Night People/Day People, Part 1

And so we understand that to say someone is the son of is to merely say that their nature or their character obviously seems to have been born of that. To say we are sons of light means that the dominant influence in our lives is light.

Do you prefer Pepsi or Coke, Apple or Android, baseball or football? Now, those are not exactly life or death alternatives, but some alternatives are indeed that serious, like the night people and the day people the apostle Paul speaks of. John MacArthur helps you determine which group you're in as he continues his series called The Rapture and the Day of the Lord. John, in this study that focuses on end times events, even here you are driving home gospel truth about the eternal destinies of believers and non-believers. Is it ever surprising when a passage that doesn't focus squarely on the gospel ultimately does point to the message of salvation in Christ alone?

No, it doesn't surprise me because the whole purpose of all of Holy Scripture is to bring people to a true relationship with God. The whole intent of the Bible, every part of the Bible, is that God can complete his salvation work. So you're never going to be very far from the means for that salvation to take place and that's the gospel.

There's a virgin who said he'd take a text and find the route to the cross and take it there. Yeah, you can sometimes be guilty of pushing a text to the cross before you explain what it has in its own historic intentions, but that's absolutely right. Eventually everything is going to lead you to the cross because the answer to everything is in the cross and the resurrection. Throughout my years of studying God's Word and preaching at the pulpit of Grace Community Church, I have always, always gone back to the gospel and I'll tell you why. Not because I'm intending to go back and preach the gospel as if I had some preoccupation with it, but because it's in every text for that very reason that we just said. You're never very far, no matter what you say about man, what you say about God, what you say about Christ, what you say about the Holy Spirit, what you say about the Bible.

You're coming at it and always realizing the same thing, that this is meaningless to someone who's not converted. So you're always going back to the fact that you need to come to God through faith in Jesus Christ, believe the gospel, be saved, and then all the truth of scripture, all the glorious realities of scripture become accessible to you because of the transformation of your own heart. So we need to say thank you to you, men and women, who share our love for the gospel and believe it's the only hope for a lost and dying world as it is. So on behalf of the many, many grateful, growing listeners whose lives have been transformed and are being transformed through the gospel and biblical truth, thank you for standing with us at Grace to You. Yes, friend, thank you for standing with us, for sharing our commitment to the gospel of Christ, the dividing line that you must be on the right side of, as John's about to show you. To continue his study, titled The Rapture and the Day of the Lord, here again is John MacArthur.

First Thessalonians chapter 5, and we're going to begin a look at verses 4 through 11. The title of our message is Night People, Day People. We all know that some people are night people, just in the normal human sense, and some people are day people. Some people prefer to do their work and their activities in the day, and some prefer to do them in the night. Some people like to sleep at night, rise up early with the dawn, go to bed early when the darkness comes, and others like the night. And just as that is true in some sense in terms of our human life, it is also true spiritually speaking. In fact, we could almost say that there are only two kinds of people in the world, and we would be accurate biblically. There are night people, and there are day people.

Let me read about them. First Thessalonians 5, beginning at verse 4. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day should overtake you like a thief. For you are all sons of light and sons of day. We're not of night nor of darkness. So then, let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with Him.

Therefore, encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing. The whole human race, says Paul, is divided into two groups, night people and day people. Night people, we learn here, are associated with darkness, sleep, and drunkenness.

Day people are associated with light, alertness, and soberness. Now Paul is really showing us the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian, a believer and an unbeliever, one who possesses salvation and one who does not. Now the purpose in this text, the goal which he has in mind primarily, is to meet the need of the Thessalonian believers who are disquieted and discomforted and worried and anxious and nervous about their future. For some reason, they have become concerned about whether or not they are secure in the future. Having been taught by the Apostle Paul something about the coming of Christ and having been given some information about the day of the Lord, they have become worried. Some have come along and confused them to some degree, and so there are a number of questions in their mind that Paul wants to answer as he pens this epistle, no doubt questions brought to him by Timothy when he visited the Thessalonian church. They're very anxious and somewhat fearful about what is to come.

In light of these concerns that they have, the beloved Apostle has set in the inspired text the answers to their queries. First of all, they were concerned about Christians that died. Would they miss the rapture? And so in chapter 4, verses 13 to 18, he answers that question by saying, No, they will rise first in the rapture and you'll be there to join them. And then he answered their question about the timing of the Lord's coming.

When would it happen? In chapter 5, verses 1 to 3, by saying, You can't know, no one can know, it's going to be unexpected. And now he answers the question, Will they miss the rapture and is there any possibility they might wind up having to go through the day of the Lord? And here in verses 4 through 11, he says, That's impossible.

No, you will not experience the day of the Lord, you will not experience the wrath of God. The purpose for which he writes is to settle their fears. That's why at the end of chapter 4, you notice verse 18, it says, Therefore comfort one another with these words. And down in chapter 5, verse 11, Therefore encourage...and by the way, that's the exact same verb in the same form as translated comfort at the end of chapter 4.

