First Thessalonians 4:16-18 The Lords Return

We're going to begin this morning by reading verses 13 through 18. Andrew covered those nicely. Andrew, could you read those again? You got your Bible open this morning. Oh, it's behind me. Hold on. I'll grab it. I got mine handy. So let's begin again by reading verses 4, chapter 4, 13 through 18. And to some extent this continues in Chapter 5 next week too. Y'all set? Yeah, hold on. Okay, I got it. So, 13 through 18? Correct, thank you. Okay.

But we do not want you to be uninformed, Brethren. about those who are asleep that you may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, and the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up with him in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. therefore comfort one another with these words.

All right, good. So I think to look at 16 through 18 without the verses preceded would be a mistake, so that's why I had Andrew read the verses that he covered to a large extent last week. So ultimately, okay, so verse 13, it kind of is the purpose of the instruction to follow. It both has intellectual or cerebral applications and also has kind of emotional kind of relevance here. So Andrew, read verse 13 again please. Verse 13.

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope. Okay, so the idea there, we want you to be informed. So, you know, we all have brains, you know, but Lord, certain things we do that relates to our cognition and our knowledge, and that's what this verse of Paul's writing to appeal to their brains, to make them informed. The second thing is to kind of comfort them in terms of the events that are going to follow.

So why do you think, and oh by the way, then continuing verses 14 through 17, the content is covered. That's really in part what Andrew covered last week and what we're going to be dealing with today. And then verse 18 is the implementation of the piece of scripture that we're looking at here together today.

So why do you think the Lord, Kyrios, will descend, which is future fact, this is future tense and indicative of a fact that he will descend, is used here rather than Jesus or the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Why do you think Lord, Kyrios, is used here? Who's established as deity.

I like that. That's a good answer. And notice here, descent from his heavenly location relates to his position. And by the way, our position. And it's just not outer space. He's returning from his heavenly position by himself. And who is the human existence of the Triune God? It's the Lord Jesus Christ. So I think Andrew is correct. This is his lordship, his eternal position as the person of the Godhead that will return. The same Lord Jesus Christ that was here on earth and the truly God-man and man-God.

Alright, good. Now, presumably this manner of descent is going to be very similar to his process of ascending. I mean, he ascended into the clouds, right? In Acts 1.11, we don't need to look at that, we all know that perfectly well. And the descent will probably be happening in a very similar way. So what is this shout? This shout that's going to be utilized. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout.

Well, this is a military term. And I kind of like strong, a little bit wordy here, but strong defines this as an order, a command, specifically a stimulating cry, either that by which animals are roused and urged on by man as horses by charioteers hounds by hunters, et cetera, he says, or that by which a signal is given to men. For instance, a rower's by the master of a ship, to soldiers by a commander with a loud summons, a trumpet call. So that's the nature of this shout. It's a loud voice.

And there are many references to the trumpet of God in the New Testament. Here they are. So you can look up these on your own. But how many of these really relate to this this trumpet of the Lord that ultimately is being described here. Some do, and some don't. So we don't need to look at all of these verses to see how they relate to the so-called rapture, which is part of the text we're studying. So this question is effectively what I just posed.

Do you believe that all these references relate to the rapture, parousia, the coming of the Lord for his saints versus with his saints? Now keep in mind, that was the distinction we looked at last week. You know, is he coming for his saints, which is truly the rapture, or is he coming with his saints at the time of the second coming, right? So we're going to be with him when he returns for rule over the millennial kingdom. And shout, this shout or loud voice is used in both circumstances.

So we have to be careful when we look at these various verses, which again you can do on your own, to see which one is appropriately interpreted to be related to the rapture. and the dead in Christ will rise first. Isn't that interesting to reflect on what Andrew taught last week?

The dead in Christ will rise first. So, you know, this idea of, you know, ultimately that we're going to be raptured and ultimately those who died in the Lord are ultimately going to be left in the grave, well, you know, their spirit and soul is with the Lord now. But ultimately the bodily resurrection into the resurrected body will be first. So, you know, it's kind of neat to think of these graves opening up, but what about people who have been cremated?

You know, the Lord's going to deal with that. He didn't write a verse in a certain chapter of the Bible that ultimately deals with cremation. And some people think that because burial was such a tradition in the Old Testament, that ultimately burials what we should be doing today. Well, clearly, our brother Hal was cremated, and Marta and I are discussing this sometimes, you know, off and on about whether I should be cremated or whether I should be buried with my first wife. Anyway, I don't know, but we don't have any answers to these kinds of questions, but for God to think about taking a body in the grave for centuries that's now totally disintegrated and making a resurrected body, anyway, those people there have a bodily resurrection just like you and I, and they will rise first.

