Dennis Tuuri

Sermon transcript from Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Sermon scripture is found in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verses 13-18. Please stand for the command word of our King of Kings.

But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that you sorrow not even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. You may be seated. This time the younger children may be dismissed to go to their Sabbath schools. The parents desire that for them. Okay. We continue.

Now, with our series of sermons going through the book of 1 Thessalonians, if you’re counting, this is number 33. We’ll probably get close to 50 before we’re done. We transition now into a section of 1 Thessalonians dealing at an extended length with the resurrection, the parousia, the day of the Lord.

We’ll be in this for three weeks. Today we’ll deal with verses 13 to 18 of 1 Thessalonians 4. Next week, Richard Mayhar will be beginning a series on the book of Ephesians. The following week at family camp, and by the way, if you’re visiting here today, you should recognize that two weeks from today, this church will be convening for holy worship at family camp up in Washington. If you’d like directions, just let us know.

But there we’ll deal with the first several verses of 1 Thessalonians 5, and then we’ll be finishing up the verses in 1 Thessalonians 5, the first half of the chapter, that deal with the coming day of the Lord the following week. So really there is a correlation in some ways between these two sections.

Now the context for this, and I’ll come back to this a little later, is this is the exhortive section of the epistle. And while there is a lot of teaching and you could call this a didactic portion—a portion that involves a lot of instruction—it’s to the end that certain things are accomplished. Both 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and chapter 5:1-11 begin with a question. Paul gives the answer to the question, then ends with an exhortation. And so it does have application to how we live our lives. And so in this particular section, it is consistent with the rest of the second part of this epistle, which is exhortatory in nature.

The other general context is that we’ve just gone through a series of verses in the first half of chapter 4 that deal primarily with how to love our brother and how to increase in our love for each other—brotherly love. And we talked for the last three weeks of sins of the tongue and how that can really damage relationships with our extended household, the covenant community, the church.

It is very important that we apply these things we hear. I’ve mentioned that in the past, but in terms of the use of the tongue, it is very important to recognize that James tells us that it’s probably the most difficult part of who we are to bring under our government—to be self-governing about—is the use of our tongue. And no man is perfect in that.

It’s very important in the context of building a covenant community and a social structure, which is part of what Paul is doing with the church at Thessalonica. This is his earliest epistle. This is written shortly after he had been there and established the church. It’s very important in the context of that that communication be good amongst the members of churches. I have seen churches in the past, and I’ve seen it happen in this church as well, where a failure to communicate, a failure to deal properly with problems we have with other believers in the context of the church, can eventually end up creating a grievance list, as it were, against the church, and people leaving them without working things through.

It’s very important to keep short accounts in terms of our own confession of our sin, but also to keep short accounts in terms of our complaints about one another and difficulties we have with each other. Very important that things are worked through. If they’re not, I’ve seen it happen in the past. It will probably happen again in this church where it actually causes people to withdraw from the fellowship of the church because the tongue has not been used correctly to bring conflict resolution.

In any event, we do move to eschatology now, and there is a relationship—I suppose we mentioned this before, but it is worth pointing out again—that the sins of the tongue have the context, I believe, of people that become somewhat idle and as a result meddle some with each other. And eschatology can be a cause for idleness in the Christian community.

I was talking with one of you even this last week that said, “Gee, if I just do the things I’m supposed to be doing, I know I’ll keep out of trouble in terms of talking to other people about people that I shouldn’t be talking about.” Well, a lot of Christians don’t realize there is work to be done here on planet Earth while we’re awaiting the coming of our Lord. There’s much work to be done. It’s not simply being saved and then waiting for heaven or the rapture.

Interestingly enough, at various times in church history, eschatology, as it did with the Thessalonians, as we’ll see in 2 Thessalonians, an improper view of eschatology can create real problems in terms of just awaiting for the end of time to come and waiting for the rapture. This happened in the year 1000 at the end of the millennium approach. There were those who quit jobs, incurred debts they weren’t going to pay, etc., thinking that the Lord would come back at the end of the first thousand years of the church.

