Read: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Last week, I saw a billboard poster for a prominent British insurance firm recently with the message, “There is only one predictable thing in life – the future is unpredictable.” Now there’s a sense in which I understand what the insurer is saying, but there’s another sense in which that’s just plain not true – that’s just a gimmick to get you to buy their insurance products – that should be prosecuted under trading standards legislation, because you see the problem is that ultimately, the future is 100% predictable. We know the future for 100% of us here today, like as not, will be death and the grave. Every one of us will die – from the oldest to the youngest, from the fittest to the laziest, from the poorest to the richest – we all know the future – and it ain’t orange – the future is dead. We don’t know is when, where or how it will happen, but we know it will. How dark the future is!
And yet, the final reason that I am a Christian is because Christianity presents us with real hope for the future – not a fuzzy, vague picture which is pie in the sky when you die, but a sober, certain and solid future where death is swallowed up in life and darkness is destroyed by the light. Christianity tells us that if we believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, death is not the end, but the beginning of an eternity of pleasure with Jesus Christ Himself in heaven.
If I can remind you; I am a Christian today because I live in God’s World, I am a reader of God’s Word, I am an admirer of the life of Christ, I benefit from the death of Christ, I believe in the resurrection of Christ, I have found meaning in Christ – and now, lastly, I have hope for the future in Christ. I want to look at three things this morning which I hope, will explain to you why, on the basis of the reality of death and the future, you should become a Christian today.
[A] The Problem of the Future
There is no greater fear that a normal human being can have than that of facing death and the possibility of life after death. The painful unknown terrifies and every effort is made to turn the tide of the dying process – because you see there is no hope for the person who isn’t a Christian – those are the words Paul uses in 1 Thessalonians 5:13 to describe those who don’t believe in Jesus –they have no hope. I think this hopelessness reveals itself towards two realities:
1. Death – perhaps the most prominent place where the fear of death is seen in our society is in its music. I want to give you the lyrics of 2 of the most contemporary music bands. One of the most successful bands of the last 20 years is the indie rock band Radiohead. They have a song called Street Spirit (Fade Out). Radiohead lead singer, Thom Yorke has said about Street Spirit (Fade out), “All of our saddest songs have somewhere in them at least a glimmer of resolve. Street Spirit has no resolve. It is the dark tunnel without the light at the end. We all have a way of dealing with that song. It’s called detachment. Especially me; I detach my emotional radar from that song, or I couldn’t play it. I’d crack. I’d break down on stage…. Our fans are braver than I to let that song penetrate them, or maybe they don’t realise what they’re listening to. They don’t realise that Street Spirit is about staring the devil right in the eyes, and knowing, no matter what you do, he’ll get the last laugh. And it’s real, and true. The devil really will get the last laugh in all cases without exception, and if I let myself think about that too long, I’d crack. I can’t believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song. That’s why I’m convinced that they don’t know what it’s about. It’s why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts everytime I play it, looking out at thousands of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy of its meaning, like when you’re going to have your dog put down and it’s wagging its tail on the way there. That’s what they all look like, and it breaks my heart.” And then there is another Indie Rock Band called Muse, who wrote a song called, “Thoughts of a dying atheist” where they sing, “I know the moment’s near and there’s nothing we can do, look through a faithless eye are you afraid to die? It scares … me and the end is all I can see and its scares … me and the end is all I can see.” See how terrified society is with the idea of death! Death is the ultimate nightmare; only for those who have ‘no hope’, as Paul here says in vs. 13, it’s a nightmare you don’t wake up from because the terror of death is utterly real.
2. Future – to think about what happens after you die, for the consistent realist, is also a nightmare. As they delve into the future, there is no hope for them there. Think, for example about the future of the universe – we know that this physical universe has a certain future – utter destruction. There are two possibilities. In one, gravity will cause the universe to contract back on itself – the big crunch. In the other, there will be insufficient matter to restrain the universe’s expansion and there will be heat death. Either way, the universe is doomed. At some time in the future, everything will cease to exist – everything – the beauty and wonder of all we see will be wiped out. My predecessor in Milton Rabbi Duncan summarised the logical foresight of the one for whom the universe is all there is, “I wandered to the furthest verge of Creation, and there I saw a Socket where an Eye should have been and I heard the shriek of a Fatherless World.” But then, think also of the person who said to me when I asked her if she believed in God, responded by saying in fearful tones, “I believe in a God of wrath. A God of the Ten Commandments. A God of Punishment”. What a terrible future – no wonder the apostle Paul concludes that when it comes to death and the future, the person who does not trust nor believe in the Lord Jesus Christ has ‘no hope’. You see the Bible paints a picture of those without Christ as not just physically dying, but also being spiritually dead – spiritually tortured and punished eternally in hell. What about that for an outlook?
