Believers Who Have Died – 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 — A Christian Growth Message

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Transcript

The background to these verses is that if you travelled to Greece today, it would be a very expensive journey and hopefully it would be done for good reason, but you could find the city of Thessaloniki.

It’s alive and well, the city of Thessaloniki today in Greece, and 2000 years ago, the apostle Paul conducted a 3-week mission in Thessalonica. Now he would have liked it to have been a longer mission, but he had to run for his life. You can read about it in Acts chapter 17. He and Silas had to get out. And what we’re doing on the Sunday evenings is we’re following Paul’s first letter to the city, which he had to basically get out of. And the summary of the letter so far goes like this –

We thank God that you have put your faith in Jesus. Please don’t think that we left because we wanted to, we left because we had to. It is so good to hear that you are keen followers of Christ, keep going.

That’s the letter so far.

And as we come to 4:13 this evening, we come to a question which is worrying the Thessalonians, and that is, this is their question – You told us Paul that Christ is coming back, we’re waiting for him, we’re looking forward to that. Some of our church, however, have died. Did they miss out? Did they miss out on the glory that Jesus is coming to bring?

Now Paul writes some very wonderful verses here, these verses 13 to 18, which have comforted millions, millions and millions of people around the world have been comforted by these 6 verses. Now I hope you will take hold of these verses for a number of reasons. One, in this world we need an expert on the afterlife, we need somebody who’s gone through and back. I only know one person who’s gone through and back with credentials, and that’s Christ, and he therefore becomes the world expert on this subject. And because he has died and risen, God expects people to take him seriously.

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but if you read the book of Acts, all the early church preaching is God has raised him, you must take him seriously.

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And Jesus himself said in the Gospels that if you follow him, and entrust yourself to him, He outweighs the world.

Who else would dare to say to you this evening. Follow me and you won’t lose your soul. But if you lose your body. You’re still a winner because you have Christ. Who else would dare to say that, only Christ can look people in the world in the face and say, lose everything but have me, and I outweigh the world, and that’s the way Jesus speaks.

You notice of course that the ISIL people are making a point by decapitating people. And the world is noticing. This is the way you get people to sit up and take notice. Now God has made a point to the world by raising somebody from the dead. To decapitate is relatively easy. To raise somebody from the grave is miraculous. And without an expert on the afterlife, we’re all guesses.

We need an expert on the after-life

Think of Richard Dawkins, he says there’s nothing after this world, well he’s guessing.

Think of the movies that you watch, one that comes to mind a long time ago is Gladiator where you have that kind of vague, mystical floating around in the afterlife, it’s just a guess.

Or think of the people who say in the obituaries in the papers, they’ve gone to a better place, all will be well, nothing to do with Jesus, they didn’t believe in Jesus but all will be well, they’re just guessing.

So we need an expert.

We also need to know that the future is safe for us so that we can take Jesus seriously. There are lots of people who’ve gone in the name of Jesus to do very dangerous mission without any fear because they knew that their security was forever, we need this security. And we also need to know what God says so that we can comfort other people.

We need to do the comfort with more than just sentimental fluff, we need to be able to say things that are really true and powerful and realistic and well-founded.

So let’s think about our verses this evening. I’ve got three headings. The first is Jesus and security verses 13-14, and then we’re going to look at Jesus and community 15-16-17, and very briefly Jesus and authority, verse 18. This talk may raise some questions for you about the future,

But first of all let’s think about Jesus and security. Look at chapter 4 verse 13

He says, we don’t want you to be ignorant, we don’t want you to be in the dark, we don’t want you to be agnostic, we have some information for you about those who fall asleep. Notice what Paul is saying, he says we don’t want you to be stuck for answers, and you don’t need to be stuck for answers.

Do we not love it? When someone fills in some information for us, you’re probably too young for this, but have you ever had to have medical tests and wait for the tests results?

It’s a wonderful thing when the results come back clear.

Or perhaps you’re worried about a relationship, you don’t know whether somebody is cooling off in their interest for you. And it is such a help for them to communicate and tell you no, they are still devoted to you, or waiting for your exam results, or waiting to find out that your job is secure.

I was talking with a lady this morning aged 87, after the morning service. We’re just chatting at the morning tea-time and she said to me, I’m really hoping that my sins do not disqualify me cos she said I’ve done some terrible sins over the years.

So we just pulled out all these promises and she said at the end of the conversation, this has been such a helpful conversation. Filling in the gap, filling in the worry.

Now, what is going on in these situations, the fact of the matter is that what we’re doing in this situation with hospital results or relationship results or exam results is that we want some information.