This has occurred several times in history where people would actually stop working, not do anything, and just wait, thinking that Jesus’s return was imminent. Even in our own time, several years ago, some person whose name I can’t recall put out a book about the day that Jesus was going to return based upon the Old Testament Sabbath system or the festival system. And indeed, people—you know, they really stopped any future planning, quit jobs, incurred debt or didn’t pay off debt they’d leave it to the devil, whatever that means. And so there’s a real failure of dominion with an improper eschatology.

So that’s part of what’s going on here. But I think this love for one another that the Thessalonians were already so good at, and we’re being encouraged to grow in, is also the proper context for these statements in eschatology. And I’ll relate that generally as we go along.

Now the particular section we have here outlines itself very nicely, as you can tell in the outline I’ve presented to you. First, a summary statement is given in verse 13. Verse 13 says, “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that you sorrow not even as others which have no hope.”

So we begin here at the summary statement. And Paul said he’s going to instruct them. Now, I’ve got a swimming pool, and this last week we used it a little more than we have the last few weeks. And we bought one of these masks that go over your face, you know, at a garage sale. And I used that this last week as we were diving for things in the deep end of the pool. And it was a revelation to me.

Frequently people are afraid to dive into deep water. There’s a fear of the deep water, etc. And although I would do it and could do it pretty good, I still had a little anxiety. And as I put this mask on and began to dive for things in the end of the pool, everything became very clear. You could see really clearly, like you weren’t underneath the water. And then it was very—I knew where I was. My bearings were a lot clearer, and I could stay down a lot longer in the deep end, knowing where I was, what my orientation was. It was a remarkable change in my approach to diving underneath the water.

And my wife, who’s always kind of a problem going underwater with the mask, she can do it quite easily now, too. Now, I bring this up because fear and sorrow and failure to do what we should be doing frequently can stem from a lack of knowledge. Now, that’s not always the case. Sometimes there’s actual disobedience or rebellion against God’s truth. But knowledge is an important factor of clearing things up for us so that we can avoid a particular sin.

And Paul here says, you’ve got some anxieties about the resurrection and its relationship to the coming—the final coming of Jesus Christ, the second coming. And I’m going to clear up these anxieties by clearing up the water. You’ve got some things wrong, or you haven’t really thought them through carefully. And as a result, you’re being overly sorrowful about those who have died, who are believers. And so Paul is going to help us put a swimming mask on the face here to clear up certain things about the end of time and about the resurrection.

So that’s the context of all this. Paul begins by showing they have a need for teaching. “I would not have him be ignorant, brethren.” Now, I might just point out here that the specific nature of the Thessalonian need is not clear to me, and it’s not clear to commentators in general. In other words, what the specific problem or lack of information the Thessalonian church had, I don’t know. There’s been various guesses, probably at least half a dozen explanations given as to the reasons Paul gives them here. But what this tells me is it’s not important, at least at this stage in church history, to know specifically what the problems of the Thessalonians were. But it is important that we know what Paul gives them here by way of instruction.

And there are various errors about the resurrection that will be cleared up as we attend carefully to Paul’s instruction. So he tells them first of all they have a need for teaching, and this need for teaching is about the dead in Christ. He doesn’t want them to be ignorant. He wants them to have knowledge or understanding, and that knowledge or understanding is specifically concerning those which are asleep.

Now sleep here is a reference to death. It means those who are dead. It means those believers who are dead specifically. And the word sleep is significantly used throughout the scriptures, Old and New Testament actually, to speak of those who have died. You may not know it, but the word cemetery, which is where dead bodies lie, really comes from the same root as this particular Greek word that is translated sleep. And so a cemetery is a sleeping place. You didn’t know that, did you? The body is asleep there.

The idea is that while the body is asleep, of course, it doesn’t mean the believer who has died is unconscious. He is with the Lord. God makes that quite clear that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. But the body is, in one sense of the term, asleep in the cemetery, the sleeping place. And so this is what Paul’s going to instruct them about—those who have died in the Lord.

