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Sermon: True Peace and Security is Only in Christ Date: June 20, 2021, Morning Text: 1 Thessalonians 5:1–3 Series: Awaiting Christ Preacher: Josh Sheldon Audio: https://storage.googleapis.com/pbc-ca-sermons/2021/210620-TruePeaceAndSecurityIsOnlyInChrist.aac
We'll open your Bibles, please, to 1 Thessalonians and chapter 5.
Our text this morning for preaching will be verses 1 through 3, though I'll read verses 1 through 11 for the reading.
And this morning, in those first three verses, will have to do with the suddenness of the coming of the day of the
Lord.
And next week, Lord willing, verses 4 through 11, we'll speak about how to prepare for that great day.
Now as a quick review before we read this morning's text, remember that chapter 4 verses 1 through
8 were about or are about our moral purity, our ethical behavior as we
await the Lord's return.
And then verses 9 through 12 of that chapter commend to us to continue to grow in brotherly love.
As he told the Thessalonians, continue in brotherly love.
Continue to grow in just what you are doing as we await the Lord.
In verses 13 through 18 of that chapter, we found words of encouragement about our loved ones who have
died in the Lord, that they will be raised, that they are with the Lord now in spirit, they will be raised in body.
If we are alive when the Lord returns, those who are alive will be caught up with him as well.
The Lord will not forget a single one.
Now in verses 5 or chapter 5 verses 1 through 11, the apostle continues to teach about the
Lord's second coming.
This great day of the Lord telling us in the verses I'll read in a moment that true peace and security is found
only in Christ Jesus.
So with that brief introduction, please stand for the reading of God's word for this morning's preaching.
Chapter 5 of 1 Thessalonians verses 1 through 11.
Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you, for you
yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
While people are saying there is peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them
as labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.
For you are all children of light, children of the day.
We are not of the night or of the darkness.
So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.
For those who sleep sleep at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night.
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.
For God has not destined us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that
whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him.
Therefore encourage one another, and build one another up, just as you are doing.
God bless the reading of his word, and now the preaching of his word.
Please be seated.
Now there's a man named Isaac Klein, who in the late 1890s was
made one of the chief meteorologists for the United States government.
He was stationed in Galveston, Texas.
Now as the summer of 1899 drew to a close, there began to be signs of some weather
disturbances in the area of the Gulf of Mexico and east of there.
In fact, Cuban meteorologists telegraphed warnings to Mr. Klein
that a storm that had headed over there and gone over some of the islands in that area seemed to be
gathering strength and seemed to be gathering strength and being pointed towards no other place than
Galveston, Texas, or at least the general southwest part of the United States.
Now due to a blend of arrogance and perhaps some racism, the warnings were
condescendingly ignored.
And he also ignored his own barometric pressure readings.
And you can read about this in an excellent history, I think, by a man named Eric Larson, who wrote something called Isaac's
Storm.
And you'll read there and understand that as the barometric pressure drops, it sort of sucks a storm in.
So a storm that would see that low pressure and head towards it will accelerate towards it.
You know nature hates a vacuum, as they say.
It sort of sucks a storm in.
It accelerates.
And during this period, as a storm was beginning to see that low pressure zone to which it was being
invited, we had unusually hot weather in the Gulf of Mexico, and so water was getting sucked up in the middle
of this forming storm, meaning it was gathering strength, energy, and destructive power.
So as this water and all this strength and all this heat is getting sucked up in there, it's staying there until it hits something
that will cause it to disgorge.
And that something, of course, is land.
So Klein, Isaac Klein, did not give the warning until it was too late.
The Galveston Storm made landfall.
It's the most destructive storm to hit the United States ever.
It landed with winds well over 100 miles an hour and near diluvian floods.
The sea level actually rose four feet in four seconds.
This was not a wave or a tsunami like we had several years ago.
This was the pressure of the storm coming towards the southwest United States, actually pushing up
the ocean.
Four feet.
This was an incredible storm, so powerful
that it pushed the ocean itself ahead of it.
And when it hit landfall, some 8 ,000 people, including Mr. Klein's pregnant wife, were swept away.
In today's dollars, there was over $113 billion of damage.
Why do I bring this up?
I bring this up because the warning signs were all there.
The Cuban meteorologists had told them that the thing seemed to be gathering strength.
