There’s an old story about a business that was relocating to smart new offices and flowers were delivered on the first day. The owner read the out the card to the staff; “Sincere regrets, rest in peace.” He was a bit cross, so he called the florist to complain. The florist apologised but said “Well, it could be worse. There is a funeral somewhere today with a note on the coffin saying “Congratulations on your new location”!
As we continue reading through 1 Thessalonians, we notice a change of subject when we get to chapter 4, verse 13 where Paul starts to talk about grieving the death of loved ones and the second coming.
So, to start with, I’m really going to cheer you all up by talking about dying. Last week I talked about sex, this week I’m talking about death. One member of the congregation, who shall remain nameless said to me on Monday, “Sex, death – it’s the same sort of thing isn’t really?” I said “Speak for yourself!” Actually, I say I’m going to talk about dying. Really I’m talking about living - until the Lord calls us home.
Attitudes to Death in Culture
Whether we regard death with resignation, or with defiance, or with denial it is the one experience we will all face (unless the Lord returns first). One of the founding fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, famously noted that “nothing in the world can be said to be certain except death and taxes.” Some wit replied “Yes, but death doesn't get worse every year!”
Death is an unpopular topic of conversation. So it’s not surprising that there is widespread ignorance about it. So it’s no wonder that Paul starts off by saying in v13 “We do not want you to be uninformed [or ignorant] about those who sleep in death.”
These days it’s common to hear ideas about reincarnation or (especially when children die) becoming an angel. Or people say things like “Granddad’s looking out for us now from up there”, or “Auntie Mary hasn’t really gone, it’s just like she’s in the next room or is in the wind.” I’m sure you’ve heard this kind of thing at funerals.
Probably the most common thing I hear from bereaved relatives is “Uncle Tony would have wanted you to be happy, so we’re going to wear bright colours and celebrate his life instead. Don’t be upset,”
People get through bereavement as best they can of course and I don’t say this critically, but I think grieving properly, with real tears, is important and it can even be unhealthy to bottle it all up and force a smile, however well-intentioned that is.
In fact the Bible says as much. Remember how Mary Magdalene wept when she couldn’t find Jesus’ body? She needed closure and she needed an emotional outlet. Jesus openly wept when he heard about Lazarus’ death too.
I just feel that some of you might need to grieve today. Something that might have been bottled up for years. There is great healing and release in grieving. The Bible says there is a time to mourn and a time to dance and I just feel that he wants to bring healing to someone here today in that way. If you feel tears welling up in the service, I want to urge you to come forward for prayer ministry later.
So notice Paul doesn’t say here, “We don’t want you to grieve.” He says in v13 “We don’t want you to “grieve like the rest, who have no hope.”
In Bible times, as today, there were many ideas doing the rounds about death.
A second century letter written by someone called Irene has been discovered. The letter reads: “I was sorry and wept over the departed one… but nevertheless against such things one can do nothing. Therefore comfort one another.”
The tone is resignation. It speaks quite pathetically about those whose business it is to console - but who have no consolation to offer. There’s nothing good you can do or say.
It’s common to hear that sort of approach today. The British Humanist Association’s slogan is “For the one life we have.” Because humanists don’t fear hell or yearn for heaven, they try to make a virtue of having no hope, no expectation, no wish, of anything beyond the grave. So when someone dies, all you can really do is dispose of the body, say a few nice things, and support each other as best you can. And that’s it.
Christian Attitudes to Death
I’ve accompanied Christians in their dying days many times I have marvelled at the peace that descends on a believer as death approaches. Christian funerals have a starkly different feel to them.
I’m sure I’ve told you before about the man in Buckinghamshire who was given weeks to live by his doctor. He went home and sent out invitations to all his non-Christian friends. The invitations said: “Come and stay with me. Come and see how a Christian dies.”
Archaeologists have unearthed another letter, also dating back to the second century, but this time about Christian funerals, which says this: “If any righteous person among them passes from the world they rejoice and offer thanks to God; and they escort the body as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby.”
There is one reason, and only one reason, why Christian attitudes to dying and death are so different; the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
The Bible often speaks of the death of believers as sleep or rest. Paul uses that language three times in this short passage.