Why do most people that we deal with in this world not want the information about the resurrection?

Even though it is overwhelmingly good information, and the answer of course is that these people don’t want to surrender to Christ.

They would lose the blessing of eternal life. In order to keep the control of a temporary life. And then of course lose the control of a temporary life anyway. It’s a tragedy. It’s an absolute tragedy.

But for those who are wanting information, for those who are wanting God’s Word, even if you’re an open agnostic this evening you may be an open agnostic, Paul has some very great news. The first thing he says in chapter 4 verse 13 is that Christian death has been redefined by Christ. It is now to be called, he says, sleep.

Now the reason that he uses the word sleep is because, sleep is a temporary thing. It’s not forever. The Christian who dies as we see them die, is going to get up one day with a brand-new body.

The other thing about sleep, this redefinition of death is that sleep is safe. It’s not dangerous. The Christian who dies as we see them die, is going to experience no danger, no separation.

This word sleep was the word that Jesus used, you remember in the Gospels he’d talk about a little girl who had died and say she’s just sleeping and he said this although they laughed at him because he was about to raise her up, it was temporary, it was not dangerous.

But the word sleep was actually used back in the Old Testament.

And the word sleep was used in Greek literature and it was used as a euphemism, a polite word to soften a harsh reality.

We have similar phrases today, we talk about somebody passing on or somebody has left us, or they’ve kicked the bucket. We talk about these sort of things to soften a harsh reality. Now when Jesus spoke of the believer sleeping or when Paul here talks about the believer sleeping, he’s not just softening a hard reality, he’s teaching a brand new reality, which is that it’s temporary and it’s safe.

So this is the remarkable thing about this teaching in 1 Thessalonians 4:13, is that people long for it to be true that there’s something after this world.

And they can only fictionalise what it could be, you know, the little girl has become an angel. It’s an invention of something, people long for there to be something beyond this world.

Jesus takes the longing and says, if you belong to me, it’s not fiction. It’s nonfiction.

And so the pagan who wants there to be something after the grave, is going to have to take Jesus seriously, if their longing is to be a reality. Incidentally, the word cemetery comes from the Greek word for sleep.

Because Jesus transformed the tragedy of dying and made the burial place into a place where many believers saw their loved ones go as it were into the ground, looking forward to something temporary and something wonderful based on the resurrection. So we can learn from cemeteries.

In fact, the Old Testament tells us that we should learn from cemeteries.

It’s a great place to walk around a cemetery and see what people have written, they’ve had one opportunity to write on their tombstone. And to see whether they’ve written something that’s based on the reality of Christ’s resurrection, or whether it’s just pure fiction.

One of the most interesting funeral cemeteries is the Bun Hill Cemetery in London, which is actually named after what was the Bone Hill Cemetery, and it was called the Bone Hill Cemetery, now the Bun Hill Cemetery, quite near Saint Paul’s Cathedral, because, in the plague, they poured so many corpses into this cemetery that it was basically just piled high with bones, and lots of great believers have been buried in the Bun Hill Cemetery, people like Isaac Watts and Susanna Wesley and John Owen and John Bunyan and others, they’re all buried in the Bun Hill Cemetery and this cemetery became so famous for these famous believers.

That lots of poor people would buy a plot in the cemetery in order to get into the cemetery in the hope that when the great resurrection took place, they would kind of be swept up with all the other believers, which is a piece of lunacy, but there you are, that’s what they were thinking.

And I think it was John Stott who said that the resurrection changes the RIP rest in peace to risen in power for the believer.

Now this is lovely that the apostle Paul says that Christians will sleep, but why will Christians sleep? Why should we expect to sleep, why should we expect to get up?

How can we know this is true? The answer is in verse 14.

He says Jesus died. Jesus died and rose. Notice that Paul doesn’t say Jesus slept before you slept, he says Jesus died, he uses the very deliberate word died, you see the death of Jesus was not safe. And it was not secure. He got all the terrors and all the dangers of judgement piled on top of him, he experienced the full force of God’s justice, it was an absolute total death.

And therefore, if your confidence is in him, he has experienced the death for you. Your experience will be to sleep. The other thing that Paul says here is that Jesus rose, if he didn’t rise of course, he would be a deceiver. He would be on par with the devil.

How could Jesus walk round in his life saying, trust me, I will give you eternal life, I’ll see you through the grave. And then just die?

It would be the great deception.

