Night People/Day People, Part 2 B

You see, if you are questioning whether you're going to end up in the day of wrath, whether you're going to end up in the day of the Lord, you're questioning the efficacy of the death of Christ. He's saying, look, your nature is different, your behavior is different, and your destiny is different as determined by a sovereign God and worked out through a sacrificing substitutionary death of his own son. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. In the dawning hours of December 7, 1941, all seemed quiet at Pearl Harbor. Members of the U.S. naval fleet were just starting their day. Some still slept. They were unaware and unprepared for the coming attack. The results were staggering.

Four battleships sunk, 188 aircraft destroyed, and more than 2,400 lives lost. As infamous as that day was, if you're unprepared for the enemy's attack in the battle with sin, the results will be even more devastating. In light of that danger, John MacArthur will show you how to remain alert and ready as you wait for the Lord's return. It's the conclusion of his study titled, The Rapture and the Day of the Lord. And now here's John with today's lesson. 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 idea of sober is alert, watchful, and undoubtedly, as Paul said that, the idea of alertness suggested to him a picture of a soldier on duty because he moves immediately into describing a soldier. Let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love and as a helmet the hope of salvation. Now a well-equipped soldier only had two essential pieces of equipment that preserved him. One was the breastplate, the other was the helmet.

Those are the vital areas. The breastplate covering all the vital organs and of course the helmet covering the head. Now the breastplate was an obvious part of the Roman soldier's garb.

It covered the very area where he was vulnerable, the vital organs where he could so easily be killed. The breastplate could be made out of chain mail. It could have been made out of gold. Some of them were made out of heavy cloth. Some of them were made out of brass. Some of them were made out of iron. Some were made out of leather, any other material. It was like a bulletproof vest basically.

And the parallel that we would understand to the helmet would be something like a football helmet or a motorcycle helmet that could protect blows from crushing the skull. And this was the soldier that was armed against the attack of temptation. By the way, this imagery is not original with Paul. He borrowed it out of Isaiah 59, 17.

There's a beautiful statement in that chapter, maybe you haven't read. Isaiah 59, 17, and he put on righteousness like a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head, and he put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped himself with zeal as a mantle, so forth. There you have the first mention of a breastplate of righteousness and a helmet of salvation in Isaiah chapter 59. And you have it repeated again in Ephesians 6, 13, of course in Paul's description of the armor of the believer in that section of his letter to Ephesus. Now it isn't important to go into all kinds of detail about the physical analogy, the breastplate and the helmet. What is important is you note what they represent. The breastplate represents faith and love, and the helmet represents the hope of salvation.

Listen very carefully. You know, if you know anything about the New Testament, that these three come together quite frequently. Back in chapter 1 of this epistle in verse 3, you have the mention of faith, hope, and love. That very familiar usage in 1 Corinthians 13, which says, and now abides faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. This is the triad of supreme Christian virtues. But what I want to say to you, and what is very, very important for you to understand, is that these are the three great defenses against temptation.

Okay? If you want to deal with temptation in your life, these are three things you must understand and apply. I'm going to give you what right now is the most practical instruction you can possibly have as a believer with regard to dealing with sin in your life. So if you're concerned about dealing with sin in your life and overcoming temptation, you must know these things. First of all, faith, a defense against temptation. In what sense?

Let me say it this way. Sin is a result of distrusting God. Sin is a result of distrusting God. That's as clear as I can say it. God is worthy of your trust.

Let me tell you how. You can trust in His person. He will be consistent with His attributes. He will never deviate from His character. He will never deviate from His character. He has perfect integrity. You can trust His person.

He will do what is consistent with who He is. Secondly, you can trust His power. Nothing is too hard for Him. Nothing is too difficult for Him. Nothing overwhelms Him. No one can defeat Him.

And no amassed circumstances cumulatively are more than He can unscramble and handle and overcome. You can trust His person, you can trust His power. Third, you can trust His promise. If He says something, He will do it. If He promises something, He will keep it. Fourth, you can trust His plan.

He is unfolding a sovereignly controlled plan that is right on schedule. Nothing exists outside that plan. If then I believe that God is consistent with His person, that God is all-powerful, that God always keeps His Word and His promise, and that God is unfolding His plan, then no matter what comes into my life, if I trust God, I will not fall to temptation that questions God's credibility. Faith always puts up the breastplate. It makes you impenetrable if you believe God because sin is always a temptation not to believe God. God says, do what is right and I'll bless you. Satan says, do this and you'll have fun. Who do you believe?

