If we can learn what the resurrection means for us, we've got it. And in fact, if you'll turn it in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, you'll see that here in verse 13, the Apostle Paul takes up this issue of the afterlife because the Thessalonians were facing some confusion about the afterlife. They have been told by the Apostle as we have already studied in Thessalonians that Jesus Christ defeated death and that we were going to live forever. And then all of a sudden they started having funerals in this little congregation. And they started to ask the question, what does that mean for people who die before Jesus comes back? Where are they? Are they happy? Are they okay? Will they be saved in the end? And they were facing some massive confusion. And you know what bereavement has a way of instigating confusion. And I look back just on the six years that I've been here in this congregation and how many funerals must we have had something near 400? And how many of our loved ones must we have prayed for in those six years, surely a thousand or more? How much grief, grief upon grief has been piled upon the hearts of this congregation. And there's no issue like the issue of death that arouses our attention and causes us to wonder, what difference does the gospel make? What difference does Jesus Christ make about the afterlife? And here we'll see it before us in chapter 4 verse 13 as the apostle has moved from the heavily doctrinal section of the letter in the first three chapters to now the heavily practical section. And one of the very practical things in life is how we understand and deal with our death and the death of those around us. Let us pray that we'll understand and believe the gospel, the good news, and put it into practice in our hearts, in our words, and in our steps. Let us pray. Father, thank you for your sacred word, and we pray that as we attend to it this morning, you would transform us. And in the midst of this life situation of living in bodies that are gradually dying, grant us life, radiate O Christ through us, that through these vessels in which we live, the very treasure of the gospel may shine forth. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verses 13 through 18. Hear the word of God. 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 left till 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. All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field, the grass withers, and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever. Well, in case some of you ladies hadn't noticed your husband sitting in front of the tube this weekend, it is master's weekend, and a gulf of bounds across our nation, and you know some people, they just do anything to get a game of the gulf. And there's a story about a man who was playing with his for some, he was on the 17th tee, and he was ready to tee off when the road right next to the fairway showed that a funeral procession was coming by. Of course, normally men who were on the gulf course noticed not such things, and proceed right on with their gulf game. But this man happened to take off his gulf head, he was standing right in front of his ball, took off his gulf head, put it over his heart, and recognized the moment of silence. The other three playing with him said, Joe, we never knew you were such a religious man, and he said, well, after all, we were married 40 years. Now, the reason, of course, the reason of course that people tell that story is that it's absolutely ridiculous, and of course it is ridiculous, as well makes it funny. And although I've known a lot of people who are rabid about gulf, I never met a man like that, never did. And it's really not funny, is it? When it really happens to you, whether you're a gulf or anything else, all of a sudden when you lose someone you love deeply and arrest your heart, it changes everything. And some of you know that deep sinking feeling in the soul about which I speak, because there's nothing like death, and the threat of it in your life, or the presence of it in the life of someone that you know and love dearly, that causes us to ask the big quantum questions in life. Some of you, if not most of you, know the name CS Lewis, and you've read certain things by him, mere Christianity and problem of pain and so on. And you may know that he married an American woman after he had been single for a number of years, and they had a delightful Christian marriage, some of you have seen the movie about this, but perhaps a few of you have read a book that he wrote about the grief that he experienced when she died of cancer. Her name was Joy. In fact when he wrote the book about his conversion, the title of it was Surprised by Joy, which of course for those who knew him at a double entendre. But now he writes about a grief observed. And if you are going through grief, I do not recommend reading this book. It is too profound, it is too painful, even someone who was not going through it at the time like myself, found the grief observed by CS Lewis almost more than I could take in one sitting. But he says these sorts of things about the grief that he observed in his own life, when the love of his life, Joy Davidman, passed away from cancer. He said, never in any place or time will she have her son on