It had passed over some of the islands there and was reforming on the other side, heading west,
northwest, towards that area.
The warning signs were there.
And ignoring that sign, Mr. Klein saw his own barometric pressure dropping
and gave the warning when it was just too late to save the lives.
What was happening all this time was that people were simply enjoying life.
They're simply enjoying life, going about their business, as Jesus says will happen in his second coming.
And what will he find?
People, as in the days of Noah, marrying and festive occasions and all the like.
In that day, Galveston was prosperous.
It was so prosperous that it was positioned to rival Houston as the economic powerhouse of Texas,
if not the entire southwest of the United States.
Years prior to this, seawalls had been talked about and recommended, and it
was just too peaceful and too secure and too prosperous now to even worry about those things.
Way down the priority list because of their ease of life, because of their bright hope for tomorrow.
They were all saying, just as in the world in general that is portrayed in
verse 3 of what I read from 1 Thessalonians 5, there's peace and security.
Why worry?
Things are going on just fine.
The ocean looks level.
The money's coming in.
The resources are growing.
We're going to overtake Houston all is well.
A bubble of false optimism soon to be pierced.
A fatal delusion soon to exact its price.
A peace and security founded on something other than God
about to be destroyed.
And I ask you this morning, do you feel that sort of peace and
security that Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5, 3?
When people are saying peace and security, when people are fine, when people are comfortable, everything's going along today as it went
yesterday, and I'm sure it's going to happen that way tomorrow.
When people are thinking and behaving and ordering their lives that way, all of
a sudden, here comes the unexpected storm and it will take its price.
Do you feel that kind of peace and security?
And I ask you, if you do, on what is it based?
If your peace and security is anything in this world, job, marriage, education, investments, government, military,
I tell you this morning, God willing, you will hear this before you leave, you're standing on dangerous ground.
I tell you this morning, I warn you, a storm approaches.
Like the Galveston storm, it has been detected.
Unlike the Galveston storm's victims, you're being warned.
If you have breath this day, you're being warned.
Like the Galveston storm, this storm cannot be stopped.
Unlike the Galveston storm, you can be spared its fury.
You can be spared its fury so that not so much as a raindrop will fall on your head, if you'll hear me this morning.
The day of the Lord comes.
It is building.
It is approaching.
No one can tell you when it will make landfall.
I should say when it will make earth fall, but I can tell you that it will.
I tell you this morning, true peace and security is to be found only in something
unchangeable and unfailing.
Wouldn't we not all agree with that?
There was that financial company, I forget the name, that had as its symbol the Rock of Gibraltar.
Why?
Because it's tall, it's massive, it's strong, it's always been there, and it always will be there.
And we as Christians know, of course, it wasn't always there.
God spoke it to be there, and it won't always be there, because God could speak it to not
be there in a moment.
And in between those two, all kinds of things could happen.
True peace and security found in something unchangeable and unfailing, and this is what we all strive for.
Do we not?
We join companies that we're sure will pay us every month.
We put our investments in companies that we are sure will invest wisely, and things will grow so we'll be secure in our
retirement.
I tell you this morning, trust God, because God has written to you about the times and the seasons
in which you live, so you can properly discern, so you can reason things out.
Verse 1, he says, Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written
to you.
Amos 3, verse 7, says something very significant that applies here.
He says, For the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants, the prophets.
Now that doesn't mean absolutely everything.
God does not reveal his secret will.
That's Deuteronomy 29 .29.
What it means is that he's revealed everything you need to know for true peace
and true security in him.
He's revealed everything you need to know to believe this storm that I'm going to speak of is coming, and will
indeed come, and that its damage can pass
you by.
You see, the Thessalonians here, they were not in need of any further information, data points, we call them today.
They knew all about the times and the seasons.
Now that knowledge may have come directly from the apostle when he and Timothy and Silas were first there in Thessalonica.
You can read about that in Acts chapter 16.
Maybe it came from Timothy when he was sent back to strengthen and encourage the fledgling church.
But Paul says here they had no need for any more information.
They've been told everything they need to know.
God willing, this morning you will be told everything you need to know about this as well.
What was their curiosity about?
Their curiosity was about the day of the Lord.
The day of the Lord, the second coming, means the same thing.
And they both relate to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now there's two words here to describe times and seasons.
Times is chronos, and seasons is kairos.
