Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Sermon scripture is 1 Thessalonians 5:4-11. Please stand for the command word of our King of Kings.

But ye, brethren, are not in darkness that the 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 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 a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has 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.

You may be seated.

Of our series of messages going through the book of First Thessalonians, the section we’re going to attempt to deal with fully today, verses 4-11, is the second and third parts of a series on eschatology found beginning in the second half of chapter 4.

Remember, at the end of chapter 4, the last half deals with the final resurrection of the body and the final coming of Jesus Christ. Chapter 5:1-11 deals with eschatology as well. But there’s a transition in subject that I pointed out as given by several contextual clues in verse one. The transition of subject still involves eschatology, now to the day of the Lord and the times and the seasons. And so last week we dealt with the day of the Lord and those in darkness dealing with the first three verses of chapter 5.

This week we deal primarily with the day of the Lord and those in light.

Now, just to review a little bit, remember that when we speak of the day of the Lord, first of all—and I didn’t point this out last week—it’s important to recognize this is strong another strong evidence in the scriptures to the godhood of Jesus Christ. The day of Yahweh is the day of the Old Testament day of the Lord.

And quite easily, the New Testament church made the transition, as did the scripture writers, to the day of the Lord, the day of Christ being spoken of in the New Testament, equating Yahweh and Jesus Christ.

The day—that term is important to remember in the context of this. The day, that daylight that shines outside right now, is in one sense made in the image of God. God created light and he said it was good. His first creative act. And indeed, we’ve been singing scriptures now this afternoon for the last 15 or 20 minutes and reading them, equating it many times over God with light and lightness and day. And so day itself pictures to us one of the attributes of God.

Many passages in scripture depict God’s coming as the dawning of the sun when God’s presence draws near in a special sense to his people. God’s day brings light and with that light it brings evaluation on the part of God of what his creation is doing. And so for instance when God created the week in the creation week he sees what he has made in the light of the day and says that it is good. And obviously God always knows in day or darkness the deeds of men and his creative works, etc. But the point here is the scriptures say that God saw it, and that the daylight in that sense is important for us to associate then day with the time of God’s coming with the time of God’s judgment.

And so John for instance was in the spirit in the book of Revelation on the Lord’s day. There’s a relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Lord’s day—the Spirit of judgment, the spirit of the Lord that comes upon men and discerns their works. And the Lord’s day, the first day of the week, the Christian Sabbath, is also another really basic term for the day of the Lord. It is one of the days of the Lord is the Lord’s day.

And John on that Lord’s day was worshiping God. And the Lord’s day is a day of evaluation of men’s works. And God showed John from heaven what would come to pass in terms of his judgments against primarily apostate Judaism in the 1st century AD.

Scripture teaches then a definitive day of the Lord. As David Chilton has written in *Paradise Restored*, a definitive day of the Lord at the first creation week, a progressive day of the Lord in historical judgments throughout time and history, and a final consummative day of the Lord when Jesus Christ will return in bodily form, in his resurrection body, and will abolish death itself. From then he now sits at the right hand of the throne of God until all enemies are made his footstool. Then he comes back finally to abolish the last enemy with—which is death itself. And that is the final day of the Lord.

The coming of Jesus was a great day of the Lord as attested to so clearly by the book of Malachi: “I will send before the great and terrible day of the Lord one of the power and spirit of Elijah,” and that was John the Baptist. And so the first advent of our savior was of course a tremendous day of the Lord because here we had God becoming incarnate and walking in men and producing judgments in the earth as well and bringing men to salvation and to light.

The days of the early church and its growth were also a day of the Lord as Peter attests to in his sermon in the book of Acts where he cites from the day of the Lord as prophesied in Joel, which we just read responsively, and that prophecy is set up from the book of Joel and said to be contemporaneously being fulfilled in the first days of the church.

The Old Testament saw days of the Lord and God’s judgment upon apostate Judah and Israel. For instance in the Old Testament, God’s judgment upon the Egyptians—remember he was the cloud and light to Israel and darkness and death to the Egyptians who were pursuing the people who had been delivered by God. A day of the Lord—a visitation upon Adam and Eve in the garden of course, etc.

Day of the Lord simply speaks to God’s approach and specifically to evaluation and judgment.

As such the day of the Lord has two aspects to it: darkness and light. And in a way you can see here the principle of “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.” To those who are in darkness, the day of the Lord is indeed darkness to them and judgment and damnation and destruction. But to those who are in Jesus Christ—or in the Old Testament in the Messiah to come, and believing by faith in the one who would come to die for their sins—to those who are in light, the day of the Lord comes as a day of light and healing, establishment, deliverance, and edification and the building up of those people.

