CALL TO CONFESSION

Psalm 33:18-22

18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,

   on those who hope in his steadfast love,

19 that he may deliver their soul from death

     and keep them alive in famine.

20 Our soul waits for the Lord; 

   he is our help and our shield.

21 For our heart is glad in him,

    because we trust in his holy name.

22 Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, 

    even as we hope in you.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION

Loving heavenly Father, yours is surpassing greatness, goodness, and grace. Your steadfast love greets us each morning, and your faithfulness is our constant companion. We thank you for the many blessings you so kindly give us.

Yet we mourn our sin and ingratitude. We have not put our hope in you, nor have we waited patiently for you to act. We have trusted creation rather than the Creator and looked to failed idols to make us glad. We have weighed others down with our demands and sinned against them when they fell short. Father, forgive us. We do not excuse our sin, but confess that we have broken your holy law.

Thank you that when we repent and run to you, you will not cast us off or condemn us, for Jesus died in our place. You do not count our sins against us, for Christ has washed them away and clothed us in his beauty. Thank you for your Son, whose unshakable hope is now our own.

Holy Spirit, help us turn from our sin and cling to the cross. Hide us in the wounds of Jesus and ground us in his powerful blood and perfect righteousness. When life is painful and fear takes hold, root us safely once again on our firm foundation, our only hope in life and death. Restore to us the joy of our salvation: Christ was faithful for us, and because we are joined to Him, you will always be faithful to us. Amen. 

“Take a few moments to personally confess your sins to the Lord.”

ASSURANCE OF PARDON

“Hear these words of comfort and assurance.” 

Romans 5:1-6

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

• We’re at the time of the year when trees will begin to shed their leaves. Trees that were full of leaves one day are standing bare just a few weeks later. 
• The trees might look like they’re dead. There's not much sign of life. But we know they’re not dead. They’re dormant.
• Below the ground, the roots are alive and holding on to survive the winter months. 
• When spring comes, the same branches that looked like firewood will bud and new growth will emerge. 

• In our series through 1 Thessalonians, we’ve seen a young church rooted in faith, who turned from idols to serve the living God. They were sent to serve, as Paul shared his example of pouring out his life for that church, and they were rooted in holiness, walking to please God, loving one another, and bearing witness before a watching world. 

• But a young church in a hostile city will eventually face the winter season. 
• Remember, Paul’s ministry in that city was short-lived. He had taught them about the return of the Lord Jesus. In Chapter 1 he writes to them that they were waiting “for his Son from heaven.” 
• But after a few weeks he was driven out. He sent Timothy back to find out how they were doing. 

• During the months after Paul’s departure, some of the believers died and the church was shaken by those deaths.
• When Timothy came back with his report, he also brought a question from the believers: “What happens to our brothers and sisters in the Lord who died before Jesus’s return? Have they missed out? Are they lost?”

• Many of you have asked that same question at the death of a loved one. You’ve stood beside a casket, or at a graveside. You’ve watched a loved one breathe their last. You’ve experienced the massive ache in your chest and have wondered how you would be able to deal with the grief. 

• Paul speaks a word of hope into that grief through his letter. 
• We’ll see in a moment that Paul uses the word “asleep” for believers who have died. 
• Like those trees standing bare, it looks like it’s over for them. But it isn’t. Spring is coming. 
• Christian hope is not wishful thinking.
• The Christian’s hope is confident expectation. It’s resting on what God has already done in raising Jesus and on what he has promised to do. 
• And that isn’t hope that we keep to ourselves. We carry it and we proclaim it. 
• Rooted in Christ, we are sent in hope. 
• Here’s the main theme of today’s message: Because Jesus died, rose, and is coming again, his people are sent into a world that is grieving and sleeping, as people of hope.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

• Notice that Paul treats their problem, in part, as a knowledge problem. He doesn’t want them to be in the dark about those who have died. 
• Grief is always painful, but grief without truth leaves people in a state of darkness. 
• So the first thing Paul does is to teach them good theology.  When your heart is crushed, you need something solid to stand on, and sound doctrine is that solid ground. 

• Paul describes the dead as “those who are asleep.” 
• The Greeks and Romans sometimes spoke of death as a sleep with no morning. 
• Christians took that same word and filled it with hope. 