The end to which he’s going to instruct them is also given in this summary statement in verse 13. The end of this instruction about those that are asleep is that they not sorrow as others which have no hope. The Gentile community was the pagan community, the Greek community specifically, had little or no hope relative to the future. This difference between the Greek community and the Christian community, the pagan community and Christians, is pointed out very explicitly.

This is Neil’s commentary on 1 Thessalonians, and he cites a couple of different letters that were found. And the first letter was a pagan one which was apparently written in the second century. And the letter is from one Irene to a couple of people. And Irene says—and she’s not a Christian, now, okay?—”I was as sorry and wept as much over Yamorus, a person, as over Ditimus. I did all that was fitting, as did all my family. Still, there is nothing one can do in the face of such trouble, so I leave you to comfort yourselves.”

The situation was that one of these people had killed themselves. And this Irene writes to another pagan saying, “Well, I really wept a lot over the fact that this person killed themselves and our family did all we could do, but really can’t do anything in a situation such as this, and so comfort yourselves.” Well, small comfort. There’s no comfort to be given there.

The Greek world really looked upon the body as kind of an imprisoned place or a prison house for the soul. And in the resurrection or in the afterlife, the soul would have a real thin body referred to as a shade, and they really had no hope. They went to a dark place, a dark abode. There was really no hope in terms of the future of people as they died. In fact, the Iliad, one of the classic Greek works, actually concludes with funeral rites being given. And so that was kind of the Greek perspective—a real downer, you know?

Well, contrast this letter from somebody who said they really couldn’t give you any hope, just comfort each other with no knowledge at all, pass this to a letter that was written about the same time by a Christian. Again, this is a Christian letter about the same time as this other letter, and this is written by Aristides. And he says, “And if any righteous man among them—that is, the Christians—passes from the world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God and they escort the body as if it were setting out from one place unto another nearby.”

So the Christians have great joy at their funeral places. The Greeks have no hope. So the no hope of the Greeks is not to be what our sorrow is like, and that’s the end to which Paul instructs them here in this portion of 1 Thessalonians 4.

Now the difference then between hope and no hope is the difference between unduly grieving and our sorrow being limited or somewhat restrained by a proper understanding of the final resting place of Christians.

Now I would want to quote from Proverbs 14:30, 14:32 here for a specific reason. In that proverb we read, “The wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the righteous have hope in his death.” Now, I bring that up for this reason: It’s not simply a matter of belief according to the scriptures that determines those who have hope. Christians, because of their belief in what Jesus has accomplished and they’re being born again, have hope. But that belief must be evidenced in works of righteousness.

Proverbs 14 says it’s the workers of wickedness who have no hope. On the other hand, it’s the righteous, those who do good deeds, who do have hope. Now, good deeds can’t merit salvation and hope, but they are the evidence that God has truly brought us to a saving belief in Jesus Christ, and it is those who have true hope in him.

Okay. So now let’s get into the specific instructions then about the resurrection that Paul gives them that is supposed to assist them in the development of hope and, as a result, they’re not grieving as the Gentiles or Greeks do.

First, Paul instructs them about the resurrection by speaking of the resurrection of the dead in Jesus Christ as being assurity. Verse 14: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which slept in Jesus will God bring with him.”

Okay, so Paul says first, then, in terms of his instruction, he’s going to instruct them that as Jesus was raised from the dead, so also believers will be raised from the dead. As I said in Philippians 1:23, Paul said, “For I’m in a strait betwixt that is staying and leaving, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better.” So in terms of the resurrection, it’s important that we recognize that while Paul says specifically in Philippians 1 that his soul, his spirit, upon his death is present with the Lord, that those that sleep—the body portion of who we are—will also be raised up as Jesus was raised up.

And so Paul instructs him of that in this particular text. The scriptures teach a general resurrection at the end of time that Paul is here alluding to in Daniel 12:2. We read, “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” And Paul says that because Jesus was raised from the dead, so also by implication, those that sleep in the Lord will also be raised up.

