1 Thessalonians 4
McGeeCHAPTER 4THEME: The coming of Christ is a purifying hope; the coming of Christ is a comforting hope
1 Thessalonians 4:1
HOW BELIEVERS ARE TO WALKThis section teaches how the believers are to walk down here in light of the coming of Christ. It is bound up in that little word walk, which we find in this verse and again in the twelfth verse. This is the practical aspect of the hope of the coming of the Lord. We like to look forward to the day when we shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. But, my friend, in the meantime our feet are down here on the ground and we need to do some walking. We are to walk in a way that will please God. “As ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.” We should keep improving. We should grow in grace and in the knowledge of Him. The walk of the believer is very important. It is emphasized in many portions of Scripture, and it is the emphasis here. A believer cannot do as he pleases; he does as Christ pleases.
1 Thessalonians 4:2
In regard to their walk, we will find Paul giving some commandments to the Thessalonians. You will remember that the Lord Jesus also gave commandments. Some of these commandments are new commandments. Let me say this very carefully: The Ten Commandments have no part in a sinner’s salvation, nor are they standard for Christian conduct. The purpose of the Ten Commandments is to take us by the hand, as a pedagogue would take a little child by the hand, to bring us to the Cross and say to us, “Little fellow, you need a Savior!” The Ten Commandments are like a mirror which lets us see that we are sinners. The Ten Commandments were not given to save us; they were given to show us that we are sinners and that we need a Savior. That is their purpose. However, there are commandments for believers, and the standard for Christian conduct which they set is on a much higher plane than the Ten Commandments. In chapter 5 we will find twenty-two commandments for believers given. Now the question naturally arises: If man could not keep the Ten Commandments, how can he keep higher commandments? The Bible makes it very clear that man was not able to keep the Ten Commandments. The nation Israel transgressed these commandments as Simon Peter confessed: “And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe…. Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they” (Act_15:7, Act_15:10-11). Now if we can’t keep the Ten Commandments, how are we to keep any higher commandments of Christian conduct? Man cannot do it himself. This can be attained only by the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells within the believer (see v. 1Th_4:8). “For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.” Paul has some commandments for believers. We are not lawless. We should be disciplined, and we should be in obedience to Christ. It should be a love relationshipwe should be motivated by lovethe Lord Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (Joh_14:15).
1 Thessalonians 4:3
Sanctification is a very wonderful word, but I am afraid that it is greatly misunderstood. If you go through the Scriptures, you will find that sanctification has several different meanings. When it is used in reference to Christ, as it is here, it means that He has been made over to us sanctificationand you cannot improve on that! Therefore, it does not simply refer to a sinless state, but rather that we have been set apart for God. For example, Simon Peter speaks of the fact that “…holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2Pe_1:21). Now some of those holy men have life stories that don’t make them sound very holy!
Moses, for instance, was a murderer. David, who wrote so many wonderful psalms, was also a murderer. But they were sanctified, holy, because they had been set aside for God. Sanctification of the believer is a work of the Spirit of God. We need to review the threefold aspect of it, because this is so very important: Positional sanctification means that Christ has been made unto us sanctification. We are accepted in the Beloved, and we will never be more saved than at the moment we put our trust in Christ. We are never accepted because of who we are, but because of what Christ has done. This positional sanctification is perfection in Christ. Practical sanctification is the Holy Spirit working in our lives to produce a holiness in our walk. This practical sanctification will never be perfect so long as we are in these bodies with our old sinful flesh. Total sanctification will occur in the future when we are conformed to the image of Christ Jesus. Then both the position and the practice of sanctification will be perfect. The literal meaning of the word sanctification is to be “set apart for God.” The moment a lost sinner comes to Christ and accepts Christ as Savior, that person is set aside for God’s use. This is clearly taught in the Old Testament in the tabernacle. God taught the Old Testament believers great doctrinal truths through very simple, practical lessons. In the tabernacle there were vessels and instruments which were used in the sacrifices. After they had gone through the wilderness for forty years, those pots and pans and forks and spoons were pretty well beaten and battered. I don’t think they were very attractive.