• Scripture does not teach that the soul sleeps until the resurrection. Paul himself said that to depart is “to be with Christ, for that is far better” (Phil. 1:23). He also said to be “away from the body” is to be “at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8).
• Our confession says that after death, the bodies of believers “return to dust and undergo decay. But their souls neither die nor sleep, because they have an immortal character, and immediately return to God who gave them…They are with Christ and behold the face of God in light and glory while they wait for the full redemption of their bodies.” (1689 LBCF 31:1)

• There is a precious truth in verse 14. Paul says “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again.” Jesus didn’t fall asleep. Jesus died. Paul doesn't use the gentler term for death he used earlier.
• Jesus tasted death in all its bitterness. He experienced the darkness of death under the full weight of God’s wrath. 
• He bore death’s sting so that for those who belong to him, death could be reduced to something like sleep. 
• That’s why Paul said, in “O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55)

• Paul doesn’t say believers shouldn’t grieve. He just says do not grieve “as others do who have no hope.” 
• Christians grieve. There is a loss.  Grief is an expression of love for someone who was physically separated from you by death. 
• Jesus wept at the tomb of his dear friend Lazarus, knowing that he was about to raise him from the dead.
• Believers and unbelievers may shed the same tears, but they are not the same grief. 
• One weeps believing the grave is all there is.
• Another weeps knowing the grave is a doorway to unspeakable glory. 

• Where does this hope come from? Christian hope looks at an event in history, an empty tomb, and reasons from it. 
• “Since we believe…even so…” Since Jesus rose, even so those who belong to him will also rise. Our hope is tethered to his resurrection. 
• If the resurrection of Jesus is true, then the grave is not the end for those who are in him. 
• And if it’s not true, well, Paul says “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor. 15:19)
• But we have hope because we are united to Christ. 
• Paul says, “through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” 
• The believer is joined to Jesus by the Holy Spirit through faith, and that union is not broken by death. 
• The grave cannot separate us from him. 
• “For I am sure that neither death nor life…nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).
• Paul doesn’t leave it there. He tells them what will happen, and he says it’s “by a word from the Lord.”
• “The Lord himself…” The same Jesus who ascended to heaven will return. 
• And his coming will be accompanied by a “cry of command.” That is the word for an officer’s commanding shout to his troops. 
• The return of Christ will be the loudest, most public event in the history of the world. 

• The Greek word Paul uses for “the coming of the Lord” in verse 15 is ‘parousia.’ 
• It was the term used for the official visit of a king or emperor to a city. 
• Paul is saying, “Your King is coming on a royal visit.” 
• And here is the sequence of events at his coming. 
• “The dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” 
• This is the direct answer to the Thessalonians’ worry about their deceased loved ones. They feared their dead would miss out. Paul says, “They won’t miss out. The dead will rise first. They are at the head of the procession.” 
• The words “caught up” mean to snatch away or seize by force. It’s a strong word for being rescued in a single motion. 
• We will be caught up to “meet the Lord.” The language Paul is using here conveys the image of when a dignitary came to a city and the leading citizens would go out through the gates to meet him on the road and then turn around and escort him back into the city with honor. 
• Jesus used the same word in The Parable of the Ten Virgins: “But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’” (Matt. 25:6)

• Faithful Christians have different views on the order of the last things. But the picture that Paul paints is beautiful. The King is coming. 
• His people, the dead and the living, rush out to meet him like a welcoming party, and then they will come with him in his triumph and glory. 
• We are not snatched out of a world he is abandoning. 
• We are gathered up to a King who is coming to claim a world that is rightfully his. 

• And then we have the most glorious promise in all of this, the words that carry us through the pain of loss: “and so we will always be with the Lord.” 
• Not, “and so we’ll see our loved ones again.” Or “and we will finally get our eternal rewards.” 
• The center of heaven is not the reunion; it’s our glorious Redeemer. 
• To always be with the Lord. That is the hope. 
• Whatever else glory holds for us, it will all pale in comparison to the reality that it holds him. 

• Paul ends this section with an instruction: “Therefore encourage one another with these words.”
• The second coming of the Lord is a balm for the grieving. It’s medicine for the brokenhearted. 

• That means that we are to carry these words with us. 
• When you sit with someone who has experienced loss, you don’t need to try to figure out the right thing to say; you have these words. 
• When you are at the funeral of a believer who has graduated to glory, you can say with confidence, “He is not lost. He is asleep in Jesus. At the Lord’s return, the dead in Christ will rise first, and we will always be with the Lord.” 
• That is the word of the Lord. And that is what it means to be sent in hope. 

1 Thessalonians 5:1-8

• Paul now turns from the dead to the living. 
• If the Lord is coming, the obvious question to ask is, “when?” 
• Paul answers, “If you’re asking about times or seasons, there’s really nothing to write to you about that. You already know.”
• “Times and seasons” translate two Greek words, one for the length of time, and the other, the appointed moment. 
• He’s saying, “you already know that no one will know the exact time of Christ’s return.” 
• “Why not?” Verse 2, the coming of the Lord will be like a thief in the night. 

