Transcript

A new army recruit was given guard duty at 2 a.m. He did his best for a while, but at about 4 a.m. he went to sleep. He awakened to find an officer standing before him.

Remembering the heavy penalty for being asleep on guard duty, the young man kept his head bowed for another moment then looked upward and said, “A-a-a-men!”

In 1 Thessalonians 5:6-11, we are show how God does not want us to be asleep to our responsibilities as believers.

In the verses previous to this text, and as we looked at in our last episode, Paul taught about the Body of Christ being delivered from the Day of the Lord. He teaches that we will have been taken to heaven first at the rapture before that time of wrath ever begins.

Paul then turns to the practical ramifications of this, and how the Body of Christ is to live and act in light of the Rapture and of the Tribulation which follows it.

Think about this: right now, we may be living among people who will enter the Tribulation if the Rapture comes in our lifetime.

Verse 5 teaches us that the Body of Christ is “children of light, children of the day.” And God wants us to be a light to the world for Him and His gospel of grace.

The Lord wants us to be Rapture ready, living aware and awake to the fact that He could come at any time and that people around us would then go into the Tribulation as a result.

And so we are taught to carry out our service for the Lord being spiritually awake and vigilant, because our life-saving information and truth about Christ is the unbeliever’s only deliverance from the Tribulation and from hell.

1 Thessalonians 5:6-7: “Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.”

Paul says, “Therefore,” or in light of the fact that we’re not going to go through any part of the night of the Tribulation; in light of the fact that we are “children of light, and children of the day” and not of the night or darkness, so “therefore” we should not sleep as others do.

The “others” in verse 6 means unbelievers. Paul pictures two groups of people here: one group who is asleep and drunk in the night (or the unsaved), and the other group is awake and alert in the day (or the saved).

The apostle draws a clear line of separation, a stark contrast, between those who have salvation in Jesus Christ by faith in Him and those who do not.

Darkness and night describes the spiritual standing and state of the unbeliever.

Previous to trusting Christ as our Savior, Ephesians 5:8 teaches that “For ye were sometimes darkness.” 2 Corinthians 6:14 says of the believer and unbeliever, “what communion hath light with darkness?” Colossians 1:13 tells us that when we are saved, we are delivered “from the power of darkness.”

The Bible teaches that unbelievers live in darkness. In this spiritual darkness and night, they do what we all do at night, they sleep.

This is the sleep of spiritual indifference, negligence, carelessness. They have their eyes closed. They can’t see truth. They are not even aware that they’re in darkness. And in the darkness, they are lost, because they can’t see where to go.

And they are not aware of the disaster that is coming right at them. They live their lives as if there was no God and that there will never be a judgment of God.

Paul makes a simple, common, everyday observation in verse 7. People sleep at night and people get drunk at night. Sleep and drunkenness go with the night.

Sleep and drunkenness here are illustrations of the spiritual condition of the lost.

Paul shows how people who are in spiritual darkness, often take on the characteristics of the drunkenness that takes place in the night.

Drunkenness causes a person to lack focus and lose control, they can’t think or walk straight, they make poor choices, they lose sense of right and wrong, it dulls the senses and they’re not as aware of the circumstances and true reality around them, and drunkenness can lead to a person’s ruin. Many stumble and stagger through life like this.

Paul is making 2 points here for the believer in verses 6 and 7. First, we need to be aware and sensitive to the unbeliever’s spiritual condition of them being in darkness, and their sleeping and drunkenness.

We know that the only way that one can be delivered from spiritual darkness is by “the light of the glorious gospel of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4), and trusting Christ alone. It is at that point and from that point that one can truly see spiritually.

Second, Paul is teaching us here that day people shouldn’t act like night people. He says, “let us not sleep, as do others.” The reason for this instruction is because day people CAN still act like night people.

The difference between the believer and the unbeliever is literally to be like night and day. This is true in our spiritual position of in Christ and not in Christ, but it is also to be true in our practice, in how we live. In Christ, we can live a transformed life by God’s grace and we can live in a completely new and different way, as we obey God’s Word by faith.

