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Who is in control of the world? Is it George Bush with his alliance of the willing? Is it Rupert Murdoch with his incredible control of the media? Is it the baby boomer generation?

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Is it Bill Gates? Is it those people who have access to oil? They are all powerful people, absolutely, but they don't actually control the world.

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Most of us, I suspect, would immediately and instinctively have said, God, when I ask that question. And that's true and right. But what about those others that I've mentioned?

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They have power and influence. Doesn't that mean that they control the world in some sense at least? Well, the passage that we're considering now in one Thessalonians shows us that no, they don't, they so don't.

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Because the passage raises for us one of the key things in this reality that no human will have any control over the day of the Lord. Here in this section of Thessalonians, Paul moves to show us that God really is in control.

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And he does this by introducing the teaching about the day of the Lord and how it will affect people. Paul starts off this section by telling us that the day of the Lord is coming and it will be sudden. No one knows when.

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No one gets an email an hour before or the day before saying it's about to come. All of a sudden, the world as we know it is over. One minute, everything is normal, just as we are used to. The next, it's completely different.

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The day of the Lord is sudden and it will demonstrate to all of us how little we control the world. The world will end and not only will we not have a say in when it ends or how it ends, we won't even know it's about to end.

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This teaching that Paul gives us dissolves our illusions of control. This world we live in, this air that we breathe is going to end and we won't be consulted. And here in this passage Paul summarizes all human reactions to hearing

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that this will happen into two groups and these groups are distinguished by two key things. What they believe about who really controls the world and therefore how the day of the Lord will affect them. The first group are distinguished by belonging to the knights

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or to the darkness. They don't know God and they do not accept that it is God who controls the world and we'll step him to end history. I think that's day or someone else like George Bush is in control of the world.

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They say the world won't end if it was going to, it would have already. This is a predictable place we live in. There's cause and effect, there's action and reaction. God doesn't just make things happen like that. So when the world does end because the Bible tells us that it will,

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this group of people will not be expecting it. It will be a huge and dreadful surprise. The second group of people are those who believe in Jesus. They belong to the light, to the true day. They or we believe that God owns all things

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and even if we have doubts sometimes or we have trouble seeing how it works out we believe that God is in control. This group of people, most of us here I suspect, take on board that God owns history and that he will bring it to an end when he decides that the perfect time has arrived.

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It's something that we have no control over and we know it. God will interrupt history and end time with eternity and he has a perfect right to do that. God is in control, not us. One of the big things that Paul tells us here about these two groups

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is that what they believe about the coming day of the Lord isn't just theory. It will have a profound effect on them and it will affect them each differently. The first group, the group who don't believe that God owns history, this group are in deep trouble. Paul tells us that here.

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That day brings their destruction suddenly and they will not escape. They will be surprised by the day like people are surprised by a thief. If they knew the thief was coming, they'd be prepared. But they're not expecting this. They think the world is certain and settled.

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They say peace and safety to each other. So the day of the Lord will be a surprise and not a good surprise because they ignore God. They don't respect him as the one who controls reality. They don't think that he has a right to call all of us to a count

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for how we have acted and lived in his reality. The end of the world is awful news for this group. It's the worst kind of surprise because it brings their judgment and destruction. If you are in this group, don't muck around with this.

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Don't leave today without speaking to someone about how Jesus can rescue you from this. Speak to a friend who you might have come with or speak to one of us on the team. We'd love to talk to you. But don't, don't be surprised by this day. The second group of people are surprised but in a completely different way.

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Those who follow Jesus aren't expecting it to happen when it happens because as Paul says, the only thing we know about the timing of the day is that we don't know about the timing of the day. So we don't know when that day will arrive.

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But we know that God owns history and that a day will come when he will interrupt time. He'll pick up the world like a used tablecloth and roll it up. Its time will be over. It might be for two thousand years. It might be tomorrow. It might be today.

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But we know that it will happen. And Paul explains that these two reactions to the day of the Lord come from the kind of people we are. One group, the children of the night, have no association, no share in that day.

