The Marks of a Good Christian: Aware

• View transcript

  The Marks of a Good Christian: Aware

  Download transcript

  Last week in 13 to 18 the focus of Paul talked about the return of Jesus Christ was on comforting those who had lost loved ones who died in Christ. And yet they were still a grieving going on related to not knowing exactly, what would become of them when it came to the return of Christ, if they were going to miss out, if they were going to be left behind as those who had died in Christ and not gotten to see his return. And so the topic really last week was bereavement. It was how we should think and feel about the loved ones of ours who die in Jesus Christ. And we came away without any shadow of a doubt that there is hope, not just hope for those who die in Christ, and they are with Christ and will be forever. But it turns to this week, now to the topic of judgment, how those who are alive Christians think and feel about our own and our own mortality. And in both cases, as we saw in Colossians 1:27, Paul said, Jesus Christ is our hope of glory. So whichever way you want to come at it, if you want to come at it from those who have died in Christ and wondering what their future is when Christ returns and how they'll be raised and where they'll be, their hope is in Jesus Christ. Because with him in life means with him in death and with him again in the great resurrection from the dead. Now this week, our anchor and our hope is in Christ for those who are alive and what becomes of us. So it's no longer about bereavement, it's about judgment. And maybe if last week's main emphasis was the hope we have the anchor we have in Christ...this week, for those who are alive, Paul wants them to know you need to be aware of what the future holds. And the focus of today's section is being aware most of all of what already has been said rather than speculate on what hasn't been said about the future return of Jesus Christ. And also turning our attention to ourselves and saying, as we think about the return of Jesus, rather than speculate on calendar dates and try to predict, we prepare best by focusing on our own conduct, on our behavior, on who we are in Christ, not focusing on everything outside of us. But the best way to be prepared, Paul is going to teach these Thessalonians today is to be anchored in the truth of God's Word and what it says for us. Curiosity about the future and where it's headed for our own sake and others sake is not unbiblical, but it can be, if taken to far unhelpful or even spiritually unhealthy. Fixating on trying to predict and lose sight of that which has already been said and needs no prediction. This church clearly had had false teachers come in and taken what already had been taught and start to twist it. And the beliefs that these believers once held too closely now, might have been getting filled with doubt. And so Paul has to address this matter. He addressed last week those who are asleep. This week he is addressing those who are awake, but he is going to use sleep language, not in the sense of those who are dead asleep, but saying if you're awake, then live like it. Act like it, because our beliefs are ultimate in determining our behavior. And if we really do believe that Jesus Christ is coming again, and we are to be aware of how we are to act, then there's a certain way we should be living. The main truth he wants us to be aware of is not the date of a return, but the state of our soul when he returns. 
So let's read 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, and then we'll see how Paul gives three exhortations for our awareness when it comes to the return of Christ. "Now, as to the times in epochs, brethren, you have no need of anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come, just like a thief in the night. And while they are saying, peace and safety, then destruction will come upon them suddenly, like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape. But you brothers are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief. For you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night, nor of darkness. So then, let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. For those who sleep, do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing." He who has ears to hear, let him hear, O Lord. And with the measure we use, may it be measured back to us accordingly and abundantly in Christ. 
As I mentioned, there's three movements to this passage; verses 1 to 3, 4 to 7, and then 8 to 11. And you can see that as Paul's use of conjunctions. He starts...now as to the times, verse 4 then...but you, brethren, and then verse 8...but since we each one of those times. He uses that conjunction, he's moving slightly to a new topic of awareness overall, still wanting them to get the big picture, which is the best preparation you can have for the return of the Lord is to be aware of your own state. 
