Live This Day #6 - With Clarity
Message Description
Senior Pastor Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the message series entitled "Live This Day" looking at the book of 1 Thessalonians. God's plan for the future provides clarity in the midst of the confusion of our present times.
Message Transcript
Good morning. It's great to be together. Let me just emphasize a few things you just heard about. You heard about our group that's been in Southpointe moving to Bridgeville, and we're really excited about this. And as we're doing that, one of the ways that we have grown as a church and multiplied campuses over the years, starting in 2013 when we launched what at the time was the Cultural District, now the Strip District, then Butler in 2017 and so forth, is we asked people here just to pray, especially if you're in one of those locations, maybe giving six to nine months to help establish the congregation that would be in that place.
And so what happened is about 200 people went when we started the Strip District, and many of them stayed and are still there today. Many came back after six to nine months. They said, this was great. I helped get it launched and now I'm coming back. We did the same thing when we went to Butler.
Many people went and stayed. Some came back. And now what we're doing, by and large, is we're saying we have a campus pathway. So when people raise their hand, figuratively speaking, they actually click on a link on the web, but, you know, raise their hand figuratively. And many people in an area say, we'd love to see Orchard Hill.
We hold an informational meeting and then we start a launch group and we just see how God might be working. And that happened in Southpointe, where a group of people said, we'd love to see Orchard Hill in the south hills. And as that has grown and become more and more solid, now, we're at the point of saying, with the move to Bridgeville, if we could just bring enough people together, we think it could really be a great time. So we'd love just to say, if you're anywhere in that area, if you just want to pray about maybe giving six to nine months to that location, that'd be great. And especially if you have some musical talent, there's a real opportunity there to serve and help that be even better.
And along with that, we're excited to announce also that Mike Chilcoat, if you've been around Wexford, you've probably heard Mike speak. He's the regional director for Young Life, has agreed to, in addition to his Young Life responsibilities and working with Mike Dunn, who's already been there, give pastoral leadership to that location moving forward here for this season. So we're excited about that as well. So a lot of great things and thank you for just your support over the years to help make multiple campuses and here's what has happened in the Strip and in Butler. If you are always here and aren't in those places is there are hundreds of people gathering in each of those places each week.
They are vibrant communities of faith that are an extension of what happens here. And so that's our hope for Bridgeville and beyond in the days ahead. Also, you heard about It's A Party, and this is something we do every year. It's based on the idea of Luke 15, where there was much rejoicing in heaven over people who turned toward God. And so we gather every year as a church just to say, let's celebrate what God has done.
Sometimes when you walk in and out of the doors here on a weekend, you can lose track of just the scope and the depth of what God is doing. And so we get together to celebrate and then to talk about where we're headed and what can be. And so I just want to encourage you, if this is your church home, to make a priority of coming to that evening. It will be just a great time to be encouraged about what God is doing here and to dream about what can be. And if you've been around, you say, well, I've already done a lot of those events. I kind of know how it goes. I know what it'll be. Can I encourage you to come anyway? Because I know that when you come, there's something to being gathered with people and celebrating God's work that just inspires us. And so I hope that you'll make that be part of your plan for November. And there's a good chance November 6, 7, 8, 9, you'll want some good news and a party no matter what else is going on.
So let's pray. God, thank you for a chance to gather today. I pray that you would speak, that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
So today is October 13, you might say, well, that's not that significant, but if you have paid attention to some online stuff, there were a lot of predictions that October 9 was going to be the rapture and that everything was going to change on October 9. Now, if you didn't pay attention to that or see it, good for you. Your feet is not as littered with stuff as mine, but here's why I bring that up.
This isn't the first time that some Christians have decided that they knew when the rapture was happening, that they predicted it. And they spoke with definitiveness, saying, this is happening, here it is. And here's what happens. Like, this time, the date comes and goes. And then everybody who is not necessarily a person of faith goes, see, these wacky Christians!
They're a bunch of crazies who believe this weird stuff, and it gives kind of a discrediting effect to the church. But before you dismiss all of that as being maybe a little weird, a little off putting. There is something in the Bible about this idea of Jesus coming that is central to the message. And there is an idea about people being caught up into the sky with Jesus. In fact, if you were here last week, 1 Thessalonians 4 talks about the dead in Christ being raised up, caught up into the clouds, and those who are alive being caught up.
It's what many people have called the rapture. But in 1 Thessalonians 5, where we are today, verses 1 through 11, the apostle Paul, who was the human author of 1 Thessalonians, writes about the times and the dates, the times and the seasons. He says, now, concerning these things, I don't need to write to you anymore because you've already understood a lot about it. And then he says at the beginning of verse two, he says, for the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. And the day of the Lord is a phrase that was used in the Old Testament to reference this idea of the coming judgment of God on the earth and the deliverance of God for his people.