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But those of us who follow Jesus belong to that day because we belong to Jesus and to his kingdom which that day will bring in. It's a big thought. Let's see how Paul unpacks it in verses four to eight. When Paul says that we are the children of the day and children of the

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light, it's not just any old light or any old day that he's talking about here, he's talking about the day of the Lord. That's the day where we belong. That is, we belong to this day of the Lord because it is a day owned by Jesus. It's his day and we belong to him.

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And that day, that day of the Lord is good news for us. It reveals our salvation. So we see the outworking of everything that Jesus has promised us. And we have nothing to fear from that day or for ourselves. It does not bring us judgment if we belong to Jesus.

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We deserve judgment, of course. There's nothing particularly good about us that may God want us, want to save us. He loved us. He picked us up out of the darkness and night and put us into the light, made us belong to him or because of Jesus' death and resurrection for us.

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We aren't in the dark anymore when we know Jesus. We change. We come into the light. We belong to the day. Everything is different for us. And because we belong to that day, so Paul says that this will affect us. Because we are children of this day which are coming, we won't sleep or be drunk.

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In other words, we won't live life in our pajamas. We won't sleep walk through life. We won't be drowsy, careless, unaware, and we won't be drunk in the way that we live life. We won't be deluding ourselves, darling our thinking,

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hardly aware of what we are doing or why. That's how the children of the night live and we are children of the day. Instead, Paul shows us in verse 6 that we are to be in control of ourselves and alert. Our attitude to this life will be shaped by watchfulness, being focused,

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clear-headed, thoughtful, and it's not about energy or drive or having a plan. It's not about having a particular kind of personality that's really into this kind of stuff. It's not about following the habits, seven habits of highly affected people. It's about realizing that this world will end like Sarah told us.

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We can't control that. That's God's job. But our job is to control ourselves, to be self-controlled in the way that we live life because we are shaped by God's priority. So we're orientated differently. We don't just do whatever we want, whenever we want. We're alert. We're aware of life and the choices that we make.

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We're self-controlled. We aren't just a living for our own pleasure. We belong to the day the Lord is bringing in and that shapes us now. Well, being alert and self-controlled might sound a bit odd. I mean, it sounds like Paul might be suggesting that we walk around on egg shells

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and never relax, have very tense neck muscles. Never get to enjoy the good things in life. Never even get to enjoy the good things about being Christian. But thankfully, Paul unpacks his for us a bit more in verse 8. Here, he shows us that this self-controlness is all about faith, love, and hope.

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Now, we meet faith, love, and hope early in Thessalonians. It's a special triad of the book. You believe in Jesus, you're hoping he's salvation, and you get busy loving the people around you. And so Paul tells us here that being alert and being self-controlled is to keep doing those things. And self-control is important because faith, hope, and love aren't

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haphazard, careless, vague kind of actions. They are intentional. You have to be self-controlled to love and to have faith and to hope. So be alert about believing in Jesus. Be conscious of being Christian and learn how to look more like Jesus. And don't be sleepy about the way that you love. Don't be careless.

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Think about it. Plan it. Learn how to love people and get better at it. And cultivate your hope. Look forward to where you really belong. Do it intentionally. Don't sleep walk towards heaven. Even if you're apprehensive about it or which is quite understandable, find out more about it. Don't get focused entirely on this world.

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Hope. Learn to look into the next world. Those are the kinds of ways that we should behave. And that's what we should look like because we belong to the day of the Lord. So two groups, one living in the light, believing in Jesus, ready for the day of the Lord, the other living in darkness, thinking that God doesn't control the world,

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going to be terribly surprised when God steps into wind up history. But both groups have one thing in common. Neither group is in control. Neither group has a say in if, how or when, the day of the Lord comes. It's the day of the Lord. It belongs to Him. It's out of everyone else's control.

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But it's different for those of us who belong to the day of the Lord because though it is out of our control, it's the day of our Lord, our Lord Jesus. It's His day and we belong there because we belong to Him. Our home is where He is. And we already know Jesus now. We know what He's like. We know what makes Him angry. We know what He rejoices in. We know how kind He is to

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the weak and to the sick and to the little people like us. We know how He always tells the truth. We know how humble He is. The day of the Lord might be strange. All things might happen. But the Lord whose day it is is no stranger to us. He is our Lord. We know Him. We love Him. And even better, He knows us and He loves us. He died for us so that we could be together with Him.