Do this and it'll feel good. Who do you believe? It comes down to that. And so that's why I always say, how you live your Christian life is directly related to, first of all, your understanding of God and your confidence that He is who He is. That's why the most important thing you can ever learn as a Christian is not some kind of a formula to deal with temptation. The most important thing you can ever learn as a Christian is the fullness of the character of God and then grow to believe that. And if you really trust God, then those other things aren't going to happen.

You're not going to fall prey to those temptations. If I believe that God is sovereign, that God is perfectly righteous, that God is all-powerful, that God is faithful to His promise, and that God has a perfect plan for my life and every component in it is under His control, then I don't question anything. I don't argue with anything.

I don't violate anything because I believe God. Faith puts up the shield. Now that's the hard side. Any Roman shield had a soft side.

Underneath that hard armor was soft cloth to warm the body. And that, he says, is love. It's the breastplate of faith and love.

Here's the other side of it. All sin reflects a failure to love God. All sin reflects a failure to love God. What do you mean love? Delight in, listen carefully, delight in and devotion to God as the supreme object of my affection. Delight in and devotion to God as the supreme object of my affection.

Now listen to this very carefully. Whoever is the supreme object of my affection is going to control what I do. If I sin, what I have just said is, sorry God, I am the supreme object of my affection, right? I'm going to do what I want to do.

I'm going to do what feels good to me. You're not the supreme object of my affection. But if I love God supremely, Paul says in Romans 13, love fulfills the whole...what?...the whole law. I don't need a law that says don't make any graven images. If I love God supremely, I'm not going to make any. I don't need a law that says don't take the name of the Lord your God in vain. If I love God supremely, I'm not going to take His name in vain.

I don't need laws that say don't do this and don't do that because it's against the will of God. If I love God supremely, I won't do those things. So the hard side of my breastplate, that resilient, resistant strength is that I believe God and the soft side of it is that I love God. And between my love for Him which is supreme and my confidence in Him which is supreme, I become impregnable. You see, whenever you sin, you have failed to believe God and you have failed to love God.

You failed to believe Him because you believed Satan's lie, the lie of your sinful impulses and you failed to love Him because you loved yourself more and you wanted to fulfill yourself. Perfect trust in God and perfect love for God leads you to perfect obedience. So Paul says, look, your behavior, the pattern of your behavior is now light, you're children of the day, be watchful, get your armor on, trust God with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and you will withstand the onslaughts of the temptations of the night.

The outer surface shines with faith and the inner surface is lined with love. And then he adds another protection that a soldier had to have, the helmet of the hope of salvation. You say, why does a Christian need to put on the helmet of salvation?

Keep putting it on. Don't we already have salvation? Yes, but he's talking about the hope of the future aspect of our salvation.

It comes in three dimensions. We were saved in the past the day we believed. We're saved in the present as we are kept saved by the continuing grace and forgiveness of God. And some day there is yet a future element of salvation in which we are released from these bodies. These bodies are redeemed and become new glorified bodies and we enter into the perfection of being like Jesus Christ. That's the final dimension of our salvation, that's what he has in mind here.

This is a very simple point. He says, you will protect yourself against temptation if your heart is filled with the realization of what you're going to become. You understand that? Of what you're going to become. If you have the hope of eternal glory, if you know you are the child of the day that will dawn into the greater and brighter day of eternal glory, you're going to behave consistently with your identity. The hope of eternal glory, the hope of the coming of Jesus Christ, seeing Him face to face, hearing, well done, good and faithful servant receiving His reward, that hope preserves the Christian against the luring of the darkness.

And it's not an uncertain hope, it's a certain hope. So as I really know my future destiny and know that I'm going to be with the Lord forever and that I'm going to serve Him and honor Him forever and that I'm going to some day be rewarded for my life, that purifies me. Remember 1 John 3? He that hath this hope in Him purifies Himself even as He is pure. So what is it that preserves and protects the believer?

Faith, that is trust in God's perfection, love, complete devotion to Him as your supreme delight and hope, the anticipation that some day you're going to see Him face to face and receive the reward for what you have rendered. Faith, hope and love are the defenses against the onslaught of the night. When faith is weak, love is cold. When love is cold, hope is lost and sin results. When faith is strong, love is zealous. When love is zealous, hope is firm.

And when hope is firm, righteousness results. Our defense against the debilitating deeds of the night is a strong trust in God in all things, a fiery love for Him, and a purifying hope in His glorious return and the day we see Him face to face. We're different. We're different in nature. We're different in conduct. And we need to continue to be different by defending ourselves against the onslaught of the deeds of darkness.

