1 Thessalonians No.7 Dead or alive when Jesus comes?

1 Thessalonians 4, reading from verse 13. 1 Thessalonians 4, 13. 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 words, 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 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 nor 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. And the second reading is in 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

1 Corinthians 15, commencing at verse 50. 1 Corinthians 15, 50. I declare to you brothers that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Listen, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true. Death has been swallowed up in victory.

Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God. He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Praise his name. Thank you, John, and we pray God's blessing on the CPO literature that's gone out throughout our country for this Easter time. Any excess gifts that were put through my office or to me personally in regard to carrying the advert exploiting this GPO franking, I think we could well send on to Paul, this brother in Southport, did you say, John? Southend.

Always get these Souths mixed up. We'll get the money to the right place. Let's sing, shall we? Three, nine, six.

The king of love my shepherd is, whose goodness faileth never. I'm nothing like if I am his, and he is mine forever. One of the choicest of hymns.

The paraphrase is from, of course, the 23rd Psalm. Three, nine, six. Please be seated and have your Bibles open at 1 Thessalonians and chapter 4, where I return you to the passage that we were considering last week from the 13th through to the 18th verses.

And I'm deliberately coming back to this portion of God's word for two reasons. First of all, because I think it's so necessary for us to have an understanding of just what is in store for us immediately and in the long term as Christian people. And secondly, because I don't think that I clearly got across all that I wanted to say last week and had a number of folk who obviously had been quite excited by this passage of scripture.

And I want to take up the interest that has been engendered and feed it more with information from this and from other passages from the word of God. A number of friends were asking me a little more about what faces us immediately and ultimately as far as our Christian pilgrimage in life is concerned. And you might recall that the Apostle Paul actually is responding to two questions in this particular passage and the following verses in the fifth chapter, put to him by the Thessalonians who are very young Christians and didn't, of course, have the full complement of scripture that you and I enjoy.

The questions were namely these. Look, Paul, since you were with us in Thessalonica, some of our number have died. Why did they die? Did they die because they were particularly sinful? Because we remember, Paul, that when you were preaching here in Thessalonica, as when you preached in Athens, you said that the Lord Jesus would come back and receive his church for himself.

So why have they gone? And Paul, are they in some way worse off spiritually than we are who are still alive and are looking for the physical return of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus? And then they put in another major question. Paul, when Jesus comes back, what will the day be like and what will the circumstances be that materialize, that develop just before his coming? Well, we return to the first question that he's answering about those who've fallen asleep, those who've died, and the Lord Jesus has not returned to the earth. What about them? Now, let's break off by saying this and quoting another preacher, a preacher of a previous century.

There is nothing more certain than death, nothing more uncertain than dying. I will therefore be prepared at all times for that which may come at any time. That's sound advice, isn't it, from yesteryear? I will be prepared at all times for that which may come at any time.

There were folks in Paul's day who had died and the Lord Jesus hadn't returned. There's an increasing number of people who've gone to be with the Lord, and yet the physical reappearance of our Saviour has not occurred. It seems, of course, when the apostle was actually writing this statement that he had in mind that fond, forgivable hope that he too, the great apostle Paul, might still be around when the Lord Jesus returns.

According, verse 15, according to the Lord's own work, word we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not foresee those who have fallen asleep. And yet later on in some of the epistles that he wrote in the years that were to come, he identifies himself amongst those who will probably be dead before the Lord returns. And yet when he makes mention of this, he doesn't with any sense of depression at all because he has in mind what immediately will befall him at his death and what is the experience of those also who have died.

Now obviously since those days, thousands, millions of people are in this category. They've died and yet Jesus has not physically returned. So the apostle has to deal with this situation and he does so, as I say, with great insight and with great feeling.

And the important thing that he starts off by assuring them and ourselves is that actually spiritually there is no great value in being present when the Lord comes as opposed to those who have died before. He uses the word proceed, at least it's translated proceed in the NIV version of the Bible. We will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.

The employment of that very word indicates that Paul is not saying that these people who have the glad experience of being present when Jesus returns are in some way superior to those who've gone on before. Though it's quite clearly an honourable thing to hope that you will be in this category. Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone here in the tab happens to be present on the day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns? The Jews had an expression, how will you do in the in the swelling of the Jordan? It was a metaphor.

It meant how will you cope when you have to pass through death? How wonderful not to have to face the swelling of the Jordan. But if you do, says the apostle, as far as God's ultimate purpose is concerned, in no way are you disadvantaged over against those who will be present physically when the Lord returns to this earth. Now there are a number of parallel passages of scripture in which the apostle makes reference to the great return of our Lord Jesus and to the fact that there will be those who have died ere that event occurs and what will happen to them.