We are taught by God that our conduct needs to demonstrate our position in Christ. In Christ we are light, we belong to the day, “therefore,” let us not sleep as others do, or as non-believers who are asleep spiritually, unaware what is coming, indifferent and negligent about eternity.

We do this because we DO know what is coming. We do understand eternity and what awaits those who believe and who do not believe.

With the relief of our deliverance from God’s wrath in the Day of the Lord comes responsibility. Believers are to live in the light of truth. We see spiritually now.

So we’re to live as a child of light that we are, warning people around us about judgment to come, being a light to this world, sharing the light and truth of God’s Word. God uses rescued people to rescue people. That is our calling as believers.

We are called to be like an old elevator operator at a hospital in Nashville, who once said, “I’m just a nobody, telling everybody, about Somebody, who can save anybody.”

In God’s plans and purposes, it’s daytime, the day of grace. We are children of the day. Night is coming, the night of the Tribulation. Paul’s analogy here is since it’s daytime and not the night of the Tribulation yet, we should not be sleeping during the day!

Instead we should be awake to what’s going on around us spiritually as this world speeds toward the night of God’s wrath, and as we are surrounded by those who need Christ.

Sleep is natural to night people, but not to day people. Going through life sleeping should not characterize believers who are day people, but it can.

So Paul teaches the Church that we need to make a determined effort to stay awake. We are not to be spiritual sleepwalkers. We should not be spiritually dull and negligent, instead we should be full of care toward the unbelieving and their need of the Lord.

It’s easy to sleep through life. It’s like the guy who said: “I’m so good at sleeping, I could do it with my eyes closed.” God doesn’t want His Church to be good at sleeping and slumbering spiritually.

As believers in Christ, we’re taught to be awake and to live with our spiritual eyes open.

This is what Paul means when he says, “Let us watch.” Watch speaks of being alert, awake. As we remain Rapture ready, we’re to watch against laziness, distraction and complacency in our spiritual lives. And we are to watch for the Savior’s return and those around us in life who need to be warned about the judgment to come that follows Christ’s return.

Watch and sober in verse 6 is in contrast to the sleep and drunkenness of verse 7.
Sleep and drunkenness are two ways to define insensitivity, so are being watchful and sober are two ways to define sensitivity to spiritual realities.

Paul says for the believer we are to live alert and watchful, looking at life, the world, and people as God does, with His heart of love, remembering that the night of the tribulation is approaching and could begin at any time, because the Rapture could happen at any time.

Being “sober” is the opposite of drunkenness. The stress here is not merely on not being drunk, but on the self-control in comparison to the lack of control of drunkenness.

Sober speaks of having focus, purpose, being filled with spiritual and moral seriousness, being zealous for what is true, honorable, right according to God’s Word; not indifferent but having a clear mind, being balanced, consistent, and steady spiritually.

William Hendriksen writes this, “The sober person lives deeply. His pleasures are not primarily those of the senses…but those of the soul. He is by no means a stoic. On the contrary, with a full measure of joyful anticipation he looks forward to the return of the Lord but he doesn’t run away from his task…

“The apostle’s exhortation to watch and be sober amounts to this: Let us not be lax and unprepared but let us be prepared, being spiritually alert, firm in the faith, courageous, strong, calmly but with glad anticipation looking forward to the future day. Let us do all this because we belong to the day and not to the night.”

1 Thessalonians 5:8: “But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.”

Notice that Paul doesn’t say, “Please be day people.” He says, “You are day people.” We are day people, so we are instructed here to act accordingly.

And as people of the day and to act accordingly we are to be sober and wear God’s armor of the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of the hope of salvation.

In other words, the armor is faith, love, and hope. This trilogy here is described as armor to protect us in this world, and for how we are to reach out to the world.

As Paul thinks about a person who is awake, watchful and alert, his mind goes to the one who was most watchful, most sober-minded, most alert and that would be a soldier on duty. And he sees him properly armed with protective armor.

