GRIEVING WITH HOPE

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on October 10, 2018 under PM Bible Study |

PM Bible Study Group; October 10, 2018 – from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Theme: The promise of the Lord’s coming gives us comfort with regard to fellow believers who sleep in death.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

I will never forget the first funeral I ever went to after I became a believer.

It was for my friend Randy. We were in high school; and Randy—himself a believer—was the first person I ever told that I had accepted Jesus as my Savior. Randy died about a year later of blood cancer. His death, which occurred at a very early stage of my Christian life, was a significant event to me. I, of course, grieved his loss deeply; but what was most surprising about it all was the hope that was conveyed at his funeral service. I had never been to a funeral before where there was so much joy and hope in the midst of the tears. Randy trusted Jesus—and it was declared that we would see him again.

This was the first time I ever encountered the way that a Christian grieves over the loss of a believing loved-one through death. They grieve, and we’re never told in the Scriptures that it is wrong to grieve. But we do not grieve as those who have no hope. Paul wrote about this to the Thessalonians believers;

But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

Why did Paul write this to these believers? There are many indications in his two letters to them that they seemed to be greatly concerned about end-time issues, and about the promise of the Lord’s return (see 1 Thessalonians 2:12; 3:13; 5:1-11; 2 Thessalonians 1:9-10; 2:1-12). They were even confused at times about some of these matters (see 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3, and perhaps also 3:6-12). It may be that, because they looked so expectantly to the return of the Lord and to the promise of His kingdom, that they were concerned about what happens to their fellow believers who had died and pass on to the Lord before them. Would they miss out on the glories of the kingdom yet to come? In the passage before us, Paul answers that concern.

Now; we should be careful, in studying this passage, to stick carefully to the main thing it is intended to teach us. We should not expect it to answer every question we might have about the end-times. We may not know when the Lord’s return will be (as 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3 makes clear to us), or the exact order of all the events that will occur. But what the apostle Paul wanted his grieving brothers and sisters to know—and what he makes very clear to them—is what it is that will happen to those who have gone on before in death at the time of the Lord’s return. None of our beloved believing loved ones will be lost to us; nor will they miss out on any aspect of the kingdom’s glory; nor will we enjoy any aspect of it without them. And this helps us to grieve for them as those who enjoy great hope in Christ.

As Paul makes clear in this passage, the promise of the Lord’s coming gives us comfort with regard to those who sleep in death.

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Notice first what Paul says about …

1. OUR HOPE FOR THE SLEEPING ONES (vv. 13-14).

Paul writes, “But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope” (v. 13). The phrase that he uses—‘those who have fallen asleep’—is a wonderful way the Holy Spirit led him to describe those who have died in Christ. As unbelieving people see it, when someone dies, they stay dead. All hope is gone. They are in the grave forever. But when it comes to those who have died as believers in Jesus, we are taught that their bodies may rest in the grave for a time, but they will be ‘awakened’ unto life in the resurrection.

Consider some of the ways that our Lord promised this to us. He once told the Jewish people who opposed Him that there would be a day when the ‘spiritually’ dead will hear His voice and come to ‘spiritual’ life in Him. And He then told them,

“Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5:28-29).

This He said concerning the physical resurrection of those who trust in Him. He gave proof of His power to bring this promise to fulfillment when He later raised His friend Lazarus from the dead. At that time, He declared,

“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die” (John 11:25-26).

Because this is true, it is never God’s will for us to ‘grieve’ as those who have no hope. We are not to follow after the manners and customs of unbelieving people who have no faith in Christ. Those who grieve without faith in the hope that God gives us through Christ may end up engaging in dreadful paganistic practices in their grief—just as when God told the people of Israel,

“You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you: I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19:28).

To grieve in a hopeless, paganistic, ungodly way is evidence that someone does not really believe in the resurrection that is promised to us in Christ. Paul goes on to tell us in verse 14, “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.” This is the underlying hope that is to characterize all aspects of our life—even the way we deal with the hard reality of death. As Paul told the Corinthian believers;

So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6-8).

What a victorious hope this is! It gives us hope beyond death! It assures us that even those who sleep in the Lord Jesus are still very much alive and with Him, and that we will be united with them together on the day of Jesus’ return.

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Now; this is a truly glorious, out-of-this-world kind of hope. But is it a true one? Do we have genuine warrant to believe such a glorious thing? Paul then goes on to assure us of …

2. OUR AUTHORITY FOR THIS HOPE (v. 15).

He writes in verse 15 to these grieving Thessalonians believers—and to us also—“For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.”