• What you can know fully about the coming of the Lord is that it will happen. 
• But you cannot know the day or hour. 
• Jesus said, “concerning that day and hour no one knows” (Matt. 24:36). 
• In that same passage, Jesus was the first to use the picture of the thief to describe his coming. 
• A thief doesn’t alert ahead of time the person they are planning to rob.
• The church has a long and embarrassing history of people who thought they had cracked the code of the timing of the Lord’s return. Every single one of them has been wrong. 

• Why doesn’t the Lord disclose this to us? 
• Because he wants us watching every day rather than waiting for the one day. 
• “The day of the Lord” is an Old Testament phrase. The prophets used it for the day God would step into history to judge his enemies and save his people (Amos 5:18-20).
• For the unrepentant, it is a day of darkness and not light. 
• Paul says that day finds its fulfillment in the coming of the Lord Jesus. 

• Verse 3, “peace and security” would have been a phrase that was readily understood in Thessalonica. They echoed the words of the Roman slogan, ‘Pax et Securitas,’ words that were stamped on coins and carved on monuments. 
• Paul says the world will still be repeating that slogan when the day arrives. 

• In our day and age, our version of “peace and security” might be a retirement account, being in good health, living in a safe neighborhood, or a strong economy. 
• None of those things are evil. But none of them can stop the day of the Lord. 
• Our confession warns that God keeps the day unknown “to encourage men to shake off any fleshly security and always to be watchful” (1689 LBCF 32:3). 
• Fleshly security is the feeling that you are safe if your circumstances are safe.
• Paul writes that “sudden destruction will come” like labor pains come on a pregnant woman. 
• Labor comes suddenly. And once it begins, labor is unavoidable. A woman who is expecting knows the day is coming, even if she does not know the hour. 
• So it will be with the day of the Lord. It will be sudden, inescapable, and certain. 

• In verse 4, Paul reminds us of our identity: we are children of the light and of the day, not of the darkness and the night, so that day will not surprise us or catch us off guard. 
• We don’t have to ‘try’ to become children of the light. We are!
• It’s our very nature to belong to the light now that we are in Christ. 
• God “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). 
• In Christ, you now belong to the light and the day, even though it has not yet fully dawned. 

• The thief only surprises the person who is not expecting him. 
• For the believer, the day of the Lord will not be a burglary but a homecoming. 
• The same event that will bring terror to the world and destruction to the unrepentant, is the answer to the church’s prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20). 

• And because we are children of the light and of the day, we should live like it. 
• Verse 6, “So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.” 
• Paul is using “sleep” in a new way here. He’s not describing the physical death of believers. 
• Here, it means spiritual drowsiness and moral carelessness. It’s living as if the King were never coming back. 
• But because he is, be watchful. Stay alert.
• “Be sober” means to have clear-headed alertness, the opposite of being drunk and having one’s senses dulled. 

• Sleeping and drunkenness belong to the night. If the Lord’s people belong to the day, then the Lord’s people should be awake and alert. 
• Illustration: Ernest Shackleton and his legendary trans-Antarctic expeditions; the rescue of his men stranded on Elephant Island and their daily watchfulness.
• That is a picture of watchfulness. Having your bags packed every morning because you believe your Captain keeps his word. 
• It is ordering today as though he might come before nightfall.

• And Paul even tells us how to dress for the occasion as people of the day: wearing the breastplate of faith and love, and the hope of salvation for a helmet. 
• This is borrowed straight from Isaiah 59:17, where God himself puts on “righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head.”
• The armor God wears to save is the armor God gives to those he saves. 
• The breastplate covered the heart and vital organs. Paul says faith and love guard our hearts. 
• The helmet protected the head. Paul says hope guards our minds. 
• Paul repeats these instructions in his letter to the church at Ephesus, exhorting them to put on the full armor of God (Eph. 6:10-17). 

• Here is the triad that Paul repeatedly refers to: faith, love, and hope. 
• The very things Paul thanked God for in 1:3 are now the armor for living through the night. 
• And hope is the helmet. Why? Because the battle for hope is fought in the mind. 
• Despair begins with a thought: “God has forgotten me. Nothing will ever change.” 
• The helmet of hope answers with facts: Our salvation is secure, the finish line is fixed, the King is coming, and we will always be with him. 

1 Thessalonians 5:9-11

• Paul ends this section the same way he ended the last one: “encourage one another.” 
• But first he tells us why we can wear that helmet of hope with confidence.
• “Destined” means to set or appoint. It is God’s sovereign purpose for his people to obtain salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord.
• Our hope does not rest on how well we watch for his return. It rests on God’s sovereign determination.  
• In 1:4, Paul said, “we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you.” The God who chose his people has not chosen them for wrath but for salvation. 

