A Life Pleasing to God: Living with the Age to Come in Mind
Pastor Fletcher preaches from 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11. Discussion points: We long for the day of the Lord when we will have rest and peace; our culture can easily lull us into spiritual sleep; we can armor ourselves against apathy and worldliness through faith, hope, and love.
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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 5:1-11] Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying there's peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.
So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the the breastplate of faith and love. And for helmet, the hope of salvation, for God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with Him. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Preacher: All right, good morning. It's good to see everybody this morning. My name's Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor here at the church. If I haven't had a chance to meet you, I would love to meet you after the, service today and get to know you a little bit better. as a Christian, I don't know if you're with me on this, but sometimes I feel like I'm constantly trying to clarify I'm not like those Christians. those Christians that you see doing these sorts of things, that's, that's not me. We don't always send our best onto the news TV programs. You know, I'm always trying to clarify, what type of Christian I am, and sometimes you just feel embarrassed by the type of people that are out there and spreading, things and giving Christians a good or a bad name, I guess more a bad name by the ones that you feel embarrassed by.
Back in 2011, a lot of you were like in elementary school, OK, but, I was already in graduate school in 2011. Megan and I were living in Louisville, Kentucky, and we didn't have children yet. We did have a very puppy, like a little dog. Who's still with us, Maggie, she's, she was, she was born an old lady and she's still an old lady. She's just grumpy, so in 2011 there was this guy named Harold Camping. Does anybody know the name Harold Camping? Probably not. he was a radio personality, a Christian radio personality who was on like 150 stations around the United States. So very prevalent guy. He was very old by the time that 2011 rolled around, and he very famously predicted the end of the world is going to occur on the 21st of May 2011.
If you were around at that time, you may have seen one of these billboards. That were all over the world. Anybody does that look familiar to anybody from 2011? OK, a few folks you may have recognized it, they spent $5 million putting up billboards all over the United States. They had one in the middle of Times Square. They had them on cars. Driving around, you would just have like you know those advertisements that would be like on the back windshield of a car. People were putting them on their back windshields. They were everywhere. Judgment Day, May 21st, 2011. My favorite part of this is the stamp, the seal. The Bible guarantees it. It's just hilarious.
I just, I, I, how did he come up with this date? I looked into it. I've actually used this illustration before, so if you've been at the church long enough, you've probably heard this, but, it's not, I couldn't tell by the way that you recognized Harold Camping or the signs. He came up with this date. I, I've never looked this up before. It's wild. He basically said, OK, the word atonement. Let's say that word equals 5. The word completeness, let's say that word equals 10, and the word heaven, let's say that word equals 17. Now, when you multiply 5 times 10 times 17, and square it, you get 4 you get 722 and 500, 722,500. When you add 722,500 days from the day that Jesus died on the cross, May 21, 2011. That's how we came up with that.
And people gave him money. They gave him their money. And he put billboards all over the place. Never mind the fact. That Jesus very explicitly said, you will not know the day when I am to return. Never mind the fact that Harold Camping had done this before in 1994. He predicted the end of the world, and then when he was wrong on May 21st, what did he say? He said, oh, I just got it off by a little bit, it's October, something, something. And then that day passed and then they quietly said, OK, grandpa, let's go back home, OK?
I remember where I was on May 21st. I was in Louisville. my wife and I watched a really trippy movie. It was like, Black Swan with Natalie Portman in it, real weird movie, OK, I don't know if I recommend it. It was many years ago. OK, I don't remember much. I just remember being like that was weird. And then I it's like I've been seeing these billboards everywhere and then I'm taking my little puppy outside in my front yard and it's like around dusk time and the whole sky is orange like that color orange, and I'm like, Jesus? Alas, we're still here.
So. What does the Bible actually say about this day of the Lord? And why are some Christians just seem really excited about it? Like some people, it's like, you seem overly excited about judgment Day. And why is that? Why, what does the Bible actually teach? And and how does the Bible actually teach that we should be prepared for that day? That we should prepare for. That's what our passage handles today. That's what we're talking about today.
It seems like the question that Harold Camping is raising is the same question that the Thessalonians had, which is when? You see, the Thessalonians, when they received the gospel, we're going through this book on the Thessalonians, so if you've been with us, you've heard this, but they received the gospel. Paul was only in Thessalonica for 3 weeks. That means they got a. Crash Course in Christianity. The Gospels were not widely distributed by then. So the book, they didn't have the book of Matthew. They weren't able to read the words that Jesus said, like you won't be able to predict. So they're asking Paul, they're he sends Timothy to go hang out with the Thessalonians a little bit after they leave, and then they send send Paul send Timothy back to Paul to ask him questions.