Now; Paul tells us something remarkable in these words. He lets us know that not only will those who sleep in Christ enjoy the glories of the kingdom with us, but that we will not enter into those glories before they do. We will not “precede” them (or as the old King James puts it, “prevent” them) because we are alive to enter the kingdom’s glories and they are not. In this respect—though we’re not told all the details of the timing of many end-times events—we are told at least something of the order of events for those who sleep and those who remain.

But first, you’ll notice that Paul says that this comes “by the word of the Lord”. Where does the Lord say such a thing? It may be that some of the things that the Lord Jesus had already taught about the time of His return gives us a hint that those who live at His coming will not precede those who sleep. In His great discourse on His own return—in Matthew 24—the Lord Jesus said;

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matthew 24:29-31).

The Lord tells us a great deal in those words about the events surrounding His return. And this may be what Paul means when he said that he speaks from ‘the word of the Lord’. But even those words from our Lord do not directly address the issues that Paul mentions. It seems more likely, therefore, that this truth about those who sleep in the Lord was something that was given to Paul as a special revelation concerning the times of the Lord’s return. Elsewhere, he spoke of this as the revealing of ‘a mystery’. A ‘mystery’, in this sense, is a truth that had been hidden in the divine purpose of the Lord, but in time revealed to His people. Paul spoke of this promise in 1 Corinthians 15 and said;

Now, this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed (1 Corinthians 15:50-52).

Our hope for our brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone before us—that we will be reunited with them and will enjoy the glories of Jesus’ kingdom together with them—is not a fantasy that we Christians have made up for ourselves to comfort our hearts in times of grief. It has real, objective substance in the fact of our Lord’s own resurrection; and it is affirmed to us by the authority of our Lord through His apostles.

We can fully trust it.

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Now; how will this wonderful hope ‘work out’ in actual experience? How is it that we who are alive and remain at the return of our Lord will not ‘preceded’ those who sleep in Him; but that we will be glorified together with them? Paul goes on to explain to us …

3. OUR EXPECTATION IN THIS HOPE (vv. 16-17).

He tells us first, “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first” (v. 16). The return of the Lord will be a world-wide recognized event. Do you remember how the Lord once said that we were not to believe those who say that He is ‘here’ or that He is ‘there’—as if we had to be told that He had somehow slipped into the world secretly; or as if it had to be discovered later and announced on the evening news? It will happen with as much startling occurrence to everyone on the earth as ‘the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west’ (Matthew 24:27). All people will know at once that He has come.

And it will be then that the dead in Christ will rise first. Marilyn and I live next to a cemetery. She has often said that we will have an additional early warning sign of the Lord’s return; because we’ll see our church cemetery emptying out of those who sleep in Christ! And it’s then—as the next event in the sequence—that “we shall be changed”. As Paul had put it in 1 Corinthians 15, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption; but we’re told that while we will not all “sleep” (that is, die), we will all be changed. He said that “this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:53). This explains how it can be that Paul could tell the Thessalonians in our passage, “Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord” (v. 17).

This also helps us to appreciate the glorious picture we’re given in Revelation 19 of the return of our Lord; where the apostle John wrote,

Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses (Revelation 19:11-14).

We will be transformed and ‘caught up’ (or ‘raptured’; from the Latin rapturous, which means ‘a carrying-off’) to meet the Lord in the air; and to join our resurrected brethren at the time of our Lord’s return. We will march in with that coming glorious army, and thus we will ever be with the Lord—never again to be separated either from Him or from our brothers and sisters.

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And this brings us all back to Paul’s original concern. These Thessalonians believers needed comfort in a time of grief; and so, Paul reminds us of …

4. OUR ENCOURAGEMENT FROM THIS HOPE (v. 18).

He says simply, “Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

That’s what a true and faithful understanding of the promise of our Lord’s return should do for us. It should comfort us in the troubles and griefs of life. In 1 Thessalonians 5:11, after explaining further about the Lord’s return, Paul wrote, “Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.” And in 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, after telling the believers about their deliverance from the promised wrath to come upon this world, he wrote, “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.” And it should most certainly comfort us with regard to our beloved brothers and sisters and loved ones who ‘sleep’ in Christ.

In this world, we have this much in common with unbelieving people: we grieve at a time of death. But what distinguishes us from unbelieving people is that we grieve with sure and confident hope. We look ahead to the return of our Lord; and to the time when He will bring with Him those who are now in His presence—whose bodies He will raise and glorify and unite to their glorified spirits; and to the time when we who remain—if indeed it be that have the privilege of being alive at His return—will be transformed and ‘caught up’ to join them. When it comes to entering into and enjoying the glories of our Lord’s coming kingdom on earth, we will, by no means, precede those who are now asleep in Him!

May we truly comfort one another with these words—and thus ‘grieve with hope’!

EA