And so the day of the Lord always has that two-fold aspect to it.

The first mention of the day of the Lord is in the book of Amos in the Old Testament. And it’s interesting in that context in Amos 5:20 that God through the prophet Amos tells them: “You may think the day of the Lord is going to be light to you, but it’s really darkness.” Verse 20: “Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness and not light, even very dark and no brightness in it?”

The point is that the apostate people that Amos preached to thought since they were institutionally in God’s church that the day of the Lord would be light to them. And so you see this aspect to it. But Amos says, “No, it won’t be light for you.” And there are many today who want the return of Jesus Christ and want the rapture, etc. But because of their absolute rebellion against God’s law and against his sovereignty and election as well, the day of the Lord will be for them darkness and not light.

It always has this two-fold aspect to it. And it always comes upon people unawares. Their sin produces a sense of slumber and drunkenness to them. So the day of the Lord comes upon them suddenly. It brings surprises to men—those men that is who are going to be damned and judged by God.

Remember we read last week about the Egyptians. They said according to the song of deliverance there that “we’ll take those Israelites, we’ll overcome them and kill them.” And instead God comes to the Egyptians and judges them. Same with Amos. Same with Malachi—the institutional those who thought they were safe because of being institutionally in the body of Israel at the time of our Lord. Those who rejected Christ were judged in AD 70 and very abruptly. For them they thought that they had successfully persecuted the church.

The book of Joel which we’ve read responsively now for the last couple of weeks is really an extended treatment of progressive days of the Lord in history and it develops to the final consummative one as well and it treats these aspects—this light and dark aspect—as well.

And so last week’s readings had to do with the day of the Lord of those in darkness and this week the day of the Lord and those in light.

It’s important to observe in the context of all this—which I assume is mostly corrective for most of us who have always equated the day of the Lord at the final consummative day of the Lord. As we apply this corrective to our worldview and to our understanding of scripture, it’s very important that we don’t lose the exceptional nature of such days.

It would be easy to say, “Oh, every day is the day of the Lord because every day God is sorting the affairs of men out.” But that’s not really what’s going on. The term the day of the Lord refers to a supernatural, as it were, an extraordinary visitation of God upon a man or upon a people.

In 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, Paul wrote to this same group: “I beseech you by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our gathering together unto him that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled neither by spirit nor by word nor by letter from us as that the day of the Lord, the day of Christ rather, is at hand.” He wanted them to be aware that there were certain things that had to happen first before the day of the Lord that he referenced in our text in the first epistle to the Thessalonians occurred.

So we don’t want to get rid of the exceptional nature of the day. It is an exceptional thing. I think that Paul’s primary reference in First Thessalonians in the passage from chapter 5 that we’ve been referring to is the destruction of Jerusalem, God’s judgment upon them in AD 70.

And I think that for two reasons. One, because of the follow-up letter in Thessalonians. Remember he said—we read last week—that those will persecute you will be judged. You’ll be delivered from them. And that was contemporaneously to give them comfort in the context of those enemies to the church which were the Jewish nation that were persecuting the church. Remember there was a reference to God’s wrath upon them in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 as well.

Secondly, in 2 Thessalonians it also talks about some events that would happen contemporaneously with the Thessalonians that they could see as indicators that the day of the Lord was really coming upon them quickly. Now remember they would look at the book of Hebrews and how they were supposed to see the day approaching. And in Thessalonians, he actually gives them a couple of indications of what would have to happen before that great day of the Lord and judgment upon Jerusalem in AD 70 would occur.

And so for those reasons, his primary reference is to AD 70. However, whenever the Bible talks about the day of the Lord, it wants to bring up the theme of the final consummative day as well as contemporaneous days of the Lord to various times of church history as well.

Day of the Lord, those in darkness. We said last week that sudden destruction comes upon those in darkness. That’s a good summation of the day of the Lord and those in darkness. It is sudden and it is destruction.

Deuteronomy 28:15 and 45—God says: “If you don’t obey this book of the law, all these curses shall come upon thee and overtake thee.” Verse 45: “Moreover, all these curses shall come upon thee, shall pursue thee and overtake thee.” Suddenness comes upon you from behind. You don’t see it coming and bam, they overtake you. It is sudden. And it is total destruction. The removal of all that makes life bearable is what’s being spoken of there.