I think that any good housewife would have said, “Let’s trade them in on a new set. Let’s throw these away.” However, God called them holy vessels. They were holy because they were set aside for the use of God. That is what made them holy. In the same way this applies to a person. When he comes to Christ, he is saved. He is redeemed; he belongs to Christ. Paul says, “This is the will of God, even your sanctification.” You have been set aside for a holy purpose, for God’s use. Every child of Godnot just preachers or missionaries or Christian workers, but every believeris set aside for the use of God. “That ye should abstain from fornication.” Don’t think it was only the Thessalonians who needed this admonition from Paul. Don’t think they were the only ones who engaged in sins, especially the sins of the flesh. Don’t think it was only in Roman times that idolatry involved sins of sex. Today we are seeing the rise of the worship of Satan and the practice of the occult. There are all kinds of amulets and rituals connected with such worship. Also there is astrology which seeks to tell people about themselves. And there is always sex involved in all of it. The great tragedy today is to hear of some Christian worker who has become involved in sexual sin. And, unfortunately, there are even churches that will defend a minister who has been guilty of such. We are people who are supposed to be set aside for the use of God! Paul says that you cannot be involved in sexual sin and at the same time be used of God. One cannot live in sin and be a preacher or singer or Sunday school teacher or an officer in the church. I don’t care who you are, if you do, you will wreck the work of God. Now, should a Christian strive for holiness? I think so. But you and I need to recognize that it is only in Christ that we can be acceptable to God. Paul says that we have been sanctified, brought to this high state, set apart for the use of God. Now what?
1 Thessalonians 4:4
All around these Thessalonian believers were the pagans who combined sex and religion. Sex was a religion among the Greeks. You could go to Corinth and find that out, but you didn’t have to go to Corinthyou could find it out right in Thessalonica. Paul says that we are to live a life that commends the gospel. The loose living that we find among some believers today brings the gospel into disrepute. Such people are not living for God or serving God. You cannot serve God and live in sin. He doesn’t accept that. “That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour.” The immorality that exists in our day is absolutely astounding. A very fine Christian leader who holds Bible classes on the campus of a college here in California told me that the boys’ dormitory is Sodom and the girls’ dormitory is Gomorrah. These poor kids know all about sex, but they don’t know about love. God says that the body should be saved for the marriage relationship, and this applies to men and women. There are all sorts of reasons given for the fact that there is so much unhappiness in marriage. The problem is that the marriage partners are not people who have been set apart for the use of God and who are faithful to each other in a love relationship.
When a person saves his body for marriage and is faithful to his partner, he is possessing his vessel “in sanctification and honour.” Such should be the practice of every child of God. Believe me, Paul puts it on the line.
1 Thessalonians 4:6
“That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter.” You have to be honest if you are going to be a child of God. “Because that the Lord is the avenger of all such.” I’ve lived long enough as a Christian and as a pastor to see this principle worked out in the lives of many believers. I’ve observed certain believers who have been dishonest in their dealings with others, and God is an avengerHe moves in and judges them.
1 Thessalonians 4:7
A child of God cannot continue in sin. The Prodigal Son may get in the pigpen for a time, but he won’t live in the pigpen.
1 Thessalonians 4:8
A child of God is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. He cannot continue to live in sin because the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. The time will come when the child of God will long for holiness in his own life. The Holy Spirit is the only means by which we can live for God. We see in Paul’s Galatian epistle that the child of God is not to indulge in the sins of the flesh. Instead, there should be the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit in the life. In Rom_8:3, Paul makes it very clear: “For what the law could not do….” Why? Is the Law wrong? No, the Law is not wrong; the Ten Commandments are not wrong. The problem is with man, not with the Law. Man cannot attain to the level of the Ten Commandments, nor can he live by the commandments in the New Testament. It is the Holy Spirit within the believer who has been given to him to enable him to live a life for God. God has given the Holy Spirit to every believer. He is not something to be sought after a person is saved. The moment a sinner trusts Christ, that person is indwelt by the Spirit of God. In Acts 19 we find that when Paul arrived in Ephesus, he found people who were professing to be Christians, but he saw that they were not indwelt by the Spirit of God. He asked them whether they had received the Holy Spirit when they were saved. They told him they had never even heard about such things; they had heard only of the baptism of John.
