1 Thessalonians No.6 The Christian's Hope

The reading this morning is taken from 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 and we'll be reading from verse 13. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.

According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are still, who are left to the coming of the Lord will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with a voice of the Archangel and with a trumpet call of God and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so we will be with the Lord forever.

Therefore, encourage each other with these words. Now brothers, about times and dates, we do not need to write to you for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly as labour pains on a pregnant woman and they will not escape.

But you brothers are not in darkness, so this day should not surprise you like a thief. You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the suns, sorry, we do not belong to the night or to the darkness.

So then, let us not be like others who are asleep. Let us be alert and self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night.

Those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer, suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

He died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up. Just in fact, you are doing.

Amen. I was speaking at Peter Bae's memorial service last Friday and a throwaway remark of mine, something I hadn't intended to say, hit me quite forcefully later on in the evening and early on Saturday morning. I was talking about the way that the wise men brought their gifts to the Lord Jesus and I made reference to the controversy at the moment of the franking of stamps with the Easter message, Jesus is alive.

Amazing that the Archbishop of Canterbury should receive a letter from the President of the British Humanist Society, the latter congratulating the Archbishop, who's rather reluctant to concede that putting Jesus is alive on postage stamps is a reasonable thing to do. Well, the GPO carried news of the centenary of the Mormon Church in Scotland last year. Nobody raised a voice of protest whatsoever.

It is right to proclaim that Jesus Christ is alive. Not only the proclamation, the explanation of that. So, thank God for the controversy that's raging.

Exploit it and let people know that you believe Jesus is alive. Now, my throwaway remark was simply this, that this was the best piece of franking sense since the Magi came with their gifts to the Lord Jesus at Bethlehem. At four o'clock on Saturday morning, I was awake, bolt upright in bed.

I had a sort of picture of the free newspapers with almost a blank page, but on the center of the blank page, the stamp and the motif, Jesus is alive, and at the top, franking sense. And then underneath, a short explanation of the gospel and a write-in address for people, 70,000 who received these papers throughout the whole of this area, a write-in address, credits to the three churches, the tab, Broadwater, a new life, probably our own phone number. People could write in and get an explanation of the gospel of Christ.

We could get it to every house in the area. That's what I'm thinking of doing. It'll cost about six or 700 pounds.

If you feel that this is of the Lord, and you'd like to help me to meet that bill, which won't come out of any church expenses, if this is of God, he'll provide the money, then just let me know. Write me a little note, send me a bit of paper, so that I know. You don't need to give me any money now, but if you will pledge yourself to help me fork out the money for the bill, assuming I can get the editor of the paper to carry the advert, then I'd be grateful.

I really feel this is of the Lord. That's why I shared it with you. All right, let's sing.

Let's sing a little song. God of glory, we exalt your name. You who reign in majesty.

1-3-6 in Songs of Fellowship. Let's stand and sing. Stand in awe and wonder at your majesty and your greatness.

We're asking that the authority of our God and the rule of his son may be recognized increasingly in our society in the 1980s. We thank you that Jesus is alive, and for the difference that that makes in the lives of millions of people. We're praying, Lord, that that historical fact may be brought to the attention of many men and women in our land, and that the resurrection of Christ historically may be verified experimentally in the hearts of those who confess that they need him, your son, and his forgiveness.

And as a result of his death on the cross of Calvary and his mighty resurrection, we pray that he might grant the gift of his spirit so that all shall know that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen. Please be seated, and let's turn to the inerrant Word of God and to the letter that, part of the letter that was read to us a few moments ago.

1 Thessalonians and chapter 4, making our way through this fascinating five-chapter epistle that Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica. I don't know how our mothers, who so delightfully took part a little while ago emphasizing Mother's Day, would have fared with the preaching of the apostle Paul as far as his points and the length of them were concerned. After all, verse 1 of chapter 4, he says, finally, and he's hardly halfway through, and I'm not as bad as that.

In the 13th verse of the 4th chapter, he moves over from the subject of Christian lifestyle, and he starts to speak most eloquently about the Christian hope, what it is that people in Thessalonica and people in Worthing ought to have at the forefront of their thinking. And, of course, the great hope is the return of our Lord Jesus. I'm amazed.