her needs or bathe him or tell him a story or plan for his future or see her grandchild. I have no photograph of her that is any good, I cannot even see her face distinctly in my imagination. But her voice is still vivid, the remembered voice that can turn me at any moment to a whimpering child. These responses to death are normal or at least normal for a person who deeply loved the one who died. It could be said that any natural response to death is proper and healthy. Any unnatural one may delay the healing process and be potentially dangerous. But what is the natural response? Grief, tears, an overwhelming sense of loss, desire to be alone or to have social contacts severely restricted. In grief he says nothing stays put. One keeps on emerging from a phase but it always recurs, round and round, everything repeats. Am I going in circles? Or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often will it be for always? How often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say I never realized my loss till this moment? The same leg is cut off time after time. The first plunge of the knife into the flesh is felt again and again. They say the coward dies many times. So does the beloved. An odd byproduct of my loss is that I'm aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet at work, at the club, in the street. I see people as they approach me trying to make up their minds whether they'll say something about it or not. I hated if they do and I hated if they don't. Someone has been avoiding me for a week. I like best the well-broad of young men, almost boys, who walk up to me as if I were a dentist, turn very red, get it over, and then edge away to the bar as quickly as they decently can. Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers. To some, I'm worse than an embarrassment. I'm a death's head. Whenever I meet a happily married pair, I can feel them both thinking one or the other of us must someday be as he is now. Sooner or later, I must face the question in plain language. What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is by any standard we can conceive good, doesn't all the prima fascia evidence suggest exactly the opposite? What have we to set against it? Well, I said you shouldn't read it and then I just read a portion of it to you. I hope it didn't overly depress you, but here's a man who's a Christian man who's facing honestly the grief of losing someone very, very close to him. The apostle Paul is addressing the Thessalonians who have been confused, but he's also addressing them because, just as in the case in the earlier part of chapter 4 with sexual immorality or sexual behavior, the way in which we express our sexual behavior expresses who our God is. And we saw how important sexual morality is among Christian people because it reflects the covenant character of God who is faithful to his bride. And therefore, our sexual expression must be faithful in the covenant of marriage alone so that the things which we say we believe are actually demonstrated in culture. But here it is true, too. The apostle is saying one thing that will make you very distinctive and certainly sexual practice would make you distinctive in Thessalonica and it will make you distinctive in Memphis as well. In addition to that, the way in which you grieve over the threat of death or the loss of a loved one makes you very distinctive. The apostle Paul says in verse 13, before his brothers, I don't want you to be ignorant nor do I want you to grieve like everybody else, those who do not have the Christian hope. We just say, I want you to grieve, yes, but I want you to grieve in a distinctive manner that reflects your trust in Jesus Christ. And that grief will have to come through knowing some things. For if you are ignorant, then if that is if you do not have the facts and have not studied them, then you are going to be swept along with the current of what everybody else in this culture believes and therefore you'll grieve just like them and your expression of who God really is will be the same expression that pagans make. So he says brothers, I don't want you to be ignorant nor do I grieve like the rest of men who have no hope. And then he goes to show them exactly how they are to grieve and he addresses first of all the condition of those who have died before us. And he says there are some things you need to know and not only to know factually but to believe with all your heart and it will change the way you grieve. And then he's going to show them in verse 17 that they are to know some things about their own situation, their own life and death, their own relationship with Christ, their own eternal future, which makes them think distinctively in this world. For the Christian life is distinctive for many reasons, but one of them surely is we do not live just for the moment. We are people who have a long-term perspective and we live life in the view of the long run. We refuse to just say you only go around once, grab for all the gusto you can, you don't just go around once. You live forever and therefore what we do now is in light of where we're going to be in the eternal future. So the Apostle Paul in verses 14 through 16 then wants to explain to them that Jesus Christ has defeated death for all of those that we