The Apostle Paul is writing here under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, preserved for us for all ages, for the church down through time, and included in our scriptures, the holy word of God. Hear now the word of the Lord. But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do, who have no hope, For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself would descend from heaven with a cry of command and with the voice of an archangel and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore, encourage one another with these words. This is the word of the Lord. Amen. This is the word of God. The grass withers and the flowers of the field fade away. But this is the word of God and God's word stands forever. We'll be giving our attention this morning to verse six verse 16. One phrase there the dead in Christ will rise. We join me as we pray and call on the name of the Lord today. Oh, Lord, our God, we bow before you today and we praise you for you are the king of kings, the king of the universe. Your splendor and glory is beyond what we could even ever think or imagine. You are the great I am, the one in whom we live and move and have our being, the living and true God. We praise you, Lord, for everything we need is found in you. You are our all and all. You are infinite in every way. Oh Lord, help us today to understand your measureless and infinite wisdom and grace and power and love. Lord, you are the all-powerful God who raises the dead. You are the one who is able to work in us the gift of faith and to build us in the faith. We pray that today you would come by the power of the risen Christ and work faith in all of us. Oh Lord, come through the power of the word of God and the Holy Spirit and speak to us today these words of life through the gospel. We pray that you would come and minister to every soul here. You know the needs and burdens and worries and concerns and sorrows on every heart here. And you are able to do immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine. So we pray, Lord, that you would provide in every way for all of our needs out of the riches of Christ our Savior. And Lord, we commit our whole life to you, our life now and our life to come, the rest of our lives. We pray that you would come and speak to us today, strengthen us in the faith, build us up, Lord. Remind us again of the hope that we have in Christ and his resurrection. We pray for your blessing on me, the servant of God who comes today with the word. Help me, Lord, to proclaim your word faithfully. Give us all ears to hear, eyes to see, and a heart to believe. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Sometimes it hits you more than others, that is how life flies by. The years go so fast. I'm sure there's many of you who would agree with me. You notice that some days more than others, like this weekend with Easter Sunday approaching. I guess holidays have a tendency to do that because you think of holidays in the past. I had flashbacks. the last couple days of road trips to Missouri from Iowa as a child where we would spend Easter with my maternal grandparents, my mom's parents. I can see in my mind's eye as if it were yesterday, seeing my grandmother Rice sitting at the organ in the little church there down the street from their house. We would walk there from their house in Butler, Missouri. She would play the organ, the whole church there singing, Christ the Lord is risen today. That was more than 50 years ago when I was a little boy. Remembering my dear mother exclaimed with a big smile, he is risen indeed. And since then, my mother and my father and my younger brother have gone to be with the Lord. They've fallen asleep in Christ, as the Word of God says. And many friends have also gone to be with the Lord, even some from this congregation who are now asleep, as the Bible calls the Christian in death, asleep in Christ. Why? Because they just need to be awakened on that great day. This passage in 1 Thessalonians was written to the church in Thessalonica. The Christians who first received this letter from the Apostle Paul were also grappling with the passage of time. The church in the city of Thessalonica, a city today of about a million people in Greece, the Thessalonian Christians 2,000 years ago had been particularly encouraged by the promise Paul had given them when he was there as a church planter, by the promise of the return of the Messiah, that Jesus was coming back, the second coming of Christ. Paul first went to Thessalonica in the year about 49 AD. That's found in Acts chapter 17. During his second missionary journey with Silas, and they stayed there maybe a month, he preached in the synagogue, proving from the scriptures that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. preaching the death and resurrection of Christ. Both Jews and God-fearing Greeks turned to the Lord. There was a small riot stirred up by the jealousy of the Jewish leadership. So Paul and Silas slipped out of town, but a church had been formed. And then a second, a letter comes here about a year to two years later, 51 AD, to a group of fairly new believers who were still needing shepherding. And if you read through 1 Thessalonians later today, you'll find so many of our modern needs that are addressed. The people there needed strength. They needed encouragement. They faced opposition. They faced persecution. They had questions about the second coming of Jesus. And they particularly wondered about the fate of brothers and sisters in the Lord who had died since Paul had been there. Time had passed. People had died. People who believed in the death and resurrection of Jesus. And yet Jesus hadn't come back as he said he would. He hadn't returned yet. So they wonder what's going on with them. Will they now miss out on the glorious coming of Christ? That's what Paul is addressing here in verse 13. We don't want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. Again, sleep