So Paul preached the gospel to them, and then they were saved and received the Holy Spirit. You receive the Holy Spirit only when you are converted and come to Christ. At that point the believer receives and is baptized with the Holy Spirit and is placed into the body of believers to function in it. A person may have many infillings of the Spirit after that, and I think we need a constant infilling of the Holy Spirit. It is only the indwelling Holy Spirit that enables us to lead holy lives.
1 Thessalonians 4:9
Love is the subject, and the statement he makes is rather amazing. A believer must have love for the brethren. It is a supernatural love that is taught of God: “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” It is not a theoretical kind of love, not just an abstract term. We have mentioned before that it cannot be just love in the abstract, but it must be love in the concrete. Such love can only be produced in the hearts of believers by the Holy Spirit. Notice that after Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit, brotherly love is the first thing that he mentions. He writes, “As touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.” I believe that love is the identifying mark of a child of God. My roommate in college and I could wrestle, fight, argue, try to get dates with the same girl, and all that sort of thing. One day we really had had a knock-down-drag-out fight. We had literally torn up the room. He proceeded to tell me what he thought of me, and it was not very complimentary. Then I proceeded to tell him what I thought of him and that wasn’t very complimentary either. All of a sudden it occurred to me, “Look, you are the greatest proof that I am a child of God!
One of the evidences that a person is a child of God is that he loves his brother. John emphasizes it and it is in 1 Thessalonians that we are taught of God to love our brother. In spite of the fact that you are the most contemptible person I have ever met, the most unlovely person I have ever met, I love you!” He looked startled and began to laugh. “You know, I love you, and you’re lots worse than I am!” This man is now a retired preacher, just as I am. Once in a while we have an opportunity to see one another. He is still a very ornery individual, but I love him because he is a child of God. And I think he loves me. That is the proof that we are the children of God.
1 Thessalonians 4:10
Love for the brethren is an area for growth and development. Very candidly, some of the saints are not very lovely. Someone has put that fact into this little jingle: To dwell above with saints in love Oh, that will be glory. But to stay below with the saints I know Well, that’s another story. These Thessalonians did love the brethren, but evidently their love had not reached the summum bonum of life. They weren’t perfect in their love, and there was still room for improvement. There are going to be some personality conflicts among the saints. It may be better for such people not to be together too much nor to put arms around each other and walk together. That doesn’t mean we should hate them. We can still love them as the children of God. For example, I know a minister whose methods I absolutely despise, but I can truthfully say that I love him. I know of no one who gets up and presents Jesus Christ as wonderfully as this man does, and I love him for it. The real test is our love for the brethren. If you want to put the blue litmus paper down in your life to test it and find out whether or not you are a genuine believer, this is the place to put it down: Do you love the brethren?
1 Thessalonians 4:11
“That ye study to be quiet.” That is an interesting commandment for Christians. We have all kinds of schools today to teach people to speak. Every seminary has a public speaking class. Perhaps they should also have a class that would teach their students to be quiet. A lot of saints need such a course! A lady went to a “tongues meeting,” and the leader thought she was interested in speaking in tongues. He asked her, “Madam, would you like to speak in tongues?” She answered, “No, I would like to lose about forty feet off the one I have now!” We need to study to be quiet. That is a commandment. “And to do your own business"that is another good commandment. It means to mind your own business. “Tend to your own knitting” is the way I used to hear it as a boy. Keep your nose out of the affairs of other people. This is good advice for Christians. “And to work with your own hands, as we commanded you.” I believe that every Christian should have some type of activity whereby he is doing something that is tangible for God. That would be a wonderful thing.
