Beloved, we're in the process of wrapping up our series on the Belgic Confession, which we believe to be a faithful summary of the truths of Scripture. Belgic Confession Article 37, which we read a few weeks ago, it's the last article of the Belgic Confession and it has to do with the last things. That's what we've been talking about. For the past two weeks, we've looked at kind of the personal side of the last things. How do we personally face death and what comes after? What hope do we personally have for the future in our bodies and in our souls? This week we're going to shift and start looking at the bigger picture. Not just the personal side, what happens to me, but the cosmic side, what's going to happen to all people in the end times. And I want to start looking at the last things, the general big picture last things, by looking at one particular question. What do we believe? concerning the rapture. Maybe that's a word you've heard before when you've talked to people about the last times. The word rapture comes from a Latin word that's used in 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 17, one of the verses that we read. Verse 17 says, 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. The word rapture is the Latin word for we will be caught up. And that's where we get that word. When people talk about the word rapture in regards to the end times, they are talking about a specific way of understanding this verse, 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 17. The rapture is the idea that at some point, the Christians who are living on this earth are suddenly going to be zipped up to Christ. And all the non-Christians will be left here wondering what just happened. The idea is that sometime before Jesus comes back, things are going to get so bad here on earth that Jesus won't want his people to experience it, so he's just going to snatch them away and leave all the unbelievers here to suffer. Maybe you've seen bumper stickers that talk about this. I've seen a bumper sticker that says, in case of rapture, this car will be unmanned. The idea is that the driver is a Christian, the rapture is going to come, and suddenly he's going to disappear and the car is just going to swerve off and crash. Now as we discuss the rapture, you should know four things. about this rapture idea. First of all, we need to know the idea of the rapture is very much a minority view in Christianity. Reformed Christians, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Lutherans, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, none of us historically interpret 1 Thessalonians 4 in the rapture way. So it's a minority view. Second, historically speaking, the idea of a rapture is really a very new idea. Less than 300 years old, which when you're talking about church history, is pretty new. Third, the rapture is something that really only certain Christians in America have latched onto. It's not really something that Christians talk about very much in other countries. It's kind of our thing. Fourth, this rapture interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4 is declining. It's not that popular anymore, even in American Christianity. That's due, in a large part, to the resurgence of Reformed theology that we've been experiencing for the last decade or two. Go us, I guess. With those four things in mind, you might be wondering why is this even a topic we're talking about tonight? Why are we zeroing in on this if it's kind of this minority new thing that's kind of declining? Well, the reason we're going to focus on it is kind of a very personal reason. It's a very simple reason. The rapture freaked me out when I was a kid. And so, yes, in some ways, hopefully not in all ways, but in some ways, this sermon is me publicly processing childhood trauma. But it's quite possible, and I'm sure it's quite possible, that other members of my generation may have experienced the same fears or at least quite a bit of confusion on this matter. So I do want to talk about it this evening. When I was a kid, let me give you the background to this trauma. When I was a kid, three things happened. First of all, we took a lot of trips to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to visit my grandparents. And while we were there, we would attend their church, the Pilgrim Bible Church. This church bought really heavily into the end times stuff, like big time. This church had a whole wall of tracts, and almost every one of them had to do with the end times. And I, as a little kid, was super bored, and so I grabbed every tract that had to do with the end times, and I read them, and they freaked me out. My parents didn't know I was reading it. I was a little kid and I thought if something comes from a church and if it has Bible verses in it, it has to be true. So I thought everything I was reading from these tracts was the correct interpretation of the Bible. So that's the first thing that happened. The second thing that happened is I heard the contemporary Christian pop song, I Wish We'd All Been Ready. I don't know if you've heard that song. It's a song that's written from the perspective of some person who didn't get raptured, some person who was left on earth to suffer. It's a very traumatizing song. It's kind of a super disturbing song, but it's been covered so many times by Christian artists that it's a little weird. Finally, The third thing that happened, and if you were alive in the 90s, you can guess what I'm going to say, was that the Left Behind books came out. And Christians and non-Christians alike went crazy over those books. And as the title suggests, Left Behind, the books have to do with the people who were left behind after the rapture. In the book, like, drivers disappear from cars, pilots disappear from airplanes, the whole world is plunged into chaos because all the Christians disappeared. in a moment, and all that stuff freaked me out. Eventually, all this was going on, my parents didn't know this was happening in my little mind. Eventually, in