June 12, 2022
Our Victory With Our Glorious, Hero King’s Return
1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:28
4:17
Together implies that Christians now living are closely united with those who have died. The state we call death, but which the Apostle calls sleep-because our Lord’s resurrection has robbed it of its terror-is as full of vitality as the life which we live day by day in this world. We live together, animated by the same purposes-they on that side and we on this. Whether here or there, life is “in Him.” The closer we live to Him, the nearer we are to them. (Meyer)
5:2
He places exact knowledge in contrast with an anxious desire of investigation. (Calvin)
5:6
There is one direction especially in which the Apostle thinks that that consideration ought to tell, and that is the direction of its self-restraint. … ¶ Christian sobriety and Christian gaiety have their sources lying closely side by side in the devout and earnest soul; and, like the Danube and the Rhine, which start out from different sides of the same glacier, and then diverge as far as the east is from the west, so these two, however much they seem to be at variance when they take a separate course, yet have their true founts in a living faith in God, and are then most fresh, and real, and inexhaustible, when they spring from a source of trusting love, in a heart that rests upon the Rock of Ages, and which, while it has its hold upon the earth, is yet aspiring upwards. (Nicoll)
5:8
The two great elements indispensable to the existence of a really grand character are elasticity and steadfastness: elasticity, without which a man gets crushed by every slight failure; and steadfastness, without which he will be turned aside from his purpose by unworthy motives, and be tempted to forget the end of his efforts in the contemplation of the means by which they could be attained. (Nicoll)
And so Christian sobriety must be based upon a reasonable estimate of the importance of life and the seriousness of all things here below. The trifler, who has no higher ambition than to amuse himself, mistakes the meaning of all things on earth. … Christian sobriety and Christian [joy] have their sources lying closely side by side in the devout and earnest soul. (Nicoll; edited for clarity)
Let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith, in a faithful God, who will show strength with his arm. We need not wish ill to our enemies, for their sins will find them out, and will superinduce on themselves a plenitude of evils. Let our confidence be associated with love, which is put here for all the other graces. Let us also exercise goodwill towards all men, and rejoice in the Lord, for the victory is already ours. (Sutcliffe)
5:9
The danger to which this consecration is exposed. The danger of routine, of system, of familiar acquaintance with Biblical truths, the very thing the worth of which we have been advocating. ¶ Simply because consecration must run in the old channels and be drawn on by the same motive, there is danger that we miss the vital contact with the Lord Jesus, that the spirit dies out while the system goes on. Church and prayer meeting attendance may degenerate into a profitless habit. Your soul may be satisfied with the form and die for want of sustenance. Class teaching may become as spiritless as school teaching–the mere teaching of the lesson. Great alarm about our own spiritual condition should smite us when we find ourselves doing Christian duties for the sake of getting rid of them and of appeasing the conscience. ¶ Then, again, the performance of Christian duties leads us into expressions of faith and desire that they may become stereotyped. Biblical language is the fittest medium by which to express our prayer and our faith. And the quickened soul can find comfort and relief for itself in repeating the same form. But let the fire die out, and living contact with Jesus shrink, and the form of words will remain, and we will have the startling inconsistency of devout expression enveloping a shrivelled and dead heart. ¶ There may be movement in Christian life but no progress. Like the water wheel that turns round in the same place that it did ten years ago, may be the Christian life that runs the weekly round of Church services. Like the door that swings on the same hinge, but never moves from the door post, may be the Christian life excessively busy, continually in and out, but never advancing into the interior truths of God’s Word. Christian life is not a treadmill round; Christianity is not meant to teach us how to talk, but to teach us how to walk, and walking is orderly, constant progress towards a terminus, a glory. The path of the just shineth more and more unto the perfect day. (Excell; outline notation removed)
5:10
Believers are translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. They are “children of the day,” when the sun shines the brightest when privileges are more abundant, when opportunities multiply and responsibility is therefore increased. (Excell)
5:15
That which is a whole life to the ephemera, is but a day to a man; that which in the brief succession of human history is counted as remote, is but a single page in the volume of the heavenly records. The coming of Christ may be distant as measured on the scale of human life, but may be near when the interval of the two advents is compared, not merely with the four thousand years which were but its preparation, but with the line of infinite ages which it is itself preparing.” The uncertainty of the time of the Second Advent and its stupendous issues define the attitude of the Church. (Excell)
Works cited correspond to the verses they are are grouped or outlined with. Please see the following web-page for works cited: https://insidecrosspoint.org/sermons/2022/june/bibliography.html