白昼之子 Children of the Day

Title: Children of the Day
Date: 14th Nov 2021
Preacher: Rev. Wong Siow Hwee

A couple of weeks ago, an upgraded and expanded Hell’s museum in Haw Par Villa reopened for visitors. 【1】 One reviewer amusingly said: Good news for the squeamish: the background audio with hair-raising screams that used to plague us in the past is now gone. 【2】 I remember how scared I was as a child when I visited the exhibit of “10 Courts of Hell” which depicted the gruesome punishments for each type of sin you committed in life. I think it must have been the same harrowing experience for many of us. When I was young, even though I knew Chinese folk beliefs are different from Christian beliefs, it was convenient for me to transfer such childhood impressions to my faith as well. To be fair, the medieval Christian understanding of Hell with nine concentric circles of torment, based on Greco-Roman beliefs, as described in Dante’s Inferno ,【3】 does sound quite similar to our Chinese version of Hell.

Today, I must state categorically that it is not described like that in the Bible. Besides a lake of fire (Revelations) for the wicked, there really isn’t anything else descriptive in the bible about Hell. I believe the opacity is intentional. Jesus said in Matthew 10: 28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. It is pointless to speculate about the nature of the destruction, whether it should be eternal torture or death in the form of annihilation, because the fear should be of God, not of the actual details of the judgment. No one should be thinking that ‘since the judgment does not really sound that scary, I guess I can continue my wickedness’. The fact is, the details don’t matter to the wicked, because most of the time it is not the judgment that the wicked belittle, but God the judge himself that they disregard and ignore. Psalm 14:1 The fool (wicked) says in his heart, “There is no God.”

Why should God be feared? What is the purpose of the Day of the Lord? Our answer can be found in Isaiah 59: 15 Truth is nowhere to be found,
and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.
The Lord looked and was displeased
that there was no justice.
16 He saw that there was no one,
he was appalled that there was no one to intervene;
so his own arm achieved salvation for him,
and his own righteousness sustained him.
17 He put on righteousness as his breastplate,
and the helmet of salvation on his head;
he put on the garments of vengeance
and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.
18 According to what they have done,
so will he repay
wrath to his enemies
and retribution to his foes;
he will repay the islands their due.

What we can infer from Isaiah 59 is that God will intervene to bring justice when justice can no longer be found. Metaphors of a God armored up for battle signify that this is a war against the evil and wicked. So if you ask why God should be feared, my answer is: the fear of God implies that you believe in the final judgment of the evil and wicked; that no matter the current circumstances, even when “people are saying, “Peace and safety,”” and thinking that nothing will happen to them no matter what they do, you believe God will intervene one day for justice to prevail. This is what fear of the Lord means, and the day of that divine intervention is the Day of the Lord.

What is interesting in today’s passage is that it is not just God who would be armored up, but Paul tells the Thessalonians to be armored up as well: 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. Essentially, Paul is saying that as Christians, we are fighting alongside God in this battle of good versus evil. Why else would we be armored up and ready for battle, just like God? And if we are on God’s side in the battle, then we do not need to worry about this judgment day: 9 For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me summarize my points so far. One, we do not need to speculate about Hell, since the bible is mostly non-descriptive about it. In fact, we will never know about the actual timing, because it would definitely be unexpected, especially to the wicked that doubt and disregard it. Two, what matters is the fear of the Lord, and making sure that we are already on God’s side when the Day of the Lord arrives. The side you pick will be identified by what you are wearing: faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. And this message from Paul must have been really comforting for the Thessalonian church, because faith, love, and hope were precisely what they were wearing. You might recall in my first sermon 【4】in 1 Thessalonians 1: 3 We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. The 3 elements that ensured the survival of the Thessalonian church would also be what vindicate them before God’s judgment throne. They are the Children of the Day. Faith, love, and hope means in concrete terms that they cared for one another, they worked for the good of community, and they never gave up despite the challenges. Paul must have received a good testimony from Timothy, and he affirmed them: 11 Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

Now that you learned about the children of the day, inversely, I must tell you about their persecutors, who are the children of the night. I mentioned these people who operated by lies and false accusations in my second sermon 【5】in 1 Thessalonians 2: 14 For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews 15 who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone 16 in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.