And one of the questions that they have is, so about Jesus coming back. When's that happening? You know, cause they don't have any clue. They don't know, they haven't been taught, so they're asking then Paul's answering their questions. And when we're talking about Jesus coming back, we're really the word that we're talking about when we see, say judgment day, what we're talking about there, what the Bible usually says is the day of the Lord. Everyone say the day of the Lord. There I made you say it. Thank you. Um. This day is a day that ancient Jewish people usually thought about time like this. The way that they would think about time is they had this age, which is the age that we live in, which is really marked, if you think about it, it's, there's so many good things about this age, but really this age is also marked by poverty and war and hatred and evil and death and destruction and many really terrible things that are marked by this age.
And then you have the age to come, which every ancient person, every ancient Jewish person thought of the age to come as the day when God's king would reign, when God would reign as king, eternally, and that everything in this age would come to pass, and that the world would be as it should be in proper working order, that the king would return and everything would be made right. And so when we talk about the day of the Lord, it is when this age comes in contact with the age to come, and the age to come takes over, and we live in that age to come.
So yes, the day of the Lord is marked by judgment, but that's a weird thing to get excited about, honestly, unless you think about judgment. As judgment for those who really need it. And if you think about judgment as wider than just judgment for. the sins of people, evil people, but also evil spiritual beings, and death itself, evil will be eradicated on the day of the Lord, which is something that we should rejoice in. But more than that, the day of the Lord is when God makes the world new, when heaven invades earth and restores it to proper working order.
Every single time, as we did today, we prayed the Lord's prayer, and we said, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so when we pray that Lord's prayer, what we're praying for is the day of the Lord. You're praying that the will of the Lord would be on earth as it is in heaven. That's what we long for, that the Lord would come and restore the world, judge evil, and reset it. You see, the day of the Lord is what we all long for. We're born with utopia on our hearts. For example, how many times have you said, and I know how many times have I said, if I can just get through this season of life, then things will slow down. I'll have rest and it'll be easy going. I'll, everything will be OK if I can just get through this season.
How many times have you told yourself that? And then you climb that hill and you finally get through this season only to see a full mountain range of problems that you need to continue to go through. It's a longing for the day of the Lord. How many times have you heard someone say, if we can just get this person in office, or this person out of office. Then everything will be all right. Our nation will be restored to proper working order. And you see, even in our political desires, we have a longing for the reigning of a king that is better than earthly kings. We have a longing for the day of the Lord. We have a longing for an age of rest, an age of peace, an age of security and joy.
And so, the Thessalonians are asking Paul, OK, when is this gonna happen? And when Paul writes him back, he's like, Yo, yo, yo, Thessalonians, you are asking the wrong questions. This is not what you should be concerned about. So check it out. Verse one. He says this. Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. What, what a way to answer the question. sometimes he says that when he's like, you guys are doing great. With this one, he's like, I don't need to answer that question. You have no need for anything to be written to you cause you don't need to know the answer to that. And then he continues and basically saying, What you need to think about is not the when, but the what now, OK? So you're living in this time before the age to come. How do you live?
And really the question that this whole passage is answering is this, how do you live in this age, marked by death, evil, destruction, hatred, oppression, evil rulers, evil policies, whatever it might be. How do you live in this age? With the age to come in mind. Because as Christians, we're called to live for the age to come. But at the same time, we're present today. And so that is what Paul walks through. I have 4 points for how he tells us to live like this, and they're all kind of militaristic. It just ended up being that way. it's not how all my Germans are, but the first point is to resist the propaganda. The second point is to fight like a soldier. The 3rd point is to remember the good news, and the 4th point is to stick together, right? So let's walk through.
First point, resist the propaganda. Now what do I mean by propaganda? When you think of propaganda, what you usually might think of is fake news, right? Fake news, manipulating the people, but really propaganda is any source of media used to. Coerce someone to take your standpoint, use to coerce them to, to make them believe in what you're fighting for. So oftentimes propaganda is manipulative. I think you'll find that sometimes you actually might agree with it, and you might not want to call it propaganda when you agree with it, but that doesn't mean it's not propaganda. So, for example, I've got some Star Wars posters here for you, OK? So rebels are terrorists. Do you think they want peace? Now, if you saw enough of these around, you might think, man, there's rebels, terrorists, what are they doing? You can't do it alone, guys. You got to enlist in the empire.
Let's keep going. I've got lots of these. Support your, your, your empire, right? Build the tight fighters holding back the chaos, these stormtroopers, and I love this one. Do you know who's pulling their strings? Insinuating so my normal Star Wars fan is probably like can kill a kids. Where's Chris Chestnut, you know. But, insinuating that the evil crime syndicate run by the Hutt family is really in charge of the rebellion. Propaganda.