 So his first admonition in verse 1 to 3, section one is you need to be Listening Up Rather Than Looking up. Listen up is Paul's exhortation to these somewhat worried, kind of nervous biting their nails Christians thinking about the return of Jesus. He says, listen up. Rather than be so fixated on looking up, get your head out of the clouds and into the Bible. When he's saying, listen up, he is in verse one and two, referring to there are some things that you already have been written. There are some things that already have been told to you, but clearly you have forgotten them. So let this be a reminder to you. Now as to the times and epochs, brothers, and you have no need anything to be written to you. Somewhere along the line, when Paul was at this church in Acts 17, the few weeks or few months that he was with them, he preached Christ and Him crucified, and he also taught on the return of the Lord. And even that phrase he uses times and epochs should maybe trigger in our minds perhaps the exhortation...slight rebuke that Jesus had to give to his disciples when he was about to go back to heaven. You could turn to Acts chapter 1 to see it. That Jesus is standing there with the disciples and hey, they're feeling pretty good about themselves. Their Messiah died, rose again victorious over sin and death. And they're probably thinking, what's going to stop the kingdom from being right now? So they ask him, Acts 1:6, Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel? This is what we were getting behind. We lost hope. You died. You rose again. We have hope again. So is now the time? And what was Jesus' response in Acts 1:7? It is not for you to know the times or epochs which the father is fixed by his own authority. Your job is to go be my witnesses. So instead of being so worried about my future plans, you need to be focused on your present duties. And one of them isn't for you to try to figure out the 'unfigureoutable'. Only the Father knows. He's fixed it by his own authority. What's interesting to me, if you put your Bible together, your New Testament...the book of Acts, hasn't been written yet. So Paul is not quoting Jesus in Acts 1:7 as if he's quoting the scriptures. Paul somehow understood the teaching that Jesus had given, both in Matthew 24 and Mark 13, about only the Father knows when the Son of Man will return in judgment. How did Paul figure it out? When did he learn this? Well, you actually, on your own this week can read through 1 and 2 Thessalonians, read through Matthew 24 and 25, and you'll be struck by the literary parallels between the actual literal phrases Paul is using, though he wasn't around to hear them directly from Jesus. And you might be asking the question, well, then, you know, was it just direct revelation that Jesus gave to Paul? We know that's possible because last week he says in 1 Thessalonians 4:15, I'm saying this to you by the way of word of the Lord. Could be. But also we understand that Paul spent some time with the disciples after his conversion...Acts chapter nine. He goes to see Ananias. Acts 9:18...immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales. He regained his sight. He got up, got baptized, got food, he was strengthened. And then it says in Acts 9:19, now for several days Paul was with the disciples. So right after his conversion, he got some time to spend with the disciples and potentially had a lot of questions about, hey, I met Jesus. I repented of my sins. I've trusted to him. Clearly, I was on the wrong side of history. What else can you tell me about him? And maybe in those few days that he was with those disciples is when they started teaching him immediately about the return of Christ. We also know from Galatians chapter 1, if you want to look there quickly, that in Paul's abridged autobiography, when he talks about after his conversion, he says in verse 18. Then three years later, after I went away, I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas...Peter and stayed with him 15 days. I didn't see any of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother. So perhaps it was also in that time that Paul spent with Peter for 15 days, that he learned directly about some of the things that Jesus taught about his return. This is all sanctified speculation. But what Paul is teaching as authoritative here goes back to one important point that he wanted these Thessalonians to know who were looking into the skies like the disciples in Acts chapter one, speculating on...when is the time, focusing on calendars, focusing on times and seasons. And he's saying, look, you're not going to know. Because it's not for you to know. That was the clear teaching of Jesus in...Matthew 24:36, Matthew 24:42, Mark 13:33. That the Son of Man's return is going to be unexpected, unforeseen, unpredictable, without warning. And then Paul borrows the language that Jesus used...just like a thief in the night. Well, what's that image doing? Well, you know, the great thing about when you get a biblical image to use, there's nothing I can say to like, make that image better. He uses the perfect illustration of how do you be prepared for something that could happen at any moment, but you don't know when that moment is going to happen. I was racking my brain trying to think about it, and then I was like, Adam, you dummy. Like, the perfect illustration of that is right in front of your face in the Bible. It's like a burglar