In the Old Testament, the trumpet blast usually was accompanying God's manifestation in glory. And this is just one example, Exodus. Then it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunderings and lightnings, and a thick cloud on the mountain, and the sound of the trumpet was very loud, so that all the people who were in the camp troubled. What were the circumstances here, do you recall? This is Mount Ararat, right? Yes. This is the Golden Calf, right?

And Moses is coming down from the mountain, look what he found, and a loud voice was how God's disgust was manifested in that particular setting in the Old Testament. Whatever this sound is like, it comes through the voice of an archangel. Now this is another kind of an interesting topic that I spent some time in. So what or who is this archangel? Is it Michael? Well, let's look at some potential relevance that this could be Michael.

In Jude chapter 1 verse 9, yet Michael, the archangel, in contending with the devil, What he disputed about the body of Moses, interesting now to connect that to the Exodus verse we just read, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, the Lord rebuked you. So in a sense, he kind of relates this to the event in Exodus that was just described.

And Strong says the Jews, after the exile, distinguished several orders of angels. Some reckoned four angels, according to the four sides of God's throne. of the highest rank, but the majority reckon seven after the pattern of the seven Ancipans, the highest spirits of the religion of Zoroaster. So, you know, so what? I mean, that's how the Jews viewed a series of gradations of angels in terms of their heavenly position.

But Macaulay says, the word, meaning archangel, has no definite article before it, so therefore, this isn't Michael. So, we're left with not complete understanding about this archangel. Yeah, Roger. Well, actually, I listened to J. Bernard McGee, and he takes the position that's actually Christ. Christ was the archangel himself. He's making the sound. He's the voice. Christ voice. I'm not quite sure how he gets there, but he makes that connection. So what Roger's saying, I know you can't hear him out there in the Zoom audience, but the archangel may be Christ himself.

This could be a theophany. And there's many other examples in Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament of the theophanies. And the New Testament, actually. So ultimately, that's another possibility that we need to consider. But it seems to me, if If, you know, this voice is of the archangel and Christ is the one who's returning himself, this could well be from whom the voice occurs. And with the trumpet of God. Perhaps this is like that that John experienced in Patmos. And we look here in Revelation 1, 10, 11. This is really, really, I think, uplifting.

I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice as a trumpet saying, I am the Alpha and Omega. So Roger, that relates to this archangel himself could be, but why would Christ be described as the Lord himself and then as the archangel? Anyway, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. And what you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia, to Ephesus, Myrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and the Laodicea. I mean, I think this loud voice is exemplified so many places in Scripture, and here it's none other than the Alpha and the Omega, the Lord Jesus Christ.

But think to equate verse 16 here and 1 Thessalonians 4 to the archangel being Christ when he says Christ is coming himself, being the archangel. Anyway, we can leave that up to the Lord to answer to us in heavenly places someday. Or when Christ restored Lazarus to life, here's another example, John 11, 43. Now when he had said these things, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.

And remember, that's not resurrection, that's restoration of life. This is not a new body. This is not a new creation, where in fact, the only thing I can think about Lazarus is he has to die twice now, right? Because he's effectively been restored. This is not like us when we're raptured. We're going to have a rapture that creates a new heavenly body, but ultimately Lazarus has to die twice. Anyway, all that aside, loud voice from the Lord himself was what was expressed in a way to reach Lazarus and restore him to life.

Isn't this interesting in terms of how the shout is manifested? Revelation 8-2, and I saw the seven angels who stand before God and to them were given seven trumpets. So here we're seeing the angels revisited in terms of the archangel, what his position was, given seven trumpets. So they in fact are in a position to use the trumpet presumably to reach those in terms to who the Lord has them reach out to.

And the dead in Christ will rise first. I think this relates to the hope of all who have already died in Christ versus those who have no such hope. So back to verses 13 and 14. You know, the idea of those that have died already ultimately will not experience the rapture. Well, they're going to experience it, but yet they're going to experience it first before we are raised up into the air.

So first, is first interpreted here in terms of sequence or priority? The idea of priority meaning they're more important Or is this in sequence? What do you think? I mean, we just kind of alluded to that. It must be sequence. And this is going to have to be so instantaneous that, you know, these dead in Christ will be risen, will be taken up with them. I bet it's a microsecond in terms of the way this happens. I mean, I have no idea, but it's not going to take a month or so to get all these people out of the graves and get them restored into resurrected bodies. So please interrupt anybody out there in Zoom space or here in the sanctuary with any questions that come up or comments.