But also, if you were just to Google the word propaganda and go on the Wikipedia page, what might you find? But this picture of Uncle Sam himself, you might say, no, that, that's not propaganda, but it's literally on the Wikipedia page as the main picture. It is American propaganda, though we might not think anything of it, we might not think anything of Uncle Sam in that same kind of way. And how about this? How about you can take, take down Uncle Sam, but how about this, America. Land of the free and home of the brave. Now, I've got enough America within me where I'm like, that's right, we are land of the free and home of the brave, but I also recognize that maybe I was brought up in a certain culture that valued those things and maybe shaped by the world around me in such a way that led me to believe in American exceptionalism and superiority over all other nations and that. Never mind the fact that we win more Olympic medals and everything else goes with that. we still feel a little bit of exceptional and there's that's part of me, you know, like if you're American, that's just like part of the American identity, but it is still something that you believe because it's been taught to you in that way.
Now in today's passage, what you see is a bit of Roman propaganda that's going through. So Paul, Paul is addressing this little piece here. So let's look at it. He says, verse 2, for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying there's peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. Now this phrase, there was peace and security. This was actually an ancient phrase that was often said about the Roman Empire. See what people wanted you to think or what the Roman Empire want you to think, and it isn't even just what they wanted you to think. It is the truth that the Roman Empire brought peace and security. That when you were part of the Roman Empire, you had peace and security because it was a large empire. They had a huge military force.
Now how did they bring that peace and security but through oppression and enslavement and and taking over different areas through conquest and whatnot, but they did bring peace and security. And not only that, they brought prosperous prosperity to every city they went to. At this time, Thessalonica was booming because for the first time, what had the Romans done? They built roads and you can trade. You can trade all over the empire. It's like free trade for the first time. Thessalonica is booming better than it ever has been before and so people are feeling peace from their enemies because of what the Roman Empire has given them, and they're also feeling a sense of security from their enemies.
And what Paul is saying is don't believe the propaganda that the government cannot offer you the peace and security that you most long for, but only. Jesus can. With the day of the Lord, Jesus will show you that true what true peace and true security are like. There's a, there's a certain gravity. To, the comfort of the things that we have in this world. Living in Somerville. I mean, in my opinion it's just the best right? I love living here. I love the the neighborhood feel. There is peace and security on my street. I know my neighbors, you know, we're in a band together. We, we hang out, we like our are on the text threads together like, hey, can someone please figure out what's going on with this car alarm that's going off on the next street over, you know, like we're. We're connected.
And not only that, but, but Somerville is a really prosperous place. It's booming in many ways. It's a very happening place to live, it's a nice place and there's a gravity to it that says, I can be comfortable here. And It's propaganda. That all you need is what Somerville can offer. It's a lie from the evil one, dulling your senses and causing you to place your hope in the things of this world. Instead of the things of the age to come. Do not give in to the propaganda. Paul says that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While you're not expecting it. He says that the day of the Lord. Will come like a child in his mother's pregnant womb. That you cannot avoid it. Once that labor begins, it's coming. You can't do anything to stop it. This is way before the days of epidurals, that the pain is going to come and you can't stop it, it's inevitable.
And that's what he's teaching us to stay awake, stay sober minded. Don't allow yourself to be lulled to sleep by the comfort that the Roman Empire, that the Somervillian Empire might offer for you, that your culture, that your American heritage, that whatever heritage you might come from, that your world might offer you.
The second point that he brings up is fight like a soldier. Similarly, I think that really connected to what I was previously saying is that Boston is a place where cultural Christianity often comes to die. Now many of you are the, the remnant. You're like the, the dedicated few, I think like 3 or up to half of our church is from the Northeast and maybe a third is from this area ish, and the rest of us were transplants from all over the world and the United States and the world and really we're coming from oftentimes these places where the church was much more established than it is in Boston. And so if you're. Not here and very intentional to get yourself plugged into a church and to to follow Christ there, you're just gonna drift away.
I've seen it happen a thousand times. It's where cultural Christianity comes to die because there is no cultural Christianity in the Boston area. There's a remnant of this Catholic Christianity, but as far as any sort of church, like what we do with Protestantism, that culture is not very strong here. And so what Paul is telling them is that they have to resist this desire to blend in, this desire to be cynical as our neighbors are, this desire to just get your Dunkin and keep on moving on with your life. That's the easiest way to blend in, is just hold a Dunkin cup. We have to fight. With the age to come in mind while we're in this age. Now, this isn't a battle against culture, but it's a battle within yourself. So, check it out.