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And He's not going to let anything upset or hinder that. It's locked, solid. He's in control of our salvation of getting us to be with head to heaven with Him. And this is enormously comforting for us when we come to look at some of the details of what happens before the day of the Lord, particularly in the book of Revelation. And there's lots of

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ideas that are popular in our society at the moment. I've been asked to look particularly at the Antichrist today because He's someone we associate with the end of the world and there are lots of ideas floating around out there about Him. And this Antichrist is one of the scariest figures in the Bible. He seems to be a real threat. So how do we process that? Who is this Antichrist?

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How are we supposed to react to Him? Well, many people have been nominated for the post of Antichrist, which I suppose isn't too surprising because whether they are or aren't these people or aren't Antichrists, we've been told in the Bible that there's going to be many of them. So people have been suggested as Antichrists have been a large collection of Roman emperors,

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many of the popes, just about every American president in the last 100 years. Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, Henry Kissinger. More recently, Prince Charles seems to be the big Antichrist around at the moment and people like Bill Gates. And even, and I was very surprised to find this, David Hasselhoff. As far as I've been able to tell, there aren't any women

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Antichrist, though I must admit I am a little surprised that neither Margie Fetcher nor Britney Spears made it onto the list. Well, what are we to make of this? I mean, really, what does this have to do with us? Well, let me give you a perfectly ridiculous scenario and then ask you a serious question. Here's the ridiculous scenario. Suppose you're in the supermarket doing the grocery shopping,

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you're in Woolies and you're going along the aisle and you quite absorbed in what you're doing and someone bumps you trolley and you look up and they're looking you straight in the eye is the Antichrist. He's making eye contact. Well, so much for the ridiculous scenario. Now for the serious question, should you be frightened? Not just a bit apprehensive or nervous,

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but completely freaked out and terrified. You meet the Antichrist, should you be scared out of your wits? Well, let's think about the Antichrist for a moment. I'm going to focus on just one thing and that's the Antichrist main goal. The Antichrist is against Christ. He shakes his fist at Jesus. It's not just a casual rejection, it's open warfare. He will spend all his life,

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all his energy, all his influence to destroy Jesus. He wants to take Jesus down, which means if we who love Jesus and know Jesus meet the Antichrist, we're in trouble because we aren't neutral to him. We aren't the nice reasonably well-mannered women, we pretend to be. We're actually soldiers and Paul has told us this often and it's here in

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our passage. We don't just practice faith, love and hope in a polite kind of way. We wear armor made out of faith, love and hope, armor that is beaten out for us and handmade by the Lord Jesus himself. It's a stuff he wears. We were associated with him. He is our leader, our ruler. We wear his armor. We wear defensive armor of course because Jesus has done all the real fighting, but we're in a war.

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We wear armor. We might be very well groomed, articulate women. We might not smell like soldiers. We might not have helmet here, but we're soldiers. We're Jesus-owned warrior princesses if you like. We're fighting in his war and we're wearing his armor and that means that we're dangerous to this antichrist. He will do everything in his power to take us down. He wants to take Jesus down.

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We're associated with Jesus, so if God gives him permission, he'll take us down. Anything he can do to us, anything he can take from us, any way that he can harm us, he will do. He makes good sense to be scared of someone like this. He looks like he might be able to wreck our lives. So should we be scared? Should we fear this antichrist? No. The radical answer is no.

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Yes, he's a serious threat to be reckoned with, but these verses in 1 Thessalonians should fill our hearts with courage because here in verse 10 Paul explains the thread that binds us to the day of the Lord. The Lord Jesus died for us so that we might live together with him no matter what happens to us, whether we are awake and living or whether we are asleep and no longer alive.