1 Thessalonians 4:12
“Walk honestly"this is also something that the saints of God need to do today. It will gain the respect and the confidence of mankind. Our walk should be honest before God and man. I have letters from several organizations which use methods to raise money that seem very questionable to me. Certain organizations have men out contacting people who have become senile, attempting to get them to make their wills over to their organizations. That is one reason you ought to make your will before you become senile. There are unscrupulous people who are out to get your moneythere is no question about that. A child of God cannot do such questionable things because we are to “walk honestly toward them that are without.” That means that all dealings with unbelievers are to be scrupulously honest. God will judge us if we do not walk honestly.
1 Thessalonians 4:13
THE COMING OF CHRIST IS A COMFORTING HOPEWe come now to the next section of this epistle, a section which has been labeled one of the most important prophetic passages in the Scriptures. It teaches the imminent and impending coming of Christ for His church. That does not mean the immediate or soon coming of Christ. Paul never uses an expression like that. He did not want people to assume it would be in their own lifetime or shortly afterward. It has been more than nineteen hundred years now. But when we say that the coming of Christ is imminent, we mean that it is approaching or that it is the next event on the agenda of God’s program. Let me illustrate my point. One time when Mrs. McGee and I flew to Florida on a new DC-10 from the Los Angeles International Airport, we had a friendly captain who began to talk to us soon after our flight had begun: “The weather is lovely here in Southern California as you can see. The weather in Miami, Florida, is also very good, and we expect it to be nice when we arrive there. We fly over Texas, and of course nobody knows what the weather will be there, but we should have a good flight today. Our next stop is Miami.” Now there was not a single passenger who jumped up, grabbed his luggage, and rushed for the door because the captain had said, “Our next stop is Miami.” That stop was imminent.
In other words, we would not make any other stop before that one. It would be five hours before we would arrive at Miami, but we were prepared for that stop because it was imminentit was the next stop. The difference between waiting for the stop at Miami and waiting for the coming of Christ for His church is that we knew that Miami was five hours away. We don’t know how far away the coming of Christ is. It could be five hours or five days or five weeks or five months or five years or five hundred years. We simply do not know. Still, it is imminent; it is the next event. Paul makes it very clear that he believed in the imminent return of Christ. In verse 1Th_4:15 of this chapter he says, “We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord.” Paul believed that the Lord Jesus could come in his lifetime. He did not say or believe that He would come in his lifetime, but he said that He could come. This was the attitude he expressed as he wrote to Titus: “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Tit_2:13). There are those who accuse Paul of changing his position on the imminent coming of Christ as he himself grew older. Remember that this epistle to the Thessalonians was his earliest letter. Did Paul change his theology? When he wrote to the Philippians he was an old man, a prisoner in Rome, and he said: “For our conversation [citizenship] is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Php_3:20). Paul, at the end of his life, was still looking for Him. In other words, Christ’s coming was imminent. Paul labeled this coming of Christ for His church, when we are to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, the rapture of the church. There are those today who hold a different viewpoint. They say the Bible does not teach the Rapture and that one cannot find that word in the New Testament. I insist that it is there. It is found in this chapter in verse 1Th_4:17: “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.” The Greek word translated as “caught up” is harpazo. It means “to catch up or grasp hastily, to snatch up, to lift, to transport, or to rapture.” Rapture is just as good a word as caught up.
It is a matter of semantics, whichever word you choose to use. The fact is that the Bible teaches that believers in Christ are to be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Paul taught the rapture of the church. Now if you would like, you could say you believe in the harpazothat’s the original Greek word, and it means “rapture” and it means “caught up.” Nonetheless, the point is that the rapture of the church can take place at any moment; it is the next happening in the program of God. Now I want to make a very startling statement about this passage of Scripture. Actually, the primary consideration here is not the Rapture. The precise question Paul is answering is: What about believers who have died before the Rapture has taken place? We need to review the background of this epistle in order to understand why this question was so important to the Thessalonian believers. Paul went to Thessalonica on his second missionary journey. “…three sabbath days [he] reasoned with them out of the scriptures” (Act_17:2). That means that Paul was there less than a month. In that month’s time, he performed a herculean task. He did the work of a missionary. He preached the gospel, converts were made, and he established a church. Then he taught these new believers the great truths of the Christian faith. It is interesting that he even taught them of the rapture of the church. When I was a young preacher in a denomination, they didn’t have much to say about prophecy. Very candidly, I don’t think the ministers knew very much about it. They would give an excuse, saying, “You shouldn’t preach on that. That is deep truth and should be given to mature saints. It shouldn’t be given to new believers.” Well, it’s too bad that Paul didn’t know that, because he hadn’t been with the Thessalonians for a complete month and yet he was teaching them prophecy. In fact, when we get to the second epistle we will find that he taught them about the Great Tribulation and the Man of Sin, the Antichrist who is to come.