Sudden destruction. The Philistines, the Egyptians, apostate Jews in the book of Amos, Jerusalem in AD 70, etc. All these people—sudden destruction came upon them.

It’s interesting in that relationship. I mentioned last week Samson and the very beginning of the story of Samson in Judges said that God had punished Israel. They had sinned and he put them under dominion to the Philistines for 40 years and then comes the birth of Samson—a definite indicator in the text in that Old Testament narrative to a time of deliverance at the end of 40 years of judgment. And Samson comes along to deliver the people of Israel and then of course at the end of it Samson himself seems to be destroyed, his strength gone, but he then wreaks God’s final wrath upon the Philistines in that time.

Interestingly, a phrase from one of those verses in the book of Judges about Samson has occurred to me relative to something in the homeschool bell. Samson early on, after he in the first mention of the text of him, he wants to marry a Philistine woman and his parents say, “Well, can’t you find, you know, a good Jewish girl?” That kind of thing. And he says, “No, I want a Philistine. I’ve seen this girl. She’s good-looking, etc.”

The text says explicitly that the parents didn’t realize that God was seeking an occasion against the Philistines. This was part of God’s process of building up antagonism so that the people of God might be delivered through the deliverer Samson. And God does this to us. He brings things to pass that we don’t understand and that we could get real bummed out about. But God says, “No, no. I’m in control here. And I do deliver my people.”

I think we have a contemporaneous sign, if you will, to the 40 years of judgment that preceded Samson’s deliverance. Remember, we said before that the fact of the homeschooling community in America, the hearts of the fathers being turned to the children and the children to the fathers affected through the homeschooling movement, the Christian homeschooling movement specifically, is an indication that there’s great reformation that’s going to occur across the world and through the church of Jesus Christ. And we have in the context of that very aspect a governor who vetoes a bill and at the same time tries to support homosexuality, gambling, abortions, etc. throughout our land. A wicked, wicked governor.

And I think that it’s important to remember when she does this thing such as vetoing our homeschooling bill that God is using this to seek an occasion against the Philistines once more. The homeschoolers perhaps if this bill would have passed would have become fat and lazy, etc. God doesn’t allow that to come to pass. He mobilizes his people for the next two years again to talk about the implications of the gospel in the political arena. And so God seeks an occasion against the Philistines by giving one of them this veto decision over us.

In any event, then the day of the Lord and those in darkness is sudden destruction. And so we turn now to the day of the Lord and those in light.

Those in light. And the way I’ve broken this out is first it talks about the position of those in light in terms of the day of the Lord—their position—and then their responsibilities, what God requires of us. And then third, their motivation. I think the text breaks itself up very naturally into this three-point division.

**First, their position.**

Verse 4: “Ye brethren are not in darkness that the day should overtake you as a thief.” The negative is posited first. We are not in darkness, the text says. And so the day won’t overtake us as a thief. We can see what’s happening because we’re in light.

They—that is, those in light—have been, in other words, translated out of darkness into light once for all, definitively through the work of God in salvation of Jesus Christ. And so he puts it negatively. And then he goes on to say that you are all children of light and children of the day.

We are children—God’s imagebearer. Children bear the image of their fathers. Particularly in the Hebrew Old Testament, the son always bears the characteristics of the father. That’s use of language from the Old Testament that carries over into Paul’s thought patterns here. We are children of God. And so we carry with us God’s image wherever we go. That image relates to light and to the day.

First, we are children of light, an antithesis to the darkness. We are not in darkness. God’s judgment, the book of Hosea, comes forth as light, and it comes forth as light to those who are in light. This passage posits a sharp antithesis then between those in light and those in darkness. Those who bear God’s image and those who resemble the image of their father, the devil, as Jesus was apt to speak of the Pharisees, for instance.

And so it is very important that we recognize in these first opening passages of the day of the Lord and those in light the radical antithesis that is posited. There are only two groups of people when God comes in this day of the Lord of judgment: those who are in darkness and those who are in light. No third group. Radical antithesis between the two.

And it’s very important when we make use of devices in our homeschools and our entertainment and our recreation—whatever—that we consider the source of what we are using. Has it been produced by those in darkness or those in light? Now common grace enters into that of course, but it’s very important that we don’t lose the radical antithesis that’s posited by this text.

