By David Guzik for
The Enduring Word
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
1-3 The suddenness of Jesus’ coming:
But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape.
a. Concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you: The Thessalonians were well taught about the return of Jesus and other prophetic matters. Paul taught them about the times and the seasons regarding the return of Jesus. They had an idea of the prophetic times they lived in, and they could discern the seasons of the present culture.
i. Again, we are impressed that Paul was with the Thessalonians only for a few weeks (Acts 17:2). In that time, he taught them about the prophetic times and seasons regarding the return of Jesus. Paul would be surprised that some people today consider the return of Jesus an unimportant teaching.
ii. Jesus criticized the religious leaders of His day because they could not discern the signs of the times (Matthew 16:1-3). We should also study the Scriptures, and look to the world around us, so we can be aware of the times and the seasons.
iii. Hiebert on times and seasons: “The first designates time in its duration, whether a longer or shorter period; the second draws attention to the characteristics of the period. The first deals with the measurement of time, the second with the suitable or critical nature of the time.”
b. The day of the Lord so comes: With this phrase, Paul quoted a familiar Old Testament idea. The idea behind the phrase the day of the Lord is that this is Gods’ time. Man has his “day,” and the Lord has His day. In the ultimate sense, the day of the Lord is fulfilled with Jesus judging the earth and returning in glory.
i. It does not refer to a single day, but to a season when God rapidly advances His agenda to the end of the age. The day of the Lord “Is a familiar Old Testament expression. It denotes the day when God intervenes in history to judge His enemies, deliver His people, and establish His kingdom.” (Hiebert)
c. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night: The Thessalonians knew, and had been taught, that they couldn’t know the day of Jesus’ return. That day would remain unknown, and come as a surprise, as a thief in the night. A thief does not announce the exact time of his arrival.
i. Some take the idea that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night to mean that nothing can or should be known about God’s prophetic plan for the future. Yet Paul indicated that they definitely knew that the time could not be definitely known.
ii. Paul certainly was not one to set dates in regard to prophecy, and Jesus forbade setting dates when He said of that day and hour no one knows (Matthew 24:36). God wants this day to be unexpected, but He wants His people to be prepared for the unexpected.
d. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them: The unexpected nature of that day will be a tragedy for the unbeliever. They will be lulled to sleep by political and economic conditions, but they will be rudely awakened. They will hear the frightening verdict “they shall not escape.”
i. When “all’s well” and “all is safe” are on the lips of men. (Moffatt)
ii. This sudden coming, in a time when many say “Peace and safety!” must be distinct from the coming of Jesus described in Matthew 24:15-35. The coming of Jesus described in Matthew 24:15-35 happens at a time of great global catastrophe, when no one could possibly say “peace and safety!” Comparing passages like this shows us that there must be, in some way, two aspects to Jesus’ Second Coming.
*One aspect of His coming is at an unexpected hour, the other is positively predicted.
*One coming is to a “business as usual” world, the other to a world in cataclysm.
*One coming is meeting Him in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17), the other is Him coming with the saints (Zechariah 14:5).
e. As labor pains upon a pregnant woman: The phrase labor pains suggest both inevitability and unexpectedness. Jesus used the same idea in Matthew 24:8, when He spoke of calamities preceding the end times as the beginning of sorrows, which is literally the beginning of labor pains. The idea is both of giving birth to a new age and implying an increase of intensity and frequency in these calamities.
But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.
a. But you, brethren, are not in darkness: In addressing their behavior, Paul first simply told the Thessalonian Christians that they should be who they are. God has made us sons of the light and sons of the day. The time when we were of the night or of the darkness is in the past. So now we simply have to live up to what God has made us.
i. “In the Semitic languages generally to be a ‘son’ of something means to be characterized by that thing.” (Morris)
b. That this Day should over take you as a thief: Paul means that this should not happen for the believer who lives according to their nature as a son of light and son of the day. They will be ready for the return of Jesus Christ.