But even when we occasionally do the deeds of darkness, we know they're out of the normal pattern for our lives. We are day people as to nature and behavior, and therefore the day of the Lord and the wrath of God have nothing to do with us. And lastly, Paul says we should not fear, not only because of the distinctiveness of our nature and our behavior, but the distinctiveness of our destiny.

This is wonderful. Verse 9, for God has not destined us for wrath. Now we're talking about our final destiny. God has not destined us for wrath. When God pours out His wrath on the day of the Lord, it won't be for us. When God pours out His final wrath in eternal hell, it won't be for us. The word destined implies that God has sovereignty over us as He does over all of human life and history.

And His plan which was laid in foundation before the world began included us in glory. We were not destined, predestined, foreordained, predetermined for wrath, but we were predestined, predetermined and foreordained and foreknown unto glory. We were once children of wrath, Ephesians 2, 2 and 3. Before we were saved, we were children of wrath but no more. Now what is this wrath He's talking about? What kind of wrath here? The word orgē is used. It means a settled, heated anger.

It's not just a momentary, impulsive thing. It's a settled, heated anger. But what does it mean? Well, this term wrath, or the wrath of God, is used often in Scripture. And generally speaking, it is a general reference to God's final judgment, without necessarily being specific. God is simply talking about ultimate damnation, ultimate destruction of the ungodly when He pours out His wrath. God has not destined us for wrath, period, in the general sweeping sense.

But it must incorporate in it also the concept of the day of the Lord because that's what the context of 1 Thessalonians 5 is talking about. So as we look then at verse 9, and it says He's not destined us for wrath, we must incorporate into that word wrath the day of the Lord. We're not destined for eternal wrath and we're not destined for temporal wrath in the day of the Lord when He burns up all the sinners on the earth and then sends them to hell. We have part in neither of those things.

It's not our destiny. And by the way, there is a usage of the wrath of God to refer to the temporal day of the Lord. If you take the time, you can look at Revelation 6 where you have the sixth seal and it says, the great, verse 17, day of their wrath, that is the wrath of God and the Lamb has come and who is able to stand. So there is a specific day of wrath that it refers to the day of the Lord. In fact, in verse 18 of Revelation 11, thy wrath came, it says. In Revelation 16, 19 and 19, 15. So when you see the wrath of God, it's a general term of God's final damnation of sinners, but sometimes it focuses in on a specific day of fury, as I noted in several places in the book of Revelation.

Well, we're not destined for either of those things, not either of them. Now with that in mind, go back to verse 9. But, on the other hand, keeping the distinctions clear, we are destined for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, for acquiring literally in the Greek. And here Paul has the idea of that third dimension, that full, final, glorious future deliverance from judgment to come, that ultimate salvation and deliverance that lifts us into glory and makes us like Christ, that redemption of our bodies, that glorification that is the final phase of our salvation. And he says, I love this at the end of verse 9, through our Lord Jesus Christ, all three phases are through the Lord. In the past we were saved at the point of faith through our Lord Jesus Christ. We are being kept saved through the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. We will be ultimately delivered from the wrath to come and brought into the presence of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. All three phases, all three tenses, past, present and future, rest on what Christ has done. That's why in verse 10 he then says, the Lord Jesus Christ who died for us, who died for us.

I wish we had time to dig into that statement. That is a powerful statement. For who died on our behalf, who died with reference to us, to die in our place, to die as our substitute. He didn't die for Himself.

He wasn't killed as a martyr for His own cause. He died for us. He died in our behalf. He died to accomplish for us what could otherwise never have been accomplished.

Galatians 1, 4, who gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us out of this present evil age. He died for us, a substitutionary death. He died in your place. He bore in His body your sins and mine. He became our sin that we might become His own. That's the message of the cross. He died for us.

He paid our penalty. He suffered our punishment and our judgment at the hands of God. It says in 2 Corinthians 5, 15, and He died for all that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. He died for all, for you and for me in our place. He took our death and bore it for us. And because of that, He granted to us salvation. He laid down His life, He says in John 10, 11, for the sheep. His death was the sole condition.

Did you get that? The sole condition in procuring as God's peculiar possession a people destined for salvation. It was the sole condition. Christ's death sets us apart from the night people. He died for us. Now verse 10, that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with Him. Now He's not referring to awake or asleep in the sense of verse 6, that the night people are asleep and the day people are awake, or it would be saying whether we're day people or night people, we're going to be with Him.

Not so. He's going all the way back to chapter 4. And back there it talked about believers who are awake and asleep. There are believers who are alive and there are believers who are asleep. In verses 13 to 15, they were concerned about what happens to believers who die or who are asleep.