How was Jesus raised? Jesus was raised and given a glorified body. His body became glorified. What Paul is saying here is that the analogy is with Jesus’s death and resurrection. So we die in Jesus; we will also be resurrected. Isaiah 26:19 says that the earth shall cast out the dead. And Paul has reference to this resurrection of physical bodies from graves at the end of time in verse 14.

Again in John 5:26 and following: “For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself, and have given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth. They that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.”

So Paul alludes here to the resurrection of the believer. But also scripture teaches the resurrection of believers and unbelievers at the same time. So Paul alludes to this. So he instructs them first that indeed those that die in the Lord will be raised up in bodily form.

Now this was not simply restricted—rather—to the New Testament. In Job chapter 19, verses 25 and 26, we read from Job: “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and he that shall excuse me, and that he shall stand in the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold and not another, though my reigns be consumed within me.”

Now it’s very important you understand this: that if you were to die, and you know people that have died—perhaps I’m sure all of us have friends now. The older we get the more friends we have and relatives that do die. And if they’re a believer, very clearly from these scriptures we pointed out, their spirit is with Jesus; they are present with the Lord. But their body remains in the grave, so to speak, and these scriptures clearly teach that is not an eternal state—the disembodied spirits that join us in worship on the Lord’s day that we speak of frequently in this church.

That is not the natural state, the eternal state, of those who are in Jesus Christ. As Christ was resurrected bodily, so all believers will be resurrected bodily as well. And in fact, these scriptures point out that it will be the same body—well, the same but different. Their body will move from glory to glory, is the way the scriptures put it.

The Reformed church has consistently held that Jesus’s resurrection body, which is as Paul gives this instruction here in verse 14, the model for what will happen to those who are asleep in Jesus Christ, that his resurrection body is the same body that he died in. The 39 Articles of the Church of England, for instance, say this: “Christ took again his body with flesh and bones and all things pertaining to the perfection of man’s nature.” The Westminster Catechism, question 52, says that he rose again from the dead the third day, “having the very same body in which he suffered.”

Now the body was glorified. It was changed, but it was not a different body totally in kind. Very important. The scriptures teach us one element of comfort: that the spirit of those who have died in Christ will be reunited with their bodies, and that body will actually be a glorified body as Christ received also.

And so the book of Job points this out too, as we just quoted from. “I know my Redeemer lives, because my Redeemer lives. Job, looking prophetically forward to the resurrection of Christ. As our Redeemer lives, so we shall live. He shall stand on the earth. He’ll have a physical body, albeit supra-physical, I suppose, be one way to put it—super-physical.

And so in that way also, Job says, “And I know that my flesh, even though worms have devoured it, will also be resurrected, and in my flesh shall I see God. Mine eyes will behold God, not another, not a different body totally. The same body, but glorified and brought to perfection and going from glory to glory in Jesus Christ the Savior.” And so the first thing that Paul says we have need of in terms of comfort about the resurrection of those who have died in the Lord is that the resurrection of the dead in Jesus Christ is assurity. It definitely will happen. It is based upon the historical reality of our Savior’s death and resurrection. Verse 14 tells us that clearly.

Based upon this, Thomas Watson said, “We are more sure to rise out of our graves than out of our beds. We are more sure to rise out of our graves than out of our beds. You might die in the middle of the night, but we know based upon the historical reality of Christ’s resurrection that we shall surely rise out of our graves.”

But secondly, Paul speaks in terms of giving comfort to the Thessalonians of our coming reunion with the dead in Jesus Christ. So he tells them first resurrection will happen, but then he tells them, secondly, in verses 15 to 17, about your reunion with those who are dead in Christ.

Verses 15 says: “For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”

Now, first of all, this section of scripture should be seen as a unit for a couple of reasons. In verse 15, he talks about those who are alive and then those who are asleep. In verses 16 and 17, he talks about those that are dead in Christ and those that are alive. This is a form in scripture that shows a unit. He goes from dead—those who are alive rather—to those that sleep, those that are asleep who are dead at Christ’s return. In other words, to those that are still alive when Christ finally returns. And secondly, while verse 15 goes from the positive to the negative—or excuse me, rather, stresses the negative—verses 16 and 17 stress the positive side of this.