i. “Paul is led from a consideration of the day of the Lord to the thought that the Thessalonians have nothing to fear from the coming of that Day. This leads to the further thought that their lives should be in harmony with all that that day stands for.” (Morris)
ii. In some respect, the coming of Jesus will be a surprise for everybody, because no one knows the day or the hour (Matthew 24:36). But for Christians who know the times and the seasons, it will not be a complete surprise. No one knows the exact hour a thief will come, but some live in a general preparation against thieves. Those who are not in darkness, who live as they are all sons of light and sons of the day, these are ready for the return of Jesus.
iii. But if we are in darkness – perhaps caught up in some of the sin Paul warned against previously in this letter – then we are not ready and need to make ourselves ready for the return of Jesus.
a. Therefore let us not sleep: Because we do not belong to the night nor of darkness (1 Thessalonians 5:5), our spiritual condition should never be marked by sleep. Spiritually speaking, we need to be active and aware, to watch and be sober.
i. Not sleep: Paul used a different word here than for the sleep of death mentioned in 1 Thessalonians 4:13. “The word sleep is here used metaphorically to denote indifference to spiritual realities on the part of believers. It is a different word than that in 4:13-15 for the sleep of death. It covers all sorts of moral and spiritual laxity or insensibility.” (Hiebert)
ii. Sleep speaks of so much that belongs to the world (the others), but should not belong to Christians:
· Sleep speaks of ignorance.
· Sleep speaks of insensibility.
· Sleep speaks of no defense.
· Sleep speaks of inactivity.
iii. In a sermon on this text titled, Awake! Awake! Spurgeon showed the folly and tragedy of the sleeping Christian with three powerful pictures:
· A city suffers under the plague, with an official walking the streets crying out, “Bring out the dead! Bring out the dead!” All the while, a doctor with the cure in his pocket sleeps.
· A passenger ship reels under a storm and is about to crash on the rocks, bringing near-certain death to the hundreds of passengers – all the while, the captain sleeps.
· A prisoner in his cell is about ready to be led to execution; his heart is terrified at the thought of hanging from his neck, terrified of death, and of what awaits him after death. All the while, a man with a letter of pardon for the condemned man sits in another room – and sleeps.
iv. Sober doesn’t mean humorless. It has in mind someone who knows the proper value of things, and therefore doesn’t get too excited about the things of this world. The person who lives his or her life for fun and entertainment isn’t sober.
v. In commanding sobriety, Paul didn’t have in mind the sort of people who stamp down all enthusiasm and excitement for Jesus, promoting what they think is a more balanced way to live. Paul himself was an enthusiastic follower of Jesus and accused of religious fanaticism. The Roman official Festus thought Paul was mad (Acts 26:24), and the Corinthians thought he was beside himself (2 Corinthians 5:13).
b. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night: The opposite of spiritual watchfulness is spiritual sleep. The opposite of spiritual sobriety is to be spiritually drunk. As Christians we are of the day, and so we must watch and be sober.
c. Putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation: Paul used the images of a soldier’s armor to illustrate the idea of watchfulness. A soldier is a good example of someone who must watch and be sober, and he is equipped to do that with his armor.
i. When one compares this description of spiritual armor with that found in Ephesians 6, there is not an exact correlation. This indicates that Paul saw the idea of spiritual armor as a helpful picture, not something rigid in its particular details.
ii. Faith and love are represented by the breastplate because the breastplate covers the vital organs. No soldier would ever go to battle without his breastplate, and no Christian is equipped to live the Christian life without faith and love.
iii. The hope of salvation is represented as a helmet, because the helmet protects the head, which is just as essential as the breastplate. Hope isn’t used in the sense of wishful thinking, but in the sense of a confident expectation of God’s hand in the future.
a. For God did not appoint us to wrath: Before we had the hope of salvation (1 Thessalonians 5:8), we had an appointment to wrath. We no longer have an appointment to wrath, but now to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
i. Wrath: It is important to understand that Paul means the wrath of God. We are saved from the world, the flesh, and the devil. But first and foremost, we are rescued from the wrath of God, the wrath that we deserve. Paul’s whole context here is the believer’s rescue from the wrath of God.