I want to read to you just two paragraphs of an article by a guy called Sir Norman Anderson and you can download this article, just look up Norman Anderson on the resurrection. Norman Anderson was a remarkable man, first of all because he got 3 – 1st class degrees from Cambridge. Which is pretty special. The second is that he was considered the greatest legal mind in the UK during the 50s and the 60s.

And the second thing is that he and his wife had 3 grown-up children who all died before the parents of various diseases.

So this is a subject which for Norman Anderson is not just an academic exercise, but a very important one, and he says this – this is the opening paragraph –

“Easter is not primarily a comfort, but a challenge. It’s message is either the supreme fact in history or a gigantic hoax. This seems to have been realised in the days of the early church. On the one side there was a little company of men and women who turned the world upside down by their passionate proclamation of the miracle which had transformed their lives. On the other, those who vehemently denounced the whole story as arrant blasphemy. We ourselves find it hard to see the issue so clear cut, for ours is a tolerant age and one suspicious of all fanaticism. Most people have not the slightest desire to attack the Easter messages, yet they only half believe it. To them it’s a beautiful story full of spiritual meaning, why worry then whether it’s literal fact? We missed the point. Listen to this. Either Easter is infinitely more than a beautiful story, or it is infinitely less. If it is true, it is the supreme fact of history, and to fail to adjust one’s life to its implications means irreparable loss. But if it is not true, if Christ be not raised, then the whole of Christianity is a fraud, foisted on the world by a company of consummate liars, or at best deluded simpletons.“

Paul himself realised this when he wrote, if Christ be not risen our preaching is meaningless, your faith is worthless, and we are found to be false witnesses. Now that’s a very helpful point, you see, you cannot call the resurrection of moderate interest,

It’s either of total interest or total disinterest.

It just won’t play, won’t play the middle game, now because Jesus died and rose, says Paul, the Christian will sleep and rise.

And that’s why the Christian funeral such as we experienced this past week has grief and hope. It doesn’t just have grief. That would be hopeless. It doesn’t just have joy, joy, joy, that would be insane. It has grief and it has hope, so that’s Jesus and security.

Second point, Jesus and community verses 15 to 17.

Now this is where Paul tackles the Thessalonian question which is have the Christians who’ve already died missed out on the glory to come? In other words, would it be better to stay alive, say the Thessalonians, until Christ comes, and if we don’t manage to stay alive, will we miss out and have those people who’ve died missed out?

Now the answer is in verse 14.

He says when Jesus comes, he will bring them. Although their body may be in the grave. And although their body may be destroyed in a crematorium, the real person, what Jesus might have called the soul, goes to be with Christ. And we know this from the rest of the New Testament, that’s why Paul says in Philippians 1, I desire to depart and be with Christ. He wouldn’t say that if he knew that he was just going to lie in the soil for 2000 years. No, he says, I want to depart and be with Christ, or 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 8, away from the body, home with the Lord.

As soon as a believer leaves the body, he or she is in some sense, home with the Lord.

Again, this may be relevant to Luke 23 where Jesus said to the thief on the cross, today you’ll be with me in paradise.

Or again in Revelation chapter 6, we read that the saints around the throne in heaven, are saying to the Lord in some remarkable way, how long, how long, come on, finish this, bring it all together, bring it to completion.

So we are immediately with Christ when we die, but we’re waiting for the resurrection body. And there’s a little bit of mystery in this. We’re just not in a position to be able to pin down all the details and answer all the questions, but what we do know is that once you’re with Christ, you’re always with Christ. Once you die, you are in some sense with him, absent from the body present with the Lord.

But there is still some kind of waiting for the resurrection body and that’s why chapter 4 verse 14 is very clear, those who’ve gone from us and friends that is – billions of people have died – and hundreds of millions of them trusting Christ have died – they’ve gone to Christ, and he will bring them when he comes, when he comes he will bring them with him.

And this is what the 2nd coming will mean verse 15, we who are alive when Christ comes, and notice incidentally Paul doesn’t necessarily say that he will be alive when Christ comes, he just says if we are alive, when Christ comes, we will not beat those who’ve died to Christ, in other words, if Christ was to come in one second, now, the people who’ve already died in Christ would have got to him first, they would come with him, and then we would join them.

So, which is the most blessed condition? Is it to be dead in Christ with Christ, or alive in the world waiting for Christ, Paul’s answer is the first, it’s to be with Christ. That’s why Paul of course wants to depart and be with Christ.