Paul ran the whole gamut of prophecy for these Thessalonians. It is nonsense to say this is not to be given to new believers. It is to be taught to them, and Paul is the demonstration of that. It is clear that Paul taught the Thessalonians that the rapture of the church might occur at any moment, that it was imminent. Then Paul left Thessalonica; he went to Berea, established a church and was there for some time. Then he took a ship and went over to Athens. We don’t know how long he was there either. He was waiting for Timothy and Silas to bring word from Thessalonica. They didn’t come, and he went on down to Corinth.
After he was there for awhile, Timothy and Silas came. They came with questions from the Thessalonians to ask of Paul. So Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians to encourage them and to answer their specific questions with regard to the rapture of the church. During this unknown interval of time after Paul had left them, some of the saints in Thessalonica had died. A question arose in the minds of the believers. Had they missed the Rapture?Obviously Paul had taught them the imminent coming of Christ, or this question would not be pertinent at all.
Paul had told them that the Lord Jesus might come at any moment. These saints had died, and the Lord hadn’t comehad they missed the Rapture? What would happen to them? Paul gives the answer to this question in this epistle. To us the question the Thessalonians had is not meaningful in the same way as it was to them. That is because you and I live nineteen hundred years this side of 1 Thessalonians, and literally millions of believers have already gone down through the doorway of death. Therefore, most of the church has already gone ahead, and a small minority remains in the world. Paul had taught the Thessalonians that the coming of Christ was imminent, and this is still what we believe today. Between where we are right this moment and the coming of Christ for the church it is tissue-thin, which means it could happen any momenteven before you finish reading this pageor the coming of Christ could be way down yonder in the future. There is a grave danger today in setting dates for the coming of the Lord. Some are doing that, and it is dangerous because they do not know when He will return. The Lord said that we do not know the hour He will come. They might pick the year correctly, but they surely won’t pick the hourI don’t think they will even hit the year. When they set dates, they are robbing believers of the opportunity of looking for Him to come. Now the Thessalonians were concerned about the saints who had died before the Rapture had taken place. We need to keep that in mind as we go through the rest of this chapter. “I would not have you to be ignorant.” I love the way Paul says that. We have seen it before in the Corinthian epistles. When Paul says, “I would not have you ignorant, brethren,” you can pretty well put it down that the brethren are ignorant. Paul just didn’t come out and say so in a flat-footed and crude way. He is more polite and diplomatic. I would say that he did it in a very Christian way. “Concerning them which are asleep.” Paul is referring to the death of the body. This never refers to the soul or the spirit of man, because the spirit of man does not die. We shall note that as we move through this section, but first I want to mention several reasons that the death of the body is spoken of as being “asleep.”
- There is a similarity between sleep and death. A dead body and a sleeping body are actually very similar. I’m sure you have been to a funeral where someone has remarked that So-and-so looks just as if he were asleep. Well, in a way it is truethe body of a believer is asleep. A sleeper does not cease to exist, and the inference is that the dead do not cease to exist just because the body is asleep. Sleep is temporary; death is also temporary. Sleep has its waking; death has its resurrection. It is not that life is existence and death is non-existence, you see.