The publication and emphasis produced by Greg Bahnsen’s church down in Southern California, that group originally that he writes for. Such a good thing. Just the fact that it exists on a regular basis coming into many of our homes with that title on it: *Antithesis*. There is radical warfare and dissimilarity between those in Jesus Christ and those outside of Jesus Christ. Two kinds of people—those that obey God and those that suppress the truth of the knowledge of God and so are in darkness.

Radical antithesis, which means we must evaluate at everything we do—our music, our literature, whatever we do—and we present it to our families, particularly on the basis of that, and think it through: How is this imaging the darkness of these people as opposed to the light of God? Very important concept.

Those in light are different in this case. They’re different and they won’t be surprised. They are understanding.

Secondly, this idea of we being sons of the darkness but sons of light, children of light—that tells us a tremendous truth that is all too easy to just skip over when you look at a text like this. This text tells us of the great blessing, the tremendous blessing, that God has brought into our lives who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. That we are lights in the world. We bear God’s image, his light. God is light. We bear that in our own selves now because of our union with Jesus Christ, our communion with the Lord Jesus Christ. We are lights in the world.

Indeed, Paul frequently speaks of this and Paul’s very mission involved this concept of lightness. In Acts 26, when he’s speaking of what happened to him, he is commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ to open the eyes of the Gentiles in verse 18 of Acts 26 “to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God that they may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me,” that is in Jesus Christ.

And so Paul’s very mission was to translate people, to convert them out of darkness into light.

Ephesians 5:18 says that we were sometimes in darkness but now we are definitively light in the Lord. This is our position. We are light in the Lord.

Colossians 1:13 of course is the central text that comes to mind. God has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of his dear son, and that is a kingdom of light. We have been positionally transferred, definitively, once for all. And we bear God’s image then.

1 Peter 2:9 he has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Matthew 5:14 “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.” The light of the world is Jesus but our children sing this: “Little light of mine,” and because of our communion with the Lord Jesus Christ we are lightbearers into this world. Very important to recognize that we are like Jesus. We are the light of the world.

Philippians 2 says that we are in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation. But we are to shine in that midst as lights in the world holding forth the word of life that Paul may rejoice. He said to the Philippians now in the day of Christ, the day of the Lord—the light combined the day of the Lord there again. So we are positionally in God. We have the tremendous privilege of bearing God’s light into all that we do. We are God’s light now in the world. We are ambassadors for the Lord Jesus Christ. We are lightbearers of the great light that shines, the Son of God.

We are also children of the day. This refers to God’s eschatology. We have a special relationship, I think, in the context here. Day is not simply used to indicate day versus night and light versus darkness. I think this also reminds us of the central theme of this, which is the day of the Lord. We are children of the day of the Lord in a special sense.

While the day, we are children of the day of the Lord in that sense as well. God’s great prefigurement of victory is found in this statement properly understood. We talked last week about Psalm 149 a little bit in the question and answer time afterwards. It’s important to see our relationship to eschatology as positive.

In Psalm 149, and I’ll just read a couple of verses from that psalm—the very next to the last one in the Old Testament. Verse 6: “Let the high praises of God be in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hand.” Well, okay, the high praises. But why is that sword there? “To execute vengeance upon the heathen, rather, and punishments upon the people. To bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute upon them the judgment written. This is the honor to all his saints. Praise ye the Lord.”

That’s the honor you have. One of your great honors and glory that God has given to you is the ability to execute judgment in the context of the world. Now, we know the institutional church and individual Christians are not supposed to take up the sword literally and physically to go cut people up. We’re not—that doesn’t mean we’re all supposed to form a posse and go get Barbara Roberts and chain her up. No, no. But what it does mean is we have a relationship to God’s eschatology. As we are God’s lightbearers in the world, imaging Jesus Christ, we are also God’s escaton, as it were, in the world, his judgment in the world. How?

Well, the book of Revelation says that we pray. The Psalms say we pray for God’s judgments in the world. That affects things. Our prayers are not insignificant. There is a relationship between prayers and God’s answer to those prayers in terms of God’s judgments in the world as well. It’s very clearly pictured in the book of Revelation. The preaching of God’s word of judgment against those who use their power wickedly. The prayers of God’s people that go up to God for deliverance. “How long, oh Lord, how long will it be before you execute wrath upon these people?” These things are effectual to producing judgments in the world. We are children of the day of the Lord and we bring that day of the Lord as we pray for it as well.