who doesn't give you advance notice of when he's going to decide to come. So every night I say to Shannon. I love you. I always say that. But I also say, did you lock all the doors? I'll go back down and lock them if you didn't. And that's our thing. Every night...we are prepared for what?...the unexpected. My candelabra is at my bedside...ready. Because you're trying to prepare for something that doesn't let you know it's coming, even though it can come at any time. So he uses the illustration of a thief in the night for the unforeseen, unexpected nature of the return of the Lord. And then verse three he says, and when they...the world is saying peace and safety, so don't be lulled to sleep by just the world feeling like, hey, times are good. Maybe Paul borrowed this language from the Romans in this time, the Pax Romana, that there is peace across Rome and that everybody's thinking things are hunky dory. He goes, just when everything looks great, then destruction will come upon them. How swiftly?...suddenly, like labor pains upon a woman with child. And I will not exegete that. Let the reader understand...what maybe he's saying to add to this sudden, unexpected nature of labor pains on a woman is not so much what he's already established with the thief in the night, but what he says right after that they will not escape, as in when the labor starts for a woman to give birth, there's no stopping it. There's no escaping it. It's inevitable. It's unavoidable. It's going to happen. So you put those two illustrations together. It's unexpected, unforeseen, unpredictable. You're not going to know the time and the season, but when it does begin, there is no what? Coming to an end. It's going to be to fulfillment. It's done. The father's fixed it. There's no slowing it down. And so Paul gives this idea of those times and seasons that you guys are worried about. And just for the person who's like, yeah, but you know, what about the passages say, well, we can't know the day or the hour, but maybe we can know the year. No...those two words he uses in the Greek...times and epochs...the word for chronos and kairos. They're to be all inclusive terms. They're the forest and the trees. When Paul uses those terms, times is chronological time. He's saying whether it's seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, you will not predict the particular time. Okay, fine. Maybe I'll know the season. I'll be watching what's going on... No, that's epochs. That's a word Paul would use for time marked by an event that begins a new period of development. Either way, he's saying, stop trying to predict the unpredictable. It's not for you to know. Back to Acts 1:7. It's fixed; it's set. It's known in its entirety, but only by who?...God the Father. Fixed...no doubts, no surprises to him. And when he starts it, it will run to completion. So if you are one of those who are on a quest to predict the time or season, you're on a fool's errand. You cannot know the time. You're not meant to know the time. You will not figure out the time. The Bible is clear on that. But in case the Bible doesn't convince you, anybody in church history that's made an attempt at it, they've all failed. Really good ones too. People that knew their Bibles really well. Back the second century...Irenaeus, disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John. You think if anybody's going to know it, it's going to be a guy that was that close to the action. He formed his calculations for the return of the Lord using the specifications...numbers related to the Ark. This was a guy that wrote against heresies. He was defending the heart of the faith, and he goes and throws out a number AD 500 because of how the arc was written about and designed...bad idea, wrong. My guy, Martin Luther, loved the Protestant Reformation. I mean, recovers the heart of the gospel...justification by faith. Had some bad interpretation on Daniel. He thought he was living in the end in the 1500s. And listen, if you survived the plague, maybe you would think the end was near. If you thought the Pope was Antichrist, there you go. But he also was doing faulty calculations on when he thought the world began, and that he was living in the sixth day and the seventh day borrowing language from Genesis. He was in the middle of the sixth day, in the middle of the 70th week in Daniel. And so he thinks the end of the world is going to happen sometime around 1600. He was wrong. John Wesley, by some wacky interpretation of Revelation 12:14 of all verses...living in the 1700s, picks 1836 to be exact. He was wrong too. The list goes on up until our modern day...Hal Lindsay, Harold Camping, Pat Robertson...wrong, wrong, wrong. And when guys are wrong, what do they usually do? Oh, you know, I counted one too many toes on the statue in Daniel. I forgot to subtract one of the marks of the beast. Here's my new calculation. You think math is going to solve it? In the wisdom and brilliance and goodness of God our Father, who has fixed that time...you're going to bring some math into it and predict the unpredictable. I asked myself the question this week, though, you know, why wouldn't God want us to know? I mean, he wants us to be prepared. You could come back to me and say, well, why does Jesus continue to say, be on the alert, be ready, be aware. So I was kind of just running through that. And maybe you can right now. Why wouldn't God the Father want