- The word which is translated “asleep” has its root in the Greek word keimai, which means “to lie down.” And the very interesting thing is that the word for “resurrection” is a word that refers only to the body. It is anastasis, and it comes from two Greek words: histemi which means “to stand,” and ana, the preposition, “up.” It is only the body which can stand up in resurrection. C. S. Lewis in his Screwtape Letters uses a little sarcasm to ridicule the liberals who believe that the resurrection is a resurrection of the spirit and not of the body. He asks what position the soul or the spirit takes when it lies down in death, or what position the spirit takes when it stands up in resurrection! If you want to believe in soul sleep, you must explain how a soul can lie down and then stand up. Obviously “asleep” refers to the body. The same Greek word for “sleep” is used here as is used when referring to a natural sleep when the body lies down in bed. Let me give you two illustrations of this. “And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow” (Luk_22:45, italics mine). Imagine that Peter, James, and John went to sleep at this time of crisis! The word is the same word that is used here in 1 Thessalonians. Again, in Act_12:6, “And when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains: and the keepers before the door kept the prison” (italics mine). One thing we know for sure about Simon Peter is that he didn’t have insomnia!
Even at times of great crisis, he was able to sleep. Again, the same word for “sleep” is used, and it is the natural sleep of the body. 3. The Bible teaches that the body returns to the dust from which it was created, but the spirit returns to God who gave it. Even the Old Testament teaches this. In Ecc_12:7 we read: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” “The dust"that is our body. God told Adam, “…for dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return” (Gen_3:19). It was the body that was taken from the dust, and then God breathed into man the breath of life, or the spirit, you see. It is the body that will go to sleep until the resurrectiononly the body. The spirit of a believer will return to God. The spirit or the soul does not die, and therefore the spirit or the soul is not raised. Only the body can lie down in death, and only the body can stand up in resurrection. This is quite obvious when Paul says that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (see 2Co_5:8). The body is merely a frail tent that is laid aside temporarily in death. “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2Co_5:1). The Greek word for “tabernacle” here is skenos, which means “a tent.” The bodies we live in are tents. I have news for you: You may live in a home that cost $250,000, but the place where you really live is a little tent. God put every single one of us into a tent. It is not a matter of some living in a hovel and some in a mansionwe have all been given the same kind of tent. You could reduce the body to its component chemicals, and I am told the whole amount would sell for about $4.00, although inflated prices may push it a little higher.
Everyone of us lives in a tent that is worth about $4.00! It can be blown down at any moment. If you don’t believe that, step in front of a car and you will find that your tent will fold up and silently slip away. Our bodies are actually very frail. “For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven” (2Co_5:2). “For we that are in this tabernacle do groan …” (2Co_5:4). We groan within our tents. Have you discovered that? I met an old man at the corner bus stop many years ago. He must have been pretty close to eighty. He was swearing like a sailor. I said to him, “Brother, you won’t be here very long, and you are going to have to answer to God.” “How do you know I won’t be here very long?” he asked. “God is telling you so. He has put gray in your hair, a totter in your step, a stoop in your shoulder, and a shortness of breath when you walk. He is trying to tell you that you won’t be here much longer. You are living in a little tent down here, and you are going to be slipping away soon.” I am told that when President Adams was an old man, a friend inquired about his health. He answered that he was fine, but the house he lived in was getting rickety and was not in good repair. That is the kind of body each of us is living in, my friend. When I was a young man, I could bound up and down the steps to my study. Today it is different. I come down the steps one at a time, and there is no more bounding. My knees hurt, and I groan. My wife tells me I groan too much, but I tell her it is scriptural to groan. Paul said that we groan in these bodies. These old bodies are going to be put into the grave, and there they are going to sleep. The spirit goes to be with the Lord. Paul wrote, “Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)” (2Co_5:6-7). Now we are at home in this body; this is where we live. People