But secondly, we are children in the day of the Lord in the sense that it is manifested. The day is primarily for us. It’s very easy to get into kind of a dichotomy here: “Well, the day of the Lord is darkness and light and it’s equal portions of both.” No, that’s not the concept of the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord is primarily brightness, increasingly through history. It starts primarily as darkness upon apostate nations to the coming of Jesus Christ. But primarily the day of the Lord is the establishment of God’s people.

The day of the Lord comes not so much for the weeds in the garden, those in darkness. The day of the Lord comes primarily for the flowers in the garden, for those who are light, to deliver them from their enemies, to establish them in the truth, and also, as we’ll see in a couple of minutes, to give them motivation to live lives that more clearly exemplify and picture forth the Lord Jesus Christ and his power.

Jesus Christ. Now, it isn’t really the church. Ultimately, Jesus Christ is the focus of history. We are children. We bear the image of the one whose purpose it is to establish the Christ. And so, as we are in Jesus Christ, we then become the focus of history and eschatology as well.

There is a dominance of blessing. You know, we read the Ten Commandments all the time in our communion service: “He visits the iniquity of one of the fathers under the third and fourth generation of them that hate him. But he shows mercy to how many generations? Thousands of generations of those that love him and keep his commandments.” You see, the dominance is to blessing throughout history. And that’s what the day of the Lord’s dominance becomes increasingly as well—blessing and establishment to those who are in light.

So that’s our position. We have a position of being in the Lord Jesus Christ and because of that being in the light, being children of the day, and being image bearers in that sense.

**But secondly, these verses go on to say in verses 6 through 8 that we have responsibilities, those of us in light in relationship to the day of the Lord.**

And notice the change in the outline—their position, our responsibilities. I underlined our there. There’s a transition in the text. He’s saying “children of the light.” Then in verse 6: “Therefore let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep in the night, and they that are 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 a helmet the hope of salvation.”

Paul transitions in verse 6 from describing their position, teaching them about that, to now calling for action on the basis of that position. He tells them of their responsibilities. And when he does that, he transitions to speaking about them to including himself with that group.

Now, this is important to get because this is what we should be doing with each other. This is the model for how we’re to instruct each other as well. When we want to come alongside of somebody and exhort them, this is the way: “Walk ye in it.” The idea is frequently we should, as Paul did here, use this device to shift from “you” to “us” as a counseling device to encourage them into righteousness.

But it isn’t simply a device. If we are humble, if we are walking humbly with our God, we recognize that when we give counsel and exhortation, it involves exhortation to ourselves as well. We don’t want to stumble in that sin either when we’re exhorting somebody. And so we include ourselves as well. It’s not simply a trick, but rather it posits a truth that we also need that exhortation. We may understand positionally our relationship to Jesus Christ, but we need the exhortation.

And so that’s very important to point out here. Again, in addition to this shift and the teaching that gives us for exhortation of each other, it also stresses here the contrast between the two: those that sleep and those that are watchful and sober. Sleep and get drunk—those who are watchful and are sober.

The word for sleep here is different than the one used earlier—we talked about last week in terms of death. Rather, in verse, chapter 4, the word sleep here refers to moral indifference. And so now Paul says there’s this—in light of that there’s a transition here to their darkness. They are now not only in darkness and blinded. They’re also sleeping. They have moral indifference. And they’re actually drunken as well.

And the contrast is drawn then to us. Instead of being asleep, we watch. We are awake. Instead of being drunk, we are sober.

Now, the word watch here in the text said, “Let us watch and be sober.” In verse 6, that word is the same word that’s used later on translated wake—wakefulness when we are awake, whether we sleep or are awake. And to wake up, to be watchful, are essentially the same thing in the text here.

By the way, both words are a reminder to us of one of these primary responsibilities of Christians. Mr. Skipper sitting in the congregation here—Gregory comes from this Greek term meaning to watch or to be awake. And so if we know somebody named Greg or Gregory, then it should be a reminder to us that we need to be watchful and awake.

Now, I point that out because as we had in the Old Testament in the book of Micah, remember the three things that God require of men from God? To love—to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. Big theme in the scriptures. And here’s a big theme as well: to watch with prayer and to be sober. As one commentator said of this text: those two things—”watch and pray,” or “watch and be sober”—should be engraved on every shield of every Christian who goes forward to do battle for the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a big thing that we want to remember in terms of our lives and those things we teach to our children.

Remember I said that Ephesians 5:8 says we were sometimes darkness but now you are light. The second half of that verse says “walk as children of light.” Then on the basis of that position that God has brought you into you have responsibilities then to walk as children of light.