I am really quite flabbergasted at the way some of our theologians can go into our established church and say the creed, which happens to conclude with the words, or almost conclude with the words concerning our Lord Jesus, He will come again to judge the living and the dead. How can you say that and not mean it? I came across one theologian who said that he could sing it, but he couldn't say it. I said, oh, there's any difference between singing a creed or statement and saying a creed and referring to your belief in the second coming of our Lord Jesus? No, it was dominant, was it not, in the letter that Paul writes to the Thessalonians.

After all, at the end of each chapter thus far, he makes some comment about the return of Jesus. Look, will you, in the 9th or the 10th verse of the 1st chapter, we wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus who rescues us from the coming wrath. And then at the end of the 2nd chapter, 19th verse, speaking of His affection for the Thessalonians, for what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ when He comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy.

And the final verse of the next chapter, may He strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all His holy ones. It has been said, and it's a jaundiced comment, that a theologian is a man who spends his time answering questions that nobody is asking. Actually, the Apostle Paul was never like that.

He was a theologian, but he was answering questions that the people in Thessalonica, who had become Christians as a result of his ministry, were putting up. They had two difficulties, you see, in regard to the second coming of Jesus, and he responds to the first difficulty from the 13th verse through to the 18th of the 4th chapter and the 2nd difficulty from the 1st verse of the 5th chapter through to the 11th. The two difficulties, in effect, were these.

What will happen, Paul, to people who died before Jesus came back? Can you give us information about this? And that's precisely what he does. And then the second question was this whole notion of the physical return of the Lord Jesus. When will it happen? Those were the two questions, and it's with the first question that we deal this morning, and then next week we come back to the few verses at the beginning of the 5th chapter to attend to the second question.

Now, the first question really devolves or really swings around the whole business of the Christian hope, doesn't it? The 18th verse, he makes reference to the encouragement that Christians ought to gain from the fact of the return of our Lord Jesus. And in effect, he's repeating in the 18th verse what he has put up in the 13th verse. So, when he deals with the subject of the Christian's hope in these verses, he does so by highlighting at least three different things.

This is his style of approach in this teaching. First of all, there is the consolation he applies. The consolation he applies.

Brothers, verse 13 he says, always using these affectionate terms for his readers. Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep. You see, one of the great problems for those people, as it is for ourselves today, is the problem of what happens when a man dies.

What happens when a man dies? It's not true to say that people in the Greek world of Paul's time were firm believers in an afterlife. They weren't. It was the exception rather than the rule.

You've heard of the Stoics. Maybe you haven't heard of the Epicureans. Maybe you have heard of the Greek mystery plays.

All these had some semblance of religion for the adherents. If you inquire into the teaching of those philosophies, if you look at or read through some of those Greek mystery plays, you'll see that any semblance of resurrection is somewhat shadowy if it is there at all. What happens when a person dies? Well, the apostle deals with this in talking of the Christian's hope and he does so, as I say, with a consolation he applies.

And there's a twofold approach that he has here. First of all, he dismisses ignorance and then he distinguishes grief. We do not want you to be ignorant.

You know, the apostle will use that expression time and time again, won't he? In Romans chapter 11, for instance, dealing with the future of Israel, he'll say to the people, we don't want you to be ignorant as to what's going to happen to the Jewish people. When describing his understanding of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and the opening verse, he says, brothers, we don't want you ignorant. And here, speaking of the hope that Jesus is coming back again and indeed perhaps the more immediate problem of what happens on the death of Christian people, the apostle says, we don't want you to be ignorant.

Our Lord made it very clear, didn't he, that you and I ought to have a mature attitude towards death and towards his second coming. He tells us always to be on our watch, always to be on our guard. A great Puritan preacher, William Gurnell, has this to say, Christ has told us that he will come but not when that we might never put off our clothes or put out the candle.

In other words, we're always to be diligent, we're always to be watchful, we're always to be careful in the way that we live our lives. Jesus is coming again. And also, the possibility is here, reckons the apostle that the grave might be first in your experience, but he can apply some consolation.