They use the term sleep for death when the rapture comes. And here He goes all the way back to their original question and He says, He died for us, the children of the day, that whether we are awake, that is alive, or whether we're asleep, or as we have died, we may live together with Him. You see, if you are questioning whether you're going to end up in the day of wrath, whether you're going to end up in the day of the Lord, you're questioning the efficacy of the death of Christ. He's saying, look, your nature is different, your behavior is different, and your destiny is different as determined by a sovereign God and worked out through a sacrificing, substitutionary death of His own Son. He's saying whether you live or die as a Christian, as a day person, your destiny is not wrath.

Your destiny is to live together with Christ. Jesus said it in John 14, I go away to prepare a...what?...place for you and I'll come again to receive you to Myself that where I am, there you may be also. You're going to come and you're going to be with Me in My eternal presence. The end of verse 17 in chapter 4, we will always be with the Lord. See, there's no need to fear the day of the Lord. There's no need to fear the future condemnation and judgment of the ungodly. Whether you live or die as a Christian, whether you're awake or asleep when it happens, you're not going to be there.

Your nature is different, your behavior is different, your destiny is different. So in conclusion, verse 11, therefore, now He's being very pastoral, encourage one another. The word encourage is exactly the same word as the word comfort in chapter 4 verse 18, identical word, comfort each other, those that are anxious and worried and fearful. And build up one another, those that are weak and don't know very much and the weakness of their understanding causes them to be so anxious.

Encourage and build up, there's no reason to be discouraged, there's no reason to be weak and in doubt. He says, do that. And then He adds at the end of verse 11, just as you also were doing. There was such a command of the church. Back in chapter 4 verse 1, He says, I want you to excel more. You're already doing it, but I want you to do more of it.

They were a good group. You're already on the way, He says. Now you encourage each other and now you strengthen each other with this confidence that as you look at the future, you will never know the wrath of God. You will never experience the day of the Lord.

It's not for you. So as Christians, we live in the reality that Jesus Christ is coming to rapture His bride, the church, to deliver her from the day of the Lord in eternal wrath, to grant her eternal joy and glory in His presence forever. We have no part in the wrath. We have no part in the darkness. We have no part in the night, the sleep, the drunkenness of the night people headed for hell.

It has nothing to do with us. And even those people who are saved after the rapture of the church and who go through the day of the Lord are going to be spared from it because they're going to tread on the ashes of those consumed by it. Day people, be comforted. Be comforted. Night people, be warned.

Be warned. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, with practical instruction for fighting sin and walking in holiness. John has titled this current series on Grace to You, The Rapture and the Day of the Lord. So still thinking about your closing statements, John, it seems ironic that a single event waiting down the road can be at the same time a source of fear to some people and yet a source of great comfort to others. That's exactly the way the Bible presents it. It should be a terror to some people. Paul says, knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. Terrifying sinners is an important duty. That's really lost on this evangelical world, isn't it?

We're just trying to schmooze sinners, unbelievers, trying to win them by being kind and talking gently and making salvation easy. Sinners need to be terrified. They need to be terrified of the realities of eternal judgment. They need to be terrified of the fact that the events of the second coming could happen any time. Nothing prophetically needs to happen before the rapture of the church and the explosion of the terrors of the tribulation. So we need to terrify people, but at the same time, the truth that terrifies the truth of the end of human history, the end of the age, the end of the world, is a great comfort to believers. I've been in the deep hinterlands of the former Soviet Union, and over there the people talk about the book of Revelation and the return of Christ as the good stuff. The good stuff. They're weary of this world.

They have so little. When is Jesus going to come, set up his kingdom, and bring his people to glory? This series has covered the future, the rapture and the day of the Lord. It's available as an MP3 series from Grace to You today.

That's right. Thank you, John. And friend, to better understand what's ahead for this world and how to warn your friends about the judgment to come, go to our website and download the rapture and the day of the Lord for free. Contact us today. Our web address?

GTY.org. Or if you'd like to get this series on CD, we can get them to you on CD if that works best. Call us at 800-55-GRACE. Keep in mind there is a lot of material in the rapture and the day of the Lord that we didn't have time to air.

Even if you caught every lesson, you are sure to learn something new. Again, to download this series or any of John's 3500 sermons, go to GTY.org. And to help you get all you can out of every part of God's Word, keep in mind the MacArthur Study Bible. With its 25,000 footnotes written by John, reasonably priced in three English versions and several non-English translations, you are sure to find a MacArthur Study Bible that's right for you. To order, call 800-55-GRACE or go to GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, reminding you to watch Grace To You television this Sunday, and then join us on Monday when John shows you how you can find hope and even joy in the midst of suffering. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.