But the New Testament never speaks of Jesus’ death as “falling asleep” lest anyone get the wrong idea. It insists repeatedly that Jesus actually died; he breathed his last, he surrendered his spirit and was independently certified dead. His lifeless corpse was physically handled by several witnesses as it was removed from the cross and laid in a tomb.
And God didn’t wake him from sleep; he raised him from death, on the third day. The tomb was empty. Why was no corpse ever found? Because there wasn’t one.
Why didn’t the disciples understand it or believe it until they encountered Jesus face to face? Why the penny drop only then? Because they were genuinely shocked by it and never expected it.
Hundreds of eye witnesses saw him alive. Not one person, not one, out of hundreds who were stoned, beheaded, crucified and thrown to the lions for preaching the resurrection, ever admitted to staging an elaborate hoax. Because they knew it to be true.
Verse 14: “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.”
If you’re a Christian, don’t fear death. It’s just a doorway into a new reality that outshines anything this life has to offer.
People often say to me “I’m not afraid of death, but I am anxious about the process of dying.”
Well, that’s fair enough, I think. Even Jesus shuddered at the thought of the agony he knew he would have to face on the cross: “Father,” he said, “if it is possible, take this cup from me.” He endured far more than you and I ever will. He is Emmanuel, God with us, who does not abandon us, especially at the hour of death.
Sometimes God gives departing believers glimpses of what is to come (partly I believe to encourage us who remain.) I mentioned the evangelist Billy Graham last week. He once once said this: “Just before dying, my grandmother sat up in bed, smiled, saying “I see Jesus and he has his hand outstretched to me. And there is Ben and he has both of his eyes and both of his legs.” (Ben, Billy Graham’s grandfather, had lost an eye and a leg in war.)
Sceptics might say it’s just delirium or wishful thinking. But there are several books out at the moment by people who claim to have had foretastes of heaven during a serious illness only to make a full recovery. Two are written by medical doctors, one of whom trained at Harvard.
Another is the testimony of a small boy who recovered from a life-threatening operation. He recovered and later revealed information he couldn’t possibly have known - such as meeting a miscarried older sister who he had never been told about. There is a remarkable convergence in each of these testimonies.
Let that encourage you. Nevertheless, as we all journey towards death, don’t put your confidence only in anecdotes and testimonies; ground your faith in the well-attested historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins [and] those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost… But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.”
Whether he returns first or calls us home beforehand, the Bible says “we will be with the Lord forever.”
The Lord’s Return
But what if the Lord returns first?
In 1988 there was a publishing sensation. A hitherto unknown author called Edgar Whisenant wrote a book called “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will be in 1988.” 4.5 million copies flew off the shelves. In January 1989 it didn’t sell so well. Undaunted, the author wrote a sequel the following year with the title “The Final Shout – Rapture Report 1989.”
This, despite Paul writing in 1 Thessalonians 5.1, “Now about times and dates we do not need to write to you…”
Why didn’t Paul need to write about times and dates? Was it because Edgar whatshisname had worked out it was 1988? No. The reason is, v2, “You know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”
How many of you have been victims of a burglary in your home or a car theft? I am sorry that happened to you. It happened to me once and it’s traumatic isn’t it? Now keep your hands up please if that break-in was pencilled into your diary beforehand? No one.
The point is that nobody knows when the Lord’s return is going to be. Even Jesus, who knows pretty well everything there is to know, said “No one knows the day or the hour; not the angels, not the Son, only God the Father knows.” It’s a secret.
And if God the Father doesn’t even tell God the Son when it is, why did four and a half million halfwits imagine that God shared the information with Edgar whatshisname? They just didn’t think it through did they?
There are four things we know about the Lord’s return from this passage. Firstly, a thief will come in the night; secondly, a woman will go into labour; thirdly, people will have to stay awake and not get drunk, and fourthly; people will need to put body armour on. As Tom Wright says, “Don’t try that one at home!”
Of course, all four are metaphors. What do they mean?
The thief in the night doesn’t mean that Jesus is like a light-fingered criminal. It just means that his return will be come out of the blue and without warning. And for those who do not belong to him, who are not prepared for it spiritually, it will be distressing.