Paul said that his ministry—rather in Acts 26, was that he would bring those out of darkness into the light. And that the second thing we read from that passage in Acts was that he would bring people out of the control or power of Satan into the control of God. Volitional action being talked about there.

Philippians said that we are lights and among whom ye shine as lights in the world, but that has a corresponding responsibility to do all things without grumbling and disputing. Ethical action is required on the basis of our position as God’s image bearers.

We’re to walk as children of light. Children of light don’t grumble and dispute. Children of light don’t serve Satan. Children of light don’t get drunk. And children of light are not insensible to righteousness and children of light don’t get lulled into a sleep-like pattern by the beautiful things that God can bring us in terms of the world as well. None of those things are to characterize children of light.

We have a volitional responsibility. That responsibility is first to watch.

Spiritual and moral alertness is indicated in this term in the scriptures. I’ve given you several references there. It’s by no means exhaustive. But the scriptures say first we’re supposed to watch in light of enemies. 1 Peter 5:8 for instance says: “Be sober, be vigilant. Be watching, in other words, because your adversary the devil is a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour.”

We are to watch defensively for ourselves because we have an adversary out there. And everyone that serves Satan is also our adversary. That radical antithesis again that the scripture posits means we got to be very careful, sober and alert, watching that our enemies don’t trip us up and cause us to fall into sin.

Secondly, though, the watching—and this is of course the primary reference both in the text and throughout scripture—we’re supposed to watch in light of the approaching day. Matthew 24: “Watch therefore, if you know not what hour the Lord doth come,” he goes on to talk about in the book of Matthew, 24th chapter.

Concluding in verse 47: “Verily, I say unto you that he, that is the one who watches—or excuse me—that he, the Lord, shall make him that watches ruler over all his good.” So, there’s eschatology built into that as well.

Mark 13:35: “Watch ye therefore that you know not, for you know not when the master of the house cometh at even or at midnight or at the cock crowing or in the morning.”

Mark 13:37: “And that I say unto you, I say unto all. This is the Lord Jesus speaking. Watch.” All his disciples are admonished to watch in light of God’s impending judgments through history. And then the final consummation of judgment as well. It’s one of our great callings that we have to do is to watch in light of enemies and in light of Christ’s coming both in history and also at the end of time.

Third, the scriptures tell us that watching is to be accompanied by prayer and thankfulness. Luke 21: “Watch ye therefore and pray always.” Part of watching is to be in a prayerful attitude toward God to make you sensitive to areas of sinfulness in your life or areas of possible persecution of those around you and to your family or to your church. We have a responsibility to warn those. That’s part of the duty of the watchman as well.

So Luke 21:36 teaches us, Christ teaches us to watch and to be prayer and to pray. I saw a guy this last week on TV singing, “Oh Happy Day. He taught me how to watch and pray.” Big theme of the scriptures: “watch and pray.” And Christ indeed does teach us to do those things in these passages and then increasingly through time as well.

Mark 14:38: “Watch ye and pray that you enter lest you enter into temptation.”

So there the watching is specifically against temptation into sin.

Ephesians 6:18: “Praying always with all prayer and supplication of the spirit and watching there unto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.”

Colossians 4:2: “Continue in prayer and watch in the same with thankfulness.” Thankfulness, thanksgiving. So part of the watching is prayer and thankfulness.

1 Corinthians 16:13 is a good summary phrase of this need to watch. We read there: “Watch ye stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, and be strong.” The idea of courage, acting like men, and to watch lest we fall into sin, is implied there.

Revelation 3:2 says to be watchful and strengthen the things which remain.

Revelation 16:15: “Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments,” there relating watching to two specific actions.

And our text goes on to say that you watch, you be careful to watch to see when the Lord approaches. You be careful to watch to see how your own life is progressing. And you’re diligent in prayer with thankfulness.

**But secondly, the text calls us to be sober.**

And as Revelation 3:2 posits an action in relationship to the watching, here we have an action posited as well to our watching. We’re to be sober.

Sober. Hendrickson in his commentary says that soberness means to be filled with spiritual and moral earnestness, being neither overly excited on the one hand or indifferent on the other, but calm, steady, and sane, doing one’s duty, and fulfilling one’s ministry. This man, Hendrickson said, does not run away from tasks given him.

Part of soberness in terms of our responsibility as Christians is to do what God has assigned to us with a glad heart and to do it well. Hendrickson paraphrases this verse then to say: “Let us not be lax and unprepared, but let us be prepared being spiritually alert, first firm in the faith, courageous, strong, calmly but with glad anticipation looking forward to the great day. Let us moreover do all of this because we belong to the day and not to the night.”