English class, I had to write a poem, and I wrote a poem about how the Antichrist was coming to get me, and how the rapture was happening, and I was left behind. It was like a metal poem. It was disturbing. And the teacher sent home a note like, you need to talk to your kid about this. And finally, my parents staged a theological intervention for this little kid who was freaking out. So this evening I want to talk about these things. I want to address this rapture understanding of 1 Thessalonians 4. And I want to show you a way of understanding 1 Thessalonians 4 that matches up much more closely with the rest of the Bible and with the culture in which Paul was writing these words. But most of all, if you take one thing from this, I want to show you how this passage, and really all passages about the end times, are meant to comfort you. See, that's what was missing from those tracts and that song and those novels, the idea of comfort. I've always thought, go figure, that if a Bible author tells you, this is why I'm writing these things, you might want to pay attention to it. Look with me at 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 18. Therefore encourage one another with these words. 5 verse 11, encourage one another, build one another up just as you are doing. Both of these verses about encouraging and comforting follow up on some pretty intense teaching on the end times. And Paul says, what I'm telling you about the end times, use this stuff to comfort each other. In 4 verse 13, Paul introduces all this end times stuff by saying, I'm telling you this so that you can have hope, hope even in times of grief and mourning. Our theology of the end times is supposed to fill us with that hope, that comfort, that courage, not fear and distress and trauma. If you as a Christian are pondering the end times and it fills you with fear, you're doing it wrong. The Belgian Confession says that very thing. The Belgian Confession, Article 37, tells us that for Christians, thoughts of the end times are not to be, quote, horrible and dreadful, but rather, quote, very pleasant and of great comfort. So what about 1 Thessalonians 4? It gives us that very pleasant, great comfort. Well, in verse 13, and this is a beautiful verse, this is a verse that we should treasure. Paul says, we don't want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep. Now, when Paul says asleep, that's his way of describing those who have died in Christ. And don't just rush over that. Don't just say, well, asleep, Paul means dead, and then move on to the next word. Think about what Paul is doing when he's calling those who have died in Christ asleep. Let's say that I'm a little kid, I'm playing outside by myself and I find something amazing. I find maybe a patch of wild raspberries or I find a pond full of tadpoles and pollywogs and I am so excited about it that I run inside to tell my brother or sister but they're taking a nap, they're asleep. And let's say that somehow I have good enough manners not to wake them up. In that moment, I would be a little bit sad because I couldn't immediately share my discovery with my brother or sister. I would have to wait until they woke up from their nap. It'd be a little sad, but I would know that they would wake up eventually. I knew that eventually when they woke up from their nap, I could share my news with them. So there's a little bit of grief. I can't talk to my brother or sister right now. I can't interact with them. They're asleep. But I know I can when they wake up. And that could be very, very soon. That's the idea that Paul uses for those who have died in Christ. We grieve because we can't interact with them right now. We have parted from them, but we know it's not forever. If someone is asleep, they can wake up. A time is coming when we can interact with them again. That's why Paul says, we don't grieve as others do who have no hope. Now notice that Paul doesn't say that it's inappropriate for Christians to grieve. The Bible never says that. Even Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus who knew that a few moments later he was going to raise Lazarus up from the dead. Grieving is right and proper, and the Jesus who wept for his friend Lazarus sees every one of your tears. But in that grief, we can still have hope. And that's what we've been talking about for the past few weeks. At death, the souls of those in Jesus are taken to his side. And through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are guaranteed that those souls will be reunited with their bodies in resurrection glory that's like Christ's. And in that day, our parting will be over. That's what Paul says in verse 14. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Again, that's what we saw last week. The glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ is the first fruits, the guarantee that we will be raised like him when he returns. Now in verse 15, Paul anticipates something that we might ask. This is great news for all who have fallen asleep in Christ, but what about the people that are still around when Christ comes back? What's going to happen to them? What's the timeline for all this? What's the logistics for this second coming? Well, Paul gives an outline in verse 16. He says, Now this is a bit sarcastic, but it's something one of my seminary professors said, so if you find it offensive, we'll blame him. He said, if you look at verse 16, Where is this secret, silent rapture that people have thought about? I mean, all that we see in verse 16 are trumpets and commands and cries and shouts. I mean, the rapture is supposed to be the secret event. One minute Christians are here, the next minute they're disappearing. But there's an awful lot of noise going on in verse 16. It's not a secret, silent rapture. But I want you to see something or hear something in all this noise of verse 16. Cries of command, voices of archangels, sounds of a trumpet. This is very festive language. Back in the culture when Paul was writing this, there would be two