was a common term used for those who had died and were buried in Christ. What about your Christian friends and family who've already died and are buried? His answer is, I don't want you to be in the dark any longer. Remember this. Don't ever forget this. He says, we know that Jesus died and rose again. That's the core of the gospel. And so everyone who belongs to him will also rise. They'll be brought back to life. This will happen when Jesus comes back, and he'll come with a loud command, with a trumpet call, and the dead in Christ will rise first. And we'll be caught up together with them. We'll meet them in the clouds, in the glory of his presence, and we will always be with the Lord. What a great reunion that will be. Those are wonderful promises. I want to focus our attention today on the core of his statement to them, the heart of his encouragement to them. It's one of my favorite verses in all the Bible. My prayer is that after this morning, you too will find it to be a pillar of strength. Remember this great promise. For the rest of your life, the dead in Christ will rise. Very brief. I want you to think on that today and this week. Write it down. Maybe keep it on a little piece of paper in your wallet or write it with real fancy lettering and stick it on a note on your refrigerator. The dead in Christ will rise. It's true. It's powerful. It's full of promise. It's full of the gospel. It puts everything in perspective. It's evangelistic. This truth will guide you on dark days. Meditate on it day and night so you'll be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water yielding fruit in its season. It'll give you wisdom and peace and assurance. It will be like medicine to your wounds on the day of calamity or trouble or tragedy or receiving a challenging diagnosis from the doctor. It will be an anchor for your soul on stormy days. It will give you strength to sing for joy even in the darkness. The dead in Christ will rise. Let's pick apart that verse for a few minutes. There's an outline there in your bulletin if you'd like to follow along. Three simple points. The dead, the dead in Christ, and the dead in Christ will rise. The dead, their first point. We live in a world where death is all around us, right? This world is under a curse. The Bible is very honest and realistic. We're not in paradise now. Sometimes we're prone to think that or expect that. We live in a world under a curse. The curse of God because of man's rebellion. Sin entered the world and through sin death came. Death came to all of us. Juan has been reminding us that in his evening sermon series in Romans. This present world is not like the life to come. The result of the curse of God, the just and holy judgment of God on a sinful humanity is that death is everywhere. It's everywhere. And with death, all that comes with it. Sickness and disease and decay and sorrow and achy bones and separation. It's everywhere we go. And death touches everyone. The Word of God says it is appointed to every man, it comes to every person, to every man to die once and after that the judgment. Our lives are all affected by the curse of death. Christians die. Life here is lived in the shadow of death. Every day it's near us all the time. There have been two fatal accidents in southwest Florida, right on roads or intersections where I passed after or just before that. I passed earlier in the week. I could have been in the middle of those. When I saw where each of those was in the Fort Myers area, I was there. And I was there too. It could have been me. This body of mine will die unless the Lord comes back first. I will die one day and you will die. We don't know when. Our days are numbered. There's a fixed number of our days and no more. God's word says that. Show me, oh Lord, David says, my life's end and the number of my days. Let me know how fleeting my life is. Now David's not wanting to know it. Do I have a thousand days left or two thousand days left? David's asking that he would remember that there's a fixed number of them. Moses says, teach us to number our days aright that we may gain a heart of wisdom. That is, remembering that we'll die one day is important so that we don't live foolishly. And the fear of death is all throughout humanity. It's a frightful thing because God has stamped on the conscience of everyone that his judgment is on the other side of death. We know this. It's an awesome and terrifying thing. The fear of death permeates all societies, all peoples on the earth. And the fear of death can be overwhelming, even causing death. How many people have had heart attacks or strokes and died because they thought they were gonna die? that modern-day comic Woody Allen, he's now almost 90 years old, not known for his Orthodox theology. He didn't realize he was saying something theological or profound when he said, I'm not afraid of death, I just don't wanna be there when it happens. People are afraid to die. So we live in a world where death is all around us. We live in a world under a curse. Death touches everyone. The fear of death is pervasive in humanity. But God, by his grace and power, has overcome death. He hasn't left us alone. God has overcome the curse and fear of death by sending into the world his divine son to take on human flesh, to destroy death by obeying the law perfectly and bearing the punishment we deserved, taking the curse upon himself. And he rose again from the dead 2,000 years ago in real time in history, proving his victory over the grave. The promise of God, the God of all grace in this is you too can share in that victory over death. If you believe what Jesus did, if you will turn to or have faith in the Lord Jesus and what he did on the cross and in his rising from the dead, then you will with him pass through death to live forever. Your soul will go immediately to paradise when your body dies. You think of the thief on the cross who was dying there, hanging next to Jesus, and he came to