don’t really get to see us, you knowwe are hidden in our bodies. Sometimes people who come to rallies or services when I speak, tell me they have heard me on the radio and they have come just to see how I look. I always feel like saying, “You really haven’t seen me. All you have seen is a head and two hands sticking out of a suit of clothes. You don’t see meI live within this body.” This house I live in isn’t in such good repair, but that’s where I will live as long as I walk on this earth. Paul goes on to say, “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2Co_5:8). I can’t think of anything lovelier than that. If you should attend my funeral, I wouldn’t want you to come by and say that I look so natural. Friend, I won’t even be there. You will just be looking at my tent that I have left behind. It’s my old house, that has been put to sleep. I will be gone to be with the Lord. At the resurrection our bodies will be raised up. Many years ago in the city of New York (in fact, it was way back in the day when liberalism was called modernism, back in the 1920s) they had an argument about whether resurrection was spiritual. The liberal even today claims it’s spiritual. He doesn’t believe in bodily resurrection at all. A very famous Greek scholar from the University of Chicago read a paper on the passage from 1 Corinthians 15: “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body” (1Co_15:44). His paper put the emphasis on the word spiritual. He concluded by saying, “Now, brethren, you can see that resurrection is spiritual because it says it’s spiritual.” The liberals all applauded, and somebody made a motion that they print that manuscript and circulate it. Well, a very fine conservative Greek scholar was there, and he stood up. When he stood, all the liberals were a little uneasy because he could ask very embarrassing questions. He said, “I’d like to ask the author of the paper a question.” Very reluctantly, the good doctor stood up. “Now, doctor, which is stronger, a noun or an adjective? A very simple question, but I’d like for you to answer it.” He could see the direction he was going and didn’t want to answer it, but he had to say that a noun is stronger, of course. “Now doctor, I’m amazed that you presented the paper that you did today. You put the emphasis upon an adjective, and the strong word is the noun. Now, let’s look at that again. ‘It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.’” He said, “The only thing that is carried over in resurrection is the body.
It’s one kind of body when it dies, a natural body. It’s raised a body, but a spiritual body, dominated now by the spiritbut it’s still a body.” And they never did publish that paper. They decided it would be better not to publish it. May I say to you, just a simple little exercise in grammar would have answered this great professor’s whole manuscript and his entire argument which he presented at that time. Daniel is another writer who spoke of the death of the body as “sleep.” “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan_12:2). Dust will go back to dustthat’s the body; but the spirit goes to God who sent it. 4. The early Christians, adopted a very wonderful word for the burying places of their loved onesthe Greek word koimeterion, which means “a rest house for strangers, a sleeping place.” It is the same word from which we get our English word cemetery. The same word was used in that day for inns, or what we would call a hotel or motel. A Hilton Hotel, a Ramada Inn or a Holiday Innthey are the places where you spend the night to sleep. You expect to get up the next day and continue your journey. This is the picture of the place where you bury your believing loved ones.
You don’t weep when you have a friend who goes and spends a weekend in a Hilton Hotel, do you? No, you rejoice with him. The body of the believer has just been put into a motel until the resurrection. One day the Lord is coming and that body is going to be raised up. Now let us return to our consideration of the actual text of verse 1Th_4:13: “That ye sorrow not, even as others [the rest] which have no hope.” The pagan world had no hope; so for them death was a frightful thing. In Thessalonica they have found an inscription that says: “After death no reviving, after the grave no meeting again.” The Greek poet Theocritus wrote, “Hopes are among the living; the dead are without hope.” That was the belief of the ancient world. It is pretty pessimistic and doleful. Believers are not to sorrow as the pagans. I have officiated at many funeral services during the years of my ministry, and I can always tell if the family is Christian. I can tell by the way the people weep whether they have hope or not. Christians weep, of coursethere is nothing wrong with that. Paul never says that believers are not to weep. What he does say is that we are not to sorrow as the others which have no hope. A Christian has a sorrow at the death of a loved one, but he also has hope.
