1 Thessalonians chapter 4 and verse
13. Again the Apostle Paul is writing
to the church at Thessalonica and he says, But I would not
have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep,
that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which
sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto
you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain
unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend
from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and
with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another
with these words. Amen, may the Lord bless these
words to us. In this little section, the Apostle
Paul supplies some very blessed and comforting truths for these
Thessalonian brothers and sisters. truths that the Apostle Paul
seems to have had almost first hand from the Lord and there
is little phrases that he uses, for example, to suggest that
the message that he has, the revelation that he has been given
It really comes with a freshness and an immediacy as if it had
fallen from the lips of the Lord himself. He says in verse 15, As if here is the apostle in
the same way as the Old Testament prophets used to say about the
word of the Lord. Here was the apostle giving us,
almost as it were, with that Holy Spirit immediacy, revelations
from God for the comfort of his church. And that's what we have
before us here in these few verses today. The Apostle is going to
be speaking a little bit about things that concern the Lord's
people of every age. Matters of life and death. The
question about resurrection and the eternal state. And we're
not told what it was that instigated this lesson. Perhaps it was the
death of a believer back in Thessalonica. Maybe because the apostle has
been writing to do with the persecution that the church had experienced,
both he personally in Thessalonica and the church in general, perhaps
it was a martyrdom, perhaps it was a murder that had taken place
in the opposition, or maybe it was a report from Timothy of
simply the general ignorance of the believers concerning these
things which preyed upon their minds, or the superstition that
they still carried over from their heathen background, as
they had been brought as new believers into gospel truth. However, whatever it was that
brought these things to the apostles' attention, we all, with the church
of every age, must be thankful that these verses were inspired
by the Holy Spirit, included in the Word of God, written down
and recorded and conveyed to the Thessalonians and thereby
preserved for us all. Because they really are a little
set of most amazing messages and truths and facts and promises. So what I'm going to do today
is just take a few headings from these verses to try to fulfil
in some small way the apostles' instruction that we should comfort
one another with these words because I truly believe they
are amazing. And the first thing I want to
draw your attention to then is this little reference to sleeping
in Jesus. And here we have the Apostle
Paul giving us a sense of the fact that believers, though we
die in our bodies, cannot in any real sense, in any enduring
sense, in any eternal sense, be said to die. Those who die
in the faith, believing and trusting the gospel of Christ and possessing
the salvation which the Lord Jesus Christ has secured for
us, are said, rather than to be dead, are said to sleep in
Jesus. Isn't that a beautiful little
phrase? Think for a moment of the intimacy of that little phrase,
of the simplicity of it. We sleep in Jesus. Because while
we are dead insofar as the mortal body is concerned in this world,
and as far as our relationships one with another individually
is concerned, yet Believers are alive and they're secure in Christ
and they're blessed in Christ, both in body and soul, in the
company and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the
consequence of our union with the Lord Jesus. We are part of
him. and our souls and our bodies
may be parted and separated because of death in time, but the Lord
Jesus Christ still holds both parts, body and soul, and he
treasures both parts. Let me just unpack that a little
bit for you, if I may. The Lord Jesus preserves the
physical bodies of believers and he does so because they cannot
be lost. They can't be lost because they
will be required again to be raised on the resurrection morning,
this very morning of which the Apostle Paul is speaking here. The psalmist says in Psalm 116,
verse 15, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his
saints. That doesn't mean that he just
has a warm, fuzzy feeling towards his people at the moment of their
death. It means that he is guarding
their bodies because their bodies are precious in his sight. There's
an appointed time of death for us all and nothing unforeseen
or random or accidental will hinder that or make it come any
quicker. And yet the Lord looks upon the
last breath of one of his little ones as lovingly and as carefully
and as preciously as a mother or a father would their passing
child. And we may think of the grave,
therefore, as a kind of safe deposit box where the dust of
the Lord's people go in order to be preserved until it is needed
again. And the grave will be required
to hand over, to give up and hand over the dust of the Lord's
people in this resurrection day. And you can be as far-fetched
as you like I remember as children we used to hear things like this
said and think, well what happened if you died at sea? Or what happened
if you were involved in an explosion? Or what happened if your body
gets burned? You can be as far-fetched as
you like about what is going to happen to our dust and where
it might be scattered to as far as the four winds are concerned.
I think there are even people being launched into space these
days. However, not an atom will be lost because our bodies belong
to Christ. so much for our physical bodies.
What about our souls? Well, the Lord Jesus Christ possesses
our redeemed souls as well. The souls of the Lord's people
are immediately with the Lord in heaven when they die. And there they continue until
they are reunited with their bodies on this day that the Apostle
Paul is talking about. The bodies don't cease to be,
the souls don't cease to be. The souls are not unconscious. They're with the Lord in paradise. They are being thrilled constantly
with his pleasure. They're enjoying his presence.