his children to know when he was going to return? The first thought that came to mind is, you know, God is a father. In fact, I take my cues from him. And sometimes when dads say...it's just because I said so. That should be good enough for our kids, right? We play that card. So baseline...if God just doesn't want us to know, we should be okay with that, right? Okay. Moving on from that baseline of it's just not for us to know the exact time or hour, but what would be the downside? And this is where maybe you do some heart work. If you knew in your lifetime the return of Christ...the exact hour, the day. Do you think it would really make you more active?...or possibly more apathetic for a season. Could knowing the exact day, hour, time, season, whatever lead to more apathy rather than gospel activity? And you're like, of course not. Why would it? Well. You ever procrastinate on a term paper?...on a test? You can't procrastinate on the pop quiz, can you? You just have to be ready at all times. Pop quiz happens any day. You better know your material. But when you have that final exam coming at the end of the semester and all the reading you've supposed to been doing for it and all the studying, what is our tendency?...cramming. Thank you. Vicky. She's with me today. The rest of you, I know. Oh, no, I would be if I knew it was 20 years from now...evangelizing 24/7. Would you?...Would you? I'm just saying knowing my own heart, what could happen to me is if I knew. If I knew it was 20 years from today and I knew I was going to live that long. I could say, you know what? I got some things I want to get to. I'll be telling people, you know, here, there, everywhere. But would I be committed to, like, nonstop preparing for it? I don't know, maybe I would get, you know, uh, that's a long time now that I think about it. How about five years before I'll really ramp it up. And then five years turns to four and then three and then two. And, you know, the last year I'm selling it all and going all in...gospel preaching, okay, ten months because kids birthday. And I wanted to go one last time to the beach...eight months...five. And you get what I'm saying. One month before his return, I will preach the gospel nonstop. I will drink all the coffee I can get and that'll make up for it. You see, what our hearts could do with that?...is we could think we would be gung ho, knowing the day, hour, time. But in reality, if we look at the way we live our lives on a day to day basis, we might see that more time, as more time to get busy with something else. And then, you know, save it all up for the end...the ultimate rededication. Could be one reason why our Father knows best and doesn't tell us that exact moment, but instead wants us to live with a sense of urgency because we don't know. The day of the Lord...Verse two. You know that it's coming. You know that it's going to be a surprise. But this day of the Lord, which is Old Testament language from the prophets about the 'already and the not yet' says in the Old Testament prophets who talk about the day of the Lord, they're seeing the Messiah come the first time. And his judgment at the second time all at once, because they're looking at it like this. We get to turn our Bibles sideways, and we see there was that gap of time in between. So we know that there was a first coming of Christ, and then there's this time in between for the church to be getting the gospel out to the ends of the earth. And it says, you know, the Son of Man won't return until the gospel reaches the ends of the earth. If you're looking for one sign, which I don't know how we'll ever know if it's been preached to the ends of the earth, as in, has every person heard? I don't know how we could track that...possibly. We just keep sending missionaries out to do it. But those prophets would have seen the day of the Lord as both doom for some and deliverance for others. If you want kind of an encapsulated definition for what is the day of the Lord in the Bible? 19 times it's used in the Old Testament. By the way, if you use our pulpit curriculum for your life group, or you just go back and study it, I'll list. I'll give you all the cross-references. You can go study it on your own this week...the 19 times it's talked about. The majority of the time, it's talked about the words associated with the day of the Lord, the return of Christ are: doom, destruction, desolation, darkness. I'm not alliterating those because I'm a preacher. That's the actual words the Old Testament prophets like Amos, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Joel...they were all using those same words: doom, desolation, destruction for some. But what we learned last week. Is that before that time comes, we who are alive will be caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. It's destruction for some, but deliverance for others. So those two words. When you want to know what is in summation, what's the day of the Lord?...for the wicked, for those who have not been delivered by Christ's first coming. It will be desolation in a second coming. But the hope that we have in Christ is it is deliverance for us because we've been delivered the first time. Now he just comes to rescue us out of this world before his final judgment comes. So that's the first point Paul's trying to make in is to listen up, look down, read what you have in front of you rather than be looking to the clouds. 
