Sermon 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Death is Not the End

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard

New Covenant Presbyterian Church

Sermon 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Death is Not the End

November 12, 2017

Last Sunday an atheist with a deranged mind overwhelmed by evil opened fire on a group of saints engaged in the worship of God.   The members of First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, had gathered for worship on Sunday morning.   A violent man entered the sanctuary and began shooting.   26 Christians martyrs died.   And these saints are now with the Lord Jesus in heaven.  Our Christian hope is the promise of eternal life.   Evil will not defeat us.  We will get to this, but first, let’s pray.     

“Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)
When Paul was pastoring the church at Thessalonica he told them about Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and how this meant the Jesus had defeated death giving Christians the promise of eternal life.    But as time passed people in the Thessalonica church began to die, as happens today.  They were concerned because they thought that as believers they would not die because Jesus had defeated death.  They believed the promise of eternal life for all believers.   So, why were members of the church dying?   Where they not faithful enough?  Maybe they weren’t really Christian.

This concern of their got back to Paul who must have been thinking about this very subject.   What happens to Christians when they die?   And where does the promise of eternal life come in?  Paul responded to the concerns of the Thessalonian church in the Book of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.   Let’s go there as see what happens after we die.

1Thessalonians 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. 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. 15 According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 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. 17 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. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Most people grieve the loss of loved one.   It is a most natural thing to do.   I can still the day, over 30 years ago now, when my mother died unexpectedly from a heart attack.   This put a hole in my life that just wouldn’t go away.   I needed to find a familiar place for comfort.  And so for the first time in years, I returned to church and attended worship every Sunday.

For non-believers, grief over the death of a loved one never stops.   It may fade a little over time.   But non-believers experience loss with no hope of eternal life, no hope of ever seeing their loved one again.   And so their grief goes on forever.     Without hope in eternal life grief never goes away.

We Christians, on the other hand, have hope.   Of course, we experience loss when a loved one dies.   But along with our loss, there is also hope in eternal life.    And this hope reduces our grief.   We recover from grief sooner, because of our hope in the resurrection from the dead.

You see as Christians we do not believe that we are immortal.  We will not live forever.   We will one day die.   But our hope is that death is not permanent, just as Jesus’s death was not permanent.  He was raised on the third day after his death.   And so too will we be raised after our deaths to eternal life.  Paul says that a Christian’s death is like sleeping.   And if we are sleeping then one day we will all wake up.  

So there is no reason to grieve the death of a Christian for a long time. Death is not final.   After we die, we will live again. Our bodies will be resurrected, recreated by God and we will live again.  And we know this because Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

Our model for all of this is Jesus.   Jesus died, was executed on a cross.   His dead body was placed in a tomb.   A large stone was rolled in place to seal it.   But then, on the third day Jesus was alive, resurrected.   He was not a ghost.  Jesus had a physical body which was recognizable.   People recognized Jesus after overcoming the shock that he was alive.   And Jesus, in this physical, resurrected body Jesus ascended to and currently lives in heaven.  

So what happens when a Christian believer dies?  At death our bodies and our souls separate.   Our bodies are then buried or cremated.   It really doesn’t matter what happens to our bodies after we die.  But our souls, our memories, our preferences, our talents, our identities go immediately to heaven.   There, in heaven, we live with Jesus until the resurrection.  Then in the resurrection, Jesus returns to earth.    God recreates our bodies from the dust of the earth.   Our souls are joined to our resurrected bodies.  And we live again, for eternity.   We live together with each other and Jesus in the Kingdom of God on earth forever.  This is our Christian hope.

All Christians should be encouraged by all of this.   Our future, as believers, is assured.    We will go to heaven when we die.   We will be resurrected from the dead when Jesus returns to Earth.   Never doubt this truth for yourselves and your loved ones.  All who believe in Jesus Christ will be with him in heaven and when he returns will be resurrected with him to eternal life.