Well, chronos is what you would expect.
That is time as measured.
It's like on the watch that I so easily ignore while I preach.
That's chronos.
Divides up time and tells us how much has passed.
Chronos is about the character of the times.
Are you aware?
Are you informed of the character and the duration of our times?
Well, I am.
Not by any power of intellect.
Not by my own unique observations.
By God's Word.
By what He tells us plainly in His Word.
I and you have no need for any further instruction.
And with that, no need for any anxiety.
See, the question is about the day of the Lord, about Jesus' second coming.
How long?
This is what the Thessalonians were asking Paul.
This is what is asked so often in our day.
When will the Lord's day occur?
It's a question that God's people have asked so many times.
Psalm 90 verses 13 and 14.
The exiles in Babylon cry out, Return, O Lord.
Have pity on your servants.
Satisfy us in the morning.
And with your steadfast love that we might rejoice and be glad all our days.
They ask, how long?
In Psalm 80 verses 4 and 5.
O Lord God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people's prayers?
You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure.
One more, Revelation chapter 6 verse 10.
Those saints who are asleep, as we call them here on earth, but they are with the Lord now, call out in a loud
voice, O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?
How long is not a bad question.
Jesus was asked that by the apostles.
And he answered this way.
He said, but concerning that day or that hour, that how long question, when will you come?
How will we know?
He says, concerning that, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven nor the Son,
but only the Father.
That's an interesting answer he gives and it has many different takes as we understand it.
But I'll tell you one thing it doesn't mean.
It doesn't mean from God, from Jesus, that the answer
is none of your business.
That's not what is being said here.
The answer is that God our Father knows.
That Jesus knows.
That Jesus, God's glorified and ascended Son, sitting at his right hand, ruling his people, the church,
ruling you God willing, through his spirit and through his royal authority, brought to bear in us and
for us by his prophetic word, he is sanctifying and preparing us to meet him in the
air, to be made like him, to be presented as a beautiful and spotless bride whom he redeemed with his precious blood.
And the question is, how long before all this occurs?
What are those times?
And here's your answer.
You want the Kronos?
I can give it to you.
And again, not because of any power of intellect that I have.
It's on the surface of the text.
It's from Jesus' ascension, when he returned to the Father after his resurrection, having died for your
sins, from his ascension until his return to this planet.
His descension, if that's even a word.
That's the Kronos.
That's the answer.
Have you ever asked that?
Have you ever been stirred up in your spirit about when will Jesus return?
When will I have eternal pleasures in his exact presence begin?
How long, oh Lord?
Now we have to admit that the Christian yearns for that.
If you're in Christ Jesus, and you, by the inner working of his spirit, know how good
a Savior he is and how good a God we serve.
How can we not cry out, how long I desire to be there?
I want to be with him.
I cannot wait to be made like him and see him as he is.
Well, the answer is, sometime between his ascension and his return.
That's the times in which we live.
That's the measurement.
And obviously, there's no exact answer.
He will come when the Father sends him.
And I ask you, is that enough for you?
We preach next week in verses 4 through 11, God willing, if we're still here to preach that,
we're going to speak about how we live as we wait.
As we cry out, how long?
Jesus Christ answers back, not how long, but what are you doing
during that period?
So if the answer is, from when he went back to his Father until his Father sends him back to us, is
that enough for you?
So much time has been wasted trying to predict.
Jesus himself said, the kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed.
Why is that?
Because he's a mean, nasty God who wants to hold back on us?
Of course not.
Romans 8 .32 says, he who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will
he not also with him graciously give us all things?
And 2 Peter 1 .3 says, that God by his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life
and godliness.
God has held back nothing that we need to know.
He's given us everything.
He's given us his Son.
He's given us his Spirit.
He's given us by his divine power, the ability by his Spirit to live lives of
godliness.
You see, waiting for Jesus to return is not about the when, it's about the how.
And in this case, not so much the how he's going to return, we covered that last week, did we not?
It's the how we behave as we wait.
How we order our lives as we wait.
The how is our how.
As we take advantage of what he's given us in his scripture.
As by the power of the Spirit we live according to that word.
No, waiting for Jesus is not so much about the when, it's about the until that when happens.
That we're growing in holiness and Christ -likeness.
So that's the chronos.
The chronos is, the time is, we're living in that time from ascension to return
and it's going to last until God says it's over.