But when he comes, says Paul, they will come. And we will join him and we will join them. How does Paul know this – verse 15, he says the Lord’s Word, well which Word of the Lord? Where did Jesus say this? And the possibilities are that either the Lord Jesus said this to Paul as an apostle, and therefore we are learning it for the first time. Or that this is something that was recorded by Jesus which lots of people knew but was not put into our New Testament, because there were many things that Jesus said that didn’t get put into our New Testament, or that this is in some way a resting of something like Matthew 24:25 where Jesus talks about coming and bringing his people.

So, look at verse 16, to understand the second coming, if you want to understand the second coming, and we’ll look at this more next week, Jesus himself will come. It will be personal, it’ll be Jesus, it’ll be global, he’s not going to come through the heads, it’ll be global. It’ll be sudden, it could be before this sermon finishes, and some of you maybe hoping that’s the case, or it could be years from now, all we know is that it’s going to be sudden and unexpected.

And it’s going to be very wonderful for the believer and it’s going to be very terrible for the unbeliever.

And Paul says in verse 16 there’s going to be a triple announcement, there’s going to be a command from God, I presume this is God the Father calling out, now go. There’s going to be a voice, the archangel’s voice, which I presume is the archangel, maybe Michael or Gabriel calling out, here he is. And there’s going to be a trumpet, the famous trumpet which says it’s time to meet God.

Friends, you just imagine what this would be like if the 2nd coming of Christ took place in the next 5 seconds.

And everything universal changes. And we suddenly come face to face with the person who made the world.

And is now coming back to the world, just amazing.

And those who went first, says Paul, rise first.

And those who are waiting, rise too, but all believers will join Christ and all believers will join together, and as Jesus said, the future will be like a house and a feast, and very, very wonderful.

Well, there’s one thing therefore that’s absolutely certain for all of us who are here this evening and that is that we will meet Jesus. You see, you may not die, you may be among those millions and millions of people who will never physically die. Because Christ will come in your lifetime.

Therefore, we need to be very careful when people say everybody will die. Because actually if Christ comes first, we won’t die. But we will all meet Jesus.

Let me just give you a few details on Christ’s coming, just say a word to you about the millennium, and a word to you about the rapture in verse 17, just look at verse 17, he says – We who are here when Christ comes, says Paul, we will be caught up, we will be, the word is grabbed or scooped. The old Latin word is raptures, from which we get the word rapture. This caused many believers to read the words and think that Christians would be snatched away from the world.

And this has led to a lot of sort of humour, and absurdity in the church over the years, you know, what do you do if you’re in a plane and you’ve got a Christian pilot, and Christ decides to take him home.

What do you do if you’re in a bus and Christ decides to take the Christian driver into the rapture?

And Christians on camps have played games on one another, you know, by leaving the electric shaver buzzing in the bathroom and the shoes there beside the sink or have rigged up a little speedboat to go spinning round and round and round in the lake with nobody in it, you know, these pranks, to give the impression that the rapture has taken place and therefore the other people have been left behind, and this has spawned the Left Behind movies, which some of you may know about. This is a whole industry, Left Behind.

You can imagine how tragic you would feel. Some of this is based on Matthew 24 where Jesus said, there’ll be two in a field, one will be taken, one will be left.

This gives that kind of bizarre picture, the two guys are ploughing and suddenly one just zooms up in the sky, or in Luke 17, two will be in a bed, there’s a man and a woman in the bed, suddenly the wife leaves.

Now I want you to notice very carefully.

That Jesus does not teach any disappearing act in the scriptures.

He says this will take place at his return.

It’s at his return one will be taken to him.

It’s possible for two men to be working in the same office and when Christ returns, one is safe, one is in dreadful trouble. It’s possible for a couple to be in the same bed. The man is a believer, the wife is not a believer, Christ returns, he is safe, she is not.

Jesus is not talking about a disappearing act, he’s talking about when he returns, and that’s why in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, he talks about people being caught up to be with Christ. This is not some kind of random disappearance, this is when Christ comes. It’s not even a secret rapture, as many people say it will be a secret rapture, it’s so public there’s going to be a voice and a command and a trumpet, the whole world will know when Christ comes. Nobody will be in the slightest doubt when Christ comes.

What is the millennium?

Some of you will have heard of the millennial views. The millennium literally means 1000 years. It’s not related to this passage, but I’ll just mention it very briefly because it comes in Revelation 20. Which talks about 6 times in a few verses about 1000 years. Now some people say that Christ will come, just stay with me, you’re with me, Christ will come and set up a 1000-year rule on the earth before the judgement.

In other words, he will come pre-millennium.

The difficulty with this view is that it just doesn’t seem to tie up with a lot of the rest of the New Testament.