 And how could we be sure of where we stand? Well, that moves him to his second exhortation in verses 4 through 7, Wake up rather than sleep in. Now he's going to move from illustration of suddenness, unexpectedness, the idea of a thief, the picture of a woman in labor. Now he's going to use imagery of darkness and light, daytime and nighttime to say, listen, some of you Christians in Thessalonica need to wake up. Because you're falling asleep. You might be getting lax. If you're dozing off, now's the time to be alert. Verse 4...we're not in darkness that the day. What day is he talking about in verse 4, the day of the Lord, he just mentioned that it would overtake you like a thief, that you would be surprised. You would be unprepared. Now he's speaking to a church. He's calling them brothers right there in verse 4. But Paul would know, as we all know, that there could be unbelievers make believers in the midst. The true believers in this church needed to wake up. The make believers in this church needed to be shaken, stirred, and asked themself the question, am I a son of light? Verse five...a son of the day. Or am I of the night and of the darkness? I mean, he's putting that image in front of these Christians at this church, some he's already called out in chapter 4 saying, look, God's will for you is sexual morality, not immorality, that you live differently from the world. Don't act like the Gentiles who don't know God. And then he gets into and you also should be working, supporting, loving one another. So he's getting into their lives, teaching them how they should excel still more putting before them ways in which they can examine their lives. And that's the ever important question...am I walking in the light or walking in the dark? The question is the same for us today. I mean, there's no mixing up if you are asleep or awake. Look around at the people. I mean, if you're sleeping right now, you're going to wake up. But if somebody were snoozing right next to you in the service, you wouldn't be confused by it. You know exactly what that person looks like. I in particular, do. I see the guy sleep on me every week. I keep a chart at home, I keep tabs, I'm working on him. Not looking at you right now. I'm just going to blankly stare at the back of the room. But just like he's saying, he's giving this illustration, look, somebody's either asleep or they're awake, somebody's either drunk or they're sober. There's no confusion in between those two types of people. And he's saying, now, to these brothers and sisters, these Christians. Likewise, there should be no confusion in how you're living. Somebody shouldn't be looking at your life, Christian wondering, is that person awake or asleep? Are they in the light or are they in the dark? The New Testament doesn't paint anything in gray. 1 John, I mean, if you want to turn there, if you think, well, maybe that's just, you know, Paul trying to draw these lines of sons of light and son of darkness. No, 1 John, he gets right into it. Verse 5, this is the message we have heard from Jesus and announce to you that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. And now he's reasoning with them. If we say we have fellowship with Christ and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and don't practice the truth. There is no gray. But if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His son cleanses us from all sins. Aren't those very helpful pictures? That somebody is either in the light or they're in the dark. Somebody either is on the narrow path to eternal life because they're in Christ, or they're on the wide path to destruction because they're in their sin. You're a child of God or a child of the devil, 1 John says. And how do you know that? Are you a child of righteousness who acts righteously like their father, or a child of wickedness? This is the clear paths to put before us all the way back to Psalm 1...the path of the righteous, the path of the wicked...two different paths, two different destinations. And that's what Paul was trying to do to get the attention of some of these professing believers in Thessalonica to wake up. Not just him coming up with like a little spray bottle as they're sleeping and trying to get...no, he got he has the entire cooler filled with ice cold water and dumping it on them while they're in bed and saying, you need jolted back awake. You need to see the dividing line between your life and the world, because it's two different worlds. It's two different kingdoms, it's two different kings. And it really does come down to those whose king is Jesus Christ, who died for them, and those who are still king of their own life in their own sin. And that's the two colors to paint in this morning...black and white, light and dark, night and day. Where do you stand? Where do you stand this morning? Are you found in Jesus Christ and His righteousness alone? Righteous because of the perfect in the light life that he lived. Or are you still trusting in some type of righteousness in yourself, thinking that you'll be good enough to stand before the God who is light, in whom there's no darkness at all. If Christ hasn't removed every spot of your sin at the cross, you will not stand before that God of light in his perfect holiness and righteousness and justice. But if you are in Jesus Christ and have his righteousness, have his perfection and holiness and light, you stand before him complete. No fear, no worry, no trembling, nothing to be afraid of because you are clothed in the righteousness of his Son. Eph 5:8 says you were children of darkness now your children of light. But Ephesians 5:14 says, awake, sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Jesus Christ will shine on you. It's very clear for those of you this morning that aren't in Christ. This passage makes absolutely clear two things...Jesus Christ is coming again in judgment this time. Hebrews 9, not for the removal of sins...now for the judgment of them. And the other thing he makes crystal clear is there is no time to delay for you. There's no time to deliberate. You have the information you need to make a decision. Do I think I could stand before God right now, this day?...or don't I. What's he going to evaluate you on? Works...whose work is it going to be?...yours or Christ's. And if you're found in Jesus Christ, all of his goodness, all of his righteousness, all of his holiness given to you by faith. Or else you're standing before him with your own. Which is it going to be for you? The good news of the gospel is he offers it to you today. God the Father provided a way for your sins to be forgiven, your judgment to be removed, God's wrath to be taken out on his Son instead of on you. Do you believe it? Do you trust it with everything in you?...that all of your righteousness is found in Him and Him alone. Paul says later in Corinthians, now is the day of your salvation. Don't drift off to sleep again. If God has woken you up this morning to the sin in your own heart, the guilt that you have. Don't fall back asleep. Because there's no promise you'll get to wake up from it. This could be his final call to you today...to wake up and hear the call of Jesus Christ. To come to him, put your sins before him. Let him remove them as far as east is from west. But don't drift back off to sleep. Don't think you could decide another day. Today is the day of salvation...to call out to him, to cry out to him, to ask him for mercy. And when you have that hope your life's entirely different. 
