9/8/18
Tom Lowe
Lesson 15: With No Sorrow Concerning Those Who Have Died
(1 Thessalonians 4:13-14)
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 (NIV)
13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.14 For 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.
Introduction:
The idea of the second coming had brought another problem to the people of Thessalonica. They were expecting it to happen very soon. They fully expected it to happen while they were still alive but they were worried about what was going to happen to those Christians who had already died. They could not be sure that those who had already died would take part in that great day when Jesus comes for His Church. Paul’s answer is that there will be one glory (Rapture) for those who are dead and those who are alive.
The coming of the Lord Jesus is the principle theme of both Thessalonian epistles. Paul is not presenting the doctrine of the Rapture as though the believers had not already heard of it; he is simply reminding them of the things he preached when he was with them in person. Evidently some of the weaker saints had misunderstood some of his teachings concerning the Lord’s return, and false teachers had attempted to cause the believers to think Paul had let them down.
In 5:1-3 Paul warns them that no man knows the hour or the moment of the Lord’s return. He will come as a thief in the night; and therefore they are to be ready at all times, like a good soldier - fully armed and ready for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.
Lesson 15
(4:13) Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.
Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death,
Timothy brought a full report to Paul from the Thessalonian church. Apparently some Christians had died since Paul’s ministry in that city. Perhaps some had suffered Martyrdom for their faith. The Good News Paul had delivered earlier included the wonderful truth about Jesus’ return to earth. But Christians in Thessalonica were still perplexed about what happens to Christians who die before Jesus comes back. The answer to this serious question becomes an incredibly encouraging message in Paul’s letter. Paul doesn’t want these young Christians to be fearful about God’s plan for any believer’s future.
“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed” is a phrase Paul uses often in his writings. In this way he calls sharp attention to the topic he is about to discuss. There is no excuse for ignorance on the part of believers, for every believer has in his heart the Teacher of the Word of God (Romans 8:9); and since the Spirit dictated the Word of God to holy men who wrote it down, He is the best teacher. In 1 John 2:27 we are told that we don’t need any man to teach us for we are taught of the Holy Spirit. “The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” Paul commands “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”
He refers to the dead as “those who sleep in death,” a common expression of his day, but now, since the resurrection of Jesus, a phrase filled with greater meaning. Dead people often look as if they are unconscious or asleep. Paul’s descriptive phrase appears to be a picturesque expression rather than a doctrine, as some would make it. The apostle speaks of the sleep of the body, not the sleep of the soul. The body of a believer sleeps in the grave, but his spirit goes into the presence of Jesus Christ: “We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8{1]).
To the Christian, death is sleep. No, the believer does not become unconscious in spirit; the body returns to dust, but the spirit goes back to God, who gave it. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. The beggar Lazarus died and was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom. Jesus said to the penitent thief on the cross, “Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” He used the term “sleep” when referring to the death of the body: “Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for her.” "Stop wailing," Jesus said. "She is not dead but asleep" (Luke 8:52). He made the same statement referring to Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha (John 11:11). Sleep indicates a restful condition of the body; in sleep the body relaxes and is rebuilt . . . but sleep is a temporary state. In the true sense of the word, the believer’s body is put in a grave - a crypt or sleeping chamber in a mausoleum - and it will remain there until the resurrection, at which time it will be raised an incorruptible body that will never die. Sleep, therefore is not permanent. The body returns to dust, only to be raised incorruptible when Jesus comes.
so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.
He tells them that they must “not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.” In the face of death the pagan world stood in despair. The finality of death filled the heathen with a feeling of blank despair. It was a sorrow that could not be relieved by any hope of a future reunion with their loved ones. They met it with grim resignation and bleak hopelessness. “The rest of mankind”?pagans, unbelievers?”have no hope.” In Ephesians 2:11-13 Paul described them thus: “Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision,” which is performed in the flesh by human hands— remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
Great men and wise men of that time expressed their opinion on this matter. They made comments like these and even engraved them on their tombstones:
• “Once a man dies there is no resurrection.”
• There is hope for those who are alive, but those who have died are without hope.
• When once our brief light sets, there is one perpetual night through which we must sleep.
• I was not; I became; I am not; I care not.
• “Irene to . . . good comfort. I was as sorry and wept over the departed one as I wept for . . . And all things whatsoever were fitting I did, and all mine. But nevertheless against such things one can do nothing. Therefore comfort ye one another.”
Then and now pagans grieve without hope. There is nothing in these men’s words that would be encouraging; they would instead be very discouraging and lead to a feeling of hopelessness. But unlike broken hearted pagans, I have tremendous hope built on this promise: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the 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” (4:16-17). That is the next great event in Jesus relationship to His Church.
Believers are not to be sorrowful. Paul is not saying that Christians never grieve; they have their sorrows like other people (Phil. 2:27). But they sorrow like those who have an abiding hope. The apostle is not contrasting a lesser grief with a greater one; he is contrasting those with hope and those without it. When the non-Christian world is characterized as lacking hope it is probably not the absence of the hope of an afterlife that is primarily in mind, but the absence of the knowledge of God, much like those Paul describes as “without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). But this shows itself strikingly in their attitude toward death. Few things are more impressing in the contrast between early Christianity and the surrounding pagan systems than their attitudes in the face of death. Nowhere outside Christianity do we find at this period any widespread view of a worthwhile life beyond the grave.