love who died in him. Let me say it again, verses 14 through 16. Jesus Christ has defeated death for all the ones that we love who have died in him. And when we get to verse 17, we'll see that Jesus Christ has defeated death for you too. Now let's look at the implications in verse 14. You will see that he says, I don't want you to be ignorant, but he says 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. And that looks like a very simple statement, but let me say to you that that one little verse radically transforms the way that you and I agree when we lose Christian brothers and sisters, especially the ones closest to us. He says, I don't want you to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope who don't believe verse 14. How do people grieve who don't believe verse 14? Let me suggest three major categories in my observation through the years. Number one, I find a lot of people who simply try to stuff the difficult things in life. They don't face them. If they knew there were a sermon on a Sunday morning on death, that'd be the last sermon they'd want to go here because they don't want to face it. But as George Bernard Shaw said, one out of one dies and you're a whole lot better facing reality. But someone prefer the approach of Woody Allen who says, I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens. People who are really trying to move away from the reality of the fact that you're going to die and people you love are going to die. And so we have different ways of stuffing it. Oh well, you know those, yes, life does hurt, but we must move on and we move too quickly, we don't face the grief that's in our hearts. That is stoicism, that is not Christianity. The Apostle Paul says, he does not say, I don't want you to grieve. He says, I don't want you to grieve like everybody else. He believes in grief, so does Jesus Christ. How do I know? Because we saw him grieve, didn't we? In John chapter 11, he very well knows it just a few moments, he is going to raise Lazarus from the tomb. But when he sees everyone griefs tricking around him and he realizes the loss that he's feeling in that moment, from the death of his personal friend, he solves like a baby. He grieves, but he doesn't grieve like one who doesn't believe the gospel. But he grieves. And too often I find Christian people exchange Christianity for stoicism and think that the Christian is the one who just grabs herself up by her bootstrap, stiffens it up her lip, and marches forward. And never wants to think about the grief, never wants to think about the pain, never wants to deal with a huge loss that has occurred in your life. That is not Christianity. That's paganism. It's actually stoic philosophy, it's grief philosophy. The second observation I would make about those who grieve without verse 14 would be those who simply fall into despair. And I have to admit that it affects me too. I suppose the most difficult thing, there are some difficult things in the past, but I suppose the most difficult one is to be conducting a funeral when there's absolutely no evidence that the person deceased knew anything of Christ saving me. And then to add to that, sometimes in these rare moments that has happened and the family bereaved also doesn't believe the gospel. And there may be some of you here who fit that very category and I have to say to you, I would be honored to be asked to do your funeral, but I would be profoundly grieved. And the sense of despair that comes with not knowing for sure about your future and really being quite skeptical about your prospects. I'm telling you there's nothing more despairing, nothing darker, nothing more abysmal than that experience and I've had it on several occasions. And I plead with you to be sure that you are not leaving yourself in despair and those who know your spiritual condition in despair. But some who have no hope, they don't stuff it, they can't stuff it, they are just absolutely miserable and all of life is sucked into the vortex of their misery and they can't just simply can't get over and go on because the reality of it is too great. In fact, I would have to say they're too intelligent just to stuff it. And I would say that some of the most intelligent people in the 20th century are the existentialists, no, let me go on. Some of the most intelligent people in the 20th century are the nihilists. They say nothing means anything because apart from the gospel I'm not quite sure that it does. Despair, stuffing or despair, but the third and more common strategy of one who doesn't believe verse 14 is this. We have a way as human beings to create paradigms that sue us and make us feel better. Thus we have all the religions of the world. There's something true about probably every single one of them because there is a religious instinct that God put in us. So we can create religions coming from that instinct. But the one that is true is the one that's revealed from above, not just inductively derived from below. It has to be revealed to us, namely Jesus Christ and the gospel. But all the rest of them are emerging out of something genuine in our hearts and authentic desire for eternal things and to understand ultimate questions in life. And so what we do is we create fables and myths that will make us feel better in a