 Verses 8 to 11, he moves into the final admonition of examination. He says, now that you are different, believer. But since you are of the day, there's a certain way you are to dress now. Take off those old clothes. And he's not talking about plaid or preppy clothing. He's talking about armor. He's saying in verses 8 to 11, you need to be dressed up ready for war. Verse 8, since we are of the day, we are children of the light, we are children of God. Then let us think sober mindedly. Let us be serious about where we stand. And what's the first evidence that you are serious about your life right now living it for the glory of God and the sake of Christ, wanting to be pleasing to him? You put on two pieces of armor. Ephesians 6 has a lot more, but that's not going to come along for another decade. So in early form, Paul thinks of three visible attributes of a true follower of Jesus Christ. The attributes, the virtues we've seen before. What are they? Right there in verse 8?...faith, hope and love. I mean, from the beginning of this letter, 1 Thessalonians 1:3, when he remembers them... their Christian witness. He remembers their work of faith, labor of love, steadfastness of hope. And really, when you go back and you read this letter with eyes of looking for faith, love and hope, you see that that really in Paul's mind in this time, this early church, those are the three virtues of a true Christian. But now he's going to take those attributes, and he's going to associate them with armor to try to give a visual picture. Why are faith, love and hope so important. Well, think about the armor of a soldier. You need something to cover your internal organs...a breastplate. Because your heart keeps pumping the blood through your body. And if that gets damaged, wounded, you're done. And what does he put behind that breastplate? He puts faith and love. The mark of a true believer...faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, not faith in yourself. Faith in him. And then the first fruit of the spirit of a true believer is love. Understanding the love that God has shown you first from him, demonstrated to you, and then love for God and love for other people. That should be no surprise. Remember, we're thinking about a baby church, a church of Christians less than a year old, so they just need it simply put. And some of us need reminded of the simplicity of the gospel when it changes us. The heartbeat of our Christian life is faith and love. It keeps us alive. And then he moves to another picture of a piece of armor...the helmet...the hope of salvation. Protecting our minds from an attack of the enemy. Satan's attacks in the middle of a furious battle. When life gets hard, that you don't lose your head because you don't lose your hope of salvation. Those are two different things. He puts them in separate categories. Faith and love...yes, that's the heartbeat of our life. That's what's going on on the inside. That my faith in Jesus Christ is alive and well and beating because of the love of God for me. But I can't lose my head by losing my hope of where my salvation ultimately rests...not down here. He's saying, you Thessalonian Christians who are being persecuted. I've already been driven out of town. If you start to think about your temporary hopes, what you might have here and now in this life, you're losing the ultimate picture of salvation. It's for deliverance. It's not for staying here forever. You're on your way to somewhere else. And salvation is ultimately our hope in heaven, not down here. And you need to have that on your mind at all times or you'll lose it...christian. You'll lose it in very subtle ways down here. Right? You lose the hope of your salvation being an eternal life. What are you going to get sucked into down here if you start thinking...like the world. You name it, it could pull your attention off of living for Christ. You can think of anything. You can lose hope. Whether our hope is in our physical health, material wealth. Takes away from our hope being singularly in our salvation. And that's what this passage is. It's an eschatological passage. It's wanting us to think forward to the end, not be consumed in the present. And so we think about how to apply that. How do you take a passage like, well, first off, you know that the anchor of that hope of salvation, verses nine and ten, is that you are not destined for wrath. So the first thing we can rejoice in, in renewing our minds is we as believers are not destined for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through Jesus Christ who died for us. I mean, that really is the high point of this section in the sense that, okay, if I just remember the hope of my salvation is there is nothing that can separate me from the love of God in Christ, then I have one, most importantly, no wrath from God to fear. Even though the world can be caving in around me. That gives hope. Because you look beyond whatever the doomsday preppers, predictors, prophets and preachers are saying today. You get sucked down into it and you lose your hope of salvation. As in where am I ultimately headed? What's this life ultimately for? And he wants them to be thinking about a higher life then, so they can live a more holy life now, motivated because they're not destined for wrath, but for obtaining salvation. And that has to do with ultimate salvation when he comes to rescue his church. And all of this, look