ii. Our appointment to wrath was appointed in two ways. First, because of what Adam did to us and the whole human race, we are appointed to wrath (Romans 5:14-19). Second, because of our own sin, we are appointed to wrath. When Jesus died on the cross, He stood in our place in our appointment to wrath and reschedules us with an appointment to obtain salvation. As believers, when we think we are appointed to wrath, we show up for an appointment that was cancelled by Jesus.
iii. Who died for us: The idea is that Jesus died in our place. Not simply that Jesus died for us in the sense as a favor for us; but that He died as a substitute for us.
b. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation: Paul put two interesting ideas side-by-side here. Appoint emphasizes God’s sovereignty but obtain is a word that emphasizes human effort. Together, they show that the full scope of salvation involves both divine initiative and human effort.
c. Whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him: Having obtained salvation through our Lord Jesus, we will always live together with Him. The promise of unity with Jesus can’t be broken; no matter if we live or die (wake or sleep), we will always be with Him.
i. He died for us… whether we wake or sleep: Jesus’ death isn’t softened by calling it sleep, but our death can be called sleep. His death was death, so that ours would only be sleep.
Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.
a. Therefore comfort each other: Paul again tells us not to take comfort, but to give comfort. If all Christians have a heart to comfort each other, then all will be comforted.
b. And edify one another: To edify means to build up. When we have our first interest in building up other Christians, then God will edify us. The idea is of a church full of active participants, not passive spectators.
i. “It is clear that in the primitive churches the care of souls was not delegated to an individual officer, or even the more gifted brethren among them; it was a work in which every believer might have a share.” (Hiebert)
c. Just as you also are doing: It wasn’t that there was no comfort among the Thessalonians, or as if no one was edified. But they had to continue to comfort others, and to do it more and more.
enduringword.com
The Enduring Word
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
1-3 The suddenness of Jesus’ coming:
But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape.
a. Concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you: The Thessalonians were well taught about the return of Jesus and other prophetic matters. Paul taught them about the times and the seasons regarding the return of Jesus. They had an idea of the prophetic times they lived in, and they could discern the seasons of the present culture.
i. Again, we are impressed that Paul was with the Thessalonians only for a few weeks (Acts 17:2). In that time, he taught them about the prophetic times and seasons regarding the return of Jesus. Paul would be surprised that some people today consider the return of Jesus an unimportant teaching.
ii. Jesus criticized the religious leaders of His day because they could not discern the signs of the times (Matthew 16:1-3). We should also study the Scriptures, and look to the world around us, so we can be aware of the times and the seasons.
iii. Hiebert on times and seasons: “The first designates time in its duration, whether a longer or shorter period; the second draws attention to the characteristics of the period. The first deals with the measurement of time, the second with the suitable or critical nature of the time.”
b. The day of the Lord so comes: With this phrase, Paul quoted a familiar Old Testament idea. The idea behind the phrase the day of the Lord is that this is Gods’ time. Man has his “day,” and the Lord has His day. In the ultimate sense, the day of the Lord is fulfilled with Jesus judging the earth and returning in glory.
i. It does not refer to a single day, but to a season when God rapidly advances His agenda to the end of the age. The day of the Lord “Is a familiar Old Testament expression. It denotes the day when God intervenes in history to judge His enemies, deliver His people, and establish His kingdom.” (Hiebert)
c. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night: The Thessalonians knew, and had been taught, that they couldn’t know the day of Jesus’ return. That day would remain unknown, and come as a surprise, as a thief in the night. A thief does not announce the exact time of his arrival.
i. Some take the idea that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night to mean that nothing can or should be known about God’s prophetic plan for the future. Yet Paul indicated that they definitely knew that the time could not be definitely known.
ii. Paul certainly was not one to set dates in regard to prophecy, and Jesus forbade setting dates when He said of that day and hour no one knows (Matthew 24:36). God wants this day to be unexpected, but He wants His people to be prepared for the unexpected.
d. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them: The unexpected nature of that day will be a tragedy for the unbeliever. They will be lulled to sleep by political and economic conditions, but they will be rudely awakened. They will hear the frightening verdict “they shall not escape.”
i. When “all’s well” and “all is safe” are on the lips of men. (Moffatt)
ii. This sudden coming, in a time when many say “Peace and safety!” must be distinct from the coming of Jesus described in Matthew 24:15-35. The coming of Jesus described in Matthew 24:15-35 happens at a time of great global catastrophe, when no one could possibly say “peace and safety!” Comparing passages like this shows us that there must be, in some way, two aspects to Jesus’ Second Coming.
