The Dead in Christ Will Rise!

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
We live in a world where death is an unwelcome intruder. All of us will experience grief and mourning until we are the ones being mourned. But as Christians we do not grieve as those who have no hope --for the dead in Christ will rise.

Through faith in the resurrected Lord we know that death is not the end- for those we love- who trust in the Lord. Death is not the end for us. The promise of the resurrected Christ is sure and certain: because I live you also shall live.

By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul wrote the words that we have before us in our text today to make sure that we know and believe that the life we have in Christ-- is a life that even death cannot end. He writes:

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do- who have no hope.

All of us will have to deal with the death of loved ones at some point in time--but God doesn’t want any of us to experience grief unbounded by hope. Paul wrote these words about the death of Christians because he does not want us to “be uninformed” about our eternal future. Other translations say that he does not want us to be “ignorant”. The Greek work is “agnostic”—without knowledge.

Many people who see themselves as intellectuals will tell you that they are “agnostic” when it comes to the things of God—that they simply don’t have enough information to believe in God-- and they think that this lack of knowledge is some kind of enlightened virtue.

God’s Word says just the opposite—that it is knowing the truth about Christ and eternal life that comforts us in the hour of death.

Grief at the death of a loved one is to be informed and guided and, yes, moderated by a knowledge of the truth. And what does God want us to know? What is the truth regarding our death? That death—for the Christian—is a peaceful rest.

We do not fear going to sleep, we look forward to it after a hard day of work and we hope that our rest is deep and sound. When we go to bed at night- we get up in the morning-- and our senses and faculties and limbs ready to begin a new day. And when our sleep is deep, we do not experience the passage of time.

That is the way death is for Christians—and from that peaceful sleep we will arise just as certainly as we wake up in the morning to begin a new day. One of the old, familiar evening hymns says it this way: “Teach me to live- that I may dread- the grave as little as my bed—teach me to die- that so I may- rise glorious at the final day.”

The Bible does not teach that sleep is merely a euphemism for death-- but it teaches that is what death is actually like for the Christian and the Bible writers take that language from the Lord.

When Jesus came into the house of Jairus the synagogue ruler, it was grief and mourning that greeted him because Jairus’ little daughter had died. But Jesus told him not to be afraid for she was only sleeping-- and Jesus took her by the hand and she arose from the sleep of death.

That’s the way it’s going to be for each and every one of us on the Last Day because of what Jesus has already done in his death and resurrection for us. Paul writes that:

Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

The Bible says in Romans chapter 6 that “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We die because our lives are broken by sin. Sin has destroyed God’s perfect creation and death is the consequence for all of Adam’s children—including us and those we love.

But Jesus’ death on the cross has atoned for the sins of the world and his resurrection is God’s promise that all who believe in Jesus will rise from the dead- just as he was raised from the dead.

Time and time again Jesus promised this very thing. “Because I live you also will live.” “I am the resurrection and life--he who believes in me will never die.” “I am the way and the truth and the life.” “I will go and prepare a place for you that where I am you also may be.” Promise after promise, Jesus grounded our hope for eternal life in his own life, death, and resurrection.

The bible says Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of an entire harvest of people who will rise from the dead on the Last Day-- just like Jesus did on Easter Sunday. Paul writes:

For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.

Paul did not have much time in Thessalonica before he was driven from town by persecution and apparently the Thessalonians were confused about the end times and what it meant for their loved ones if they died before the Lord came. Many people in the church today are still confused about the end times.

I remember watching a program on one of the religious TV stations and there was a guy on who was teaching about the end times. And he was standing on a stage with a dry erase board behind him that went all the way across the stage. And it was absolutely filled with writing and diagrams and numbers and arrows pointing up and down—all of it trying to explain what he understood the Bible’s end-time theology to be.

And I remember smiling to myself because of the huge difference between that and how we confess the Bible’s truth about the End Times each Sunday in the creed: Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. That’s it! That’s just how simple it is!

Our Lord’s return in glory is not some riddle that has to carefully worked out by scholars—but a simple promise from God that children can understand: Jesus is coming again and the dead in Christ will rise.

Jesus’ return will be announced with the voice of the arch-angel and the sound of a trumpet so that there is no mistaking it or confusing it with something else. In that moment the dead in Christ will rise up from their tombs just as surely as Lazarus came out of his and they will join those Christians still living and be gathered together with the Lord in heaven.

You don’t need forty feet of dry-erase board to explain that or understand it. It is simple because the Lord wants his return to be comforting rather than confusing.
And there are two points of incredible comfort that I want you to understand and believe from these verses—two reasons why-- even though Christians grieve when a loved one passes away--we do not grieve as those who have no hope.

First of all, those who fall asleep in faith are called “the dead IN Christ”. The saddest moment of any funeral is when fellow mourners have left and only the family remains and then they have to leave their loved one behind for the final act of burial. It certainly feels like we are abandoning our loved one. But nothing could be farther from the truth! Those connected to Christ are never abandoned!

Christians are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection—we are connected to Jesus by faith and are members of his living body and the promise of God in Holy Baptism is that if we have been united with Jesus in a death like his-- we shall certainly be united with Jesus in a resurrection like his.

Death cannot sever the connection that believers have with Christ and his people and every Sunday when we have Holy Communion we gather around the rail with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven to join our voice to their great song of praise that is constantly being sung in heaven until that day we add them around the throne of the Lamb in his kingdom.

Later on in this same epistle Paul writes that “God has not destined us for wrath but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.” And in Romans Paul writes: “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.”

We who are left alive after a loved one dies experience death as separation-- and that is a painful thing-- but the LORD wants us to know that those who die in Christ are still connected to him just as certainly those who are left alive—all of us joined together in the living body of Christ.

And the second great consolation of this verse about Jesus’ return in glory—is that all of God’s people (those who have died in the faith and those who will still be living when the Lord comes) will be reunited when he comes gain-- and we will always be with the Lord—together with those we love. Paul writes:

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, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

The separation from loved ones at death is a painful reality for us-- but it is not a permanent reality for us-- for death’s power has been broken by Christ’s resurrection from the dead and it will be swallowed up forever on the Last Day by Christ’s victory over the grave.

And so who is that “we” that Paul is talking about that are going to be with the Lord forever?

It is you and me and our children and grandchildren—our spouses-- and our moms and dads and grandparents all those faithful Christians who have come before us and who will come after us. All of us united together with the Lord in heaven never to suffer the pain of death’s separation again because we will ALWAYS be with the Lord.

Paul wants to make sure that we understand that this is not his opinion about things—but it is a “word from the Lord” with which we are to encourage one another.

There is one comfort for us when a loved one dies --and one comfort for us in the hour of our own death-- and that is the words of the Lord that we have before us in our text today: Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep and the dead in Christ will rise. That is why we do not grieve as those who have no hope. May this Good News comfort us in our sorrow and in the hour of death! Amen.