Keeping Awake on the Night Shift

Text: 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

Proposition: In these end times the church is charged with the responsibility to keep awake amidst all the noise, struggle and apathy, to keep its lamp lit.

Introduction: It was the year 2000, the summer Olympics were in Sydney Australia and as the ceremonies began a massive sign hanging from the Sydney harbour bridge was unveiled. There was just one word on it, ‘Eternity.’ To the average person it might seem peculiar to have such an overtly spiritual word marking the opening of the Olympic games unless you knew the back story. It all began back in 1932 when a veteran from WWI was walking the streets, he had become an alcoholic and his life was falling apart. One night in an act of desperation he stepped into a church and listened to a preacher speak and one word particularly caught his attention… eternity. The man’s name was Arthur Stace and that night he asked Jesus Christ to save him. In the days after Stace would rise early in the morning, have a cup f tea, read the Scripture and then go out into the streets of Sydney with a piece of chalk and wherever he could he wrote the word Eternity. For years no one knew who it was that did this, in fact it wasn’t until 1956, some twenty four years later that they finally learned his name. The peculiar thing is that when they did find him no one demanded that he stop, it had become something the people celebrated, to the point that it was included in the opening ceremony of the 2000 Olympics. His gravestone reads, ‘Arthur Malcom Stace – Mr. Eternity’, a word that he had written more than 500,000 times on street signs, walls, and even the bells of Sydney. ( from Vertical Church, James Macdonald)

The church of the year 2015 is a church that’s working the night shift of its culture. To a great degree its work is unseen and unappreciated and yet what it does, who it is in Christ, is critical. It too writes that word Eternity on the lives of the people it serves and loves and builds. King Solomon once wrote, “ Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”

This morning let’s talk about what it takes as a church in the year 2015 to keep awake on the night shift. In the first part of 1 Thessalonians 5 Paul had talked about the Day of the Lord, a subject wrapped in the themes of Eternity and then he had had cautioned the church to keep awake, to not be distracted. Have a look at 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28 to see what it means to keep awake on the night shift.

I. Keeping Awake… Know Those Who Lead You and Value Them Highly.

We can certainly see why Paul would include this in his directions to a very young church, the leadership there would have its hands full. Just on the content of this book alone we can deduce there was sexual immorality, awkward personalities and people who were anxious about a number of things. But what about churches here today, what about this church? Why is it so important for the church today to “esteem very highly in love,” the Pastors, Elders, Deacons and various leaders of any congregation? I think there are many reasons which we could all reasonably guess at… God has called them: they are accountable; the church needs them; they have a spiritual gift for this very purpose; it’s how God intends to glorify Himself through the church… all good reasons, great reasons. I think the key to answering it in terms of how Paul intended it is contained in that tiny phrase, ‘for their works sake’. We are a people influenced by the rules and rights of our culture but the way of the Church is different from that. Just read the Beatitudes of Matthew 5 to see how those two ways differ. To welcome the authority of others over you, to willingly listen to their admonishment, to accept their direction and even correction, that’s hard. Yet if it is godly in its method, motive and origin it is to the well being of the individual and the whole church to do so. Here’s the catch, unless you affirm, love, highly esteem, welcome and encourage their leadership in these ways they will struggle to exercise it. They will pull back, they will not want to confront or challenge, who does? So what is it they are to do, check out verses 14 and 15… “Now we exhort you, brethren, warn those who are unruly, comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all. See that no one renders evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good both for yourselves and for all.” I think this applies especially to leadership but that term ‘brethren’, implies it is also a command to the whole body.

For this church to keep awake on the night shift we are going to need leadership that is willing to step up and be leaders because the people they lead are asking them to exercise this godly authority over them, even if it corrects or challenges us.

II. Keeping Awake Requires Seven Immediate and Ongoing Choices.

Paul is about to list a series of choices we need to make which sound almost idealistic, too extreme be taken literally, and yet to keep awake in such times they are imperative ongoing choices we need to make.

1. Rejoice Always… Paul gives the same instruction to the Philippians (4:4 ) “Rejoice always, and again I say, “Rejoice!” If he means this literally, to rejoice apart from your circumstance or natural feelings and if he intends it as a command, then there must be more to rejoicing than meets the eye. Is it possible that to rejoice always is an act not only of declared dependence upon the Lord but also a front line weapon for spiritual warfare? To rejoice always proclaims that I am under the sovereign hand of God and that is the very truth that the enemy would love to separate us from.

2. Pray without Ceasing… We live in a spiritual reality where God is present continually. It’s kind of like the air pressure of our world, it pushes in on us, 15 pounds per square inch, it in a sense it is what forces us to breathe. So it’s harder to hold your breath partly because of the very atmospheric pressure we live in. To pray without ceasing is to respond to the continuous presence of God in our lives, to move with a greater and greater God consciousness. It means learning how to speak with God, to share your delights with Him, your questions, fears and doubts.  

3. In everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you… This is the natural follow up to rejoicing and praying, it is the right response of the soul for the very life you are entrusted with. So again it is not contingent upon circumstance, health, finance or emotion, all of which Satan is adept at manipulating to draw you faith from God. To ‘stay awake on the night shift’ recognize that God’s revealed will for you is be thankful, in everything.

4. Do not quench the Spirit… This is a great paradox, that the omnipotent God of all Creation Who is irresistible in power can be resisted or quenched. Because God does give us moral choice He also allows for us to make choices against His will. The consequence for such action is that the Holy Spirit becomes less clear to us, not because He has diminished but because we have become hard of hearing. In 1846 Charles Finney preached a sermon on this and listed at least 15 different ways in which a person could quench the Holy Spirit. He listed things like being prayer-less, prideful, prejudiced , being resistant to the truth, to spiritual authority, dishonest, wrongly motivated, embracing impure passions. When you quench the Spirit you begin to lose the light that He would bring to your conscience and understanding to move in ways that God honoring. Your heart begins to become hard to His will, and you run the risk of a taking a short cut to spiritual and physical ruin.

5. Don’t Despise Prophecies… There are two components to Prophecy, one is the well known aspect of foretelling the future and the other is the forth telling of truth as God’s Word declares it. So when God’s word is heard by you from preaching or some other means don’t turn you heart away from what it is instructing you in. To do so would be to quench the Spirit and in the process to despise that very truth that you need, that is being declared to you.

6. Test all things; hold fast what is good... This is an essential response to what has just been said but it also applies to all else too. Get in the Scripture and search things out for yourself, do your homework and then when you have found what is good, what is of God, hold it fast.

7. Abstain from every form of evil… Evil has many forms, some more subtle than others but all evil appeals to three things in human beings: the lust of the flesh; the lust of the eyes; the boastful pride of life. (1 John 2:16)   Abstain from evil.

Keeping awake on the night shift requires of you these seven immediate and ongoing choices. In part it is why Paul concludes this with, “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calls you, Who also will do it.” Eternity, it’s what keeping awake is all about.