In this particular chapter, 1 Thessalonians 4, reference of course is made to the general resurrection. And you discover exactly the same teaching from the birth of our Lord Jesus in the fifth chapter of John's gospel and the 28th verse. Do not be amazed, our beloved Lord says.

Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all those who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out. Those who have done good will rise to live and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned. And so our Lord goes on to say that this is authority that he has from his Father, that he will be responsible for that great shout of rejuvenation when those who are dead in Christ, their physical bodies, shall be raised.

You get exactly the same teaching, do you not? Let's turn to it in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, towards the end of that passage of scripture that John was reading to us earlier. Verse 50, 1 Corinthians 15, I declare to you brothers that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery.

We will not all sleep, but we will all, those who have gone to sleep in Christ, those who are alive at his coming, we will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed. I could go on and give you further examples of scripture and the interesting thing is this, that whenever you read these great declarations of our Lord's return, there's no concept of anything that's secret, a secret removal of the church from the earth at all.

There is even no concept of an additional reign of Christ before the final and great ultimate reign. Here is the teaching of scripture that when our Lord Jesus returns to this earth, when he does so, the dead will be raised, 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 to be with him in the clouds, to be with them in the clouds.

So here is our Lord Jesus when he is speaking to Mary and Martha, you remember, at the graveside of Lazarus, he's reassuring them that they've no need to be over worried about their brother or their brother's eternal well-being. In fact, our Lord Jesus says to them, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me shall shall never die.

There is a sense, a very wonderful sense, in which it is impossible for the Christian, for the believer in Jesus Christ, to go into a state of non-existence. Now hear me, because this is the teaching of the Jehovah's Witnesses and it's the teaching of many of the so-called modern sects. This idea that the soul, that the person, dissolves into nothingness until some great event, the second coming of Christ.

The Bible most assuredly does not teach that. What it does say is this, that you and I in our mortal bodies will know the deterioration of the body that encases our soul. You're aware of that, aren't you? Cruelly, I would suggest, if you're not, have a look in a mirror.

There is that about you which is not quite what it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. You see, we have been made in the image of God, but that image of God which we bore has been marred by sin. When God created Adam, he creates him from the dust of the earth, not so? And then he breathes into Adam his own spirit, the breath of life.

I've never really been convinced that man is a threefold agent, body, soul, and spirit. I've never really understood the distinction between soul and spirit. It seems to me that the two are used interchangeably in the Word of God.

But when Adam is condemned for his sinfulness and the divine judgment is proclaimed, dust you are and unto dust you shall return, that was not spoken of the spirit. It was not spoken of the soul. Adam will start to die.

He will start to die physically, but there is that in Adam which is indestructible. His soul will return to the Lord who made it. Now here in Scripture, whenever you get reference, as I was highlighting last week, when you get reference to the dead in terms of sleep, it is invariably the description that is used to project the condition of their body, not the condition of their soul.

I had the unpleasant in one sense, glorious in another experience of seeing a friend, Ivy Sims, a lady who I loved, who was here last Sunday morning, gave me some money actually for the advert of the Jesus is Alive poster in the local press. Now when she was discovered, it was just as though her body was asleep, but her soul is not asleep. Her soul has gone to be in the presence of the Lord who made her.

The apostle refers, the apostle Paul refers to our body in 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians and chapter 5 as being a tent. It talks about the taking down of our tent. He appreciates, does the apostle, that his own sojourn on this earth is somewhat limited, chapter 5, 2 Corinthians verse 1. Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

You see the point? He's been living his life in a very reckless fashion in terms of burning up energy and his physical health and strength, an ambassador of God. He knows that he's not what he used to be. He talks in the previous chapters about his own body wearing out, but he says in this opening verse of the fifth chapter of 2 Corinthians, we know that when the tent has gone, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

And says the apostle, if you drop down later on in that chapter, he speaks about wanting to be with the Lord. Verse 6, therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. Reverse the logic of that.

If you're away from the body, where must you be? At home, at home with the Lord. What happens then to people who die before our Lord Jesus Christ visibly returns? I argue there is no other teaching in scripture than this. They go into the presence of the Lord.

You see, the interesting thing when you read the Old Testament is how it complements the new, how it illustrates the new. Now there are two or three remarkable deaths or departures from this world that are described very clearly for us in the Old Testament, and they are so that we might get some example, some illustration as we come into New Testament scriptures. I give you, for instance, the person of Enoch.

You remember this man who lived in the days of the early patriarchs. You can read his story in the book of Genesis. He was a remarkable man, a spiritual man of great caliber, of great outstanding ability to the extent that God, his maker, enjoyed fellowship with him.