The ESV study Bible has a little note on that, and it says it very clearly that this is it. And you can trace this phrase. It's in Joel, it's in Isaiah, it's in Obadiah, it's in Malachi. This is an idea that exists all through the Old Testament with the idea that there is coming a day when God will set things right. And this should be one of those things that is incredibly comforting and yet disturbing at the same time to every one of us.
Comforting because there is a desire to say, won't God one day make it right? Won't he one day deal with the people who have mistreated others, mistreated me, been unjust in the way they've acted, who seem to have gotten away with things? Won't there come a day? And then there's a sense in which it's disturbing, because if any of us are honest with ourselves, there are times when we've been those people. And so we have this juxtaposition, this day of the Lord that's coming, and what I'd like to do today, very simply, is just ask the question, when is this happening? And then what difference does it make? Or how should we live in light of it? So when is this happening? And then how should we live in light of it? Because this is what this text says.
Because in 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 1 through 3, we have two images about the coming of the day of the Lord. Now, if you've been here, we've talked about the parousia greek word for the coming, the presence. He's just talked about this in chapter four, the coming, the presence. And now he introduces the idea of the day of the Lord, and he says, I don't need to write to you basically about this, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. Well, people are saying peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly as labor pains on a pregnant woman.
They will not escape. Okay, so two images here about the timing. A thief in the night and labor pains. That's where Paul goes to talk about this. And the thief in the night imagery clearly means something that's unexpected, unwanted.
Nobody sits around going, I hope somebody breaks into my house tonight. And so it's unexpected. It's unwanted. But it also has biblical basis in Matthew, chapter 24. Here's what we read.
Matthew 24:36, and following. And here's what it says. But about the day and the hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. So when somebody says October 9, it's happening, you can know that they're wrong, because as soon as somebody says a date, they're counteracting scripture, so they are not giving you truth at that moment.
Jesus says, only the Father knows. Then it says this as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. And they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
Two men will be in the field. One will be taken and the other left. Two will be grinding with a hand mill. One will be taken and the other left. Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
But understand this. If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and he would not have let his house be broken into. So you must also be ready, because the Son of Man will come in an hour that you do not expect him. So here Jesus is using this thief in the night imagery.
Paul picks it up and says, the coming of the Lord will be like a thief in the night when people are saying peace and safety, probably a reference here to the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome, but also transcending this when people don't expect it. And his reference, I believe here, is to people who don't have faith. And the reason I say this is because in verse 4 of 1 Thessalonians 5, he says, but you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness, so that this day should not surprise you like a thief. So he's not saying that it comes, the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night to everybody, but he's saying to those who are not part of the believing community.
In other words, most people in our world say, there is no judgment, there is no reckoning. There is not a day when God will do anything. We just live. And it's an important thing to say. There will come a day when God will bring to account everything and will make everything right.
And not only that, but when you live without a sense of there being any future reckoning, it's like you're living in a place where you have an exam coming. You know, when you're in college or high school and there was a surprise test, and you're always like, ah, they won't throw a surprise exam at us. They won't. They won't. But here it's coming.
But you keep saying, no, there will never be anything. And so he says, the coming of the Lord or the day of the Lord is like a thief in the night, but it's also like the beginning of birth pains or birth pains. So now he takes the image from a thief to that of a pregnant woman. And again, this has precedent in Matthew 24, because here's what we read in Matthew 24, verse 4. Watch out that no one deceives you, for many will come in my name, claiming that I am the Messiah and will deceive many.
You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See to it that you're not alarmed. Such things must happen. But the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.
There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All of these are the beginning of birth pains. Now, some people interpret this, and they have a view that has been called historically, the preterist view. And that's not a word we throw around much. So here's what that means.
That means it is something that is past from where we stand, but was future when they read it. So in Matthew 24 they say it's a preterist. In other words, now we don't have to see it as future, but it was future to them, but it's past to us. Preterist. The problem with the preterist view, in my estimation of reading Matthew 24 this way, is when you get further into Matthew 24 in verse 29, here's what you read.
Immediately after the distress of those days. The sun will be darkened, the moon will not give us its light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. And then it says this, then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And all the people of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming. So that seems to be speaking about that day, not a day that's past.
And it says immediately. And as far as I can tell, immediately means not like thousands of years. It means immediately. And so that is pointing to this day. And here's what he says about these signs.
He says, watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come saying, I'm the Messiah. There will be a deception, a turning from truth. There will be wars, rumors of wars. In other words, there will be increasing hostility in the world.
There will be an increase in earthquakes and famines, and there will be a sense in which people will turn against the nation of Israel. Why do I say that? Verse 9. Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations on account of me. Now, who's the you here?