He says in verse 15 that we who are remaining until the coming of the Lord, and by this he’s talking about those who will actually be physically alive, have not experienced death when Christ finally returns at the end of all history and at the end of time. And his point in verse 15 is that we who are alive at that time will not prevent—that word means precede. We won’t have an advantage over those who are asleep. It’s a negative statement. In other words, don’t worry about those who are asleep in Jesus. Those who are alive at the time of Christ’s final return will have no benefit over them.

And then in verses 16 and 17, he says it positively. Those who are dead shall actually rise first. What he’s saying here is that when Jesus returns at the end of all history, the souls, the disembodied spirits of those who are with the Lord now, return with Jesus. God will bring them with them. And at that time the dead in Jesus Christ shall rise bodily. Their bodies arise out of the ground, reunited with their spirits and with Jesus Christ first.

And then after that, he says in verse 17: “We which are alive shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” This is the rapture. This is the biblical rapture which occurs simultaneously with the resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous that we just read of in Daniel and in chapter 5 of John. The actual rapture taught in the scriptures is coterminous with the general resurrection, the final judgment, the great consummation of all things. It doesn’t happen first. There’s a period of time and other things occur. These statements make it real clear that the sequence, the timing of last day events is that the general resurrection is being spoken of here.

Now, Paul’s special emphasis is to comfort the Thessalonians about those who have died in Jesus Christ. And so he stresses them. But if you take these verses and lay them alongside of John 5 and Daniel and other scriptures, it’s obvious the general resurrection is being spoken of here. The fact, though, that Paul does indeed stress the believers who have died in Jesus Christ in terms of the resurrection again shows the preeminence of the history of God’s people, their actions in history, and God’s actions in history toward them being the focal point of all history.

Okay. So he says, first of all, he gives us some details of the timing of last day events in these verses 15-17. Secondly, he tells us that in the context of this happens with the manifestation that is spoken of in verse 16. The Lord descends from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trump of God. And I think it is important to recognize this reference to the threefold manifestation of the Lord’s coming and to take note of that and to speak a little bit about it.

The trumpet is used throughout scripture and is symbolizing in scripture. It is presented in scripture first at the giving of the law on Sinai. The trumpet is used to call God’s people to victory and warfare—to God’s victorious wars. The trumpet is used to signal rest from enemies that results in victory in warfare in various scriptures. The trumpet is used to call God’s people, then, to worship God and to signal the presence of God in the form of the ark. In other words, when the ark was brought up, a trumpet was blown.

The trumpet is also used to announce judgments and to signal the anointing of the king. This is Solomon I’m speaking of specifically here, again symbolizing the presence of the king—the King of Kings, rather—being symbolized by Solomon, the person of the king of Israel.

The reference to shouting that is spoken of here is important too. Now, when it says in verse 16 that this will occur with a shout and the voice of the archangel and the voice and the trump of God, the term shout is the first of the series, and the next two items—the voice of the archangel and the trump of God—have a conjunction, the term “and,” between them. So those two are put together, and it seems that—now there’s some disagreement of the commentators—but it seems that the voice of the archangel is linked to the trump of God. There’s other scriptures that talk about that, but essentially, I think we have two things going on here. The shout—the command shout of the King of Kings to the dead to arise. And additionally, that shout is accompanied by the blowing of the trump of God, which is equated with the voice of the archangel.

Well, this shout is also spoken of throughout scripture in a particular way. And there are various times in scripture where the shout and the trumpet that are spoken of here are related. And remember, the scriptures are one unit. And when we see a phrase like this, we should think through what does that tell us about other occurrences of those terms when used in conjunction?

One of the places where this is used is in Joshua 6. Both shouting and the use of trumpet blowing are the secondary means that God uses to bring down the walls of Jericho. Victory is spoken of here—conquest—and that results in the shouting and the use of the trumpet as well.

In 2 Samuel 6:15, the ark of the Lord is brought up to the people with shouting and the sound of the trumpet. God’s presence and a call to worship, then, based upon God’s presence to the people. We read that in Revelation 1 earlier too, about how John was summoned to heaven with a voice and with the trumpet in terms of worship.

