Preparing for the End
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
“Whatever your position on eschatology is (or isn’t), if it doesn’t foster encouragement of other Christians or empower you to live an eternity-driven life, you haven’t understood your eschatology. In fact, the end of all things is the greatest hope the world has. If eschatology is not encouraging and life-re-directing, it’s not biblical.” ~ J.A. Medders & Brandon Smith
Main Idea: We must prepare for the sudden return of Christ by living spiritually alert & awake.
I. The Nature of Christ’s Return (5:1-3)
In their confusion about various things related to the second coming of Christ, the Thessaonians desired to know the “times and the seasons” surrounding his coming. Their curiosity about the “Day of the Lord” was not unwarranted or uncommon, as it appears frequently in the prophets & in Jesus’ teaching.
Acts 1:6–7: So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.
Though the Thessalonians did not have exhaustive knowledge, they did have sufficient information about Christ’s return. Paul reminds them with two analogies:
A Thief in the Night (2:2b; cf. Matt. 24:43-44, 2 Pet. 3:10)
Labor Pains (2:3)
Christ’s return will be sudden, surprising, and disruptive. While most people carry on with their lives with no awareness of the return of Christ (“peace and security”), the promised “Day of the Lord” will come unexpectedly & with judgment.
II. Preparing for Christ’s Return (5:4-8)
For those who are in Christ, however, we have no reason to be “surprised” on the day of his return. In Christ, our status & our lifestyle have been transformed by God’s grace to prepare us for the end.
Our Status in Christ (5:4-5): we are now “children of light.” Light represents illumination and life while death represents disorder and death; Christ comes as the “light of the world” (Jn. 8:12; Lk. 1:78-79) to call us out of darkness.
Colossians 1:13–14: He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Our Lifestyle in Christ (5:6-8):
Stay Awake
Stay Sober
“To be drunk spiritually is to imbibe too much of the world’s way of looking at things and not enough of the way God views reality. To be intoxicated with the world’s wine is to be numbed to feeling any fear in the present of a coming judgment” ~ G.K. Beale
Take up the armor of God & the weapons of the Kingdom: faith, love, and hope
III. The Hope of Christ’s Return (5:9-11)
We can have hope on the day of Christ’s return because the judgment of the “day of the Lord” has already been poured out on Jesus at the cross. Jesus’ death on the cross was for us so that we might live with him. Jesus is not a means to an end; whether we are awake or asleep (alive or dead), we will live forever with him.
“When we are united to Christ, we are no longer to cringe before the thought of Judgment Day. That’s because we no longer have the pressure to make the case for our own innocence. Our case is thoroughly debunked. At the cross, God has already revealed our guilt. In our repentance from sin, we have already agreed with his verdict, and our ongoing confession of sin reaffirms that agreement. Judgment Day happened for us, in a very real sense, already, at the Place of the Skull outside the gates of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.” ~ Russell Moore
Hebrews 9:27–28: And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
Together as an end-time community of God, the church ought to be constantly “encouraging one another & building one another up” in the hope of Christ’s return.