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Jesus died so that we could live together with him. So the antichrist can spend all his energy, all his influence, all his force on taking us down, but what can he actually do? Well, he can only do anything if he gets permission from God. The antichrist isn't actually in control. God is in control, no one else. But can he hurt us? Yeah, if God gives him permission,

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he can make our lives painful. He can take away our stuff. He can hurt our families and friends. He can hurt us. This is scary, but that's why this verse is so important. Jesus has died for us so that we live together with him. He didn't die for us so that we could be part of a program. This is personal. He died for us so that whether we are alive or dead,

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we could be together with him. If the antichrist decides to attack us, take things from us, make our lives painful. Jesus is right there with us. He knows exactly what's going on. He doesn't leave us alone to deal with the antichrist or anyone else all by ourselves. He's there together with us. He died so that we could always be together with him.

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Jesus is together with us and it doesn't matter how much the antichrist tries. He simply can't take us away from Jesus. In John, Jesus says that no one can take us away from him. He says, "We've been given to him and no one will snatch us out of his hand." So we are held in the hand of Jesus and the antichrist simply cannot prize those fingers open. He can't rip us away from Jesus.

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No one, not the antichrist, not the devil himself can pluck us out of Jesus' hand. We are safe. We are together with him. Whatever happens, however difficult it gets, however hard it feels, whether we are so numbed by pain, we can hardly think to believe. Nothing can prize those fingers open. Jesus holds onto us, whether we are dead or alive,

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we live together with him. So even if the antichrist were to get permission to kill you, he still can't wreck everything. If you or I die at his or anyone else's hand, we are still together with Christ. Jesus still holds onto you. Our lives change when we believe in Jesus. Whatever happens after that, our lives are hidden Christ with God beyond the reach of harm.

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Your life is not destroyed by your death. You're still living together with Christ. It doesn't mean that dying will be easy. It doesn't mean that suffering won't matter. But what it does mean is that nothing, not famine, not nakedness, not the sword, not life, not death, not things in heaven, not things on earth, not things under the earth.

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Nothing and no one can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. You are together with Christ forever if you believe in Jesus. Nothing and no one can wreck that. And Jesus can't be taken down. The antichrist wants to overpower Jesus, but he can't. Jesus has already won. He's beaten every opposing force.

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Taking on Jesus is dumb. He's already the victorious Lord of the universe. He's risen again from the dead and being declared victorious by God. So Jesus can't be defeated. If God allows it, an antichrist might do us great harm, but he can't defeat Jesus. And if he can't defeat Jesus, then he can't destroy us.

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Luther put it like this. Let goods and kindred go. There's mortal life also. The body they may kill. God's truth. Abide it still. His kingdom is forever. Jesus holds on to us. We are together with him. We are safe. Well, we will probably do the grocery shopping for the rest of our lives without actually meeting

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the antichrist. I'm pretty sure. And hopefully none of us will have to face him anywhere else. But he's one of the big threats in the Bible. The big bad, if you like. But what we learn from God's word here is that we don't have to fear him. And therefore we don't have to fear any of the smaller threats either.

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It doesn't mean that the things that we fear will be easy to deal with. It doesn't mean that we can just be passive and not make choices to get away from things or people let frighten us. It doesn't mean that we won't be really scared from time to time. But it does know that, but it does mean that we can know with absolute certainty that however frightening

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something looks, however much it threatens us, it won't swallow us up. It won't destroy us because Jesus holds on to us. When you believe in Jesus, you live together with him for all time. He holds on to you no matter what. This is something that will outlast the sky out there and the earth and the air that we breathe. When they are gone, we will still be together with Christ.

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In just a moment we're going to sing in response to this. But let me remind you, there is a day of the Lord coming, a day which will demonstrate that we are not in control. God is. Jesus died so that now and on that day we would be together with him. And we belong to that day and it should affect us now. So we need to live lives are intentional,

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loving, believing and hoping. Jesus loves us greatly. He is the only one we can depend on to bring us to that day safely. Remember this. Remember Jesus is victorious already and he holds on to you and remember that he's coming back and rattle your armour by reminding those around you of these amazing facts and living a life of faith, hope and love. Let's stand together and sing.