Here it's translated encourage. Therefore encourage one another and build up one another just as you also are doing. So he's really writing all of this to comfort and courage and strengthen them. Your future is secure, he's saying, be comforted, be encouraged, be strengthened. The way he addresses the security of the future of the believer is through a series of contrasts. He contrasts, of course, the rapture with the day of the Lord. He contrasts salvation and wrath, life and death, blessing and cursing, hope and no hope, day and night, darkness and light, being asleep and being awake, being drunk and being sober, being separated from God forever and being forever with the Lord. All that series of contrasts unfolds in this entire passage. It is a multifaceted description of the complete and total division between believers and unbelievers and the implications of that division in the lives of both.

The whole section really contrasts the saved and the doomed. And any fearful or worrying or fretting or nervous, disquieted, discomforted Christian who's concerned about his future can look to this text and have his fears calmed. We have nothing to fear in the future if we belong to Christ because we are so utterly distinct, because there is such a tremendous and total contrast between Christians and non-Christians, believers and unbelievers.

We have nothing to fear, having spoken about the rapture, which is our event gathering us to the Lord, and the day of the Lord, which is the event of the unbelievers that brings them eternal damnation. He now moves in verses 4 through 10 to show us why we need not fear about our future because of our distinctiveness, our distinctiveness, and gives a number of contrasts to make that very apparent. Let me just suggest to you three of them that we will look at, three perspectives about the distinctiveness of a believer that secures him from any future judgment. We are distinctive, first of all, as to our nature. We are distinctive, secondly, as to our behavior. And we are distinctive, thirdly, as to our destiny. Because we have a distinct nature manifesting itself in a distinct behavior leading to a distinct destiny, we have nothing to fear.

Let's begin with a look at the distinctiveness of our nature, or the very essence of our being, our character. Verse 4, But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day should overtake you like a thief, for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness.

There is the contrast made very simple and very direct. We're not going to have any part in the day of the Lord. We're not going to have any part in the future judgments of God and His wrath because we are unique people. Our nature is different. In verse 3, he says that the day of the Lord is going to come with sudden destruction and they shall not escape.

Mark that word, they. That's very important to his contrast because in verse 4 he says, But you, brethren, in contrast to them, you are not in darkness. You're not going to be in the night when the thief comes. You're not a part of darkness. The term brethren here is an emphasis suggesting that we belong in the family of God. Brethren identifies us as Christians who will never experience the day of the Lord.

The contrast is emphatic and Paul draws it all the way down through verse 7 and even into verse 8. Believers will never experience the wrath of God. They will never experience this sudden destruction. They will never experience the day of the Lord, the fury of God. Why?

Because they are different in nature. You, brethren, are not in darkness. You don't belong to the darkness. You don't belong to the night. You don't belong to Satan's domain. You are not in darkness. The people just described who are the target for God's wrath on the day of the Lord are in darkness.

But you're not. To what does that refer? Well obviously he's talking about spiritual darkness that characterizes and marks the nature of unbelievers. And it's really twofold. A number of years ago in studying 1 John, I went through the whole of Scripture to delineate the essence of this darkness and simply stated it falls into two categories. One is mental darkness, the other is moral darkness. The darkness of ignorance on the one hand, the darkness of sin on the other. The darkness of unbelief on the one hand, the darkness of rebellion on the other. One is the darkness of not knowing, the other is the darkness of not doing.

Not knowing what is true, not doing what is right. The heart of an unregenerate, unsaved person is dark. That which generates his conduct is dark and so his conduct reflects the darkness.

In John's gospel, you remember these familiar words. In him was life, chapter 1 verse 4, and the life was the light of men and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. To open the gospel of John, John reminds the reader that the world is in darkness. Christ the light came but the darkness did not understand the light.

Why? Chapter 3 of John's gospel, this is the judgment that the light is come into the world and men loved the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil. They didn't want to see the light, they loved the darkness. Verse 20 says, they hated the light and did not come to the light lest their deeds would be exposed. Jesus in John chapter 8 confronted the people in the outer courtyard of the temple in the city of Jerusalem with these words, I am the light of the world, he who follows me shall not walk in the darkness but shall have the light of life. And so the unregenerate world is characterized as dark.

Even the prophet said he would come as a light to the nations. It's the darkness that comes to the mind that does not know truth. It's the darkness that's characteristic of the conduct of one who has no capacity to do what is right.

In Ephesians, Paul also elucidates the same thing in chapter 4 verse 17. He says that people operate in the futility of their mind being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them because of the hardness of their heart. So it is an ignorant darkness and it is an immoral darkness. They are dark because they don't know the truth.

They are dark because they love wickedness. Every one who is presently a Christian once walked in the darkness. In Ephesians 2 it says that we were dead in trespasses and sins and nothing is darker than death. And we walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

We functioned in the lust of our flesh, the desires of the flesh and the mind and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest. The world is in darkness. The one who controls that darkness is Satan, whose children they are. Satan himself, Jesus called the power of darkness in Luke 22 53. He identified Satan as the power of darkness. In Ephesians 6 12 he called Satan's demons the forces of darkness and they all occupy the kingdom of darkness, according to Colossians 1 13. And they are all headed for eternal darkness.