But what are the seasons?
The kairos, the character of the times.
What Paul tells us here is when people are saying there's peace and security.
When people are saying there's peace and security, that's from verse 3, and I'm still on verse 1 really in the preaching
here, but we can address it right now.
What's wrong with peace and security?
Well, really they're good things.
Much of the book of Proverbs is about how to have a peaceful and secure life.
Not guarantees, but we find general principles of clean living, hard work, fiscal responsibility,
how it usually brings about peace and security.
But what Paul means is the character of these times is sort of a spiritual malaise.
A nonchalance towards the things of the Lord.
A casualness about what God has said in His scripture.
An ease with which we slip in to stand before Him and worship Him.
Just that there's peace and security.
Things are just going along fine, and they will continue that way.
Sort of a quick acknowledgement of what the scripture says about the need to repent
and believe the gospel and mortify the sin that still assails us so often.
But that's almost an aside compared to the other things because in these other things we have peace and security.
Things are going along just fine.
People trusting in what the world provides.
You trust your government, your education, your abilities.
You trust the company that monthly deposits your salary that's going to go to your account.
You trust that tomorrow the sun will rise because of the laws of nature and physics.
I would like to draw a distinction between trusting and expecting.
I mean, expecting is one thing.
I expect that the church will pay my agreed salary as you expect your company to pay your agreed salary as indeed
the church always has.
You might well and properly expect the sun to rise and set tomorrow and for the laws of nature and physics
to keep the earth in its proper orbit.
But there's a distinction between a reasonable expectation and trust.
The character of the times, the seasons, the kairos, is people trusting in anything but God.
Now what's Paul alluding to here?
He's alluding, I think, back to Jeremiah 6, a time when Israel failed to trust God to their
terrible detriment.
I'll just read a few verses from that chapter so you get the feel of it.
If you turn there to Jeremiah 6, Jeremiah is warning the people of
Judah that there is a storm coming to them.
Jerusalem was in, can we call it, a barometric, low -pressure, a
spiritual low -pressure that is sucking into it with ever -increasing force a
storm that is growing and ready to be brought in.
Every time the prophet cries out that this pressure has dipped ever lower, the
people find more and more ways to drown out the warning.
So Jeremiah 6, verse 1.
Now hear what he says.
He says, Now remember the southern kingdom was the tribes of
Judah, Levi with the priests, and Benjamin who came from the northern
to join with the southern tribe when the kingdom split.
So,
What is he talking about?
He's talking about Babylon's armies, God's chosen instrument of judgment, are coming, that God is sending them and the
prophet warns them.
Is it like the Galveston storm?
We could spiritualize it that way.
The storm is there and here's the low -pressure zone sucking it in with greater and greater force.
Now look down at verse 9.
In other words, nothing's going to be left.
Like the 1900 Galveston storm, nothing left behind.
Unlike the 1900 Galveston storm, they received full and infallible warning.
Look down at verse 19.
And still Jeremiah, still warning the people of this coming storm.
The fruit of their devices because they have not paid attention to my words and as for my law,
they have rejected it.
I ask you this morning, how could something so clear be ignored?
Was it only then, in the mid -6th century BC?
No, even today.
The clear warnings that we give from this pulpit morning and afternoon, every Sunday.
The clear warnings that you give to your friends and your loved ones.
When it's shrugged, it's derided, and to us it's like, I'm
telling you the storm is coming.
God has proven over and over again in history that he keeps his word.
Don't ignore me or ignore God to your own peril.
How could something so clear be ignored?
If Isaac Klein had had the instrumentation that we have today and had been able to show computer readouts of
the dropping barometric pressure and computer, or excuse me, satellite images of the storm and show that this is where it's
heading and this is the force it's going to have when it hits.
And then if people had ignored, you say, how could you have done that?
Jeremiah preached in the 6th century BC.
I preach here in the 21st century AD.
Jeremiah warned of a human army divinely sent.
I warn you of a divine son who will be divinely sent.
Jeremiah warned of destruction in this life.
I warned of destruction for eternity.
And I ask you, why do you ignore?
Or do you ignore?
But if you do ignore, then why?
It's because you hear a different voice.
You hear a voice you prefer.
You hear a voice that panders to you, really.
A different voice.
A voice that comforts you.
Look at Jeremiah 6 .14.