He dismisses ignorance. He wants them to know more. And what's more, he distinguishes grief.

He doesn't want Christian people to grieve about those who have fallen asleep like the rest of men grieve. It's a terrible thing to conduct a funeral service where there is absolutely no hope on the part of the mourners in regard to any continuation of being the one whose memorial service is being conducted. It's a most depressing thing.

Listen to this, I take it from Greek society, in fact from Egyptian society of some 2,000 years ago, a lady by the name of Irene who has heard of the death of her friend and she writes to a couple of colleagues and she sends in her little letter her greetings, good comfort. I am as sorry and weep over the departed one as I wept for Didymus, but nevertheless against such things one can do nothing, therefore try and comfort one another. Farewell.

The apostle writing to the Ephesians talks about those who are without God and without hope. If you're without God you're clearly without hope. I've got a memorial service to take up at the crematorium on Tuesday and I must do justice to my call as a preacher, remind the men and the women who come that without God there is utterly no hope.

It's a difficult thing to take a memorial service, a funeral service, if there is no conviction in the part of those who come along as to the afterlife. In fact it's a pretty difficult thing not only in terms of people who lived in Paul's day but in the 20th century to cope with the concept that afterlife there is nothing but the grave. Let me read to you, if I may, a quotation from Jean-Paul Sartre.

He was one of the great atheist philosophers in France, a man who lectured at the University of the Sorbonne and he's got great problems. He dies in 1980 but he's writing this with his death just around the corner, with this third world war which might break out one day, with this wretched gathering which our planet now is, despair returns to tempt me. The idea that we'll never be done with it, that there's no purpose, only petty personal ends for which we fight.

We make little revolutions but there's not a human end. Nothing concerning man, only disorders. One can't think such things.

They tempt you incessantly, especially if you're old and can think, oh well, anyway I shall die in five years at the most. In fact I think ten but it might well be five. In any case the world seems ugly, bad and without hope.

There that's the cry of the despair of an old man who'll die in despair but that's exactly what I resist and I know I shall die in hope but that hope needs a foundation. Within four weeks of writing those words Jean-Paul Sartre was dead. To my knowledge he never discovered any foundation for hope whatsoever.

My friend, it's when you're a Christian then and only then can you face the grave with a sense of tranquility and hopefulness. We do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep. We do not want you to grieve like hopeless pagans.

I was asked a couple of years ago to take a funeral service for an unbelieving person here in Worthing and I did so and I did it as best I could and I thought of the absurdity that instead of a final hymn, mercifully we didn't have to sing it, the song that was selected for the organist to play was We'll Gather Lilacs in the Spring Again and I thought God help us, you come to the end of a life and here are all these people and all apparently that we can offer in terms of musical choices, We'll Gather Lilacs in the Spring Again. Oh the crass folly of not having an understanding of the gospel when there is therefore no consolation to be applied. Now the apostle goes on, he doesn't want these men to mourn for the loss of those who have died in the sense of pagans.

He acknowledges that there is such a thing as valid grief and mourning because obviously at the human level you miss your close Christian friends but we don't sorrow as those who have no hope. There are consolations that can be applied but then the apostle goes on and there is a confusion that he clears, a confusion that he clears all this whole business about those who died before Jesus returned. Does that mean to say in any sense that they died as sinful people? You see the the expectation of the Thessalonians was this, that they would be alive when the Savior came back and of course that would be a very wonderful thing.

Others however who have died before the return of the Lord Jesus, are they disadvantaged? And the apostle tells us that that is not the case at all. Rather he tells us two things about people who die before the return of Christ. First he says that there is a security that is theirs and then he says secondly there is a serenity into which they enter.

There is a security that belongs to people who die in the Lord Jesus. Look at verse 14, we believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. When you become a Christian you are linked into the family of God.

It is impossible for you not to be a Christian. In one sense I can draw an analogy from the marriage service. What God hath joined together let not man separate.

It is at that level impossible to declare people who have been married unmarried. All things being equal that is a law of God that is to be applied to husband and wives. Now when someone becomes a Christian, when they have committed themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ, they are in Christ.