In 1 Samuel 4:5, it’s recorded that the shout of the people caused the earth to ring. We regularly sing of the use of the shout and trumpet in this church when we sing Psalm 47 in our communion liturgy. We’ll use that liturgy that has Psalm 47 in it this afternoon after our agape love feast together. Psalm 47: we read that God has ascended with a shout and with the sound of the trumpet. The call to us, then, is to shout forth his praises in that psalm and to blow the trumpet to praise him in Psalm 150.

So these things—shouting and the voice of the trumpets—have reference to victory, judgment, and great joy in the presence of God with his people and is based upon God’s presence with us.

Now, this—in other words, the overall context of all this is the great final victory to be seen in the resurrection of the dead that Christ accomplishes.

Turn to 1 Corinthians 15. And the same basic pattern that we read here in 1 Thessalonians, in somewhat more of a truncated form, is developed in the whole of 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

Here again, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 finds it necessary to give instructions to the Corinthians. But notice the different sort of instructions he gives to them. In the first 11 verses he talks about—he begins this section on the resurrection, this long chapter in chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians, by talking about the gospel, the historic facts of the gospel. And that’s very important. Just as Paul in Thessalonians talked about the death, the resurrection of Jesus being the basis for our hope, the historic fact of that, so Paul also in correcting their mistakes, the Corinthians’ mistakes about the resurrection, looks first at the historical data that Jesus indeed died and was buried and was raised up.

And Paul goes so far as to say that he was seen by as many as 500 people in his resurrected form, in his glorified body. So he does that in the first section of the chapter. And then in verse 12, he says, “Now if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you then say that there is no resurrection of the dead?”

The Corinthian church had particular problems, and that some of them were actually denying the resurrection of the body at all. And Paul goes on to say very explicitly here that this historic link to the resurrection of Jesus Christ bodily is absolutely bedrock in terms of the Christian faith. He says: “If Christ has not been raised” (verse 13), and then in verse 14, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain. Your faith is also in vain.” He links these two.

And then in verse 16: “And if the dead is not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Jesus Christ have perished. And if we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most to be pitied.”

Now, you’ve got to realize, and if you have any doubts about the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, Paul says you must clear up those doubts by attending to what scripture says. Don’t try to convince yourself that the Christian religion is somehow just a way of life that we do here on earth, kind of pretending that probably this happened. Paul says if that’s your approach to the Christian faith, than it was in the Corinthian church, you’re worse off than any other man. To put your faith in such a diluted thing if you don’t believe it—the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is absolutely bedrock to our faith.

The Christian faith is based upon that historical reality. Then he goes on to say, “But now Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those which are asleep.” And then he says, “But each in his own order.” Verse 23: “Christ the first fruits. After that those who are Christ at his coming. Then comes the end when he delivers up the kingdom to God the Father, when he is conquered or abolished all rule and all authority and power.”

See, now Paul doesn’t separate in the 1 Corinthians account those who have died in Christ and those who are alive at the second coming. He does that in our passage of Thessalonians. But here he simply says that Christ rises first, then at the end of all times he returns and he raises up, resurrects, those who are in Jesus Christ.

Then he says in verses 25 and 26: “For he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. This last enemy that will be abolished is death.” And then in verse 36, he talks about the change in the nature of the resurrection body.

And then moving on then to verse 51, he says: “I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of the eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable must also put on imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on imperishable and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.”

So what he says in 1 Corinthians 15 is the same thing: that the resurrection occurs at the end of time, and it is the conquering of the last enemy by Jesus Christ. The last enemy being death. Death is not definitively conquered until Christ finally returns. It is definitively conquered at the cross once for all. But the implications that are worked out in time—until when Christ finally returns after all things other than death have been conquered by his church on earth—he then returns to conquer death itself by causing the resurrection of all those in terms of their body as well as their spirit.

Their spirit has already gone to be present with the Lord. And so the point is that the trumpet and the shouting of the triumph both mark the victory that the resurrection portends—the bodily resurrection at the end of all time over the last enemy, which is death itself.