The breastplate and helmet were two essential pieces of equipment to protect a Roman soldier. Those are two vital areas of the body. The breastplate covering all the vital organs, and, of course, the helmet covering the head.

A Roman breastplate covered a soldier from his neck to his waist and could be made out of chain mail. Some of them were made out of heavy cloth, or brass, or iron, or leather. Basically, it was like a bulletproof vest.

The parallel that we would understand to the helmet would be like a football helmet or a motorcycle helmet that could protect blows from crushing the skull.

The breastplate represents faith and love, and the helmet represents the hope of salvation. It’s the Breastplate of faith and dependence toward God, and it’s the breastplate of God’s love through us toward people.

Considering this in its context, it is faith in the truth of the always imminent pre-Tribulational Rapture, and the coming judgment in the Day of the Lord, fully believing and knowing it is true because God says it’s true. It is faith resulting in action on our part.

In the context, it’s love for others, not wanting them to face the judgment to come in the Tribulation, wanting them to have the glorious hope of the Rapture as we do. It is love resulting in action on our part.

Having on a breastplate of faith and love will cause us to live awake and passionately for the Lord, and to stand ready at all times as children of light for Him.

By faith in God, He is able to make us stand out as a light and “not sleep, as do others.”

Faith and love are connected. As faith in the Lord is increased then God’s love increases and is transmitted through the believer’s life. When faith is weak, love is cold. When faith is strong, love is zealous.

The helmet of the hope of salvation is what guards our heads from attacks on our thinking. The hope of salvation is not a vague or wishful longing that someday we might be saved, the hope that at the last we will be saved and go to heaven.

Believers have a sure hope. Hope of salvation means “the hope that salvation gives to us.” “The hope of salvation” in this context is the Rapture.

The hope of salvation is the certainty that if we who believe die before Christ returns, then to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and at the Rapture, the Lord will bring us with Him, our bodies will be raised first to be united to our soul and spirit forever.

The hope of salvation is the certainty that if we are alive when He returns, we will be raptured, caught away off this earth to meet the Lord in the air to forever be with Him.

And there are attacks in the spiritual battle against the blessed hope of the Rapture, our “hope of salvation,” and certain deliverance from the Tribulation period.

The helmet of salvation is about knowing and being grounded in the truth of God’s Word, so we might defend the truth of the pre-tribulational Rapture.

The helmet is about protecting our minds, knowledge and thinking, and thus it’s about knowing the Word of God, rightly divided, so we might be delivered from error.

The helmet is about having the hope of salvation always on our minds, so we realize the need of others who have “no hope.” This helmet is about thinking of others, sharing our hope with the unbelieving, so they may have the sure hope we have in Christ.

The exhortation to put on the breastplate and the helmet is in the present tense: “putting on” or keep putting on. While we wait and are Rapture ready, we live in a world of spiritual darkness that is hostile to spiritual truth. It is an ongoing fight.

There is a battle raging all around us, a battle for the hearts and minds of people and every believer is a soldier in that battle. Thus, we must keep putting on our armor of faith, love, and hope, of faith toward God, love toward others, in light of our hope of salvation.

1 Thessalonians 5:9-11: “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.”

Speaking of the hope of salvation in verse 9, Paul says that “God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation” or deliverance.

The wrath and salvation in this context is not being saved the wrath of God in hell, but deliverance from the wrath of the Day of the Lord in the Tribulation by the Rapture.

The word “appoint” means “a destiny, an appointed end.” We all make appointments: doctor, dentist, haircuts. But we often have to cancel appointments.

We plan for the future. Most of you have already planned where you will eat lunch after church today. But often our plans don’t always work out the way we intend and they change.

God’s appointment, however, His plan for us is so certain that we can call it a destiny. Nothing will cancel or change it. He cannot lie. His promise is true. If you have trusted Christ as your personal Savior, your destiny is salvation, glory, Rapture, and heaven!