Waker in his commentary on this soberness says that watchfulness without such self-control as is implied by soberness would prove fruitless since readiness for the day of the Lord means moral and religious readiness for the judgment of God. In other words, it doesn’t do any good to watch.

Let’s say you lead the children home. We’ve got children we can leave home now. They’re that age. And you tell them, “Well, by the time we come back—and we’re not going to tell you when we’re coming—we want the living room cleaned up.” Well, if the children forget about you coming back at all and never clean up as a result, when our parousia—when our arrival revealing—when our day comes in the evening when we get home, it’s a day of judgment to them. They get spanked.

On the other hand, if they’ve done what they’re supposed to do, they get blessed. But if all they do is watch for our return and see our lights coming down the driveway, but don’t use that as motivation to clean up the living room, well, the parousia is no less painful to them. It’s still judgment to them. It’s still a day of the Lord in terms of darkness.

Watching must be correlated then to ethical activity based upon knowing the nearness of the coming of our parents in the illustration or the Lord Jesus Christ in judgment and evaluation in terms of the text.

Every Lord’s day of course is a great reminder to us of that watchfulness that we require when we go to communion. We go there evaluating ourselves knowing that the day of the Lord is a day of evaluation. Jesus comes and if we are found in him, he feeds us and that is the basis of that. Then it forms a pattern for all of our life as all of worship does.

Now it’s interesting that soberness is, as I said, contrasted to drunkenness in the text. In Proverbs 23:35 we read: “They have stricken me. I shall say and I was not sick. They have beaten me and I felt it not. When shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.”

Well, the beating me and I don’t feel it—well, that’s the way a drunk is. A drunk is so insensible to what’s going on around him that he doesn’t feel people beating on him. We saw a situation last year on vacation. We were down in California in San Francisco. We went to the Palace of Fine Arts or whatever it was and there was some street people, a drunk out in front of one of these places and there was a gal who was trying to play good music and a fellow who was collecting money for or something and I didn’t quite understand the situation, but a man came out of the Palace of Fine Arts and said, “I told you not to be here,” to this drunk. And he started kicking him in the ribs.

And this man is so drunk, he doesn’t feel it. Doesn’t bother him at all. He just kind of rolls around. You know, you can get so drunk you’re completely insensitive to what happens around you. You can get drunk in pride and ignorance as well.

In Daniel 5, we read of Belshazar who drank wine and praised the gods of gold and of silver. And while they’re doing this, handwriting in the same hour as they’re doing this drinking and praising the gods of idolatry, gold and silver, etc., Daniel 5 says: “And then came forth a finger of a man’s hand and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace. And the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.”

Belshazar brings in, he gets very afraid. His joints become loose. His knees actually smite against one another. His knees start knocking literally. He brings in Daniel, who he hadn’t paid much attention to up to now. And Daniel says that you’ve lifted up yourself to Belshazar against God. And here is what the writing said on the wall. Daniel says: “Mene mene tekel upharsin.” And he tells them the interpretation. “Mene: God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Tekel: Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting. Peres: Thy kingdom is divided and given unto the Medes and Persians.”

So Daniel brings the day of the Lord to Belshazar prophetically. And then after that is preached, as it were, to Belshazar. And that same day he then appoints Daniel as a third ruler over all his kingdom as he had promised to do. And in that night Belshazar is slain.

A good picture of the day of the Lord coming upon those who are drunken and insensible until the very day arrives itself. And it is establishment for Daniel and it is destruction for Belshazar.

Isaiah 56:10 speaks of God’s watchmen who are blind. They’re ignorant. “They’re all dumb dogs. They can’t bark, sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. They’re drunk on the job. And so it is with the church in far too many congregations this Lord’s day who are drunk to the judgments of God that he brings upon the world and upon the church through statism who are completely drunk when they get kicked by the state over and over and over again. They’re drunk to these things.

But to that church, to that world, first of all, the judgment of God comes. Their kingdom is weighed in the balances and found wanting. Imperialism in terms of the political jurisdiction is found wanting and judged and is removed. But an even greater judgment comes to those churches who are supposed to be the watchmen calling people to ethical obedience and yet are blind and drunk to the sensibilities that they’re supposed to have.