saving faith there, suddenly realizing the one next to me is the king of glory. And he says, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus said, today you will be with me in paradise. In fact, not only will your soul go to heaven, but the Bible says your body, which goes in the grave and returns to dust, will be raised up, just like Christ's body was raised. You, too, will be raised up. As we read today, he is the first fruit, the evidence of our resurrection. Just like Jesus raised Lazarus out of the grave, he will stand one day, calling from heaven, and we'll all be raised. Jesus himself said, it is my father's will that everyone who looks to the son and believes in him shall have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day. Which brings us to our second point this morning. As God looks down on humanity, there are two kinds of people in the world. Those who've looked to the son and believed and those who have not. Those who believe the promise of God and those who have not. The phrase that Paul uses to make that distinction is those who are in Christ. The dead in Christ will rise. What does that mean? In Christ. It's actually one of Paul's favorite terms. He uses it all the time. It's another way of describing what a Christian is. You see, just to believe that there's a God doesn't make you a Christian. Just to be religious doesn't make you a Christian. Just to have a moral compass, some say, doesn't make you a Christian. You see, a Christian is someone who has understood and believed the good news, the gospel. A Christian is someone who has believed what God has done in history. out of love, that he so loved the world he gave his only begotten son to die on a cross and rise again. A Christian is someone who has come to realize and to say to the Lord, I'm a sinner. I'm not right with God. I'm unworthy. I need something outside of myself. I need righteousness. I'm not righteous. I need God's forgiveness. I need his mercy or I'll die. And so when that person hears that there's an answer for not being right with God, when that person hears that Jesus came into the world to save sinners, that God laid on him our iniquity, our sin, that Jesus came to give us life on the cross as he gave his life as a substitute, and God raised him up to prove his sacrifice was acceptable to God. When a person hears that there is pardon and cleansing offered freely, They cry out, yes, I need that. I need grace. I must, I can't do this. I can't do this alone. I believe that. I receive him, the living savior. God promises when you believe on Him, when you receive Christ, Jesus comes and dwells in your heart by His Spirit. Your body becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit. And now you are seen by the Father as united to His Son. He is in you and you are in Him, united by faith to Him and a partaker of all of His benefits. And you are now covered in Him, clothed in His righteousness. You're all dressed up now in God's sight by grace alone. We have a new position. We were in Adam. We are now in Christ. As I said, this is one of Paul's favorite phrases. He says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. He says it's because of him, because of God the Father, that you are in Christ Jesus. That means it's all God's work. He says, God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. So, You are either in Christ or you're not in Christ. There's no halfway. You can't be kind of in Christ and kind of not. I think it's one of Paul's favorite phrases because of what he heard when he first met Jesus Christ. You remember on the road to Damascus. He was still named Saul at that point. You can read about him in Acts 8 and 9, before he was converted. He had been persecuting Christians in Jerusalem, ravaging the church, entering house after house, dragging off men and women and committing them to prison and to death. Acts 9 opens, Saul, that was his name before he became Paul, Saul still breathing out threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. He was on his way to the synagogues in Damascus with letters of permission to arrest and bring Christians bound up back to Jerusalem. Remember what the risen Jesus said to him when he appeared to him in all of his glory on the road to Damascus? Jesus said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Why are you persecuting me? It's interesting, Jesus didn't say, why are you persecuting my people? Jesus didn't say, why are you persecuting the church? Rather, he said, why are you persecuting me? Saul says, wait a minute, who are you? And he says, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. You see, Jesus is so united with his people, they are in him, and he is in them, that an attack on him, or on them, is an attack on him. Because he sees them united to him. We are his body. When people persecute the church, they're persecuting Christ. We have died with him, our sins are nailed to the cross. We have been buried with him. We've died to our old life. We've been raised up with him. We've been seated in the heavenly realms with him. We are citizens of heaven. In him, we have the victory. We are in him, and he is in us by his Holy Spirit. You see, at that moment, everything fell into place in Saul's mind. Surely he remembered what happened not long before that, the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Stephen was right. Jesus was alive. Stephen saw the Son of Glory on his throne. That enraged his persecutors like Saul. Jesus has been risen from the dead. This changes everything. See, Paul believed. He was born again. He came to faith in the risen Christ and was called to be his ambassador. He believed and received Jesus as Lord and was sent as Christ's missionary ambassador to the nations. You see, Paul could have hardly sung the song that we often sing. So I will go wherever he is calling me. I'll lose my life to find my life in him. I am his and he is mine. I'll give up anything. I'll give up my