And does God enjoy fellowship with you incidentally? He sought Enoch out and Enoch walked with God. You remember that grand declaration, on and on and on and on with the Lord, day after day, year after year, mile after mile. And then the moment came when the Bible says Enoch was not.

Why? Because God took him. Where? Into oblivion? Into non-existence? The whole of the context recoils against you making that conclusion. To quote a little story of Campbell Morgan, which I've used before.

He rehearses the language of a little child. God was walking with his friend Enoch. They went for many, many miles.

And they went so far that particular day when God said to Enoch, it's nearer to my place than yours. Come back with me. Enoch walked with God and he was not.

For God, for God took him. Don't you see, my dear friend, that in a very wonderful way we have an illustration of what lies for us, what is there for us at the point of death. Your body, your physical body, it carries with it, as you will agree, the marks of sin and corruption.

Paul refers to his normal body in Philippians 3 in the language of the authorized version as our vile body. The NIV softens it and talks about our lowly body. Paul makes it very plain as he writes in the first Corinthian epistle in the 15th chapter, this corruption, this corruptible body, it cannot, it cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

It must put on incorruption. This mortal must put on immortality. So for you and for me to enter into the presence of God immediately before the second advent means what? Well, the apostle you remember in 2 Corinthians 5 is talking about the dissolution of his tent.

You could almost translate the Greek there, the taking off of his top coat. Earlier this morning I was down on the seafront and I got my tracksuit on. Now it didn't seem appropriate to retain my tracksuit to come here because, I mean, you're such a sophisticated people.

You would take offense. And so what did I do? Well, I took off my tracksuit and I put something on which happily is a little bit more acceptable within the sacred sanctuary of Worthing Tabernacle pulpit. Now the apostle, when he's talking about death and the intermediate state of being with the Lord and yet not having experienced the second advent of Christ and the rejuvenation of the body that's been left behind, he talks about being robed, putting on something else in a sort of temporary fashion whereby he and all who have gone in front of him in the presence of the Lord, where they exist and enjoy the presence of God, they're clothed spiritually in the robe of righteousness, they are immediately conscious in God's presence.

But in one sense it's an intermediate state. They're still waiting, they're still crying before the throne of God, how long? How long before the Lord Jesus returns? How long before he institutes his government in a visible, physical fashion on planet earth? How long, O Lord? But until that moment, they're there with the Lord, absent from the body, present with the Lord. Not the final state, not the climax of it all, but nonetheless, so much more an advantage over against our knowledge of God here on this earth that Paul, when writing to the Philippians says, I'm in a strait betwixt two, whether to cling on to life as it now is or to go and be with Christ, which is far better.

You see, it is impossible for a Christian ever to be without Christ. Did you hear that? Your relationship with Christ can never be broken. That's why the apostle, when he's writing to the Thessalonians in the opening verses of this chapter, uses the remarkable description of the church, to the church of the Thessalonians, in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, in God the Father.

You see, this is where they're domiciled. This is where their habitat is. This is where, spiritually, they have their being.

This is where they live. This is the company that they enjoy. Jesus on one occasion says to his Father, Father, it's my will that they may be where I am.

I'll never leave them. I'll never forsake them. He'll not forsake you in life.

He won't forsake you in death. He will be there to receive you into his immediate presence, even before the second coming of our Lord Jesus. Now, I can demonstrate this continuation of your existence after death, before the second advent, very easily by bringing, again, to your attention, two remarkable examples that you get in the New Testament of Old Testament characters.

You remember our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration. There appeared to him, with him, in the company of three disciples, two of the leading characters of the Old Testament. One is Moses, a man who had a remarkable funeral, for God was the undertaker.

Do you remember that? God buried Moses. And in one sense, it seems to me that Moses stands for, if you please, the category of those people who die before the Lord Jesus returns. That's the example.

Those who sleep, to use the metaphor, in Jesus. Those who have died, who have passed through the Jordan before the second appearance of our Lord Jesus. But then there is, on the other hand, Elijah.

And do you remember, he had a most remarkable funeral. In fact, he didn't have a funeral, did he? Elijah is another example, like Enoch, of a man who never died. What happened? Well, God sent his chariot.

Do you remember the story? You remember the Negro spiritual if you don't remember the story in the Old Testament about the chariots that are coming. Oh, one of the great English folk songs which speaks about the chariot of God coming at the end of our life. Now, here's a question for some who perhaps got some problem as to whether the soul continues to exist after death.

Where did Elijah's chariot go? Could you tell me that? If it went into nothingness, then what was the point of sending the jolly chariot in the first place? He was taken into the presence of the Lord. And here, you see, are the two examples from the Old Testament. Paul is speaking of two categories of people.

