The Day is Coming!

1 Thes. 5:1-11 [show] Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. [2]For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. [3]While people are saying, "There is peace and security," then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. [4]But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. [5]For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. [6]So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. [7]For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. [8]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. [9]For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, [10]who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. [11]Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. (ESV)

• Acts 2:17 [show] [17]"'And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams;
  “we are in the end days”; its been really really long last days (past 2000 years), but the Day of the Lord is coming

Two BIGHOPE Builders…

1. the Day of the Lord will come and they will not escape (v3)
   • Jesus tells us “chronos kairos” (time & kind of time)…Day of the Lord is not for us to know
   • calendar/news watching is not meaningful because beginning of end is a surprise
   • if you know a thief is coming, you’d probably live differently (locks, motion lights everywhere)
     • the fantasy of security will be brought down by DESTRUCTION (loss of everything that matters)
     • the skeptics/scoffers/etc against God will have the destruction and wrath of God brought upon them
     • Isa 13:9-11 [show] [9]Behold, the day of the LORD comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it. [10]For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light. [11]I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless.
       
   • Isa 14:1-3 [show] For the LORD will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel, and will set them in their own land, and sojourners will join them and will attach themselves to the house of Jacob. [2]And the peoples will take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess them in the LORD's land as male and female slaves. They will take captive those who were their captors, and rule over those who oppressed them. [3]When the LORD has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve, (ESV)
     ; wake up call of Israel on Day of Lor
   • Rom 11:11 [show] [11]So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. (ESV)
     -?; JEALOUSY (the called/chosen nation will be jealous for the Gentiles)
   • God’s promises are irrevocable
2. You are children of the Lord’s Day and you will be saved (v4-11)
   • unbelievers in spiritual stupor; asleep
   • v10
   • our look (tribal look of faith & love); faith guards our heart, like a breastplate protecting the lungs, which help with breathing, and prayer = breathing
   • helmet of salvation (our thoughts, imagination)
     • for we are no longer under His wrath
   • John 2:2 [show] [2]Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. (ESV)
     ; when you came to Christ & Christ in you fullness of wrath placed upon Jesus; those yet to be saved will face full wrath of Day of Lord

• live like people in day
• sometime BEFORE anybody suspects something cosmic is up & beginning of wrath, you will be rescued