Now, this has a lot to say about the progression of last day events. Paul gives us a very clear picture in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4 of what’s going to happen in history. All things will be progressively conquered through the preaching of the gospel except for the last thing—death. And death’s sting—the separation of the spirit from the body of those who believe in Jesus—even that will finally be conquered when Christ returns. And that’ll be the only thing left to be conquered.

And so the scriptures say that at the end of all time, then Christ returns. And that’s what the events spoken of in our passage from 1 Thessalonians 4 occurs. Now, this is to be comforting to us to recognize this progression of events and that this victory trumpet at the end will mean even the death of death itself—accomplished definitively on the cross, worked out historically in the second coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

So Paul certainly does that in these verses before us. But in addition to this—and this is what I think I want to point out is important also—to recognize in terms of the comfort that Paul brings to Thessalonians here: I believe that indeed the victory of Christ over death is spoken of in these verses. The resurrection of the dead is assured as we’ve said before. But the section I’ve entitled “the coming reunion with the dead in Christ” is revealed.

And Paul uses some very interesting terminology here that I think points us very specifically to one of the comforting aspects of the general resurrection that is spoken of here: the reunion between those who have friends who have died in Christ and between and with themselves. There’s a reunion of friends that’s accomplished here that is given by Paul to comfort us.

Notice in verse 14 that Paul did not say that as Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God raise up. No, he said, “Even so those that sleep in God, sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.” Bring with him. And in this section in verses 15 and 16 and 17, he says that God will bring the dead in Christ. And in verse 17: “We which are alive and remain shall be caught up together, together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”

And so Paul says, stresses here, that those who are concerned about loved ones who have departed in the faith will be reunited with those loved ones at the second coming. And so the reunion of those who actually persist in bodily form—without going through physical death—until the second coming and those who have died in Christ will be accomplished at the final judgment, at the resurrection.

This is a very important doctrine of scripture that is not frequently preached upon. And what I’m talking about here is the mutual recognition of saints in heaven. That each of us will be able to recognize one another. Frequently, we can get the idea that the resurrection of the dead and our participation and worship on the throne of God and in heaven, the final state of the believer, is somehow just part of a faceless mass of individuals—a faceless mass.

No, the scriptures say that we can look forward and we can be comforted by the fact that we will be brought into relationship and reunion again with those whom we know in the faith one another. In other words, friends and your family—your family members, friends—who have died in the Lord. Paul, I think, wants the Thessalonians to know, and wants you to know, that you don’t have to grieve over them in the sense of not thinking you’ll see them again or have a friendship with them anymore. That somehow all just related to God without being related to one another.

No, the scriptures repeatedly throughout them talk about the fact that we are going to be gathered together with one another as well as with our Savior Jesus Christ. Earlier in this very epistle, Paul—remember he said, “Who is our hope?” He said, “You’re our hope and our joy and our crown of rejoicing in the presence of Christ at his coming.”

Now, this clearly implies that Paul believed that he could recognize these Thessalonians at the final coming of Jesus Christ, and he would see them again, and because he’d see them again, they would be the crown of his rejoicing. They would be his joy in the presence of Jesus. Many other epistles, Paul speaks of this way. So I think that the particular phrasing used here—that we shall ever be with Christ—that is in the context of the reunion of us and our deceased friends is taught in this epistle and indeed throughout scripture.

Thomas Watson said that some have asked whether we shall know one another in heaven. “Surely,” Watson said, “our knowledge will not be diminished but increased.” The judgments of Luther and Anselm and many other divines is that we shall know one another. And when we shall see the saints in glory without their infirmities of pride and passion, it’ll be a glorious sight. I might just add to Watson’s quote that Calvin, Oliver Olvianisius, Zwingli, Luther—of course, many other reformers—all believed and taught the mutual recognition of saints in heaven. And so it’s a very important part of the Reformed faith as well.