scenarios where you would hear this kind of noise. The first scenario is a wedding. In ancient wedding practices, most of the guests would gather at the bride's family's house. The bride would be getting ready with her attendants. The guests, maybe they would be starting to nibble at the feast, but no one's sitting down to eat, yet they're all waiting. The wedding and the feasting, they can't begin until the groom arrives. The bride has set aside some special attendants to stand at the door. They have lamps. They're ready to throw open the door to light the lamps and let the festivities begin as soon as the groom gets there. Sometimes you're sitting there waiting with the bride's family for a long time. You're listening at the door. Where is the groom? When is he going to come? And then suddenly you can hear the groom shouting a cry of command, open the gates, let me come to my bride. So you hear the cry of command. Then you start hearing his attendants shouting, sharing in his joy. You hear trumpets blowing, the lamps are lit, the doors are thrown open. In that wedding scenario, we see the same things that we see in verse 16. A cry of command, voices of those with the groom, in this case the archangels, and the sound of a trumpet. Now, the other scenario where we see these or where we hear these sounds in verse 16 is when an army returns home from war. Imagine that we're all citizens of a city. We know that our enemy is out there, so we send our army to go attack them. The army leaves, and as soon as they're outside, we go into lockdown. We bar the gates. We get ready just in case. But a short time later, we see our army marching back across the field. We hear the captain yelling a cry of command. We are victorious. Throw open the gates. The enemy is defeated. There's peace for the city. The rest of the army starts echoing his shout. There's peace for the city. Throw open the gates. Trumpets are blown and the gates are thrown open. That's the other scenario where we hear these sounds from verse 16, the cry of command, the voices of those who are with the victorious returning captain and the blowing of trumpets. So we have to realize when the Thessalonians are reading this letter, when they get to verse 16, they're thinking, oh, the return of Jesus will be like a wedding or it will be like a victorious captain returning from battle. And that's the key to how we understand verse 17. Verse 17 says, 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. Now, if you're reading that verse all by itself, then we can understand where some American Christians got the idea that at some point Christians would just be snatched up into heaven, caught up in some mystical moment. But if we're reading this together with the rest of these verses in 1 Thessalonians 4, a new picture emerges. Because what would happen in an ancient wedding? The groom would give that shout, his attendants would start shouting with him, the lamps would be lit, the door would be flung open, the trumpets would sound, and all the guests who were in the bridal house would rush outside and meet the groom. They couldn't contain their excitement. They wouldn't sit in the house waiting for him to get in. As soon as the doors opened, they would run out so that they could re-enter the house with the groom. The same thing would happen when a victorious army returned home. As soon as the captain gave the shout and blew the trumpets, the gate would be open and all the people of the town would rush out into the field and they would line the road to join the victory parade back into the city. Verse 17 is using that imagery, that wedding imagery, that victorious army, triumphant parade imagery. It's saying when Jesus returns, we will hear his cry of command. We'll hear the voices of the angels with him. We'll hear his festive trumpets blowing, and we won't be able to contain ourselves. We won't just sit around and be like, well, I think he's on his way, but we're going to be so happy. That we're going to rush to meet Jesus, to join Him in His second coming. That's the image of verse 17. We're not going to zip off to some invisible space somewhere. It's that we who are alive and hear the trumpet and those who are dead will be raised and we will all join the throng of celebration. The clouds that we join Him in are the clouds of His glory, the same Shekinah clouds that surrounded the presence of God in the temple and tabernacle. We're going to be there, we're going to join Him as He returns to set this world right, to glorify His people, to reign with them forever. That's good news that comforts us. This is not a terrifying story to frighten little children or adults. This is a reunion. This is a celebration. This is festivity. This is a triumphant parade. This is victory. This is a reunion with those who have fallen asleep. And even better, it's the arrival of our groom, our victor, our savior, our king. It's what we long for, not something that we fear. This is the celebration that we anticipate. We might be sitting here nibbling here and there. We already now are experiencing the beginning of our new life, but we're waiting for the feast and this will be the time when it comes. This is not something to cause trauma and confusion and doubt. Rather, Paul says in the part of chapter five that we read, Paul says, we don't know when this will happen, but we know it will. Paul doesn't encourage us to freak out about ifs and whens and signs and prophecies. Paul doesn't tell us read tracts and make guesses and speculations, write weird novels to terrorize people. Paul says, you know he's coming. So keep the lamps lit, stay awake, keep ready, keep waiting, keep celebrating, keep working for the kingdom so that we're ready when it happens. We're waiting when it happens. That's the perspective we need as we look to the future. The last line of Belgic Confession Article 37 says, we look forward to that great day with longing in order to enjoy fully the promises of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen. Let us pray.