So although believers are asleep, meaning their bodies have died, their souls and spirits are currently with the Lord, as we all know. Second Corinthians 5a, we are confident, yes, well-pleased, rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. I think that's something that gives us great comfort and peace, doesn't it? To be absent from the bodies, to be present with the Lord, our soul and spirit. And our bodies, if we die before the rapture, will ultimately be reconstituted in a new form at the time of His return.

For I am hard pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. And that follows the verse, one of my favorite, for me to live as Christ and die as Cain. So either way, you win here, is kind of my interpretation. Any thoughts about this?

I was just wondering, Bob, if unbelievers will hear the sound. They might not hear the Lord's voice, but like I was thinking of Paul on the road to Damascus. how the Lord talked to him, and other people heard the sound, but they couldn't hear exactly what he was saying. So I just wondered if it's really that loud that maybe... And keep in mind, Bonnie, the difference, Bonnie was pointing out the fact that the unsaved will hear the sound too.

I mean, the whole world, by the way, this isn't a loud voice directed to an individual. It's not to Wayne. It's not to Margaret. I mean, everybody's going to experience this. And by the way, this is a parallel to scripture in a sense, a good job. But if you've not read the Left Behind series, it's really, I think, a great exemplification in our current understanding of what this whole thing might look like.

So the left, yes. But I was just going to say, just kind of the way you've been describing it, it sounds to me it's like a battle cry. Mm-hmm. It's a military charm, right? And it's just, yeah, that kind of gets everybody's attention. Right. In fact, it's kind of a seizing or taking away. It's just to Christ's pleasure. I mean, we're thinking about the benefit we get, but His pleasure is to take the Church home.

And this is going to be a great event in the history of the world. And you know, it seems so So theoretical doesn't it to us in terms of this, because if we think about the science we know about today and trying to understand how ultimately this is going to occur, it's really a challenge for us intellectually to put all these pieces together. Roger? I was just thinking about, we have these great weather events, hurricanes and tornadoes, and that's where man, even though he tracks them, they kind of overpower man. tornadoes, hurricanes, so I'm thinking it's the magnitude of that. So the dead in Christ will go with him, and we'll go with him, so the rest of the world is going to be chaotic, and that starts the Great Tribulation period after that. It's interesting to ponder that, we don't have a lot of information. Am I correct in knowing that you're not hearing Roger's question out there in Zoom audience? Are you hearing what Roger just said? We can hear Roger. Oh, that's good. Fine. Great. All right.

So yes, I mean the hurricanes, the tornadoes, actually late yesterday there were a lot of tornado watches and warnings in the Colorado area, particularly in northeastern Colorado. So yeah, those are incredible events and I think this is going to be magnifying those five logs. That's a lot, by the way.

All right, let's go on to verse 17 then. Then we who are alive, meaning us here, and remain shall be caught up together. So the dead are risen initially, but the question is how much time. We don't have that information, but I doubt if it's very long.

We shall be caught up together with them. Together. Notice the church is together at that point. in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord." Note how personal this event is going to be, each and every one of us.

The question is, is this like the number of sands on the seashore that was mentioned by Abraham ultimately with the covenant that God made to him? It probably has some relationship to that. And 1 Corinthians 15, 51, 52, something often shared at the time of someone's home going and celebration of life.

Behold I tell you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, meaning die, but we shall all be changed in a moment. So that reflects how quickly this is going to occur. In the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, and I guess we could argue what's the last trumpet here, but anyway, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed too. So this again, within a moment, suggests that this is a very short interval of time. Caught up. Future passive. We don't have anything to do with this. It's going to happen and we're not in control here. We are the recipients of God's great grace. and his calling of the church to our heavenly position permanently.

Harpazo is the Greek term to seize, to carry off by force, or to seize or claim for oneself selfishly. The idea is Christ is selfish, that it's only the church that's going to be taken home. There's no broad application to people who have lived a good life. who have denied the gospel experience of the coming saved because of everything that's been accomplished at the cross. A selfish goal of the Lord Jesus Christ in bringing his church together once and for all. Claim for oneself selfishly, I like that term best. He loves the church. And remember, he's the head of the church. We covered that a few weeks ago. And he died for the church. And he died for the church. Right. All right.