And with that we will leave Jeremiah.
But if I ask you, why do you ignore?
If I call you to repentance before God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
that you repent of your sins and believe that Jesus Christ died for them because God sent him for that purpose,
why would it be ignored?
Chapter 6, verse 14 of Jeremiah, they have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, peace,
peace, where there is no peace.
Who are they?
Well, they are the false prophets and priests in Jeremiah's day.
They are liars who appeased men for their own gain.
They are an early type of Simon Magus who we meet in Acts chapter 8 who was willing to pay for the gift of the
Holy Spirit so he could hand it out to others.
They are purveyors of lies and dreams that titillate the senses and satisfy the ego.
It's your best life now and how you can have what you want if only you pray with enough faith and speak
the word with enough power.
It's the lie that you and the animals differ only on where you are in the scale of evolution,
that nothing was created, least of all you, that everything is material and ruled by impersonal laws.
That's that light healing of the wound.
That's that pandering appeasement that allows you to ignore the strains and the call of
the gospel.
When they are saying peace and security, beware.
Have you heard that siren call in the world?
Do you believe that?
If it comes from man and not from God, I say beware.
Several decades ago, Neville Chamberlain met Adolf Hitler and he returned back to England with wonderful news.
He gladdened timorous hearts and he steadied shaking knees when he delivered his
infamous Peace in Our Times speech.
He did that on September 30th, 1938.
And it was just what they wanted to hear.
Not just they in the parliament, but the whole world.
That this guy's not so bad.
I've talked to him.
I know what his intentions are.
There's not going to be war.
There's going to be peace in our time.
That was September 30th, 1938.
Not quite a year later, September 1st, 1939.
Do you know what started?
World War II.
The most destructive war in history.
On September 1st, 1939, the obsolete World War I German battleship called
Schleswig -Holstein, and there I'll arm you with some trivia someday
if you ever need it.
Excuse me.
That the first shot fired in that war was from that old battleship, the only one they were allowed to keep after the Versailles Treaty
from World War I.
That was for free.
But after Chamberlain's peace in our time speech, 11 months
later, excuse me, that ship began World War II.
The point is when they cry peace, peace.
Beware.
What peace are we talking about?
If they're talking about peace with men, beware.
If they tell you you have peace with God, be doubleware.
Peace with God by any means other than repentance, other than by faith, other than in Christ alone,
by faith alone.
Do not trust.
If we can't trust when they call out peace between men, and they call out to you peace with God by any means
other than what I've just said, don't trust.
In fact, run away.
Run and come to the true word.
You know, people say today that God is too good to care about something so small, something so provincial, so
prudish, so judgmental as that little three -letter word, sin.
Oh, why would a good God care about these little things we do wrong?
We try our best and things like that.
We've all heard that.
God will take me as I am.
You're being lightly healed from a terrible wound.
He made me this way.
And God doesn't make mistakes.
So here I am just being me.
They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, peace.
Peace.
You have peace with God.
God loves you just as you are.
No mention of Jesus.
No mention of the cross.
No mention of faith.
Run away.
No.
Those are all lies.
God is too good not to care about sin.
God is too good and too holy and too righteous to not make provision for your sins, but in Jesus Christ and
Him alone.
For by grace you have been saved through faith.
And this is not your own doing.
It is the gift of God.
All else is a light healing of a terrible wound.
God is too good to not care about your sin.
He's too good to not make provision for your sin.
He's too good not to warn you of the consequences of failing to repent of your
sin and put your faith in Christ Jesus and Him alone.
You know from His word that He will come.
We don't know when He will come.
So we need to trust God that He will come at a time when He's not expected.
This is what the apostle says.
You yourselves are fully aware.
Some translations say, you know with full accuracy that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
Now the Lord is no thief.
We know that.
Jesus Christ is no thief.
He never snuck around.
He taught openly.
It is not He who is likened to a thief but the day of the Lord.
As we learned in the last sermon, God's re -entrance to this earth is going to be a bit noisy with a cry of command,
the voice of an archangel, and the trumpet sound of God.
It's not the day that won't be recognized.
It's that it won't be expected.
It'll be a shock.
When you hear the cry of command, when you hear the voice of an archangel, and the trumpet sound of God, when you see Jesus coming on a
cloud, I ask you now, will you fall down in a rapture of praise and thanksgiving?
