Paul, Pt. 25: The Day of the Lord”

THE DAY OF THE LORD (1 THESSALONIANS 5:1-11)
Greeting Queen Elizabeth II’s visit in 2007 was quite a chore and challenge to the Americans. “Do people wear pants, dresses or business attire to meet the queen?” was a common question guests fortunate to be invited to meet the queen asked. Dinner attire was white tie and tails, the first and, perhaps, only white-tie affair of the Bush administration.

National Public Radio was kind enough to offer etiquette tips when meeting the queen:
WHAT DO I DO WHEN THE QUEEN ENTERS THE ROOM?
Rise and remain standing. If you make eye contact, it's okay to smile. But don't just stroll over and introduce yourself. A host will do that.

DO I NEED TO BOW OR CURTSY?
No. Americans are not expected to show such courtesy but are free to do so. Should you choose to, men bow their head only, dropping from the neck. Women perform a slight curtsy, placing the right foot behind the left heel and slightly bending the knees.

MAY I SHAKE THE QUEEN'S HAND?
Yes, but wait for the queen to offer her hand first. And, suggests Britain's Guardian newspaper, “Try to refrain from vigorously pumping the royal arm; a brief touch is preferred.”

HOW DO I REFER TO THE QUEEN?
As “Your Majesty” on first being introduced and subsequently as “Ma'am.” Lower nobility, such as her husband, The Duke of Edinburgh, are referred to as “Your Highness” at first and subsequently “Sir.” Refrain from using cute nicknames for members of the royal family.

WHAT SHOULD I TALK ABOUT WITH THE QUEEN?
Feel free to make small talk or discuss topics in the news, but let the queen steer the conversation. And keep your comments brief.

HOW SHOULD I EAT IN THE PRESENCE OF THE QUEEN?
Gracefully. Don't eat too quickly. Don't swig water directly from plastic bottles. When the queen stops eating, so should you. But do enjoy your meal.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10049551

Heaven and hell are central concepts to most religions and in the Bible but not to Paul. While the “kingdom of heaven” occurs more than 30 times in the four gospels, unique to Matthew, and “hell” 11 times in the gospels, the two teachings are missing in and not part of Paul’s teachings in the epistles. Instead he is moved by the Old Testament declaration of a coming day of the Lord.

What is the day of the Lord? How are we to prepare for it? What is at stake for believers and unbelievers?

The Day of the Lord is a Day of Destruction
1 Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, 2 for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4 But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. (1 Thess 5:1-4)

Excited about his message on the Second Coming of Christ, a minister hollered at the top of his voice, feverishly pounded on the pulpit and ended the sermon with an exclamation point: “And the Lord said, “I am coming soon (Rev 3:11), Behold, I am coming soon! (Rev 22:7), Yes, I am coming soon (Rev 22:20).”

Unfortunately the old pulpit could not withstand the big man’s relentless pounding and his habitual leaning on it, and it dramatically broke apart right in front of the gasping audience’s eyes. The minister, to his embarrassment, landed right in front of a sister in the church, hitting her in the eye and knocking her off her seat. He apologized profusely to the woman, but she replied, “It was not your fault, Pastor. You’ve warned me three times “I am coming soon,” but I did not get out of the way.”

There is one day more important than any day in the future that you do not want to miss, the day the Ruler, the Redeemer and the Reconciler of the world comes into town.

This is the first time Paul uses the phrase “the day of the Lord,” a phrase exclusively used in his letters to the church in Thessalonica (1 Thess 5:1, 2 Thess 2:2). Otherwise, the day is also known as “the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 1:8), “the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor 5:5, 2 Cor 1:14), “the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6), “the day of Christ” (Phil 1:10, 2:16) in his other epistles.

The day of the Lord first make its debut in the major prophets (Isa 2:12), when Israel faced exile, expulsion and extinction. Isaiah says it is a “a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger — to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it.” (Isa 13:9). Jeremiah adds it is “a day of vengeance…on his foes” (Jer 46:10). Ezekiel declares it is “a time of doom for the nations.” (Ezek 30:3). The minor prophets continued with this theme. Twice, Joel says it is a “great and terrible day” - once adding “great and very terrible day” (Joel 2:11, 31). Amos describes that day as “darkness, not light. It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him,” a day of “darkness, not light — pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness.” (Amos 5:18-20).

Therefore, the day of the Lord is the coming of the Lord to conquer His enemies and consummate His kingdom. On that day, he will raise the dead, right the wrongs and reign in glory. Everyone will cover in fright, cry for mercy and confess His name. The day of the Lord chorus in the Old Testament is unmistakable: the day of the Lord is “near,” or “close at hand” in other translation (Ezek 30:3, Joel 1:15, 2:1, Obad 15, Zeph 1:7, 1:14).

The day of the Lord will come not merely like a thief, but like a thief in the night. A thief in the day won’t scare anybody not in the house, but a thief in the night scare the daylights, the pants and socks out of family members – when lights are dimmed, when eyes are sleepy and when resistance is weak. The closest analogy to His coming is full pregnancy, labor pains and birth pangs (v 3). Childbirth is one of the three most mentioned extreme pains quoted on the Internet. The others are toothache and second or third degrees burns.

“Destroy” is not the regular “destroy” word that occurs 89 times in the Bible; it appears merely three others times (1 Cor 5:5, 2 Thess 1:9, 1 Tim 6:9). Its worst case is to “be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord (2 Thess 1:9). The irony of this destruction is when peace and safety is the order of the day.