They have a security that is absolute. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. Once in him they are in him forever.

This is what the apostle Paul says, does he not, at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans. For I'm convinced that nothing can separate us from his love. Death can't and life can't.

The angels won't and all the powers of hell itself cannot keep God's love away. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow or where we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean. Nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ when he died for us.

There is a security you see. Somebody who you knew died, they love the Lord Jesus. Well here is the apostle giving you this grand consolation.

He is saying that their security is absolute. More than this, he's telling you that their serenity too leaves nothing to be wished for. That's why he says that when people die it's just as though they have fallen asleep in the Lord Jesus.

As though they've fallen asleep in the Lord Jesus. Now the apostle Paul is here using a very daring term. You see the pagans in his day when they spoke of death they spoke of it in terms of sleep.

They had no conception or little conception of resurrection. Here is one of them by the name of Catullus making reference to this. Sons may set and rise again when once our brief light is set one unbroken night of sleep remains.

When the apostle Paul employs this image, this metaphor of sleep, he does so to indicate to the Thessalonians and to ourselves that when you die secure in Jesus you also die with serenity. You die with peacefulness. You look at a body just the moments after death has taken over.

What does it look like? Well it looks as though the person has gone to sleep. Not so. You know that they haven't.

You check their pulse beat. There is no blood going through the body that they are clinically dead. But for a while at any rate it looks as though they are just asleep.

And this is how the apostle describing people at the point of death uses the word sleep as descriptive. But he doesn't describe their spirits as asleep. He describes their bodies as being asleep.

Nowhere in the Bible are we told that when one dies at the point of death one goes into limbo, into a state of non-existing. What happens to our souls when we die? Well they return to the Lord who gave the souls to us, who gave us life. You remember when Stephen dies? The account of his death is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles in the eighth chapter.

Before he actually leaves this world he commits his spirit to the Lord and then he falls down dead. Or as the historian puts it, he falls down asleep. That's what his body looked like immediately on the point of death.

But his soul, where did his soul go? Father into your hands I commit my spirit. He almost re-echoes the words of our Lord Jesus. Here is the apostle Paul.

He's an old man. He's on trial for being a Christian. The possibility is that he will be done to death as the verdict of guilty is brought through by the Roman court.

But as he's anticipating this he says, I'm in a strait betwixt two. I've got a problem. I need to be with you here amongst you Philippians but the probability is that I shall be martyred for my faith.

Now this is my problem. I need to be with you because you need to have my ministry. But I desire to be with Christ which is far better.

Better with your body dead in a state of sleep and your soul being with Christ because in the presence of the Lord there you will know him obviously in a fuller and richer and more wonderful way than you know him here. And so you read in the book of Revelation about the prayers of the saints. Those who have departed this life ascending before the throne of God.

What happens when you die? There's utter security for your soul's well-being. There is great serenity for you says the apostle. So as he writes to these Thessalonians there's consolation that he applies and there's confusion that he clears up these good Christian people who've died before the second advent.

They're secure. They're safe in the presence of the Savior. I remember the story of Campbell Morgan as he coped with the death of his daughter.

His final words to her were, good night darling. I'll see you in the morning. Who I'd write to? He'd see his daughter in the morning as he himself stepped through death into the immediate presence of God.

And so the apostle takes us a little further. Having dealt with consolations that have been applied and the confusion that has been cleared up he now comes to certain conclusions that he makes from the 15th verse through to the end of the chapter. And he talks about the return, the literal return, of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 15, according to the Lord's own word we tell you that we who are still alive who are left till the coming of the Lord will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. Did you notice this? According to the Lord's word. From where did Paul get his instruction? Well you recall on one occasion Paul has been taken up into the seventh heaven and there he spoke to the Lord Jesus.

