Sermon Notes on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

…so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

Thessalonica was a large, bustling port city in Paul’s day. It was filled with commerce and commotion. It was “connected” and influential in the Empire. As a center of the Imperial Cult, worship of the Emperor would have been everywhere. This city was full of risks for Paul and his companions who were hoping to persuade people that their gods (including the Emperor) were not real.

From this, Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, (probably written only 20 years or so after Christ’s resurrection) we know that he considered Thessalonica to be the key to bringing the Gospel to the whole Macedonian region. He was willing to take the risks.

We also know from this letter that Paul’s new church in Thessalonica was made up primarily of Gentile Christians, people who knew nothing of the Jewish Bible (what we call the Old Testament). Although it seems the people in his new mission embraced the Gospel enthusiastically and followed Christ joyfully, they were only a few months out from being pagans and polytheists of various kinds.

One of the misunderstandings that had carried over from their pre-Christian roots involved some frightening ideas about what happened to people after they died. If you’ve ever seen the Disney movie “Hercules”, you have some idea of what the old Greek and Roman religions believed about death, that the dead became a part of some shadowy, pathetic existence from which there was no escape.

Somehow, these new Christians had come away from Paul’s teaching with the idea that they were still in danger of ending up in this underworld. Somehow they thought that you would only be a part of the new life in the second coming and spend eternity with God if you were actually alive when Christ returned.

This misunderstanding didn’t show up when Paul first came to them and assured them that Jesus was coming again soon, but when their loved ones began to die and Christ’s second coming still hadn’t happened they began to be worried.

Would their moms and dads, their children and their good friends who had died, be stuck in the shadowy underworld while they met their Lord and Savior? Would they be separated forever?

Timothy was the one who reported their concerns and questions back to Paul and I am so glad he did. If Paul had never become aware of their struggles, he would not have been moved by the Holy Spirit to write these words which have meant so much to me over these past few weeks.

Listen to them again: But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

 

There is something in this text that I want you to notice. This isn’t Paul’s opinion. Sometimes he does give his opinion and he will let you know when he is giving his opinion, but this is something that he says is “…by the word of the Lord…” This is a teaching that was given by Jesus himself.

 

What Paul is saying is essentially this; there is no advantage to being alive when Jesus comes again. Those of us who are currently walking around in our bodies will have them transformed before our eyes as we meet Jesus in the clouds. Those who have died, whose souls have been in God’s presence in heaven, will be resurrected. They will be given new bodies, a brand new physical existence.

 

This is not going to be anything like our current physical existence. We are not going to have to worry about sickness or hunger or pain anymore. We will be like Jesus was after his resurrection, able to enjoy a physical existence without any of its current limitations. I would encourage you to look it up in your Bibles. Check out what Jesus was like after he rose from the dead and imagine yourself with that sort of existence. It’s very cool.

 

Something else I want to make clear; this text (in my opinion) does not describe the “rapture” idea that is so popular among my fundamentalist brothers and sisters. You will not be snatched out of your clothes (isn’t that a scary thought)  mooning all the unbelievers who are left behind to face a time of tribulation and testing. That idea of a separate rapture was constructed around 1830 by fundamentalist Christians who plucked verses from various letters and books in the Bible and strung them together to form a story that (in my opinion) doesn’t really exist in the Bible. As strange as it may seem to you, the book of Revelation has no “rapture” in it at all.

 

What Paul was trying to do with this text was to make his brand new Christian converts aware of the great hope of the Gospel; that our loved ones who have died are not lost. They have not gone into some shadowy underworld. They have not ceased to exist. What Paul passes on to us, from Jesus himself, is the truth that the Spirit has wonderful things planned for all of God’s children, even those who have died.

 

I think I understand why the Gospel was so compelling to the people of Thessalonica, even though it also must have seemed so foreign. Imagine; with power, healing, and the light of the Holy Spirit, being told that you are loved by the one true God, the creator of the universe. Imagine learning of Jesus in whom this God visited the people of earth. Imagine hearing the amazing words, that this same God wants to know you and love you forever, even beyond death. Imagine hearing that you are forgiven and saved forever by what God accomplished in Jesus Christ.

 

After embracing the Gospel, even after hearing Paul’s letter, the Thessalonian Christians still grieved. Many of them were martyred for their faith and died horrible deaths. Many of them saw loved ones suffer because they believed in Jesus. But they did not give up their new faith and they did not grieve as their pagan, Roman friends who had no hope. They knew that they would see their loved ones again. Not in a shadowy, pathetic, underworld, but in the light and joy of God’s presence. They knew that Christ was going to come again and give them all a new existence with a new heaven and a new earth. They knew that, in the end, they would be together forever in the presence of God.

 

I hope, I pray that you share in this belief. I hope, I pray that you will live every day in gratitude for this great promise. I pray that you too will encourage one another with these words. Amen