• The wrath is real. It is God’s settled, holy opposition to sin. 
• Paul has mentioned it twice so far in this letter. (1:10; 2:16)
• The day of the Lord is wrath for those who are not in Christ. 
• But God has appointed his people “to obtain salvation.” 
• Salvation is not some vague possibility that we will escape the wrath of God. 
• Salvation is an inheritance God has set aside for us to receive. 

• How can a holy God appoint sinners to salvation instead of wrath? 
• Verse 10 is the answer, “through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us…”
• He died in our place, on our behalf. 
• Here is the gospel at the heart of Paul’s teaching on the end times. 
• Wrath was due. And wrath was poured out.  But it was poured out on Christ. 
• The reason the believer does not fear the day of wrath is that Jesus has already been to the cross, where the day of wrath fell upon him as our Substitute. 
• And because of that, “whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.” 

• Paul is back to using ‘asleep’ in the same sense as in chapter 4; bringing both halves of the passage together. 
• Whether we are among the living when Jesus comes, or among those already sleeping in the grave, the result is the same. We will live with him. 
• Death cannot cancel out what Christ purchased for his people. 
• That is the answer to the question the Thessalonians asked and you asked at the graveside.

• Finally, Paul repeats his exhortation from 4:18 but he adds something. 
• Encourage one another with these words and build one another up.  Keep doing what you’re already doing. 
• The doctrine of Christ’s return is meant to build up the church. And we all share this responsibility.
• Hope is not a private possession but building material that every builder is to use to help build up the church.

CONCLUSION

• The hope of Christ’s return is such an important truth that every believer must confess, embrace, and proclaim. 
• So what does it look like for us to be sent in hope? 
• To those who are grieving: maybe you’ve been carrying grief for decades and the ache is still there. 
• If your loved one died in Christ, he or she is not lost. They are “with the Lord,” and the morning will come for them as it will for us. Grieve, but let the hope be louder than the grief. 
• To our older saints: some of you are in the final laps of your race.
• I want to encourage you that your hope in the face of death is one of the most powerful sermons this church will ever preach. 
• When you face your last years with peace and joy, you are showing a watching world what it means to grieve, “but not as others do who have no hope.”
• Parents: we need to teach our children about death. They’ll face it before they understand it. Teach them that Jesus died and rose again, and those who trust him will rise too. 
• Young people: Christ’s second coming is not something that’s just for old people to worry about. 
• Paul wrote to this church knowing the Lord might come in his lifetime. And Jesus could come in your lifetime. 
• Being “awake” means living for Jesus now, not when you’re older. 
• Young adults and young families: if you’re grounding your “peace and security” on a career plan, investments, or a relationship, hold it all with an open hand. 
• Live as one who belongs to the day. Build your life so that if the trumpet sounded tonight, you would not be embarrassed by how you spent it. 
• Church: may we never neglect to teach the return of Christ. Let us teach it as Paul did: aimed at the desolate, the drowsy, and the discouraged, and always ending with “encourage one another.” 
• And to those who are struggling: who maybe feel more asleep than awake. You know you have drifted. Remember your hope is not resting on how alert you have been. It rests on Christ “who died for us.” Wake up! Put the helmet of hope back on and be watchful. 
• If you’ve not yet trusted Christ: the day of the Lord is coming, and it will come suddenly. Your peace and security is borrowed time. But God has not left you without hope. Jesus died for sinners, so that whoever turns from sin and trusts in him is appointed not to wrath, but to salvation. Turn to him and trust him. Then you, too, will always be with the Lord. 

• The tree in winter looks dead but it’s not. Its roots are alive, held fast in the ground, and spring is coming. 
• That is the picture of the Christian life and the Church. 
• Some of us are in winter. Some of the people we love are lying in the ground and to the world it looks like the end. 
• But Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20). 
• He went into the ground and came out again, and every believer is rooted in him. 
• Spring is coming. The Lord himself will descend. The trumpet will sound. The dead in Christ will rise. And we will always be with the Lord. 

• So we are not only rooted in hope; we are sent in hope. 
• We are sent to the bedside and the graveside with these words. 
• As children of the day with our lamps trimmed, we are sent into a world of darkness that says “peace and security” and does not know what is coming. 
• We are sent to one another, with trowels in hand, to build up our brothers and sisters until the King arrives. 

• Are you awake? Or have you drifted into sleep? 
• Are you resting your hope on your circumstances, or on Christ who died for you and rose again? 
• If you’ve grown drowsy, repent and put on the armor again: faith and love as your breastplate, and the hope of salvation as your helmet.
• And then go, sent in hope, and encourage one another with these words:
• “The Lord himself will descend from heaven…and so we will always be with the Lord.” 

APPLICATION AND REFLECTION

In light of today's message....

• What did I learn about the gospel?
• How can I apply what I learned about the gospel to my life?
• With whom can I share the gospel this week?