There were certain things that were revealed to Paul that he does not declare to anyone else. But there are some things, and this I suggest is one of them, that he feels he has every right to bring in front of the people who read his letters according to the Lord's own word. What I'm telling you now is anchored in revelation, anchored in what I discovered from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well what's going to happen according to his word? Well at the end of time the Lord himself will descend. The Lord will return and there will be some people, and the apostle Paul wishes that he might be amongst the number, there are some people who will not have died before that event who will be caught up to be with the Lord. Wouldn't that be wonderful if that was your experience? If the waters of the Jordan never swelled for you? If you never had to pass through the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death? Well says the apostle this will happen for some people, not for all.

And for those who've gone before for whom it hasn't happened they will in no sense be disadvantaged. The Lord will bring them with him, which again proves their existence after death. The Lord himself will bring those with him and as he descends visibly to make his presence felt in the world there will be a great moment of discovery by all people as they recognize who the Lord Jesus Christ is.

According to the Lord's own word says Paul, it's answered, it's anchored in revelation and what's more there will be a great demonstration that the whole of the world will appreciate concerning the return of Christ. The Lord will come down from heaven with a loud command and with a voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God. When Moses went up Mount Sinai the trumpet sounded.

God had come down and Moses was invited to have an audience with the Lord. At the end of time at the closing days of this dispensation the Bible tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ will return visibly and physically as the disciples saw the advent or the ascension rather of our Savior. It will be a time of great celebration.

The voice of the archangel, the trumpet of God, the dead in Christ will rise first. Their bodies will be raised from the dead. Every atom that constituted their body while it was on this earth shall come back together again.

That is no problem. God made man from the dust of the earth. He can regroup those cells that formed your body and my body assuming that we are physically dead at the point of the second coming of Christ.

Our spirits come with him. There is this remarkable repatriation of body and spirit as the Lord returns and says the apostle, this is so great that it will be manifested by the trumpet of God, by a loud shout throughout the world. Now whether he means this quite literally or not it is difficult to say.

He is obviously trying to convey truths and impressions which are so wonderful, so magnificent that words can hardly bear the weight of what he is trying to put across. But this is obvious and is true that at the end of time the Lord Jesus, the creator of the world, the savior of the world shall return to the world and the dead in Christ shall rise to be with him and those who are around at that time who've confessed Jesus Christ as savior will ascend to meet him as dignitaries come out for a city, as messengers and welcomers come out from a city to meet a dignitary and bring him or her back into their city. So we rise to meet our Lord and he returns onto this earth which he renews and regenerates bringing in his eternal kingdom.

There is no thought here of any secret rapture of the saints. There is no talk here of any thousand years of government and then the second or third coming of our Lord. All that the apostle Paul teaches us here is at the end of time the Lord himself will come from heaven with a loud shout.

The dead in Christ shall be raised and those who are alive who've confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and savior will be caught up in this grand event as Jesus Christ is revealed throughout the universe as the king of kings and the Lord of lords. These are remarkable things. The bible is not speaking in language that is simply a metaphor and it's certainly not speaking in terms of of legend.

It is conveying principles of truth here that we ourselves as Christian people should embrace and allow them to direct the way that we live our lives. When a man dies we have a right to be sorrowful but when a man dies in Christ our sorrow is not like the sorrow of the pagans. When a man dies before the second advent of Christ he is in no way disadvantaged.

He goes immediately into the presence of God and at the end of time and time may well be coming to end in our own generation with all the strange things that are happening in our world today. At the end of time the God who spoke and brought life into being will speak again and he will bring to himself all who have confessed his son as Lord and savior. Are you amongst those people? If you are then yours is one of the most wonderful situations in life in which to hold on to.

If you're not then I plead with you in the name of God confess your need of the Lord Jesus. Make him your hope and endeavor to live your life with reference to his ultimate return and the fact that you are responsible to him for the way that you live and conduct your affairs in this world as it is right now. Let's sing another hymn.

277 in songs of fellowship. Jesus is Lord or Jesus is King and I will extol him. Let's stand and sing.

Thank you for the hope that is ours. We praise you that come death come life. We discover ourselves to be on the victory side through our Lord Jesus and we just ask that we might live out our lives with reference to his coming again, his soon coming.

Bless these dear friends and may they be aware increasingly of the spiritual presence of our Lord Jesus during the time between now and his return or our own personal exit from this world into your immediate presence for his sake. Amen.