*One aspect of His coming is at an unexpected hour, the other is positively predicted.
*One coming is to a “business as usual” world, the other to a world in cataclysm.
*One coming is meeting Him in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17), the other is Him coming with the saints (Zechariah 14:5).
e. As labor pains upon a pregnant woman: The phrase labor pains suggest both inevitability and unexpectedness. Jesus used the same idea in Matthew 24:8, when He spoke of calamities preceding the end times as the beginning of sorrows, which is literally the beginning of labor pains. The idea is both of giving birth to a new age and implying an increase of intensity and frequency in these calamities.
2. (4-5) The basis for Paul’s exhortations
But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.
a. But you, brethren, are not in darkness: In addressing their behavior, Paul first simply told the Thessalonian Christians that they should be who they are. God has made us sons of the light and sons of the day. The time when we were of the night or of the darkness is in the past. So now we simply have to live up to what God has made us.
i. “In the Semitic languages generally to be a ‘son’ of something means to be characterized by that thing.” (Morris)
b. That this Day should over take you as a thief: Paul means that this should not happen for the believer who lives according to their nature as a son of light and son of the day. They will be ready for the return of Jesus Christ.
i. “Paul is led from a consideration of the day of the Lord to the thought that the Thessalonians have nothing to fear from the coming of that Day. This leads to the further thought that their lives should be in harmony with all that that day stands for.” (Morris)
ii. In some respect, the coming of Jesus will be a surprise for everybody, because no one knows the day or the hour (Matthew 24:36). But for Christians who know the times and the seasons, it will not be a complete surprise. No one knows the exact hour a thief will come, but some live in a general preparation against thieves. Those who are not in darkness, who live as they are all sons of light and sons of the day, these are ready for the return of Jesus.
iii. But if we are in darkness – perhaps caught up in some of the sin Paul warned against previously in this letter – then we are not ready and need to make ourselves ready for the return of Jesus.
3. (6-8) Paul’s exhortations: be awake, sober, and watchful.
Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation.a. Therefore let us not sleep: Because we do not belong to the night nor of darkness (1 Thessalonians 5:5), our spiritual condition should never be marked by sleep. Spiritually speaking, we need to be active and aware, to watch and be sober.
i. Not sleep: Paul used a different word here than for the sleep of death mentioned in 1 Thessalonians 4:13. “The word sleep is here used metaphorically to denote indifference to spiritual realities on the part of believers. It is a different word than that in 4:13-15 for the sleep of death. It covers all sorts of moral and spiritual laxity or insensibility.” (Hiebert)
ii. Sleep speaks of so much that belongs to the world (the others), but should not belong to Christians:
· Sleep speaks of ignorance.
· Sleep speaks of insensibility.
· Sleep speaks of no defense.
· Sleep speaks of inactivity.
iii. In a sermon on this text titled, Awake! Awake! Spurgeon showed the folly and tragedy of the sleeping Christian with three powerful pictures:
· A city suffers under the plague, with an official walking the streets crying out, “Bring out the dead! Bring out the dead!” All the while, a doctor with the cure in his pocket sleeps.
· A passenger ship reels under a storm and is about to crash on the rocks, bringing near-certain death to the hundreds of passengers – all the while, the captain sleeps.