at verse 11, leads to us being able to look around and encourage one another and build one another up. I mean, you might be wondering today a passage on the future, the return of Christ...real practical pastor. Thank you. Well, think about leaving today in the conversations over lunch, in the car, later at night. I mean, we can be so sensitive and jumpy in every way we think that our God hating culture wants us or our kids or our grandkids to have a godless future. We rail against it. They're indoctrinating us into a godless future. But we have to ask ourselves the questions. Are we indoctrinating ourselves into a hopeless future? Are you? Do you talk to your kids about the future as if everything is going to cave around us. Everything's going to come to an end if the wrong guy gets elected this year. Where's your hope? We want to point out everything around us in the culture that's going bad and gets us all up in arms. What are you communicating at that point?...a Christ-less future. Why? Because if you think it's hopeless, then it must be Christ-less. Thank you. If the way we talk to people around us, other believers not encouraging and building one another up, but the sky is falling all the time. You're indoctrinating the next generation into a hopeless future when we have a Christ filled future. Amen? That's where our hope is. That's where Paul's hope was. That's what he was pointing them to. That's why he could say at the end of this, we're not destined for wrath, so we can leave talking about how encouraging it is to be alive today. We can build each other up. Why? Because we're not trying to build anything down here. Should we be thankful for the freedoms we have?...100%. I'm like first in the list. But I need to wake up…wake up sometimes and realize providing for my family or whatever future I might have down here is a preacher is not contingent on any kingdom down here. It's contingent on the kingdom to come. That's what I've been called into. Maybe that's something we need to think upon a little bit longer. Do we really speak to one another because we believe with everything in us that we do have a future hope of salvation. In anything less than that, we can be teaching the next generation to put their hope in something less than Christ. When I want my kids, I want this church, I want us to walk out of here saying...our hope is in Christ and Christ alone. Do we care about other things? Absolutely. As Luther said, if he found out Christ was returning tomorrow, he would plant a tree today. Why? Even though he was wrong about the return of Christ, because we're still called to love and good deeds. We're still called to spread the message. But all around us we can be told, you know, the world's coming to an end. I mean, I was in the gym this week minding my own business. Friend comes up to me, I'm doing some kind of move to try to build core strength. He comes up and says, hey, core strength guy. You know about April 8th. What about it? Solar eclipse And? Cicada Armageddon...300 trillion. It's the end. He didn't actually say it like that, but he went on to tell me about all the things that can happen tomorrow. I like this guy. I even used it as an opportunity to invite him to church. Guy, if you're here, thanks for coming. I mean that. Because it was providential. He was indoctrinating me on whatever might happen tomorrow. And I said, you know, providentially, I'm actually preaching on the end of the world a day before that. I think you should come. I think you should know how it really is going to go. That's how we should be. I mean listen to people, opportunities to witness to people. Let them tell you about whatever theory they have. Why not. It's fun. Enjoy it. I mean, know when that opportune time is, like, okay, man, I've got to get back to my lift. But, honestly use it as leverage. You have the hope. You know the most important things about tomorrow. Don't you? So tell other people about it and say, yeah, I mean that that would really be crazy if all those cicadas came and I'm out there catching a ball with my kid and they carry me away. Sorry, Shannon. I was a terrible husband. Remember to lock the doors. My farewell words to you will be something stupid like that. Get Davie to eat his breakfast. But that's just the thing. We can look to the future. God set eternity in our hearts, Ecclesiastes tells us. But not face it with fear. We face it with faith. We face it with love, and ultimately we face it with hope. The hope that we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. 
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word this morning. We thank you that it gives us so much hope. Lord, there's so many things that weigh heavy on our hearts today. Real things, painful things, trials of life in a fallen world. And really that dark cloud that could be hanging over us this morning. There is only one sliver of hope that pierces through it, and it is the hope of our salvation. There may be for some in here no other hope besides that. But behind that cloud is an eternity of unending light. Where we are in your presence: glorified, delivered, full of joy forevermore. So I pray that that's where our hope would be this morning. As we think forward to that now as we turn our attention to the Lord's table, I pray that you would help us to see that all that is offered to us today because you first offered us your Son. In his name we pray. Amen.