So the domain of the lost, the domain of those without God, without Christ is the domain of darkness, dominion of ignorance, sin, wickedness and rebellion, the realm of the fallen sinful nature in Adam and unredeemed. But you, he says, brethren, are not in that darkness. You're by nature not darkness. I am the light of the world. The one who comes to me will not walk in darkness, Jesus said, but will have the light of life. And you remember those wonderful words of our Lord in Matthew 5 where He said that you are the light of the world, let your light shine among men so they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

And you remember the wonderful, wonderful truth of 1 John chapter 1 which tells us about our nature. It says that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. And if we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If you say you know God but you live in darkness, you don't know God.

If you know God, you live in light. So we're not in darkness. We're not night people. We're not people of the night. We don't live in mental darkness, we know the truth.

We don't live in moral darkness, we live the truth. Because of this distinctive nature of the believer as a day person, a child of light, there is great relief. Back to verse 4, we have no fear that the day should overtake us like a thief.

What day? The day of the Lord. That day belongs to the darkness. The prophet Amos, looking forward to the day of the Lord in prophetic revelation, wrote in chapter 5 verse 20, Will not the day of the Lord be darkness instead of light, even gloom with no brightness in it? The day of the Lord is darkness, the day of the Lord is for the people of darkness, the night people. And so he says the day of the Lord is not going to overtake you, it's not going to seize you, it's not going to catch you, it's not going to capture you like some unwary person sleeping in the house when the thief comes. The day of the Lord is the day of darkness and we have no part of darkness. We're not the people of darkness, we're not the people of the night. We won't be there when the day of the Lord comes. When it comes suddenly and unexpectedly like a thief, those in the dark will be taken captive by its terrors. And according to verse 3, they're going to be surprised. They're going to be saying peace and safety when it hits. But we have nothing to fear.

We won't be there. It's an event for the night people, not the day people. Verse 5 says, For you are all sons of light and sons of day. We're not of night nor of darkness.

And he keeps saying it over and over so that it finds its way deeply into our confidence. You are all sons of light. You're not night people, you're day people. By the way, I went back to the gospels being reminded that similar expressions I thought I had read there from the lips of our Lord and I found indeed that is the case that Paul was certainly building on the very teaching of Jesus. In chapter 16 of Luke and verse 8, our Lord speaking said, And his master praised the unrighteous steward because he had acted shrewdly. For the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light. And there He identified believers as sons of light. Even in their weakness, they are nonetheless sons of light.

And I was reminded also of John's gospel, a wonderful statement in chapter 12 and verse 36. Jesus said, While you have the light, believe in the light in order that you may become sons of light. An evangelistic invitation to come to the light, to see the light, believe the light, live the light, become sons of the light. That may sound like a strange term, sons of light, and perhaps for us in the English language it is a bit unfamiliar, but let me take you back, if I might, to the Hebrew idiom that is really behind this Greek concept. It is a Hebrew idiom. The Hebrews used to say that a man is the son of whatever influence dominates his character, whatever influence dominates his thinking, whatever influence characterizes his nature. We might even say that today. We might see some person who is dissolute, who is unruly, wild, careless, reckless, sinful, and say idiomatically he's the son of the devil.

And that would be catching the same sense of this idiom. Back in Judges, for example, chapter 19 verse 22, those who are characteristically wicked are called sons of Belial, or sons of the devil. There were two of the disciples, James and John, who got a nickname. Their nickname was sons of thunder.

Why? Because it seemed as though they had been born by the thunder, volatile, aggressive. And then there was that very wonderful man in the early chapters of the book of Acts, Barnabas, who in chapter 4 verse 36 was called the son of consolation. It was as if he was born or fathered by comfort, consolation, tenderness, gentleness.

So we understand that to say someone is the son of is to merely say that their nature or their character obviously seems to have been born of that. To say we are sons of light means that the dominant influence in our lives is light. The influence which characterizes our nature or our character is light. Light on the mental side that we know truth.

Light on the moral side that we live right. We live in the realm of light. We're destined for eternal light. And then as if we might miss it, he adds, doubling the point, you are all sons of light and sons of day. Light belongs to day just like dark belongs to night. And so we are not only sons of light but then therefore sons of day.

That's our nature. It isn't our nature to be in the darkness. It isn't our nature to be caught in the day of the Lord.

It's totally inconsistent with who we are. We're not going to be around in the night the thief comes. And then Paul says it another way as if we don't understand it yet. In the end of verse 5 he says we are not of night nor of darkness.

That explains exactly what he's been saying. We live in a completely different sphere of life than those who will be caught by the day of the Lord and know the wrath of God. Sin has no dominion over us. We know gospel truth and sanctifying truth. We have the light in us, the indwelling Holy Spirit. We face no condemnation ever. We will never experience the full fury of God's wrath. The day of the Lord has nothing to do with us.

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