You will not suffer wrath when it is poured out on this world. You will not go through any part of the coming Tribulation period.

In chapter 1, verse 10, Paul wrote that we are delivered from the wrath to come. Here he says we’re not appointed to wrath. When God pours out His wrath on this world in the Day of the Lord, it won’t be on us, because we won’t be here. We’re destined for heaven.

We’re appointed to obtain salvation, deliverance from the Tribulation, at the Rapture. The Rapture is the consummation of the believer’s salvation when we experience the glorification which is the final phase of our salvation. At that time, we will receive a glorified body and be delivered from the presence of sin forever in heaven.

For the unbeliever, however, the Rapture means entering the time of wrath on earth. Revelation 6:17 says of that time: “For the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”

But God has not appointed us, the Church, the Body of Christ, to that wrath that He will pour out during the Tribulation. Rather He has appointed that we obtain salvation, or deliverance from that wrath by the Rapture.

And you have to love this, at the end of verse 9: “By our Lord Jesus Christ.” Our deliverance is by our Savior who personally comes to deliver us from the wrath to come.

And the salvation at the Rapture is on the basis of the salvation at the Cross and the price He paid. The basis for our confidence and the sure hope of our deliverance is: “He died for us” as verse 10 says. This is why we can be delivered from the wrath to come and taken straight into the presence of God in heaven, because all my sins have been paid for.

He died that we might live together with Him forever. He died for you and I so we will never have to face the wrath of God, any of it, whether in the Tribulation or the Lake of Fire. He died for us is the message and good news of the Cross. He died on our behalf, He died in our place, He died as our substitute.

He died to accomplish for us what we could never have without Him: salvation from all our sins. He bore in His body your sins and mine. He paid sin’s penalty for us.

He died for us that we might become His own and “live together with Him.” That “together” is the whole Body of Christ, and at the Rapture, we will be together with Christ and together with each other forever.

“Whether we wake or sleep,” means “watch or sleep.” “Wake” is the exact same Greek word as “watch” in verse 6. And the word “sleep” also refers to verse 6.

“Sleep” is not the same Greek word used for “sleep” in chapter 4, verse 14, referring to death. It speaks of spiritual indifference and carelessness.

What Paul is saying here is that whether believers are spiritually awake or spiritually asleep, we will all be caught up to meet the Lord to live with Him forever.

Our eternal salvation does not depend on what we do or don’t do, but on the fact that Christ “died for us” and that we trusted it.

So whether we are living a vibrant, passionate, awake Christian life, or a sleepy, slumbering, indifferent Christian life, our salvation depends not on what we do but on what Christ has done, and on faith in Him alone.

Chapter 4, verse 18 speaks of comfort. Verse 11 here speaks of comfort. Verses 1-10 are bracketed by comfort: the catching away of the Church to heaven is comfort and the truth that we’re not going through the Tribulation is comfort. The first is positive, the second is negative, and both are comforting.

The fact that we will be with our believing loved ones again and will be forever with the Lord is comforting (4:18). And the fact that we will not face God’s Tribulation wrath is comforting too (5:11).

Paul says to comfort, encourage, build up one another together with this truth. There’s no reason to be fearful or discouraged at all with the pre-tribulational Rapture!

We each are to be God’s channel of comfort by our understanding of God’s Word, rightly divided. We gain strength and comfort with the confidence of understanding, knowing as you look at the future you can face it with confidence, without fear, knowing you will never experience the wrath of God in the Tribulation and that the Rapture could happen anytime.

Verses such as these wakes us up and remind us about the importance of living for the Lord and not sleepily walking through life.

The light we have about things to come and knowing about the wrath that is coming to the world is to make us realize the seriousness of our responsibilities as believers.

Our message for the day people is: be comforted, don’t worry. For the night people the message is: be warned, be worried.

If you are not saved, then you have an appointment too God’s Word says, with death and judgment. And it may come sooner than you expect.

Hebrews 9:27 tells us: “It is APPOINTED unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” But as Romans 10:13 says, “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”