The imagery of heaping sins to the limit is as if God has a maximum amount of sin he can tolerate. And just like how Prophet Isaiah 59 described, when it reaches the limit, God will intervene with his wrath. For the Jews who persecuted Jesus and Christians, Paul might have thought that the great suffering of the Jewish people during A.D. 49, including their expulsion from Rome by Claudius’s decree and the massacre of thousands of Jews in the temple during the Passover of 49, might have been a mini Day of the Lord for them. The same will happen to the persecutors of the Thessalonian Christians. The coming of the Day of the Lord is just a matter of time. Paul declared that “destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.” In the meantime, Paul’s encouragement and comfort to the Thessalonians was to stay awake and stay sober. They just need to keep doing what they were doing, as they are children of the Day with their “work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ”.

I’ll like to extend the metaphor of day and night to end my sermon by addressing the people who are in the twilight zone. Twilight is the time between day and night when there is light outside, but the Sun is below the horizon. The twilight zone has two timings, one just before sunrise, and one just after sunset. It is not night, it isn’t exactly day either.

The children of the day are the active Christians. They fight alongside God with faith, love, and hope. They will receive salvation on the Day of the Lord. Paul’s message to them in our passage today is comfort and reassurance. The children of the night are evil and wicked people, or those who actively persecute Christians, and are unrepentant till the end. They will receive wrath on the Day of the Lord. Isaiah’s message to them is a final warning. But what will happen to those in the twilight zone, those who aren’t exactly day or night? I believe the answer is unknown, God will decide. My message to them is a calling. Don’t loiter in the twilight zone. In the Day of the Lord, you should be the children of the Day.

There are two types of people that loiter in the twilight zone. The first type, I call them children of the dawn. These are non-Christians who are not in darkness because they stay moral, and they are ambivalent towards Christians. For many of them, they don’t see the need to be a Christian. In a way, I can understand why, because twilight seems to be operational enough. Early in the morning, twilight is enough for me to wake up, walk to the carpark, and drive my kids to school. But twilight is still a big contrast from daylight, and this is why the Word became flesh, to bring full light and life to us. If you are a driver, you might know what I mean, because when twilight becomes daylight, that is the moment you turn off your headlights in early morning. When twilight becomes daylight is the moment of evangelism. Evangelism means we share with them how Jesus fulfills the purpose of the Creator God. We share through our words and deeds on how the Holy Spirit guides us in the ways of faith, love, and hope. As a Christian, if you find that you are no different from the children of the dawn, then there is a possibility that you are also in the twilight zone yourself.

This brings me to the second type of people in the twilight zone. I call them children of the dusk. These are Christians who are no longer in the day 【6】because they are gradually drifting towards darkness. This is why Paul needed to send Timothy to check on the Thessalonians, because Christians moving into the twilight zone happens. It happens when our faith is no longer accompanied by works, when our love is no longer motivating us into labor, and when our hope diminishes in endurance. Timothy was sent to prevent this. I hope I am doing the same with this sermon. To exit the twilight zone, you need to reconnect with the Light and Life himself: Jesus Christ. If you feel you are slipping into the twilight zone, talk to your zone pastor or youth pastor. If you know someone who is like that, you might want to share what you learn in your cell group or in your own quiet time with that person. Evangelism is not just for non-Christians, but Christians as well, who need to “11 encourage one another and build each other up”. As we come to the end of the year, our theme of sharing God does not end, because it should become part and parcel of our Jubilee culture. Let Jesus be our light as we live as children of the day.

【1】https://www.hawparvilla.sg/hells-museum/#about and https://www.zaobao.com.sg/news/singapore/story20211028-1207650
【2】https://thesmartlocal.com/read/hells-museum-haw-par-villa/
【3】https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)
【4】https://www.jubilee.org.sg/sermons/?sermon_id=1119
【5】 https://www.jubilee.org.sg/sermons/?sermon_id=1124
【6】 They might still be considered Children of the Day because they are still in union with Christ, but perhaps they are not living as the Children of the Day in behaviour.

华语崇拜视频链接：https://youtu.be/F1c3DM5E_bM
Bilingual service video：https://youtu.be/WUSY7QTLuVM