Now I just want to go through briefly here a couple of evidences of this. First, in the Old Testament I mentioned that sleep is a frequent phrase used in both Old and New Testament to speak of dying, to sleep. The common phrase in the Old Testament in terms of sleep is to sleep with one’s fathers. And again, this is the inspired word of God—says that when those people die, they sleep with their fathers. That is in the context of those who have gone before him and who they knew.

Additionally, the Old Testament frequently speaks of the saints dying as being gathered unto his people. And one of the specific occurrences of this is the person of Moses. And I use Moses for a very explicit reason. The scripture says Moses died and was gathered to his people. This does not mean gathered to his people in burial, because we know that Moses was buried outside of the promised land. His bones in that sense were not gathered with his people.

What was gathered to his people? Well, his spirit was, and eventually, Thessalonians tells us, his body shall be as well. And so to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, but it is also to be reunited with those whom we have known in the Lord prior to our death.

Indeed, Jacob, when he was brought the news that Joseph—at least he thought Joseph had died, he hadn’t—he said that he would go down to the grave to his son, albeit mourning. So he knew that when he went to the grave, he would go to his son. David, upon the death of his son for his sin with Bathsheba, said the same thing. After he had fasted and then prayed, and yet God had taken his son, he got up and dressed himself. And they said, “What are you eating for now?” He said, “Well, look, my son’s not going to come to me. I’ll go to him, but he shall not come to me.”

David had a cognizance of the fact that when he died, he would be going to certainly Abraham’s bosom, to the place of the repose of the dead in the Old Testament. He would, in the New Testament, be going to be present with the Lord. We’ll also be going to our son if we’ve had a son who’s died in the faith. And so the scriptures repeat this over and over again in the Old Testament and other places as well.

The Mount of Transfiguration is an interesting account of this as well. The Mount of Transfiguration—we had three people there: Elijah, Moses, and our Savior, of course. And they all were recognizable one to the other. And indeed were recognizable to Christ’s disciples as well. Now, they didn’t have picture books about these people, but they recognized them. As Watson said, “Indeed, there will be an increase in our knowledge, not a decrease in our knowledge, and we’ll even be able to recognize apparently those saints who have departed that we’d never known before.”

And so indeed, our span of friends will not be restricted. It’ll be greatly expanded in the resurrection. The Mount of Transfiguration shows this mutual recognition of people in their glorified state. And it’s interesting to me that besides our Savior, who do we have? We have Elijah, we have Moses. We have one of the only two men, I believe, in the scriptures who was actually translated—who didn’t die in the body—Elijah. As well as Moses, who very explicitly, according to the scriptures, did die in the body, was buried.

So we have a picture right there in the Mount of Transfiguration of what Paul is speaking of here in 1 Thessalonians 4. We’ve got Christ in a glorified state. We’ve got those who are translated, of which we have a couple of types in the Old Testament, of Elijah, who will be, or are, types of those who, when Christ finally returns historically, are alive at that time. And then we have Moses, a symbol very obviously of those—most of us—who will have died in the Lord prior to the Lord’s return. All together, all mutually recognizing one another, a reunion with their Savior, but also reunion with each other.

And so I think it’s very important that we understand the scriptures teach this. Another interesting text that I think points this out is Luke 16. In Luke 16, our Savior tells us that we should make us friends of the unrighteous mammon, so that when you fail, they shall receive you into everlasting habitations. That’s an interesting verse, isn’t it?

Make friends with your money. With your money, make friends, so that when you fail, when you reach your end, they—the ones that you have helped with your money—will receive you into everlasting habitations. Now, Calvin has written a lot, as well as others have, as well—Cotton Mather and others—about the responsibility of the rich to the poor and the converse of the poor to the rich.

The rich are to share the wealth that God gives them with those who are poorer. And the poor have then an obligation, according to Calvin and others, to pray for the souls of the rich and to try to do whatever they can to extend the blessedness of the rich as well, to help them out in payment, so to speak, for the monetary help that the rich have given them. And indeed, I think that’s what our Savior is talking about here—that when you give money to a poor person, you make friends by the gift of that love, that show the demonstration of that love through your gift of money. And they then can receive you into everlasting habitation.

The implication seems to be