Who is them and together with them? Well, seems pretty straightforward, doesn't it? And those who are asleep will all be together for the first time, really, in the global history and present age of the church. We're just thinking, you know, we think about our brothers and sisters, Hal, all the brothers that have gone before us. Family members, right? Yeah, I don't know whether we'll have a sense of them or not, but we'll all be together, which is pretty amazing. I think we're going to have name tags. Margaret says name tags, okay? Margaret, time out for you. You think a lot about this. I think we all consider this often, you know, our relatives, our friends in heavenly places.

What kind of relationship is that going to be? And I don't know that it's going to be, we keep saying, I can't wait to see my brother or my aunt or, you know, Hal or everybody. I mean, we say that, but do we really have evidence that that kind of human relationship is ever going to be there again?

I don't think we have scripture to back that up, but it's something that we wish for. since we're all going to be together, and we're going to have the knowledge of Christ then. We're told we have the knowledge of Him now, and that's only through the Spirit-led act and faith of what Scripture tells us. That's the knowledge we have now, but we don't have complete knowledge. We seek it, and that's why we come to Holly Hills, because we want to rightly divide the Word of Truth.

But what those relationships are going to be in heavenly places, we have very little information on that. It's nice to think we could renew this Remember, our life here with our relatives and our friends and brothers and sisters in the Lord, we all had sin natures here. In heavenly places, there's going to be none of that. There's going to be no recollection of how that aspect of our life was manifested.

I kind of think of, you know, some people say, well, will my dog be there? And I think it's probably the same kind of thing. If when we get there, if that's important to us, then we'll be able to see them, or our dog will be there. But I have a feeling that those kind of things aren't going to be important to us anymore, and we're just going to be with Christ, and that's going to, you know, maybe that's all we're going to care about, and the other won't matter. I think if it's important to us, it'll be there, but it might not be important to us anymore. I think you're right, Caroline.

I'm going to say something that's very human, so forgive me for this. being there to be raised up and glorifying Christ, I'm not sure what that's all about. It seems like, you know, this isn't turning from Channel 9 to 31 to see what's on tonight. I mean, you know, I mean, but it just, I don't know. We're going to experience this in a very, very wonderful way, I'm sure, but we just don't know exactly how this is going to take place.

But, you know, all we need to do is trust the Lord by faith that ultimately this is, you know, to be present. where the Lord is to be absent from the body. And that presence is in either way you win. So for me to live is Christ and die is gain. All right, good. Good comments.

In the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And some people think that, is this cloud like the cloud that surrounded Israel? I mean, just think about God's ministering to the needs in the desert as a cloud. I mean, his presence was there, his food manna was provided. water was provided, everything that relates to our human existence was there. Is that kind of cloud atmosphere kind of what's spoken to here?

Or is it the atmosphere that's immediately above us? It says we're raised into the air, so it's likely that's what this means. Or maybe being taken up in heaven to meet the Lord in the air. Well, potentially all three have some relevance, but since the scripture says that whatever in the air is what is proclaimed here, and if this is like the ascension, where in fact you went up to be in the clouds, then we're going to go up to be in the clouds with Him when He comes and descends to bring us home. So I don't think we need to overly interpret this in any other way than a physical presence in the clouds as we ascend into our heavenly position.

And thus we shall always, ever always be with the Lord. So positionally we're with the Lord now, but conditionally at times we get distracted. What I'm saying is the human existence has a lot going on and we are distracted by things of the earth, but there will be no distractions at all. We'll always and ever be with the Lord.

So that position that we now have scripturally will be physically ours forevermore. So what security we will, and by the way, we have now in this truth of the Epistle to the Thessalonians by Paul. Philippians 3, 20 and 21, for our citizenship is in heaven. I love that. I think that's a reminder often when these trials and tribulations come our way. Our citizenship's not here. This is our business address. Our citizenship's in heaven from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior.

That's waiting for this scripture to be fulfilled. the Lord Jesus Christ who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to his glorious body according to the working by which he is able even to subdue all things to himself. Again, his selfish nature is to take the church home to be with him permanently and physically. And you know, this section of scripture that we're reading here, to look at the relationship that it has to the rest of scripture, By the way, just think about our coming to the Lord and our living by faith as members of the body of Christ. I mean, when I was unsaved, I thought a person could use a Bible verse to support any position that he or she wanted to support. And I was very intellectually critical of that, seeing the hypocrisy that I now feel like I am, ultimately, to see that. But then when you get into Scripture, you get saved, and the Spirit leads in the understanding.