If you listen to the podcast on the rapture that we did this last week, we talked about the idea of how you interpret Israel and what a big deal that is in Bible prophecy. If you were here last week, I alluded to it, I'm not going to go too far into that now. But if somebody holds the pre-tribulational, pre-millennial return of Christ, so you're raptured. There's seven years of tribulation. Then comes this return of Christ in the millennium.
Who's the you? For them, it has to be Israel here, which is interesting because a lot of times they're the people who are most afraid of this whole season because they're like the you. I shouldn't have to go through this. And yet the you is Israel. But why is that important?
Because what it means when you see an increase in antisemitism in our day and age, it is one of the indicators that we are getting closer and closer to the return of Jesus Christ. Now, I'm not talking about just being against some of the methods of war that the nation of Israel is propagating today. I'm talking about some of the outright despising of people who come from a Jewish background. And you see that happening in an increasing way today. And that, I believe, is part of what you're seeing in Matthew 24.
And even if your you is more general there, there's no question that there is something about the nation of Israel and its role today. In Isaiah, chapter 66, verse 8 and 9, we're told that the nation will come to life or be given birth in a single day. And on May 14, 1948, the nation of Israel came into being in almost a day. In other words, it isn't a stretch to say we are living in some of these labor pains. Now, what happens if you've been around a pregnant woman at any time with labor pains?
I mean, there's the, oh, this could be it, and then it's not. And what do you do? You pack a bag. You have a bag ready, and you hold all of your plans loosely because you're seeing the beginning. You know it's coming, but you don't know exactly when.
And that is, I believe, the point of these two images. For some people, it'll be like a thief in the night, completely unexpected. For other people, it will be a sense in which you say, I am aware that this thing is happening, it's coming, but I don't know exactly when. And that leads us to the second question. And that is, so what difference does it make?
And here's what we see first. 1 Thessalonians 4:5, chapter 5, verse 4. And following it says, but you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness, so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night, but to the darkness.
So then let us not be like others who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night. And those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet. So three images here that are portraying the what should we do?
The first is being awake and sober. So he says, there are some people who are asleep. Don't be like that. Don't just be, if you're drunk and sleepy, what happens? You're not aware.
Some of you are saying, I don't know. Ask somebody else. If you're a little drunk and sleepy, what happens? You say, I'm not aware. I don't care.
I just want. But he says, be awake and be sober, so pay attention to what's going on. That is part of the response. You just saw earlier us talk about the Kidzburgh Pumpkin festival. Those are always fun, aren't they, when you go with kids to a little thing. And Christians always have this funny thing around Halloween of offering the alternative.
Have you ever noticed that? It's the pumpkin festival. It's Noah's Ark's fun festival. It's something where you can dress up and go, but, you know, it's a little different. And yes, I'm poking a little fun at that and I get it. But I also am like, hey, it's candy. And so I remember when my kids were little, and my kids are older now, but when my kids were little, we went to a Noah's ark fun festival. There was this place we lived by that had one. And so my kids got dressed up, and there were two of them at the time. I ended up with four.
I think we may have had the third. He was in a stroller. It's a little blurry to me at this point, but I remember going to this festival and my kids got dressed up. And the way it worked is you would go and you'd play all these little games and you'd get tickets, and then after you got your ticket, you could go and use your ticket to redeem it for candy or toys or stuff like this at this one section. And I had the two kids and one of them, as soon as he got a ticket, would run over to the place where he would get candy and he would offer his ticket and he would get like, lousy little candy because he only had a ticket or two or a lousy little toy, but he was spending them as soon as he got them.
And the other son did the thing where he was keeping his tickets, and he was eyeing the bigger prize. All right, any of you seen this with kids and how they do this? And so then what happened is, as the evening went, there started to be signs that the evening was going to come to an end. Like, they went over the loudspeaker and said, the evening's going to end in half an hour. Use your tickets.
And so I tried to say to my son, my, probably four or five year old son. At the time, I tried to say, hey, you want to use your tickets? Because if you don't use your tickets, they won't be any good. And he wanted to keep his tickets because he wanted something that he thought the tickets could get him. He didn't understand that there was coming a day when all of the tickets that he was accumulating were not going to do him any good. And then the evening came to an end, and there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.
But how many of us live our lives getting tickets, trying to accumulate stuff for this life, rather than saying, there is a day coming that will be that day? And here's the thing. Even if this generation isn't the terminal generation, the day of the Lord isn't in your lifetime, my lifetime, our lives are still short. And when we just take tickets onto ourselves, what we're doing is we're saying, I have all the time in the world, instead of living with a sense of urgency or being awake, sober minded, saying, this world is not everything. And so there's the image of being awake and sober.