· A prisoner in his cell is about ready to be led to execution; his heart is terrified at the thought of hanging from his neck, terrified of death, and of what awaits him after death. All the while, a man with a letter of pardon for the condemned man sits in another room – and sleeps.
iv. Sober doesn’t mean humorless. It has in mind someone who knows the proper value of things, and therefore doesn’t get too excited about the things of this world. The person who lives his or her life for fun and entertainment isn’t sober.
v. In commanding sobriety, Paul didn’t have in mind the sort of people who stamp down all enthusiasm and excitement for Jesus, promoting what they think is a more balanced way to live. Paul himself was an enthusiastic follower of Jesus and accused of religious fanaticism. The Roman official Festus thought Paul was mad (Acts 26:24), and the Corinthians thought he was beside himself (2 Corinthians 5:13).
b. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night: The opposite of spiritual watchfulness is spiritual sleep. The opposite of spiritual sobriety is to be spiritually drunk. As Christians we are of the day, and so we must watch and be sober.
c. Putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation: Paul used the images of a soldier’s armor to illustrate the idea of watchfulness. A soldier is a good example of someone who must watch and be sober, and he is equipped to do that with his armor.
i. When one compares this description of spiritual armor with that found in Ephesians 6, there is not an exact correlation. This indicates that Paul saw the idea of spiritual armor as a helpful picture, not something rigid in its particular details.
ii. Faith and love are represented by the breastplate because the breastplate covers the vital organs. No soldier would ever go to battle without his breastplate, and no Christian is equipped to live the Christian life without faith and love.
iii. The hope of salvation is represented as a helmet, because the helmet protects the head, which is just as essential as the breastplate. Hope isn’t used in the sense of wishful thinking, but in the sense of a confident expectation of God’s hand in the future.
4. (9-10) The security of our future.
For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.a. For God did not appoint us to wrath: Before we had the hope of salvation (1 Thessalonians 5:8), we had an appointment to wrath. We no longer have an appointment to wrath, but now to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
i. Wrath: It is important to understand that Paul means the wrath of God. We are saved from the world, the flesh, and the devil. But first and foremost, we are rescued from the wrath of God, the wrath that we deserve. Paul’s whole context here is the believer’s rescue from the wrath of God.
ii. Our appointment to wrath was appointed in two ways. First, because of what Adam did to us and the whole human race, we are appointed to wrath (Romans 5:14-19). Second, because of our own sin, we are appointed to wrath. When Jesus died on the cross, He stood in our place in our appointment to wrath and reschedules us with an appointment to obtain salvation. As believers, when we think we are appointed to wrath, we show up for an appointment that was cancelled by Jesus.
iii. Who died for us: The idea is that Jesus died in our place. Not simply that Jesus died for us in the sense as a favor for us; but that He died as a substitute for us.
b. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation: Paul put two interesting ideas side-by-side here. Appoint emphasizes God’s sovereignty but obtain is a word that emphasizes human effort. Together, they show that the full scope of salvation involves both divine initiative and human effort.
c. Whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him: Having obtained salvation through our Lord Jesus, we will always live together with Him. The promise of unity with Jesus can’t be broken; no matter if we live or die (wake or sleep), we will always be with Him.
i. He died for us… whether we wake or sleep: Jesus’ death isn’t softened by calling it sleep, but our death can be called sleep. His death was death, so that ours would only be sleep.
5. (11) Our privilege: comfort one another
Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.
a. Therefore comfort each other: Paul again tells us not to take comfort, but to give comfort. If all Christians have a heart to comfort each other, then all will be comforted.
b. And edify one another: To edify means to build up. When we have our first interest in building up other Christians, then God will edify us. The idea is of a church full of active participants, not passive spectators.
i. “It is clear that in the primitive churches the care of souls was not delegated to an individual officer, or even the more gifted brethren among them; it was a work in which every believer might have a share.” (Hiebert)
c. Just as you also are doing: It wasn’t that there was no comfort among the Thessalonians, or as if no one was edified. But they had to continue to comfort others, and to do it more and more.
Enduring Word Bible Commentary 1 Thessalonians Chapter 5
David Guzik commentary on 1 Thessalonians 5, where Paul exhorts the church in Thessalonica to be ready for the return of Jesus.
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