Death has been overcome by the risen Lord, and that has transformed the whole situation for those who are in Him. If a loved one dies in the Lord, that one would not return even if it were possible to do so, because when saints depart this earthly body they are immediately present with the Lord - and to be with Him is far, far better than anything earth can offer. Paul said, “I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far” (Philippians 1:23).
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[1} “We are confident, I say, and would prefer,” We are cheerful in our present state, being assured of future happiness; though we choose rather “to be away from the body”; that is, to die, to depart out of this world. The interval between death, and the resurrection, is a state of absence from the body, during which time the soul is disembodied, and exists in a separate state; not in a state of inactivity and sleep, for that would not be desirable, but of happiness and glory, enjoying the presence of God, and praising of Him, believing and waiting for the resurrection of the body, when both will be united together again; and after that there will be no more absence, neither from the body, nor from the Lord:
“and at home with the Lord”. This was promised to Christ in the everlasting covenant that all his spiritual seed and offspring should be with him. This he expected; it was the joy of this which was set before him, that carried him through his sufferings and death with so much cheerfulness; this is the sum of his prayers and intercession, and what all his preparations in heaven are on the account of. It is this which supports and comforts the saints under all their sorrows here, and which makes them meet death with pleasure, which otherwise is formidable and disagreeable to nature; and even desirous of parting with life, to be with Christ, which is far better.
14 For 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.
In this one short statement the faith of the believer is expressed in brief, understandable terms. The same message is found in Romans 10:9-10?the same verses I have used when revealing the way of salvation to the lost: “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.”
For we believe that Jesus died and rose again
We have hope in Christ. That is good news. That means that we do not face sin but grace, not punishment but pardon, not judgment but mercy, not defeat but victory, not death but life, not the temporal but the eternal. The resurrection of Jesus provides us unspeakable hope for the future. Paul exclaimed, “For 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.” What an intimate phrase, “fallen asleep in him.” Jesus surrounds them as they slip into rest. The Bible says, “Or if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Romans 14:8-9). Paul speaks of Christ not as sleeping but as dying. In the New Testament there are two distinct strands of teaching about death. On the one hand it is the most natural of all things and is an inevitable part of the conditions of our earthly existence. On the other hand it is completely unnatural, a horror, the result of sin. Christ in His death bore the wages of sin. He endured the worst that death can possibly be. Thereby He transformed the whole position of those who are in Him. It is because there was no easing of horror of death for Him that there is no horror in death for His people. For them it is just sleep.
If we believe that Jesus died on the cross and God raised Him from the dead, all the fundamentals of Christianity are wrapped up in this declaration of faith. If we believe that God raised up Jesus from the dead, we believe Christ is divine (Romans 1:4); we also believe that through His death we have justification (Romans 4:25), and that if Jesus was raised from the dead, His blood was divine and through His shed blood we have redemption and remission of sins (Colossians 1:14, 20; 1 John 1:7). The resurrection is the heart and soul of Christian faith. If we refuse to believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, our preaching is vain, our faith is vain, our hope is vain, we are of all men most miserable, and we are traveling day by day, step by step toward the lake that will forever burn with fire and brimstone. Read carefully 1 Corinthians 15:20-34, Romans 8:29, and Colossians 1:18.
Paul laid down a great principle. The man who has lived and died in Christ is still in Christ even in death and will rise in Him. Between Christ and the man who loves Him there is a relationship which nothing can break; a relationship which overpasses death. Because Christ died and rose again, so the man who is one with Christ will rise again.
and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
In the Greek, the words “fallen asleep in him,” read “them which fell asleep in Jesus.” Because of His death and resurrection from the dead, the sting and fear of death have been removed for believers. Those in the Thessalonian church who had died in the Lord had not fallen into death?but had simply fallen asleep in Jesus. To the believer, death has no sting, no power?and the fear of death is removed in the fact that Jesus conquered death and emerged victorious from the tomb. Therefore, all who fall asleep in Jesus are not dead, but are resting from their labors. The works they leave behind will continue to bear fruit until the Church is complete and caught up to meet Jesus in the clouds in the air, where we will receive our rewards at the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 14:13; 2 Cor. 5:10).
The resurrection was the great event that demonstrated that death really was conquered. The resurrection is the great triumphant act wherein the divine quality of the Christian gospel is conclusively demonstrated. In the light of the resurrection there can be no doubt that God was in Christ, and if God was in Christ, then, just as He raised His Son, so in due time He will raise those who “have fallen asleep in” Jesus. The resurrection is the guarantee of the Christian hope.
God will bring along with Jesus those Believers who have fallen asleep in Him?for the God who raised His Son from the dead will also raise up all believers who fall asleep in Jesus (2 Cor. 4:14; Eph 1:19-20).
The tremendous truth Paul is attempting to get across to the believers at Thessalonica is that Jesus died and rose again, and because He died and conquered death, He made a pathway through the grave. By this pathway true believers who fall asleep before the Rapture will be conducted into the place where they will be at rest until Jesus comes, and at that time they will appear with Him in the air.