Others say that Christ will come after 1000 years of great blessing. In other words, the church will suddenly enter into a golden period for 1000 years, people will be believers all over the place, and then after the 1000 years, Christ will come, post millennium.

The difficulty with this again, is it just doesn’t seem to tie in with the rest of the New Testament, which talks about a declining world rather than an improving world. The most satisfying view of the millennium to me is that the 1000 years is a symbol, like the rest of the Book of Revelation. It’s teaching that Jesus will come after a very long time.

And we’re in the long time.

We’re in the millennium.

But don’t miss the big issue of what Paul is saying to the Thessalonians and get lost in these micro issues. The big issue is this, will a Christian be lost when they die, no.

Perfectly safe. Will all Christians be together one day, yes. There will be a great reunion.

We have security because Jesus died, we have community because Jesus rose.

Last thing very briefly, Jesus in authority verse 18, how are we meant to encourage one another?

The apostle’s answer is, with words, with words of truth, with good theology, and of course we’re to exercise every kindness, and it’s very interesting when you go through some time of grief, that people in the church use words and kindnesses. And it’s very precious.

The pagan world doesn’t have any words.

And so it has to invent very sort of schmaltzy things, you know, those terrible carts. And sometimes it uses balloons. Or makes big claims. Lots of hugs, which is fine, but no gospel, no gospel.

Whereas the Christian uses all the kindness as possible, and works the words of God which God has underwritten in blood.

So don’t miss the power of this, I know that you would like for somebody to tell you something about the future which is rock solid.

I know that you like me would like a window into the future through the grave, wouldn’t it be wonderful to see heaven waiting. Well, the best we’re going to get is the book of Revelation, where the door is opened, the roof is opened, and we’re given a glimpse.

But Paul’s answer is that since we walk by faith and not by sight, we are to encourage one another with the power of words. Now I know words can be cheap. We need to be very careful when we’re comforting or encouraging somebody that we don’t say something really cheap. I remember once, in a family bereavement in my home where somebody sent a card and all they put was Romans 8:28. That’s all it said.

All things work together for good for those who love God, it was thoughtless, it was a good verse. But it just didn’t come very thoughtfully. And we don’t want to use cheap words, but we don’t want to use no words. God is a great speaker, God communicates to encourage. And we can’t encourage people without words. Therefore, silence is sub-Christian.

We’re not expected around the fellowship to be a stored dummy who just stands.

We’re meant to be people who speak the words.

And exercise the kindnesses, otherwise we are diluting and even becoming useless, maybe even heartless.

Now the people who ignore God’s words, the people that we live amongst who ignore God’s words, they can’t expect any light in the darkness because the words of God are the light in the darkness.

But for those of us who take hold of the words, they bring tremendous light, and as John Stott says in his commentary on 1 Thessalonians, there will be everlasting fellowship, there will be everlasting fellowship.

And we need God’s promises to know that.

So there are 3 profound treasures in 1 Thessalonians 4, Christ died, the believer sleeps, all believers will be together. And we have powers in the words of God, to encourage one another.

Let me close by just telling you that when the great Baptist preacher Spurgeon was preaching once in a hall in the area in the UK called the Surrey Hall, I think it was a big agricultural hall, 20,000 people came to hear him and some young people played a very dangerous prank, and when everybody was gathered and there was a bit of quiet, they called out fire, fire.

And there was pandemonium and people ran all over the place, and there was a great deal of damage and injury and a handful of people were killed.

As Spurgeon was so cast down by this, he slept for 3 days. And he resolved when he awoke that he was not going to continue in the ministry.

And he went on for a while thinking he wouldn’t do this anymore, it was just too difficult and too costly, and then he said the word of God came to his memory of Philippians 2, that God has exalted Christ to the highest place.

And he suddenly realised that everything was under control.

I would never have thought of giving that verse to Spurgeon.

It doesn’t even seem to me to be a new idea to say to him.

But it was the truth which brought the encouragement and the comfort and the strength that he needed.

And turned the corner for him, so he continued his ministry.

I’m not suggesting to you that there is a magic verse for all situations. But the Word of God does have great power. And it has power for us to believe it, and it also has power for us to extend it.

Well, let’s pray, let’s bow heads.

Our Father, we thank you for the question which was raised by the Thessalonians, which triggered the answer, which we read today and is such a blessing.

That because Christ died, the believer sleeps and that all believers will be gathered together with Christ and with one another.

And that in the present we have very precious promises to stand on and to share with one another. We pray that you would help us to take your word and to live in the light of it.

And that you would help us to use the word as a blessing not only to ourselves but to those who are needy.

The believer and the unbeliever, and we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.

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