They're enthralled at his majesty. They're praising his glory. The
glorious hope of the believer is realized in death, and we
who remain in time should not mourn the passing of the Lord's
people immoderately. Though we don't deny the natural
emotions of loss and sadness and bereavement, we remember
that they are blessed to be in the presence of the Lord. The
Lord wept for Lazarus at the side of his tomb as a testimony
both of his love for the man and the Lord's own humanity and
union with us in our human emotions. The Lord knew both and we know
both. So that's the first thought that
I want to leave with you about sleeping in Jesus. Here's another
thing that the Apostle Paul says which is very interesting. He
speaks about the fact that there are those who die or sleep in
Jesus, and there are those which are alive and remain. So in verse 15, he tells us that
there will be a generation that will not see death, but will
be alive when the Lord Jesus returns. Now, I don't know whether
any of us here will be in that generation so as not to experience
death but it is possible However, there's no loss or profit in
being in one group or the other. We're not to be jealous of those
who die, nor are we to be jealous of those who won't die. We shall
all arrive at the same destination at the same time, even if our
experiences differ a little. Because the apostle tells us
here that on that day we shall be caught up together with them
in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So that living and
dead shall enter glory together. One shall not go before the other.
We shall all be changed. Those bodies of the saints which
taste death, Paul tells us elsewhere, are sown in corruption, but they
shall be raised in incorruption. So the resurrection for them
will be of an incorruptible body. Their natural bodies will be
raised as spiritual bodies. And likewise, at the time of
Christ's return, the bodies of that final generation who do
not die will also be changed and transformed into spiritual
bodies, fitted for the life to come in the spiritual realm and
for everlasting glory. So here we have these truths
being conveyed by the apostle. He goes on to tell us that the
Lord himself is the one who shall return for us. And he's already
told us that that Lord is God, the Lord Jesus Christ, our God. This is Jehovah returning for
his church. And the Lord is not going to
send a representative to get us. He's not going to send an
angel. He's not going to send a man.
But our Lord Jesus is going to come himself for us. And we're told that there will
be three distinct noises that are made when the Lord comes. He's going to come with a shout,
he's going to come with the voice of the archangel, and he's going
to come with the trump of God. And I don't know whether all
of this noise proceeds from the Lord Jesus Christ alone, or if
it signifies the noises that are being made by those in attendance
with him. Because the Lord is coming back
with the spirits of those who have already gone on. The believers
who have died. Those who sleep in Jesus. He's
coming back with them. And he's coming with the angels
as well. And he is coming himself. So perhaps it's the returning
souls of those who sleep in Jesus who are shouting as they repossess
their newly raised incorruptible bodies. Because the sense of
that word is a mighty army shouting in victory. And then there's
the voice of the archangel. This is the voice that musters
and commands the angelic host. And it may well be a reference
to the Lord Jesus himself, if indeed the Lord Jesus is Michael,
that archangel at the head of the armies of heaven. And then
there is the trump that will sound. That great blast, that
great call, that will gather the elect from the four corners
of the earth, whether they're in their tombs or whether they
are still alive, they will be gathered in at the sound of that
trumpet. The glory of God. And there will
be that great gathering of the Lord. It's going to be a noisy
time. We're told that there will be a gathering in the clouds. Having once ascended as the Lord
did from the mountain into the clouds in his return to heaven,
the Lord Jesus Christ is going to come back upon clouds and
we will meet him in the air in the clouds. And yet, this is
interesting, he will be visible to every eye. These clouds are
not clouds to conceal, but clouds to convey. It's the clouds that
are going to gather us into the presence of Christ. So that the
dead in Christ, those who sleep in Jesus, together with that
final generation of faithful believers upon earth, shall be
caught up. Together. That's where the word
rapture comes from. It's a catching up. It's an old
word which means to catch up. We will be raptured together
into the clouds and there we will meet with the Lord. We will meet together with those
who have died in all the previous generations together with those
who are alive at that time. And we will come together to
meet the Lord. Nothing will hinder or delay
this glorious meeting, this gathering, this initial meeting of the Lord
and all his church, united for, as it were, that first time.
From all nations and every age, This is not hidden or secret
or invisible. It will be visible, it will be
noisy, it will be glorious and it will be final. The Apostle
Paul doesn't say anything about what is going on amongst those
who are left behind on earth. But in those final moments of
dawning realisation, Surely the eternal implications of the separation
and division that is occurring before people's eyes will not
be misunderstood. And here's the final point that
I want to leave with you. The Apostle says, we will forever
be with the Lord. The eternal nature of our glorious
inheritance in Christ is summed up here in perfect simplicity
in eight little words. He says, so shall we ever be
with the Lord. So shall we ever be with the
Lord. And we really should endeavour
not to lose sight of that glorious promise day by day, hour by hour,
moment by moment as we face our trials in this life. So shall
we ever be with the Lord. Paul tells us elsewhere that
we must go through much tribulation to enter into the kingdom of
God. But he goes on to assert, the sufferings of this present
time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be
revealed in us. We all shall be changed, those
who sleep in Jesus and we who are alive and remain. We shall
be endowed with new spiritual incorruptible bodies. We shall
see the Lord. We shall go to be with him. We
shall live with him in mansions prepared for us with such particular
detail such as only a master builder could perform. and there,
in the presence of our Saviour, so shall we ever be with the
Lord, with Christ, and that forever, never more to part. Paul says,
wherefore, comfort one another with these words. And as I was
doing a little bit of reading around and preparation for these
thoughts, I read what Dr Gill said on this verse, and it's
better than I could put together, so I'm just going to read what
he says. He says this. Nothing can yield
more true and solid comfort under all the trials and troubles of
this life, under all diseases and distempers of body, under
all afflictions and persecutions for Christ's sake, under the
loss of near and dear relations, and in a view of death and eternity,
than that we shall meet and ever be with the Lord. May we all
be comforted by these words today. Amen.