Here, Philippians 3.20 and 21 perfectly relates to what we're looking at in 1 Thessalonians 4. I mean, Scripture duplicates itself, and it builds on itself. And I think this is such an exciting aspect. of what the Lord has done, providing us all the information we need to be consolidated in that faith that he's given us. Any thoughts? Alright, let's turn to the closing verse, and we'll be done fairly soon this morning. This is pretty straightforward. Therefore comfort one another with these words.

If you have to think, this is kind of trivia in a way, but If you had to think of one chapter in the Bible that deals with the term comfort, what chapter would that be? And what text? 2 Corinthians 1, Patty, you're right on. And boy, if we want to learn about comfort, I think that's where you can find more on comfort than anywhere else. And you know, the neat thing about what the Lord shares with us in 2 Corinthians 1, is if we think about the trials and tribulations we've had to face in our human existence, those are the ones that use us to comfort one another.

And I'll personalize this. Losing Sharon at a very young age, when I was with, and we were with somebody just a couple days ago, honey, where somebody had just lost Spouse and ultimately I was able to in some ways bond with her the fact I've been through this I know what you're going through and this is fairly recent for this woman whose husband had recently died This is a woman. We didn't I didn't know at all until we were with her on the Gulf Coast the other day So anyway, all that aside This comforting one another with these words think about how that might apply How might that apply? I need an answer from someone in terms of in context in 1 Thessalonians 4. Well, I can share something with our family. Bonnie's mother was concerned about, she says, well, she had the concerns that Thessalonians had. Well, the dead, if I'm dead, I'm going to miss out. You know, so I said, I'm going to miss the rapture if I'm dead. So they had the wrong thinking.

So this is to straighten out that thinking and to comfort them at the same time. It's to correct a lot of misunderstanding about the Lord's return and the relationship between the dead in Christ and the living in Christ. Some people place the rapture in the mid-trib period and sometimes post-trib and that just doesn't fit here, does it? It really doesn't fit. So yes, the comfort here relates to this specific truth of the dead in Christ and ultimately the way the rapture is going to happen.

Also, I would say that a whole generation or several generations of Christians would not be cremated because they thought their body could not rise up at the rapture. And that's wrong teaching too. Really, I mean, because again, if you're thinking of bodies that have been engraved since the first century, those bodies, even the bone will be gone. I mean, there'll be nothing left by the time that this rapture occurs. So yes, and so that gives you some comfort about cremation being a reasonable choice, because the Lord's ability to recreate a resurrected body is going to exist in that person as well as someone who was buried two weeks ago. Yes, Roger.

In my mind, in parallel possibly, God made us from the dust of the earth. So if he started from the dust of the earth, why can't he do the reverse? He made us into a man, why can't he do the opposite and restore us from the particles that are out there? If you think about the forces of the atom, Christ is a force, you know, He's a force of holding things together. So all that's familiar territory to God and to the Lord Jesus. It's not something that is beyond his ability.

Other thoughts here? What's therefore therefore? And I think we've kind of addressed that. It's therefore to summarize verses 13 through 17 in terms of what the message is from Paul to the church. These words concern what precedes them. So I just mentioned that, verses 13 through 17. To comfort is perikoleo, and that's one another, meaning those members of the body. And also this term, this Greek term, can mean to instruct and exhort one another. And a verse that comes up with that is ultimately in Hebrews 10, 24, and 25, and let us consider one another not forsaking assembling of ourselves together as in the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the day approaching. And that day is the day of the coming of the Lord. So here's somebody's vision of what this rapture is going to look like.

I guess I'm not sure what the bodily form really accurately reflects, what this resurrected body. I guess the question is, does the body get created immediately when Christ comes for the church, or is this delayed in some way? I think there's so many questions about this that we really can't address all the questions we have. But I think what we can do is really look at this as a soft pillow for a tired head, and we can look forward to this.

And if Verne were still here, I mean, Verne, remember, really wanted the rapture, as we all should, to happen today. The question is, what is the motive for wanting the rapture to happen today? How many people would say, it's because I want to be with the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, I think that's what Scripture tells us.

But I think it's, get me out of this fleshly, earthly body where in fact this flesh shows up only too often. The power of Satan, the cosmos, the world system, and ultimately my own sin nature. Please rescue me from that. And Christ says, no, my selfish desire is not to rescue from that, it's to create in you an increasingly firm and permanent relationship with myself in heavenly places.

Any closing thoughts on our section of Scripture this morning? All right, Wayne, would you close us in prayer, please? Father, thank you for this time together and from the words and the scripture and the comfort that they do give us. We give you the praise and the honor in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you.