Those who die before the second coming of the Lord, those who are alive at the second coming of the Lord. Those in the Moses category, those in the Elijah category. And what's it going to be like when the Lord comes? Well, it'll be this snatching away as the chariot came for Elijah in years gone by.

Now, Campbell Morgan, a great Bible teacher of yesteryear, he understood this very well. And he tells us, with the reference to Elijah and Moses at the forefront of his mind, looking upon the scene on the transfiguration, he says, looking upon them, something is learned about the condition of the departed, something about their knowledge and something about the central interest of their existence. Notice, he goes on, that they were in a conscious state.

Their minds still follow the same line as when upon the earth, though now they saw and understood clearly. Matters at which Moses had looked in his own economy through a glass darkly, he now sees face to face. Gleams of truth that had fallen upon the soul of Elijah and compelled obedience, even while he knew there were infinite possibilities beyond which he could not fathom, now fell in full radiance upon his mind.

And Morgan goes on. It is evident that Peter, James, and John knew Moses and Elijah. How they knew them, of course, cannot be told.

But the fact that they knew them suggests that the identity of personality is maintained in the world that lies beyond. And in some wonderful manner, men know those whom they never saw. Men will certainly then know their own loved ones when they meet them in the Father's home.

The holy mount lights for a moment, the land where our loved ones wait for us. They are still human, they are still conscious, and they are what they were. We shall know them.

So, the apostle, he takes up this whole idea of the continuation of being of the folk who've died before the advent of the Lord, and he tells the Thessalonians to console themselves, not to be over-troubled. Encourage yourself with these words. And rightly so, because Christianity speaks to this condition like no other religion speaks.

You see, the philosophies of yesteryear, the religions that were around when Paul was preaching the gospel, by and large, they got no idea of the continuation of being, of immortality whatsoever. But the apostle Paul has, you see. So, he writes to these Thessalonians and he says, comfort yourself with these words.

And when the writer of the Hebrew epistle, you recall, speaks about the heroes of the Old Testament, those of whom this world was not worthy, he talks about these men who were strangers and pilgrims, who were looking for a city, whose maker and builder is God. Now, he doesn't cast the argument in terms of they're still looking. They haven't found it.

He takes you right to the city, as though they're there. And then he refers to the spirits of the righteous, those who have gone on before, those Christian dead people, dead physically. They're in the presence of the Lord.

Indeed, he refers to the church. He gives it a name. He calls it the church of the firstborn, which is in heaven.

Now, do you understand, you Thessalonians, you people in Worthing, when you die in Christ, before he has returned, your corruptible body goes into the ground and it returns to dust, but not your soul. Your soul goes on to be with the Lord. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.

Why not? Because thou art with me. I, David, that take us further. He's with us to what degree? Well, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

And David, yes, go on. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord. When, David? In a millennia to come, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Psalm 73. Whom have I in heaven but thee? And who does my soul long for on earth besides thee? I but go on, Esau, and tell us about death and your hope after death. Nevertheless, says Esau, the Lord will ultimately receive me to myself.

And he talks about the glory that there is for him at the point of death. These were Old Testament men who discerned something of what was in store for them at the point of death. So, my friend, let me conclude.

This is the Christian hope, that either way we win. Whether we die before Christ comes, or whether we're alive at his coming, whether we're present at that cosmic moment when the trumpet sounds, where the dead are snatched up, when we are born along to be with the Lord in the air, when we receive him and bring King Jesus back onto this earth, as Paul was received by the Roman Christians and brought to the capital city, you remember, in his missionary journeys. That's the metaphor behind this particular idea of being raised to be with the Lord in the air.

He then comes with his own, with his saints, those who've already died, and with the saints who've been caught up to meet him. And in that moment of creation that is equivalent to anything that there was in the opening chapters of Genesis, God will usher in his new heaven and his new earth and the whole of the universe as the Apostle Paul in Romans 8. It groans for that moment. It waits for its redemption.

It waits for the consummation of all things. Ours is a glorious future. We're caught up in the purposes of God.

Whether we die, we are the Lord's. Whether we live, we are the Lord's. Therefore, says the Apostle, comfort one another with these words.

Blessed comfort, blessed consolation. Are you packed up and ready to go, if necessary, or to remain, spending out more time living for Jesus in this world? That's the challenge of this passage of scripture. Let's sing about it, shall we, again.

The sands of time are sinking. The dawn of heaven breaks. The summer morn I've sighed for.

The fair sweet morn awakes. 502, hymn written by a lady in memory of the ministry of a preacher by the name of Rutherford from Scotland. 502.

For this mortal must put on, and this corruption must put on, incorruptible. O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory? Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, and all God's people said. God bless you.