of
Samson. And one day an angel, the angel
of the Lord visited there. And they said it must have been
an awesome experience, a fearful almost experience. So much so
that the husband, he said, With what God has shown us and manifest
to us, He's going to kill us. We're going to die. He said, we shall surely die
because we've seen God. But his wife said unto him, if
the Lord were pleased to kill us, He would not have received
a burnt offering and a meat offering at our hands, neither would He
have showed us all these things, nor would He at this time have
told us such things as this." If He was going to kill us, He
wouldn't have accepted the sacrifice. If He was going to kill us, destroy
us, He wouldn't have showed us these things. He wouldn't have
told us these things. And that's the way every sinner
is. The gospel tells us about the
sacrifice. The gospel tells us about a free
salvation. The gospel tells us about what
God has done for sinners. And to that sinner that he enables
to believe it and rest in Christ alone, he hasn't received that
sacrifice on your behalf and told you these things and given
you these promises just to destroy you by his wrath. No. He gives us hope. And that hope, he says, is the
hope of salvation. A salvation that has even more
to be revealed. What will we do at Christ's coming
when all is being destroyed around us? We'll be saved. We'll be being
saved. Just like we're always being
saved. We'll have the hope of salvation. We'll have that good
hope of grace because Christ is our hope. Because He's our
Savior. Father, this day we thank You
and praise You and give You glory. We pray that in our great weakness
you might make plain from your word to these hearers this hope
of salvation that begins even before the world began in this
appointing and choosing, which comes in a coming Savior to die
in our room instead to save us from our sins. and a spirit that reveals these
things to our heart and keeps us until the day of salvation. We thank you and we pray that
we might possess that faith to look outside of ourselves to
Him. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.