moment like that. I hear them all the time. Well, so and so will just be floating around in heaven like an angel with wings. Dear friends, the Bible says nothing about that. Certainly not floating around with the wings. And for someone who had no faith in Christ, well, they'll be reunited with grandma. Well, I hope not for grandma's sake. Or well, you know, everyone will just be relieved of their suffering here. It's just so much better to die. It's only better to die if you're with the Lord. If you're not with the Lord, it is infinitely worse to die. You're much better off being painful, being in pain and being in inflection and suffering. You're much better off to face the miseries of this life than to die without Christ. Oh, we create all kinds of fables and myths that to the society and help us to deal with our problems. But the Apostle says, don't be ignorant. Face the facts. Don't grieve like they do. Don't stuff it. Don't go into despair and don't create quasi-Christophegan fables. Let's look at reality. And he says, first one is this. As we said, verses 14 through 16. Jesus Christ has defeated death for those that we love who die in the Lord. Notice three things about them. First of all, in verse 14, they follow Christ. Let me tell you about your wife, about your husband, about your parent, your grandparent. Let me tell you about your little child who trusted in Jesus and went home. The reason I know that your loved one is going to be in the presence of Jesus in bodily form is because, as verse 14 says, we believe that Jesus Christ died in Rose again. Yes, we do. And believing that, I believe that your friend who is in Christ has died and is going to rise again. Why? Because he is following Jesus. And that's what it means to be his disciples. You follow him wherever he goes. He died. We died. He raised. We raised. This is what the Apostle says that you can count on it. That this is going to happen just as surely as Jesus Christ arose from the dead. So will your relative who is in Christ? So don't despair and don't stuff it. And don't create some angelic family. Here's what's going to happen. Jesus Christ died bodily. They did too. He was bodily raised. They will be bodily raised just like that he was. They will get their body back reconstituted into a resurrection body. And just as Jesus had a body that could be recognized, it wasn't a different body. He was a resurrected body. He walked through walls on a couple of occasions, but it was a body, a physical body. And our goal is not to be airy, fairy like angels flying around in wings. Our goal is to get back to the new Eden. A physical place. We're God dwells with us. We can touch him. We can feel him. We can hear him. We can see him. We get our eyes back and our ears back and our hands back. We can run and dance and embrace and love. We were made human beings and we shall forever be human beings in his presence. That's the goal. But for now when your loved one dies, they go into the presence of God in their spirit. Their soul goes to be with him. But when he returns, he will not only have regenerated their soul, now he will regenerate their body. Your body is not regenerate now. Your body is decaying just like your soul was before Christ regenerated you and gave you new birth. So he's regenerated your soul and it is moving upwardly toward God, but your body is unregenerate, it is dying. That's a picture of what your soul was doing before you met Jesus. But dear friends, Jesus Christ gives life, listen to this carefully, Jesus Christ gives life in the realm in which He is present. He is present spiritually so he gives spiritual life. Dear friends, one day he's coming back physically and he shall regenerate the entire physical cosmos. And he shall raise up his people with physical bodies because he's here physically. Nothing less would honor the great king. And so the apostle is saying they are following Jesus and he is coming back and you will notice then in verse 15, not only are they following Jesus, but they are preceding us. You shall all poor Aunt Martha went on to be with the Lord. Poor Aunt Martha, nothing. Let me tell you something about Aunt Martha. She's going before you do. She's going to see him and embracing before you do if Jesus Christ comes back before your death. Death is a graduation. Death defines the order of precedence. So when my father dies, he is now in the presence of God. When his body is raised, he'll be in the front of the line ahead of me. And so the apostle is saying don't worry about the loved ones, they can get the first glance. And don't worry that they're lost for heaven's sake, don't worry that they're lost in the crowd or forgotten. No, no, no, they're in the book, their name is in the book before yours. So he says, looking for a 15, according to the Lord's own word. Now we don't have this word in the gospel account. So the apostle Paul is giving us a word of Jesus that's not in the gospel. You know, that happened once in Acts when Paul quotes Jesus, is saying it is more blessed to give than to receive. You won't find that in the gospels. It's an Acts where Paul quotes and here Paul's giving us another word that didn't show up in the New Testament in the gospel accounts. And he said, according to the Lord's own word, we tell you, we who