One day I went to visit a member of my church.  He was near death and under hospice care.  I arrived at the hospice early one day not knowing if Cliff was still alive or not.   The nurse told that he was not expected to wake up.   And she told me that his hearing aids had been removed so there was no way he could hear me.   So I sat next to the bed and began reading the 23rd Psalm.   As I read the psalm Cliff woke up.   He recognized me and asked, “Pastor, where do I go next.”   I said, “Cliff, your next stop is heaven!”.   With that, he smiled and went back to sleep never to wake up again.  It was a miracle that Cliff could hear these words of hope from his pastor.   I have no doubt that Cliff is enjoying heaven today.    And I have hope that one day I will see Cliff again, not in the diseased body he lugged around the last few years of his life, but in a new resurrected body which will allow Cliff to harvest oysters off the shore of Greenbackville VA.   In fact, I hope to see resurrection all the believers I have buried over the last ten years I have been a pastor.

Paul’s purpose in writing this to the Thessalonians was to comfort them as they grieved the deaths of loved ones.   And we too are comforted by these words when our loved ones die.   As Christians, we are so filled with hope in the resurrection that our grief will be short and replaced anticipation of a glorious future.   Sadly non-Christians have no such hope.    They don’t believe in the resurrection.   They don’t believe in heaven.   They have no hope.   Death is the end.  It leads to nothing.   And without hope, Atheists grieve for the loved ones.  Their grief goes on and on.   It is so sad.  But not so with us.   Our grief is replaced by hope in the resurrection from the dead.

“William Willimon has written that when he was a young pastor in rural Georgia, a dear uncle of one of his congregation’s members died suddenly, and though this uncle was not a member of Willimon’s church, he and his wife decided to attend the funeral. So Willimon and his wife drove to a back-woods, off-brand Baptist church for the funeral one sunny afternoon.
It was, Willimon said, unlike anything he had ever seen.  They wheeled the casket in and soon thereafter the pastor began to preach.  With great fire and flaying his arms all over the place, this preacher thundered, “It’s too late for Joe! He might have wanted to do this or that in his life, but it’s too late for him now!  He’s dead.  It’s all over.  He might have wanted to straighten out his life, but he can’t now.  It’s finished!”
As Willimon sat there, he thought to himself, “Well, this is certainly a great comfort for this grieving family!”  The minister continued: “But it ain’t too late for you! People drop dead every day, so why wait?!  Too late for Joe but not for you!  Make your life count, wake up and come to Jesus now!”
“Well,” Willimon concluded, “it was the worst thing I ever heard.’ Can you imagine a preacher doing that to a bereft family?'” he asked his wife in the car on the way home.  “I’ve never heard anything so manipulative, cheap, and inappropriate!  I would never preach a sermon like that.”  His wife agreed: it was tacky, calloused, manipulative.
“And of course,” his wife added, “the worst part is that everything he said was true.” (http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/proper-27a/?type=the_lectionary_gospel)

And that’s the point.   Christians who believe in Jesus have the hope of everlasting life in the resurrection from the dead.   Atheists do not believe any of this and are therefore condemned to the nothingness or possibly a ticket to hell.  Let’s talk with the atheists we know, our loved one who doesn't believe in Jesus.   Let them know about Jesus love and forgiveness.   Tell them about your hope in everlasting life in the resurrection.   And tell them that all they have to do is believe in Jesus and accept his offer of eternal life.   The offer is so good and it costs so little.  To encourage people to believe and hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.     

The saints in Texas who died last Sunday are most assuredly in heaven with Jesus today.   They will be with him when he returns to earth.   They will receive new resurrected bodies and will be reunited with their loved ones.   Don’t grieve for them.  Be filled with hope in everlasting life.  Let’ pray.

“Eternal God, our help in every time of trouble, send your Holy Spirit to comfort and strengthen us, that we may have hope of life eternal and trust in your goodness and mercy, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”   (Book of Common Worship p.906)