Verse 4. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief, for you are all children of light, children of the day. We're not of the night or of the darkness, so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober, for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. And so what he's, what he's saying, Is that we have to Keep ourselves awake, that we cannot be lulled to sleep by the culture around us, the comfort that we might have from the world around us.
He continues the illustration, verse 8, I love this illustration. He says, but since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet, the hope of salvation. Your enemy against the decay of the Christianity within your heart, of the love of Jesus within your heart. It's not cultural criticism. It's not seclusion, it's not isolation, it's not fighting back culturally, it's not, it is your weapons. Breastplate of faith and love. And the helmet of hope. Now, we can talk about those words and those words just sound like niceties, like something that a boomer would put on their wall, but But that's true, OK.
But there's way more to it. Think about what it means. Faith. Faith is not just this genuine belief like you might have faith in Santa Claus. Faith is a trusting in Jesus, as sufficient as enough. Think about love. Love is not just this sentimental feeling. Love is a self-sacrifice for the good of someone else. And hope, hope is not just this mere like wishful thinking. Hope is the assurance of things that aren't seen. And so how does he tell you to battle against the things of this world? Faith You lean on him. Love, self-sacrifice, and hope. The assurance, these are your weapons, these are your armor church, not that cultural sniping comment that you're gonna put on Instagram or whatever, your hope, your faith and love, those are your weapons against a world that wants to snatch you away from Christ. You're a soldier, going out to war. Why would you ever leave your armor? When you have to constantly put on faith, hope, and love.
The third thing here that he tells us to do as we live in a current age and long for the age to come is to remember the good news, remember the good news. Let's take the imagery a step further. Let's say you're a soldier in a war torn, a war torn land, and you get a message through the radio or whatever that the war is over, that they have surrendered. But for some reason, the bad guys are still using guerrilla warfare, they're still attacking you as you're on your way out of there. Well, what's going on? Obviously they haven't gotten the message or they don't care, they just hate you and still, so they're still attacking you.
That is the world that we live in. The war is over, the good news has been declared. Jesus wins triumphantly, war over, but you still have to fight. That's the world that we live today. You hear the good news, you have to remember that evil will not win. Isn't that a good reminder for us this morning? Evil will not win. Whatever you're facing in your life, whatever temptations you're struggling with. I just want you to think about that. To, to own that today. Evil will not win. It will not win in my life, because Jesus is victorious.
Verses verse 9, check this out. It says, for God has destined, God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with Him. This is at the heart of Christian belief that Jesus has died for us. I'm going to use an illustration that's been used a lot of times before. I don't think I've ever told it, but I've heard several other preachers use this illustration. There was a pastor about mid-century to the 1900s, named Donald Gray Barnhouse, and his, he had 3 children under 12, which hits me because I have 3 children under 12, and his, wife was diagnosed with cancer and shortly died. Thereafter. And so he's in Philadelphia, he's driving his kids to the funeral of his wife, of their mother. And he's trying to help think, think through ways to help them cope with what's going on and and to to direct them toward Christ.
And he looks out the window and he says, guys, do you see that large semi truck outside the window? What do people call those here, tractor trailers or 18 wheelers, I don't know. Everybody has a different one. This large semi truck outside the window. Would you rather get hit by the truck or the shadow of the truck? And his oldest responses, well, obviously the shadow, the shadow can't hurt you. And he says, That's what happened to your mother. You see your mother was struck by the shadow of death, while Jesus was struck by the truck itself. You see, when we die we might experience a physical death, but Jesus, when we place our trust in him, he experienced the spiritual death that we deserve. He experienced the full weight of the wrath of God. He went through the death of the semi truck so that we might have the shadow of death and life with him, eternally. That's what it means that he died for us. That he would experience the full weight of death, everything that death means, and he would defeat it. That the final enemy is death itself, and that Jesus is victorious. Death, where is your sting?
He is victorious. He always wins. We have won. If you find yourself in Christ today, you can know that your final enemy, the stinger has been pulled out. That you will not experience the full weight of that. Because Christ experienced it on your behalf. You'll never be separated from God.
And the fourth point that he gives us for how we can live together is just this, keeping everything else in mind that you're resisting the propaganda, that you're fighting the fight of faith, hope and love, and that you're remembering the good news of the gospel. He tells us this, stick together. Stick together.