There's also an image of being vigilant here. Did you catch this? He talked about the breastplate of faith and love, and he talked about the helmet of salvation. This is imagery that's again, borrowed from Matthew's, not Matthew's gospel, Ephesians, chapter 6. It's in Isaiah.
And this is the imagery of spiritual warfare. And here's what I want to point out. The imagery of being in a battle is God's imagery for his people in culture. And here's why this is important. You see, there's a movement today among a lot of people to say, we're in a culture war and there is a culture war.
I would say there's always a culture war. Any culture that has people has a culture war because you have people with different views about how the culture should live. But here's what's happened in our culture, and that is there are people who are saying, well, there's something called Christian Nationalism. And Christian Nationalism is bad, and therefore anybody who's a Christian and believes in America is bad and should be disregarded. Now, let me explain that Christian Nationalism, if what somebody means is that somebody is trying to take principles like from Leviticus and make everybody live by them today, okay, that's a little extreme.
But what people do is they'll take the extreme example. They'll find somebody who lives in the woods and is trying to live by Leviticus and say, oh, this is a Christian Nationalist who wants to insist that you can't have polyester cotton mixed fabric anymore. That's actually in Leviticus somewhere. And so what they'll do is they'll say, that's Christian Nationalism. It's bad.
It's bad. It's bad. But here's the thing. If you are a Christian and you want to speak to current issues, you will be engaged in a cultural war, and you are a Christian nationalist or not a Christian nationalist, depending on your term. It doesn't matter.
The point is, if you don't speak truth into culture, then what happens is that the culture continues to get dark. And so there is a challenge here to say, be vigilant. Take on the armor of God and understand that the way scripture talks about is there's darkness and there's children of the light. Do you know what happens when you, when you go to a restaurant that's dark?
Have you ever had this where you walk into a restaurant and you're there for a while, and at first you can't see anything, and then after a while, it feels normal? You see, the darkness has an effect of making us feel as if something is more and more normal when it isn't. So there's a need for vigilance, but there's also a need to be children of the light to illumine what is going on. This is borrowed from Matthew 5. Jesus said, you are the light of the world.
And he was speaking to his followers here. And he said, you all. It was plural. He says, you all are the light of the world. What does light do?
Light attracts attention, it gives direction, and it provides security. And what he was doing was, he was saying here in 1 Thessalonians 5, you're children of the light. So as you see this day approaching, your role is to continue to provide direction, to attract attention in a positive way, and to provide safety, to lead people to safety. And anything else misses the point.
And here's then what he says as he comes to the end of this section, verse 9. He says this, for God did not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. So what did God do? He didn't appoint us to be under his wrath. Some people will say this is why you're raptured out before everything comes, but this isn't his ultimate point here. His point is to say that God, through Jesus Christ, has made it so that those of us who deserve wrath are not under wrath. Therefore, you don't need to fear the day of the Lord. Because the day of the Lord is a day of reckoning, but your account will be reckoned through Jesus Christ, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, if you've acknowledged your sin.
Therefore, when that day comes, there will be restoration. There will be all of the things that have been broken being restored. And then he says this. Verse ten. He died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live together in him.
Jesus died so that whether you're alive or not alive, you can be together with him. Then, verse 11, here's what it says. Therefore, argue with one another vehemently about your end times views and convince one another that you are right and they are wrong. And despise people who have different views than yours as being unspiritual.
No. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just as indeed you are doing. Why do we have this passage? Not? So that you can say, I get it and no one else does.
Yes, you want to try to understand scripture as well as you possibly can. Study it, understand it. But why? So that you can encourage and build one another up on the fact that there is a day coming when God will put the world to rights. And what happens sometimes is people start debating the particulars and stop living and stop talking about how we can encourage one another.
And notice it's a communal idea. Here he says, I want you to live together in such a way that you are together, the children of the light, illumining the culture that you are together, vigilant, that you are together people who are bringing about this sense of awakeness and sobriety to a culture that wants to sleep its way to Judgment Day. And so the invitation is to say, yes, there is a day coming. It is a great day. So be awake, be vigilant, and illumine the places where you live.
And then you will see God work and be able to rejoice in that day. I'm gonna pray, but just before I do, I just want to say this. If you're here today, and as we talk about that day, there isn't a sense of hope for you, it feels like dread. What that probably means is your confidence is in you, not in Jesus Christ. Because if your confidence is in Jesus Christ, meaning you've acknowledged that he died for you, what this text says, and you say, I believe.
I know I'm sinful, his work on my behalf, then you can look at this day not with fear, but with an expectation that says, this is the great day. And you can enter into that right now by simply saying, I trust Jesus Christ and acknowledge my sin, and therefore I live with hope. God, help us to be people of the day as we anticipate that day, to live with clarity this day in light of that day, and let that motivate us to live in a way that honors you. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
This transcript was automatically generated. Please excuse errors.