1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Sermon
CM -Talking about the end, the end of our lives, and if they person was ready. “ as we get older we think about these things more”
I don’t know if that’s true. Brother in law and I used to talk about getting hit by the proverbial bus.
Global pandemic means everyone is thinking about the end more.
What I want to say to you, is, that’s a good thing. Not because I want to scare you. I can tell you that every time my brother in law and I mentioned getting hit by the proverbial bus, we thought differently
I want you to believe in a last judgment because that will bring meaning to your life
The first thing we need to do. We need to clarify what the end actually is and what it isn’t. From both what people have said and our movies, we can tell pretty quickly what we think the end is.
There is the old War of the Worlds. For me, Independence Day was a big one (I know, that dates me). Armageddon, I am Legend. More recently, “The Wandering Earth”. Throw in some vampires. Throw in a plague. Then every movie is a great end of the world story. What we tend to think the end is is total destruction.
I think our conversations show the same...
JF – call and talk about deceased mom, nope
JM – call the dieing person, nope
Christians have historically said, no, that’s not enough. It may be that. But that’s not really it. What it really is, Paul calls it “the day of the Lord”. (verse 2) He doesn’t call it the “night of the Lord.” He calls it the day of the Lord.
What light does, it makes things visible. It makes everything clear and easily seen. It allows for good or at least better decision making, it cuts through the fog.
Have you ever been deeply depressed? I think if you’ve ever been deeply depressed because someone you loved died, or because you were divorced, or maybe you lost a job you really enjoyed, you can get this better.
Often what comes over you when you’re deeply depressed, there is no other way to describe it than brain fog. That’s what people commonly call it. You can’t think clearly. You can’t sometimes even see clearly. Your head feels kind of disconnected from your body. You touch things and you know they are there, but they don’t feel real. There isn’t any crispness, any sharpness, or any clarity to life.
This is what the Bible says the end is. The day of the Lord is going to be the day when things finally get revealed for what they are. The end is going to reveal everything that has been dark, and confusing, and scary, everything deceptive, everything lieing everything manipulative and everything evil and everything good and beautiful and true and wonderful and glorious and honorable and respectful is going to be painfully obvious.
I think Paul shows us, look, the end of the world is both better and far worse than you could possibly imagine. If your idea of the end of the world is destruction, it’s much better than that. The end of the world actually makes everything clear. The end is not so much destruction but judgment.
One way I’ve thought about it is the Awa people in the Amazon. There is a people group called the Awa in the Amazon. Their entire ethnicity and tribe has only 355 people remaining. They are a people group in native to the Amazon, they live off the land, and there are only 355 of them left. They are threatened by gunmen, loggers, and hostile settlers. The Awa are watching all their homeland disappear right in front of their eyes and watching children die from violence. One of them said, “This land is mine, it is ours. We Indians live in the forest. They are going to kill everything. Everything is dying. We are all going to go hungry, the children will be hungry, my daughter will be hungry, and I'll be hungry too." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/22/brazil-rainforest-awa-endangered-tribe
Everything about them, about their situation is clear for all to see. The bad and the good. The way they treated the land. The way they are treated. It’s all on display. It’s all public for us as we watch this tribe of people end.
This is sad. This is a tragedy.
If that sounds terrifying to you, far more terrifying to you than you are comfortable with, I assure you it is. All you’ve got to do is look at the cross.
No matter what you think about the cross, whether you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior or not, the cross is this display of judgment. It makes things so much clearer.
I always think of Mr Templeton, who didn’t believe in Jesus, because he said “I miss him”. He was the finest man he had every heard of. He was the most excellent moral teacher. He was compassionate. He was generous to a fault.
The Bible says, “God presented Christ ... through the shedding of his blood … so as to be just” (Romans 3:25-26)
The cross is the ultimate display of judgment. It is the place where you see the premiere display of the injustice, the violence, the manipulating, the lieing, the self-righteousness of humanity and at the same time it is the place where innocence and love and grace and mercy are made very clear. The cross is the ultimate display of judgment.
The only thing you don’t see on the cross, the one thing you don’t see, is light. It was not the day of the Lord on the cross. It was the night of the Lord.
When Matthew tells us about Jesus’ death he says, “Now from the sixth hour [i.e., noon] there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour [i.e., 3 PM].”
And here is the thing: the death of Jesus Christ was the first day of the Lord.
“And on that day,” declares the Lord God,
“I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
I will turn your feasts into mourning
and all your songs into lamentation; . . .
I will make it like the mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.” (Amos 8:9-10)
The cross wasn’t just a day of judgment on all people. It was a day of judgment on the Son of God himself. When you see Jesus absorbed in the darkness, you know that the day of the Lord will bring only light for you. There is no amount of lieing or deceit or manipulation or evil or shame that cannot be left at that cross in the dark.
So that you can walk into the light.
And if that gives you a sense of relief, if that makes you feel renewed and refreshed, to know that the day of the Lord has already started and now there will be only beauty and glory and light, now you’re ready for the end.
Action
Paul says, “be alert and sober”. (verse 6)
What he means is that we would be free from mental or spiritual excess. The opposite of alert and sober is drunk.
What happens when a person is drunk? They took a good thing, alcohol, and make it the ultimate thing. At that point, the only thing that matters is the next drink, the next bottle, or the next trip to the bar. Nothing else matters anymore. Everything else loses meaning.
If you believe that the end of the world is judgment, this won’t ruin you. You won’t be filled with either hope or despair. This will keep you from excess. Everything will be more filled with meaning.
I guess some of you have already said, but wait I don’t need the judgement to have meaning. I think my life can be full of meaning even if the world is totally destroyed in the end or everything just disappears.
I’ve heard that too. One of the best examples started as a British bus campaign about a decade ago: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Do you see that? There is an assumption there that without God and without a final judgment, we can have a sense of what is actually good and true and beautiful.
I think you have to push back on that and say, is that really true?
I fully agree that people who do not believe in God can do good things and that those good things can be all sorts of enjoyable, meaningful activities. To give a specific example, my nonbelieving friends enjoy conversation and games and a beer just as much as my believing friends.
But would conversation even be good if there wasn’t a God who loved to talk Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
We don’t have time to get into it. If you want to later, let’s do it. Just put it simply, I think only God and a final judgment helps us see what is good and meaningful.
Plenty of people have found this to be the case. ….... One example that someone pointed out to me was a Czech poet named Milosz. He watched Nazism and Communism destroy so many lives. dHe said something like, what is really a truly evil opium is belief in nothingness after death – thinking that our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders (lieing, manipulation, deceit) are not going to be judged.” (Milosz, quoted in Tim Keller, The Reason for God, pg 78). Instead, he says, it is the doctrine of judgment that undergirds a life of love and peacemaking.
Be alert and sober. Judgement at the end brings out all the meaning of the middle of my life.