In verse 11, he says, therefore encourage one another and build one another up just as you were doing. And I feel like this is just kind of Christianity one on one, but it's something that needs to be said that you cannot be a healthy Christian without living in community. Let me just say that one more time. You cannot be a healthy Christian without living in community. This is what Paul is telling us. He's saying, therefore encourage one another and build one another up. Well, if you're not living in community, how are you doing those things? You cannot be a healthy Christian if all you do is watch YouTube videos about Christianity. Those things are great. I'm so thankful we're on YouTube. Praise the Lord, it's great. You can't be a healthy Christian by yourself.
Now, let me dig a little bit deeper into that because some of us, we might be at church, you are the ones that are at church and so I wanna preach to who's here. A lot of times we take Christian small talk, and we call that community. But that's not what it means to build up one another. You see, flattery is like the artificial sweetener of true Christian encouragement. Flattery, it's, you know, sometimes we need to learn a little bit of flattery. It's like relational lubricant, OK, flattery is not a bad thing, but to flatter someone is to tell them something good about themselves. But not necessarily to build them up, but to, usually it's to get them to like you more. Is it not? Is that not the purpose of flatter? Hey, I, I really like your hair today. It's like. I'm the type of person that noticed that your hair looks nice. Don't you like me? It's it's kind of like a, a backwards, but true encouragement.
Christian encouragement is looking at someone, expressing gratitude for them or for something that the Lord's done through them. Explicitly saying a fruit of the spirit that they see in their life, telling them thank you for something they've seen. When I first started this church or it kind of came and and became a pastor of this church, I was sent out from City on the Hill, Brookline. And they did such a good job of this with me, and I am so thankful for it. They, on my last week, they wrote letters and and gave me encouragement that I cherish. I cherished so much that I couldn't find them this week, as I was trying to go back through those letters, that I asked Megan and I was like, have you seen these letters? She's like, I didn't know they did that. But it, it was true encouragement, and several of them were, were really heartfelt, and several of them weren't, but. But they, many were, and so we have to encourage one another and build one another up and that's what it means to, to stick in it together.
So I know this is a heavy topic. Day of the Lord, this is why we teach through books of the Bible, because I would probably never choose this topic to teach on Memorial Day weekend. But God wanted us to hear it today, and I guess that the final application is this, that you just consider the day of the Lord. Consider that this life isn't going to last forever. Consider that your life isn't going to last forever. I'm boldly encouraging you to consider your morality, your mortality, and maybe your morality also. But consider your mortality. The fact that you are going to die, and everyone else you know is going to die. And that this life is only for a temporary amount of time, and that we have this siren tune telling us to find all of our salvation, our hope, and in the things of this world, when we have a holiday at sea, a joyous reality with Christ in the life to come, and the age to come, and we are children of that light.
So that means to be a child of the light, this is in the passage, to be a child of the light means that you are an emissary of the age to come. It means you shine, we are a city on a hill. You shine the age of to come cause it's alive within you. The age to come is alive within you if you're in Christ, and you shine that into a world that's marked by darkness and evil. So you are the emissaries of the age to come into the current age, that the age to come is invading it, that Jesus came and inaugurated the kingdom, and one day he will come again.
And so I want you to consider how you need to change, how you need to be. Loving Christ or changing the way that you are resisting sin, or changing the way that you're considering who might need to hear the gospel and who might need your love during this time, and who might need a word of encouragement during this time. These are all the many application points of the sermon. Take it where you want, but after the, in just a moment we're going to take a sacred meal and be reminded of what Christ has done for us, that he has paid our penalty, that we might have life with him and that we might know him forever in the age to come, and there will be some prayer counselors back here if you would like to pray with someone. Maybe this whole idea of the age to come scares you. The day of the Lord, it scares you, and maybe you just need to trust in Christ for the very first time. We'd encourage you to do that.
And if you do that, we would encourage you to come to the baptism class so that you might be able to be baptized with us next week. We have two people probably that were looking at baptizing and and hoping to to make that more if you would be interested in that. If you would stand as we prepare to respond to the Lord in song.
Jesus, we long for the day that you would return and make the world new. But in the meantime, we pray that we would live out these true statements, this truth from First Thessalonians that we would resist the propaganda of the world around us, that we would fight with faith, hope and love. That we would live with the age to come in mind as we live out in this age, that we would remember the good news of Christ, and that God we would do it all together, that you would make us a church that builds up, that doesn't beat up, that is in sweet community with one another.
God, would you, would you take someone here today who has closed off to others in their life and open their heart both to you and to others here today, would you cause them to join a community group or to start a conversation or to just be here and really open themselves up, if they're in a group even. God, we pray that you would cause people to open up and to build up, so that we open up so that we might build them up, and so that we might encourage them. Christ, you see us and you love us the same, and we praise you for that. And as we take this meal, would you prepare our hearts? In Christ's name we pray, Amen.