That church also was found wanting. And Jesus said in the book of Revelation chapter 3 that if you don’t wake up or when I come I’m going to take that lampstand away from you. You’ll be no church anymore. And that judgment is fearful because it means they’re excommunicated. They’re apostate. They’re condemned to the outer regions.

The other side of that, of course, is those in the light are established.

So, we have a call to watch, to be alert to the dangers when the state is kicking the church. We might cry out to God. We have a responsibility to do that. You know, the widow in the case law of the Old Testament who was being mistreated by the civil magistrate, she was supposed to cry out to God and God then would bring relief to her. But if she doesn’t cry out, the text doesn’t say he will cry out for her. The church is supposed to understand things well enough be able to cry out to God for deliverance and then God’s judgments come upon it.

We have to watch. We have to be sober involved in ethical activity. And this involves the use of God’s offensive armor.

God’s offensive armor. To be sober, he goes on to tell us in the text that this involves the use of God’s armor. “Let us not sleep. Let us for the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”

The hope of salvation. Now, Leithart in his commentary here said that the mention of vigilance probably suggested the idea of a sentry armed and on duty. And so, of course, Paul thought in terms of the Roman sentry thought of this armor stuff. It was just sort of a stream of consciousness sort of an approach to scripture. The Leithart posits there I think.

But this use of armor is repeated in other portions of scripture. I’ve listed the passages for you. Romans 13:12 says: “Let us put on the armor of light.” Very interesting in our context, isn’t it? The armor of light.

2 Corinthians 6:7: that we are equipped by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left.

2 Corinthians 10:4: “Our armor, the weapons of our for our armor, so to speak, are not carnal, but mighty through God with the pulling down of strongholds.” And there, of course, we have a strong indication that the armor is offensive. The armaments of God are.

And then Ephesians 6, of course, taking on the whole armor of God—the largest portion of scripture dealing with this. And I dealt with this a little bit several years ago, dealing with Advent, but it’s real important when we read these things we don’t think in terms of the contemporary setting of Paul in terms of the Roman army and their armor.

Paul was not schooled in that stuff. What Paul was schooled in was the revealed word of God in the Old Testament. And what Paul is making a reference here to is not some Roman soldiers outfit, as much as that is the way so many Christians seem to want to portray it. But what Paul is referencing here is the Old Testament.

Isaiah 59:17 specifically says that God put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation upon his head. And he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing. And he was clad with zeal as a cloak.

Very important. Turn to Isaiah 59. We’ll look at that a little bit. Isaiah 59 verses 15 and following.

You notice in verse 20, verse 17 is where God puts on his clothing, the armament that Paul reminds us of and the necessity to put on in terms of sobriety in 1 Thessalonians 5. And then in verse 18, he repays them according to their deeds. Verse 19: “They shall fear the name of the Lord from the west and his glory from the rising of the sun. His enemies shall come in like a flood. The spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.”

In verse 20: “The redeemer shall come to Zion and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord.”

This passage is very akin to our passage. We’re going to read here in a couple of minutes in this text, 1 Thessalonians 5. The basis for all this is the death of Jesus Christ.

In verse 20, remember we said that in the New Testament, we said this before—when they play a little theme, you’re supposed to pick up, you’re supposed to name that tune in two or three notes, you know? And when Paul says, “Put on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of salvation, the hope of salvation,” you’re supposed to pick up that, you’re supposed to name that tune from Isaiah 59 using the few notes that Paul gives you, and you’re supposed to bring into the text and understand it that whole context of that passage, because that’s what Paul is doing here.

He’s quoting it as a pointer primarily. Well, verse 20 refers to the redeemer who shall come to Zion. The word for redeemer in that text is the same one as the one for kinsman redeemer. As I said, we’ll speak of the death here of Jesus in a couple of verses here in 1 Thessalonians 5. This indicates the necessity of the incarnation of God to accomplish the work of the kinsman redeemer. God’s own arm brings salvation. None other can. That’s what the text says. Nobody really can bring salvation. God’s arm brings salvation through the coming and work of Messiah.

But the first coming of Jesus is then said to have continuing effects upon the nations—that incarnation. Verses 17 and 18 show the redeemer putting on garments which prepare him to go and do battle with his adversaries and enemies. Verse 19 shows the effect of this long-term work is the adoration and praise of the nations. And verse 19 says: “From the west they fear his name and from the rising of the sun, which is to say everywhere. His glory is feared, reverenced, worshiped, and adored by the nations. To the extent that the darkness has come upon the earth, which is near total at that particular time, the light has”—

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