So v2 says “While people are saying Peace and Safety, destruction will come on them suddenly and they will not escape.
What about the woman in labour metaphor? That means that everything else in life will become completely unimportant by comparison. When the contractions come and the waters break no expectant mother says, “I’ll just hang the washing out, do the week’s shopping and take the dog for a walk …” No, everything fades into the background as the focus is placed on the packing the bag and getting to the hospital!
A couple of years ago, I went to Saltburn for the day with Joseph and Benjamin. We went walking along the coast toward the Jurassic cliffs, looking for fossils and shells. After a while we looked up and found that the tide had been coming in really quickly and we were about to be cut off. We ran as fast as we could, back towards the main beach, some of the way through ankle deep water and we just made it.
When Jesus returns it will be like that. People will be so absorbed in what they’re doing, that that they won’t notice the signs of the times and they won’t be spiritually prepared for Christ’s return.
So thirdly, it says in v6-7 to be watchful and sober, not sleeping or drunk. To be asleep here means to live as if there will never be a judgement day. To be watchful means living holy lives, like I was talking about last week.
We’ve all heard stories of husbands-to-be waking up after a stag night wondering why they’re dressed in a tutu and chained to a lamppost on a roundabout – and realising that their drinks must have been spiked with laxatives!
I’m sure I don’t need explain to the good churchgoing people of Eaglescliffe why getting hammered is not all that clever! The point here is that when people’s senses are dulled to the reality around them, when people are spiritually desensitized, they’ll be unprepared for the Lord’s return.
And fourthly, Paul mixes his metaphors one more time by saying in v8 “let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.”
I remember travelling around Italy when I was a teenager and visiting a site a few miles south east of Naples. On 24th August in the year 79, the place I was standing was buried under 20 metres of ash and debris that came down from nearby Mount Vesuvius. The towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii (where I was) were completely destroyed.
One of the witnesses of that event was a 17 year old called Pliny who later wrote these words: “You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants and the shouting of men; some were calling for their parents, others their children or wives, trying to recognise them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives and there were some who prayed for death in their terror.”
It’s apocalyptic isn’t it? When Jesus returns it will be just as sudden, just as unannounced. There will be no time to reconsider. For some, who are not ready, it will come as a terrible shock.
It could be that meeting the Lord “in the clouds and in the air” is also a metaphor. The air, in Greek thought, was a way of talking about the spiritual realm. So in Ephesians 2.2 the devil is called “the prince of the power of the air.” It could mean that we will share Christ’s spiritual victory as he returns visibly. Or it could actually mean we will ascend physically to meet him and accompany him as he returns to Earth from heaven. Honestly, I don’t know. It doesn’t affect the status of my relationship with God. I’ll know when it happens.
But I know this: practically every passage in the New Testament that speaks of the Lord’s return makes this point: because no one knows when it will be, be ready at all times. Suppose he were to return tomorrow? Or today? How would he find you living? Are you ready to meet him? Live each day prepared to welcome Christ.
There are several models for the exact unfolding of events surrounding the Lord’s return. I remember learning about it all in Eschatology lectures, plotting it all out on charts. Was I an a-millennialist, a post-millennialist or a pre-millennialist? If I was a pre-millennialist, did I favour the classical post tribulation model or was I of the dispensationalist pre-tribulation rapture school?
To be honest, I have friends in all of these theological camps. I could spend hours going through the different schemes and systems and explaining to you why I think what I think - but it’s much more edifying for you if I close with a few bullet points of what pretty well all Christians agree on. Theologians might hold different opinions on the sequence of events leading up to Christ’s return, but they all say this:
· Christ will come in glory to judge the living and the dead
· He will return physically and visibly and all the world will see it and know it
· There will be a loud command and the sound of a trumpet
· Believers who are still alive will meet him when he returns
· Dead believers in Christ will rise and be given new resurrection bodies
Conclusion
But listen; whether Jesus returns or calls us home first, only one thing is essential to know when you leave this building this morning – are you ready or not? Get right with God today. Make sure you’re ready.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 2nd December 2012