The Day of the Lord is a Day of Decision
5 You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. 6 So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. (1 Thess 5:5-8)

One sunrise two neighboring farmers, with their wagons piled high with tomatoes ripening quickly in the hot noonday sun, pushed their horses on the road.

But the poor beasts could not get up the steepest hill. The wagons sat at the bottom of the hill, with the climbing sun beating down mercilessly.

“There’s nothing to do but let them rest,” said the first farmer, shrugging.” And come to think of it, I could use a little siesta myself. We’ve been on the road since sun up.”

“But you can’t!” his companion exclaimed. “By the time you wake up, your load will be ruined.”

“Don’t worry, my friend. God will provide. He always does. I’ll just say a few prayers before I doze off.”

The second farmer, meanwhile, strode to the back of his wagon and, putting his shoulder to the rear, began to shove as hard as he could. He yelled at his horse to pull forward, but to no avail. He cursed at the top of his lungs, but his cart ascended that hill not one inch.

The Lord and Saint Peter saw the frantic, swearing farmer struggling with his load. He smiled and laid a kind hand on the wheel, and at once the cart rose to the top of the hill.

“I don’t understand,” Peter said at last. “Why did you help that man? Even as we came upon him, we heard him cursing most irreverently. And yet you did not help his friend, who prayed for your help.”

The Lord smiled.

“The man I help curse, it’s true, but not with his heart. That is just the way he talks to his horse. In his heart, he was thinking fondly of his wife and children and aged parents, who depend on his labor and need him to return with some profit for his toil. He would have stayed there pushing all day. His friend, on the other hand, calls on me only when he believes he needs me. What he thinks of is sleep. So let him have his nap.” (Abridge, William J. Bennett, The Moral Compass)

Asleep and alert are contrasted in verse 6. Asleep means indifference, ignorance and inactivity; but alert means interest, involvement and inspection. The former is deficient in concern, but the latter is deep in concentration. The first cannot wait to sleep nor wake from sleep, but the other is wary of sleep.

Alert is “watchfulness” (gregoreuo), not merely seeing. Watch and see is different. See is merely with the eyes, but watch is with all the senses – eyes, ears and mind. Seeing is the ability, watching is the attitude. The former is the sight, the latter is the surveillance. Seeing is the view, watching is the vigilance. Watchfulness has to do with awareness, attentiveness and anticipation. A grammarian explains, “The difference between ‘I saw him’ and ‘I watched him’ is that in the second sentence you spent longer looking at him and you were very interested in what he was doing.” (Churchill House English Language Forums)

Alert and self-control, or Greek for sober, are different in nuance. Alert is proactive, the sober is preventive. The first is determination, the other is defensive. Alert has to do with external surrounding, but self-control with internal restrains, usually in the context of drunkenness. Self-control is clarity of thought and not confusion in thinking, not complacent but commanding of one’s faculties, not careless but committed to the task, constant and not changing. It is sensibility in a senseless world, sagacity in a shrewd world, survival in a soiled world.

Faith, love and hope in verse 8 are our arms and armor, because there is no frustration with faith, no fear in love and no futility in hope.

The Day of the Lord is a Day of Deliverance
9 For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. 10 He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. (1 Thess 5: 9-11)

A legend was told of a man who found the barn where Satan kept his seeds ready to be sown in the human heart, and on finding the seeds of discouragement more numerous than others, he learned that those seeds could be made to grow almost anywhere.

When Satan was questioned, he reluctantly admitted that there was one place in which he could never get them to thrive. “And where is that?” asked the man. Satan replied sadly, “In the heart of a grateful man.” (Source: V. Norskov Olsen, President, Loma Linda University. Publication: James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1988, p. 262)

The day of the Lord is not doomsday, distress or doubt day, disgrace or dishonor, discard, destruction or desolation, defeat and despair, but a day of deliverance, decoration and distinction for believers. “Wrath” (or-ge) is different from “anger” (ferocity) in the Bible. While wrath is mentioned five times in the Gospels, twice in the context of John the Baptist’s warning (Matt 3:7, Luke 3:7) and twice in Jesus’ message (Luke 21:23, John 3:36), Jesus was never wrathful. Although He looked around at the Pharisees in anger/wrath, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts (Mark 3:5), he never displayed it.

The word most associated with wrath is “to come/coming,” as many as eight times in the Bible (Matt 3:7, Luke 3:7, Eph 5:6, Col 3:6, 1 Thess 1:10, 2:16, Rev 6:17, 11:18). The progress of this word is unique. John the Baptist announces the wrath that is to come but Revelation declares “wrath has come” (Rev 6:17, 11:18) in aorist/past tense, as if it has occurred to the writer John. In the last two references to wrath in the Bible, John explains not only God’s wrath, but the “the fury of his wrath” has come (Rev 16:19, 19:15).

While there are troubles, trials and tribulation at His coming, His intention was for the deliverance of His people. The good news in His coming is He did not come to sentence us in wrath but to save us from wrath. The coming of the Lord is not about God’s wrath, but His salvation – not about His rage but His redemption, not about dread but deliverance, His fury but His fellowship, not about His anger but His assurance.

Conclusion: Conclusion: The question is not “Is He coming?” but “Is He coming for you?” Will He say to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” or “You wicked, lazy servant” when He comes? Are you applauded or accused at His coming? Are you sober, steadfast and serving?