1 Thessalonians 4:14
I want you to notice that Paul says that “Jesus died and rose again.” It doesn’t say Jesus sleptHe died. How accurate this is! There are three kinds of death in Scripture. There is physical death, which is the separation of the spirit from the body. That is what we ordinarily call death. Adam didn’t actually die physically until 930 years after the Fall. Then there is spiritual death. Paul says that to be carnally minded is death, which is separation from God. This is what happened to man in the Garden of Eden when God said that man would die in the day he ate of the fruit. Man became separated from God. Adam hid from God; he ran from God when God came into the gardenthere was now a separation between them. Adam did die the day he ate the fruita spiritual death. Paul describes this spiritual death in Eph_2:1: “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” A famous judge toured around this country some years ago giving a lecture entitled “Millions Now Living Will Never Die.” There followed him a famous Baptist preacher whose lecture was “Millions Now Living Are Already Dead.” And they were deadspiritually dead. The third death is eternal death. That is eternal separation from God. This is the second death described in Rev_20:14.
1 Thessalonians 4:15
“By the word of the Lord” is Paul’s assurance that he is giving God’s answer to their question. Paul knows that they had been worrying about those who had died before the Rapture and wants them to know that the dead in Christ will have part in the Rapture. “We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.” The word prevent is an old English word meaning “precede.” Those who are alive at the time of the Rapture will not be going ahead of themin fact, the dead in Christ will be going first.
1 Thessalonians 4:16
“The Lord himself shall descend from heaven.” I love thatHe won’t be sending angels. When He comes to the earth to establish His Kingdom, He will send His angels to the four corners of the earth to gather the elect, who will be both Israelites and Gentiles who enter the Kingdom. However, there is no angel ministry connected with the rapture of the church. Angels announced the birth of Christ, but how was He announced? As the Son of David, the newborn King. He was announced as a King.
The wise men wanted to know where they could find Him who was born King of the Jews. In contrast to this, at the establishment of the church on the Day of Pentecost, there were no angels. The Holy Spirit Himself came down. When the Lord takes His church out of the world, the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven. There will be no angels. Angels are connected with Israel but not with the church at all. He will descend from heaven “with a shout.” That is the voice of command. It is the same voice which He used when He stood at the tomb of Lazarus and said, “Lazarus, come forth” (see Joh_11:43). “The voice of the archangel.” Now wait, isn’t that an angel connected with the Rapture? No, it is His voice that will be like the voice of an archangel. It is the quality of His voice, the majesty and the authority of it. “The trump of God.” Will there be trumpets there? No, it is His voice that will be like a trumpet. Can we be sure of this? In Rev_1:10, John, who was exiled to the Isle of Patmos, wrote, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet.” He turned to see who it was, and he saw the glorified Christ. It is the voice of the glorified Christ that is like the sound of a trumpet. That ought to get rid of all this foolishness about Gabriel blowing his horn or blowing a trumpet. I don’t think Gabriel even owns a trumpet, but if he has one, he won’t need to blow it. The Lord Jesus is not going to need the help of Gabriel. Do you think the Lord Jesus needed Gabriel to come and help Him raise Lazarus from the dead? Can you imagine the Lord Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus saying, “Gabriel, won’t you come over here and help Me get this man out of the grave?” How absolutely foolish! The Lord Jesus will not need anyone to help Him. When He calls His church, their bodies will come up out of the graves.
1 Thessalonians 4:17
Again, “caught up” is the Greek harpazo, meaning “to grasp hastily, snatch up, to lift, transport, or rapture.” It is going to be a very orderly procedure. The dead will rise first. Here comes Stephen out of the grave. It may be that he will lead the procession since he was the first martyr. Then there will be the apostles and all those millions who have laid down their lives for Jesus. They will just keep coming from right down through the centuries. Finally, if we are alive at that time, we will bring up the rear of the parade. We will be way down at the tail end of it. Most of the church has already gone in through the doorway of death.
1 Thessalonians 4:18
Does he say, “Wherefore terrify one another with these words”? Of course not. My Bible says, “Wherefore comfort one another.” It not only means to comfort in the usual sense of the word, but also to instruct and to exhort one another and to talk about these things. My friend, Jesus is going to take His own out of this world someday! What a glorious, wonderful comfort this is! The bodies of the dead will be lifted out. Then whoever is alive at that time will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air. So shall we ever be with the Lord. In fact, we shall come back with Him to the earth to reign with Him at the time He sets up His Kingdom.