Will you be blessing His holy name for your faith vindicated, your salvation made complete?
Or with horror and regret, will you say, you
mean to tell me God actually did say that?
That He is going to come?
And it's only while I have this breath that I can consider the things of the Lord
and repent of my sin and put my faith and my trust and my hope in Christ Jesus?
He actually meant what He said?
Which side will you be on?
Falling down before Him?
Beginning eternal praise?
Or cast away from Him?
And beginning eternal torment and regret?
Will you be saying God really meant that?
I would answer yes.
He has shown you, oh man, what is good.
He has given you warning.
He has bidden you to believe Him and not the lying prophets or the priests or the scientists or the
activists.
See, once God sends His Son, there's no more opportunity to trust Him.
You need to trust Him now.
You need to trust God now because all other trust is delusional at worst and
temporary at best.
In verse 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.
And in both these words, sudden and destruction, are used especially in the Scriptures of Jesus' return.
Sudden, the way we have it here, is only here in 1 Thessalonians 5 .3 and once more in Luke 21 .34
when Jesus Christ said, But watch yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and
cares of this life.
And that day, that great day, the day of the Lord, Jesus' own return,
He says, and that day come upon you suddenly like a tramp.
Suddenly, as if surprising.
What's so surprising?
We said it a moment ago.
You mean God meant that, that God really spoke in the Bible through His Son, Jesus Christ?
And that if I read the Bible and take it at its plainest meaning, it means what it says and the
warnings are true?
They were meant for me to hear them?
You heard in the Catechism teaching this morning from Conley.
Ask Adam and Eve what was so surprising.
You mean God really meant that if we eat of that tree, we'll die?
He wasn't kidding.
Yes, He meant it.
He meant it.
Ask those who were consumed in the fire and brimstone that ruined Sodom.
Ask those who ignored the prophet Jeremiah, preferring the lies of the false prophets and the priests.
Ask them why they were surprised when the walls of Jerusalem were broken, the temple was desecrated, their sons were
enslaved, their wives and daughters were ravished.
Ask Egypt if they were surprised after so many warnings when their
firstborn died, even of their cattle.
What surprised them?
I think what surprised them, why it's so sudden, so shocking, is to find out
that God meant what He said.
He means what He says.
That God is the one true and living God and His word means exactly what it conveys to you.
That Jesus Christ came that whosoever should believe in Him might not perish but have eternal life.
That the only alternative to eternal life is eternal destruction.
That comes in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 9, and we'll catch that another time.
That unless you repent, Luke 13, 3 -5, the Lord Jesus
says, unless you repent, you too will perish.
That Jesus Christ and He alone procured your salvation by dying in your place and for your sins.
That He is the way and the truth and the life.
And no one comes to the Father but through Him.
This is what all that means.
It's a plain truth.
It's a warning truth.
Destruction is a rarely used word.
It means loss of life, of blessedness, followed by future and eternal misery.
Jesus told a parable in Luke 16 about a man who lived sumptuously.
He ate well at his table.
He dressed in the finest clothes.
He is a man whose peace and security, can we say, was completely vested in himself.
This man dies and he awakes in torment.
I'm not going to go through the whole parable this morning.
But he awakes in these flames.
Surprise!
Sudden and eternal destruction.
Never -ending destruction.
A worm that gnaws at you, yet the worm is never satisfied and you are never consumed.
You mean to tell me that God actually spoke that in the Bible?
That it means just that?
That God will actually bring to Himself in eternal pleasure and grateful worship all who believe in His Son
and send to eternal torment those who deny Him and refuse Him and
put their peace and security in themselves?
That Jesus, His Son, is really His last and final word for salvation?
Yes.
And that all who ignore His Son are destined for that everlasting punishment?
This is the storm that's coming.
And this is the warning I give.
If Isaac Klein had said, move inland, get north, get away from here, how
much life would have been saved?
Paul says it's going to come like labor pains.
I think he means here a process that once begun, it won't be stopped.
And once begun, it cannot but accomplish what it set out to do.
Many of you know I have multiple sclerosis.
And this week, I suffered from one of the symptoms of it that I dread the most.
My left leg gets these spasms.
The muscle will just do these cramps on me.
It starts to tense up, and you feel it starting, and even when it's very light, you go, oh, no, I know where this is going, and I
can't do anything to stop it.