are still alive who are left till the coming of the Lord will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. Now this word coming in verse 15 is a very important word. It's the Greek word Parasia. Let me spell that. The Apostle says number one, they're following him and that's the reason they're going to have a new body and be glorified. Number two, they're ahead of you. So don't worry about them. Number three, he says, look at this reception verse 16 that they're going to get. Is this kind of a thing where, you know, they're going to be raised over lasting life and someone's going to come knocking on their tombstone? Excuse me. Wake up now. It's time to get up. Come on now and rouse in them and come on and you've got to wake up. Come on, Bobby. It's over now. Come on. No, no, no. Dear friends, this is the most enormous celebration, the most public proclamation you have ever witnessed in your entire life. The entire cosmos has groaning and travail for this day. They're waiting for it. They're groaning for it. Believe me, when it comes, they're going to get the announcement. Look what it said here. The Lord himself will come down from heaven. Now some of you from time to time may have gone to see an important person in your life. Maybe someone who had high office somewhere you went to visit the governor or maybe some of you have been in a white house and time to time. And you know, if you, if you go there, how does it work? Is the president waiting on the front stoop for you? Well, heaven's no. Of course he sends a first of all some security guard to get you and they take you to a waiting room and then they say, oh, tell us who you are. Oh, yes. Okay. You get registered. Well, be a few minutes to sit there right here. And then someone else comes from the next office and comes to get you and says, well, come on. Follow me and they take you and you're dealt with very kindly and very gentlemanly way. It's very gracious and hospitable. It takes about 20 or 30 minutes to get to the big cheese because he's got all these legates, you know, all these representatives who are nicely ushering you. And then when you get finally to the to the Oval Office, the secretary will say, well, now it'll be just a few minutes. He's an important dear friends. That is not the way this one's going to work. When you meet the king of kings and the Lord of Lords, he is not sending any angels, cherubing, seraphim, archangels. He himself will come down to get you. Personally, he will come for you. He will be on the front stoop waiting for his people. It's a personal public, very loud celebration. And Jesus Christ we are told here will give a loud command. He's not saying all of you will want to come now. Come follow me. He's not inviting any more dear friends. He's looking at that dead body in the grave. And he's saying, come out of there. Come out of there. Come out of there. And he gives a universal command to his entire church. Every brother and sister in the entire world, he commands them to come out. And they have reconstituted bodies. And Jesus Christ is glorified from this great act of salvation. That's what every redeemed eye longs to see. And all flesh shall see it together. And you will not be disappointed. Don't feel sorry for those who die in the Lord, as the Apostle says. For as John the Apostle said, he heard from heaven itself, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. So you say, well, what about myself? So they're blessed. Okay, fine. I still amiss him. Would you look at verse 17. The Apostle now is going to talk about how the work of Jesus Christ has destroyed the fear of death for you too. And in verse 17 the first thing that he says is that you will be reunited with your loved ones. Look at this, after that, when the dead in Christ will rise first, after the dead rise, after that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds. What's the Apostle say? You know, sometimes people ask me, pastor, would you tell me, am I going to recognize my wife when I get to heaven? Of course you'll recognize your wife. It took a moment, but they recognized Jesus too with his resurrected body. It was a little confusing. The body wasn't, you know, it didn't, it wasn't wrinkled anymore, you know what I mean? And so it takes your minute. You may have to pull out some old photographs, but you'll recognize it. And you will be reunited with one another. Dear friends, can you imagine what the reunion is going to be like when our 24 servicemen, or let go from China? Just watch it on the news, would you? Would you watch the embraces and hear all the bands play and look at all the yellow ribbons and watch the tears, especially would you please watch the tears coming down the eyes? You ain't seen nothing yet. When you see again the one you've loved and you realize this gospel is true, oh I thought it was true, but I always had my doubts. And when those are absolutely erased and you're in that beloved's arms again, can you feature to joy? And can you feature the honor and the glory and dominion that will be ascribed to Jesus Christ alone on that day? You will be reunited with him and it says you will be caught up. The word caught up is the word for rapture. People ask me sometimes, do you believe in the rapture? Believe in the rapture? You better