prestige, my position, my role as a Pharisee, my pride. I'll give up everything. So years later, as he was awaiting his own execution in Rome, he could confidently say, I consider, this is what he wrote to the Philippian church while he was in prison in Rome, he wrote to the church in Philippi, I consider everything I've had that I've lost, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in Him Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law But that which is through faith in Christ the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith He says I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. You see, it is the dead in Christ, those who believe in Christ, who are filled with his spirit and covered with his righteousness, is the dead in Christ that will rise again, and only them. In God's eyes, it's not about being successful. It's not about those who have their theology down perfect, they can refute all error. It's not about those who've done all the good they can on this side of the world and hoping that they're measuring up for heaven. It's not about those who went to church every Sunday unless they were deathly ill. This promise is for the dead in Christ. And what's that promise? It's our third point today. The dead in Christ will rise. From the Old Testament to the New Testament, this is what God has clearly revealed. There is a resurrection of the body. It's not reincarnation. It's not that we die and our spirits go to heaven, never to be reunited with our body again. No. All the bodies that are in all the grays and the depths of the sea scattered in the dust will be by the power of God brought back to life. The prophet Daniel speaks of this in Daniel 12. There is a great day of resurrection, some raised to everlasting life, some to everlasting shame and contempt, as he says. It's a sobering and awesome thing to think about. I always think about this when I go to a cemetery. I like walking through cemeteries and seeing what people, I know it's kind of morbid, but I like going to cemeteries and reading what's written on the tombstones. What Bible verses put on them, what little quips they put on them. When you go to a large cemetery, I can't help but thinking one day all these graves are gonna be opened up. The dead will all be raised and the dead in Christ will be raised up to glory. So how will that happen? Well, that's what the rest of that paragraph in 1 Thessalonians 4 is all about, by the power of the living God, because nothing is impossible with him. Just as I said, as Jesus stood at Lazarus' tomb with a loud voice and called him out of the grave, so too, Paul says, the command will come from heaven, the trumpet of the archangel will sound. Jesus said the dead will be raised. In fact, he said you can bank on this. In John 5, Jesus said, truly I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. Paul writes here in 1 Thessalonians 4, it will be a visible, audible appearing. A day of great terror for those who've rejected Jesus, but a day of great rejoicing for those who by grace are found in him. There's people who scoff at this, who mock this, who laugh about this. You'll meet them. Perhaps you know them. Maybe you scoff at this here today. There were people who scoffed about the resurrection to Jesus' face. Did you know that? When Jesus spoke about the resurrection. He was challenged by the Sadducees, a religious political group about the resurrection of the dead. They posed a hypothetical question in Matthew 22. They say, teacher, if a man dies having no children and his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for her, suppose there were seven brothers The first one marries the woman and dies childless. The next brother then marries her and he dies. And this happens right down to the last. When the resurrection comes, whose wife will she be? Since they were all married to her. They're stifling and snickering their laughter. The answer the Lord Jesus gives is profound and speaks directly to this point. He says, you are in error because you don't know the scriptures or the power of God. Basically, he says, you guys are all messed up. You're ignorant because you don't know the Bible, you don't know the word of God, and you don't know God. You don't know his power. He says, first of all, there is no marriage in heaven. And concerning the very fact of the resurrection of the dead, he says, haven't you read, haven't you read your Bible, what God says? He says, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. What he means is, I am now in the present tense, as he speaks to Moses. He doesn't say, I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because they're still alive. They looked ahead in faith to the coming of Jesus. The dead in Christ will rise. That's why Paul can confidently say, for me to live is Christ, to die is gain. It's better. It's true. C.S. Lewis wrote, there are better things ahead than any we leave behind. Shout on. Pray on. We're gaining ground. I must ask you, do you believe this? Do you believe this simple little phrase, the dead in Christ will rise? Do your children believe it? Do they know it? Do your grandchildren know that promise? Can't you see how this is the most important promise in all the world? So I want to close with some final implications of all of this. Are you sitting here today in Christ? Are you? Why would you not care? Why would you leave it to another day to settle the question? Who knows what will happen later today or tomorrow? You could be in that fatal accident that everyone's reading about. Settle it now. Cry out to him now in the privacy of your own heart. You don't have to do anything but believe his promise that he has done it all. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. So pray to him, Lord, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus says you'll go home justified, right with God. You'll go home in Christ, ready for that great and awesome day of the Lord. Believe today that Christ died for your sins and rose again. Lord, have mercy on me. Cleanse me, wash me. Have mercy on me. Are you in Christ? And secondly, implication is if you are in Christ and this promise is for you, then live like it. Sing like it. Let it show in your face. Let it be seen in your life. Live as God's holy people, dressed and ready, bound for the promised land. Always conduct yourselves as those who are ready to go home. And then let your light so shine before men that the world may know that you are bound for the promised land, rejoicing in the Lord always. That's how Paul could say that. He was in a Roman jail as he wrote to the Philippians. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice. Are you filled with joy and praise because this changes everything? Juan was showing me the preface to a book that says there's two kinds of Christians. There's the mad Christian and the happy Christian. There's the mad Christian who believes the gospel, but they're just mad that everybody else doesn't and mad at the world. And there's the happy Christian who rejoices in the Lord, who's thankful for the gospel, who's praying for God's work to be done in other people's lives. Are you filled with joy because you're in Christ? Third implication is talk about it. The apostle Paul says here, encourage one another with these words at the end of this paragraph. Encourage one. Let other people know. Let your family know. Let your family know so they won't grieve as those who have no hope if something should happen to you. Tell them, I know by God's grace that I am in Christ and he is in me. I'm not worthy. I'm an unworthy sinner, but I believed in Christ and I'm clothed in his righteousness. I am in him. Let your family know and serve the Lord wherever you are with the gifts he's given you. If he closes one door of opportunity, he'll open another. Don't just sit there, do something. And let this truth hang over your life wherever you go like a banner. The dead in Christ will rise, and I believe this. Praise God. There are people you know who you could summarize their life with little phrases, summarizing their attitude. Right? It's my way or the highway. Some people have that as a life motto, the selfish life motto. Some people, eh, que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, the fatalist motto. There are some people like Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh, right? Eeyore the pessimist. Could be worse, not sure how, but it could be. Good morning, if it is a good morning, which I doubt. There's some people who are just pessimistic about everything. No, let this truth wave over your life like a banner, go before you, go behind you, go with you. The dead in Christ will rise. And then let everything else be lived in light of this great truth. The dead in Christ will rise. Hallelujah. The Lord is my light and my salvation. What shall I fear? What can man do to me? You know, the first Christians who saw the risen Lord Jesus the disciples and 500 more, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, were able to go undergo persecution because they knew the death of this body was not the end. They had seen Jesus rise from the dead. They saw the risen Savior. And the transformation of the disciples of Jesus proves that they knew the resurrection was true. They went from fearfully hiding in a locked room to boldly proclaiming the resurrection. Peter, who denied Jesus, I don't know him, I don't know him, because he feared man. A few weeks later, standing up before thousands of people at Pentecost Sunday in the temple, calling them to faith and repentance, you crucified the Lord of glory. Where did he get such boldness? He was willing to die for the gospel because he knew that this was not the end, this body. Martin Lloyd-Jones, an English theologian of the mid-1900s, he wrote that the first Christians could face death with a smile, because they knew. The family of Lazarus knew, right, when he was raised from the dead. I wonder what the family of Lazarus was like at his second funeral, you know? He died again at some point, and they had a funeral for him. I remember they just kind of winking at each other. It's not the end. We'll see him again. This changes everything. That's what the Lord's Day is all about. Every single Sunday is Easter Sunday, really. It's the Lord's Day. It's the day we celebrate the resurrection of Christ from the dead. He rose on the first day of the week. The dead in Christ will rise. What a great promise, and it's true. So go serve the Lord with gladness. All fear can flee, for death's dark night is overcome, as we often sing. Keep your eyes on the risen Savior. Shout on, pray on, we're gaining ground. Glory, hallelujah. We don't sorrow as those who have no hope, because the dead in Christ will rise. Oh, it is sorrowful when a loved one dies. It's grievous to be apart, to watch loved ones suffer. But remember, the dead in Christ will rise. Think on this, meditate on it, talk about it, dwell on it, encourage one another, and believe it. It won't be long. And we'll see him in the sky. Together, you and I, as we just sang this morning, soar we now where Christ has led, following our exalted head, made like him, like him we'll rise, ours the cross, the grave, the skies. I call you today, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be in him. and you will rise in Him on that great day. Praise be to God for the indescribable gift of His Son and the gift of His grace. Let us pray. Glorious Heavenly Father, we bow before you and we thank you for all of your mercy to us in Christ. We thank you for every blessing and most of all, we thank you for the one who died for us and rose again. Thank you for not treating us like our sins deserve. Thank you that your mercies are greater than our need and your grace is greater than our sin. Oh Lord, in response, we give to you these tithes and offerings. Use, Lord, these gifts as we bring them before you.