And it'll pull and pull and pull, and after a while, it'll yank my foot up at the instep with so much strength that I'm not
trying to apply, I'm trying to stop it, that it makes my foot very tender, and sometimes it snaps so hard
and so violently, I might be sleeping.
And all of a sudden, it just snaps up so hard, it sprains it, and I can't put weight on it for two or three days.
That happened to me earlier this week.
I'm healed now, thank God.
But the idea here is you feel something starting, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
It's like the storm that hit Galveston in 1900.
As a woman's labor ends in birth, so the day of the Lord ends with Jesus' coming.
As birth ends the labor pains and new life begins, so the day of Jesus Christ will end the pains of this present time
and season and begin eternal life.
The storm comes suddenly and inexorably,
and that's what is meant by the labor pains.
Once it starts, it's going to have its way.
Once it begins, it's going to complete its journey.
It's going to make the landfall, if you will.
The Galveston storm could not have been prevented.
The loss of life could have.
I tell you now, when Jesus Christ went up, when he ascended, when Christ went up, the barometer plunged
because when he went back to his Father, the storm, the day of the Lord, his return
is on its way.
From then until the Lord says to his Son, go.
And at that moment, it's over.
And if you have not repented, if you have not put your faith and your hope and your trust in Christ Jesus
and him alone, the Apostle Paul says, eternal destruction.
If you want to know more about that, read the parable in Luke 16 of Lazarus and the rich man that I
alluded to.
Jeremiah 23, verse 19.
You needn't turn there.
He says, Behold, the storm of the Lord.
Wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest.
It will burst upon the head of the wicked.
You see, the storm must come.
And the Galveston storm, as destructive and powerful as it was, it might more easily have been stopped by the little
Dutch boy holding his finger in the dike than the storm of the Lord.
But you don't have to die.
I said earlier that you can avoid this storm so that not
so much as a drop of rain will crease your forehead.
This is why I've said three or four or five times now, if you will believe this word,
if you will repent of your sin, put your faith, your hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The prophet Ezekiel cries out to you.
He says, Why would you die?
For the Lord takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
And yet to live is to live on His terms.
Repent.
Trust God whose Son died on the cross, His death for your life.
The Lord Jesus, centuries before He became God in the flesh, He beckoned everyone.
In Isaiah chapter 55 verse 1, He calls out to you.
He says, Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.
And he who has no money, come, buy and eat.
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
He means, buy salvation of himself.
We don't buy with money.
Faith.
And trust.
That was before He came.
While He roamed this earth, He called out.
He says, Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.
And you will find rest for your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light.
While Jesus Christ walked on this earth, He called you to come.
And today the risen Lord says to you, Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with Me.
Before He came, while He was here, and now from heaven, He calls you to repent and to
believe.
When He returns, He will not knock.
Once the birth pangs have begun, all is set and will bring forth just what God intends, which is glorification for
we who believe, but everlasting condemnation, disgrace, humiliation, an
eternity of regret and suffering for those who reject Him.
Jesus, in a very well -known summary of His Sermon on the Mount, spoke
about the house that is founded upon this word that He spoke, this word of God.
He says, Built on the rock of the word.
And the winds came and the rain fell and the house withstood it.
You hear a lot of opinions, and they're all good opinions.
I don't deride any of them, of what that storm is.
Is it the storm, the vicissitudes of life?
Yes, very likely.
But let me no longer leave out the idea that maybe that storm
is the one in Jeremiah 23, 19, the storm of the Lord coming in judgment.
Maybe the storm against which that house stands, so that not a
raindrop even creases your forehead, is the return of the Lord.
Recall us.
I call you to trust Jesus Christ as Savior.
We who know Him, live for Him, expectantly.
We don't know when He will return.
We know we are in the times of His return.
We know the character of the times when people are calling out peace and security.
Let we be the ones whose peace and security is in Christ and Him alone.
Trust Jesus to keep us safe from the storm that will certainly come.
Amen?
Heavenly Father, thank You, Lord, for the security that we have in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Thank You, Father, that we can trust Him completely.
That we know, Lord, that Your Word is true and certain and reliable.
And that because of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are safe from it.
That we, Father, when You send Your Son back, when He returns to us, He will call us to Himself
and not send us away.
And for all these things we give You thanks in His name.
Amen.