believe in the rapture. All it means is to be caught up with the Lord. Now, some of you had very complicated schemes about when the rapture is going to come. Here it's really simple. Jew and Gentile, every believer is caught up with those who have died before Jew and Gentile. We're all caught up in that usher is in the eternal state. That's it folks. It's over and now happiness reigns forevermore with the rapture. Yes, we believe in the rapture. And where are we caught up? We're told in the clouds. What does that mean? In the cloud of God's glory, the shakana glory, the cloud of His presence hanging over the tabernacle, we're caught up together in that great glory. No sin, no impediments to those relationships. None of you struggling anymore about why your mother didn't love you anymore than she did, and why your father abandoned you and why your brother abused you. None of that's gone that is there anymore. And then lastly, not only are we reunited with loved ones, but we are especially reunited with the Lord. Look at this. We will be caught up together with Him in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Now this word meat is just as technical as the word coming. Remember we said coming was paracia, the coming of the Lord. It's a word for a king showing up and revealing his majesty. Well, this word also is a technical word, upon taseus, upon taseus, which is the word to go out and meet a visiting dignitary. Now this is what the apostle is saying. He is saying, when the Lord shows up, we will up in taseus. We will go out to meet him just like they did in the Greco-Roman world when a visiting dignitary announces that he's coming, and when he gets about five miles out of town, the dignitaries from the village go out to meet him and usher him back. And the apostle is saying, this is your role when he shows up, you're the ones to go out and meet the dignitary. And you will come with him when he comes to reign on the earth. It looks to some of you, I suppose, as though the apostle left us hanging in the air. Well, it even is, it's unspoken, it's assumed. You know that we meet him in the air, but we meet him there to usher him back. And we're the ones who like the little children on Palm Sun, they are saying, Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna to the son of David. He comes to claim his rule, his rightful rule over the new city of God, the New Jerusalem. And so we shall be forever with the Lord. Forever, never separated. One of the most gruesome realities about death is that it separates what belongs together. I took a vow, 28 years ago, that until we both, as long as we both shall live, we were meant to be together. We're not meant to be ripped apart. And I took a vow years ago that I would love the Church of Jesus Christ and promote her peace, unity, and purity. You are not meant to be ripped apart. And death and sin do that. But dear friends, Jesus Christ is going to reverse it. Those of you who are here on Good Friday, you will be able to observe what death did to Jesus Christ. Well, let me tell you something. That ain't nothing compared to what he did to death. He's totally obliterated separation and alienation. He's going to pull everything back together with no more separations. We will be with the Lord forever. And so dear friends, the apostle closes by saying, therefore encourage each other with these words. Don't just encourage each other with commiseration as important as it is. Don't just encourage each other by feeling each other's pain, which is very, very important and part of the Christian grieving process. But dear friends, let us encourage each other with the truth. Yes, we grieve. We weave. Sometimes we wail. But not like people who have no hope. And I'd like to congratulate you, if you are in Jesus Christ, for making a very solid decision in your life. I close in this story. Some years ago there was a law office, I think it was in Philadelphia, who was starting a new office in New York. And the lawyers in the Philadelphia office were sending some flowers on the opening day for the New York law office. They were associates. And so they sent some flowers and the florist made a mistake and delivered the wrong flowers of the wrong card. And the card said, you know, our sister condolences in this time of loss, which you know didn't make any sense. But then the florist realized that the other card went to the funeral home. And that card said, congratulations on your new location. Not bad. Let's pray. Father, thank you for revealing to us what's going to happen. And you would do it whether you told us about it or not, but you've been gracious to tell us about it so that we would have hope, so that we would be encouraged, so that we would have all that we need for life and godliness no matter how bad the circumstances. And so Lord, we pray for ourselves this morning that whether we face death or bereavement or major disappointments in life, as we deal with these things, honestly, facing reality, Lord, may we never grieve like those who have no hope. But may we be the wise ones who truly believe what you have revealed to us about the future. Help us to live for it. Help us to be that burgeoning choir who will sing in the New Jerusalem. This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.