What about you today? Do you keep sane by doing what Thom Yorke does, and detach yourself from the reality of the future? What coping strategy do you employ to keep you from ending it all here and now? How does a non-Christian cope with the impenetrable darkness and hopelessness of death and eternity?
[B] The Promise of the Future
For the Christian, everything is different – I’m not saying everything is easy, but everything is different. First and foremost, one of the problems the non-Christian has with death and eternity is that he or she just doesn’t know what happens after their heart stops beating and their brain shuts down – the non-Christian is staring into the greatest of unknowns. But it’s different for the Christian, because even though we do not know the most intricate of details, the Bible does tell us everything we need to know about death and eternity, so much so that we do not stare into the great unknown – there is nowhere on the map of our lives which is a big empty space on which is written, “there be monsters here” – our future is laid out for us in the pages of the Bible. We are not leaping into the unknown, but into that which is known. Our text today gives us access into many of the issues which, for the Christian, surround death and the future:
1. Death – in many ways, the primary aim of vs. 13-18 is to act as an encouragement to Christians who are grieving over the death of loved ones. Another Christian has died – how then are the Christians who are left to grieve for him or her? The answer is that they are not to grieve as those who have no hope. Paul isn’t saying that grief is inappropriate, merely that the kind of grief, and the reasons for grief, the Christian has is very different from that of the non-Christian. How so? What makes the death of a Christian different from the death of a non-Christian, so much so that our grieving is radically different?
· You are only asleep – notice how Paul uses two terms to describe those who have died – in vs. 16 he calls them ‘the dead in Christ’, but then in vs. 13, 14 and 15 he calls them ‘those who have fallen asleep’. In other words, for Paul, to die is to fall asleep – when a person dies, it is as if they are merely engaging in a variation of the sleeping process. I think it was St. Chrysostom who said of the Christian dead that ‘they have the tomb for their bed’. And that’s what we see at the funeral of a Christian – we don’t see a body being wholescale given over to destruction and decay – we see someone being literally laid to rest. It is as if, when our children fall asleep on the couch, we gently lift them up and put them to bed – that’s the picture when we bury one of our brothers or sisters in Christ – it is as if we are gently picking up their sleeping frames and put them to bed. We think of death as the final state – the state of destruction and ultimate nothingness – but to God, and to His people, it’s little more than an extended slumber and that’s one reason we don’t grieve as the world does.
· You are with Christ – what happens while the body sleeps in the grave? According to vs. 14, where we read that those who have fallen asleep in Jesus, God will bring with him, we conclude that to bring those who have died with Jesus, those who have died in Christ need to be with Him, where He is. Stands to reason right – that Jesus brings with Him those who are with Him. From other passages in the NT, the teaching is clear. When we die, our bodies sleep in the earth, but our souls, who we are on the inside, if we are Christians, they go to be with the Lord Jesus Christ where He is. On Tuesday 31st August 1847, Andrew Bonar, minister of Finnieston Free Church, stood at the bedside of his 2 year old nephew as the little boy breathed his last. Bonar later wrote in his diary for that day, “solemn indeed to look on and see the soul leaving. It is like a flight of wings above our reach.” The soul leaves and immediately goes to be with Jesus – as Paul says in another passage, “absent from the body, at home with the Lord.” The body may assume the pallor of death, but the soul has never been more alive than it is when it goes to be with Jesus. How can we grieve like the world when we know that the soul of the one we loved has gone to be with Jesus?
· You will be perfected – Our God is a holy God. God cannot tolerate sin – He cannot abide it – He cannot bear to have it in His presence. How come therefore sinful people like me and you can be with Christ? Does our sinfulness follow us into heaven? Not at all – for the moment we die and our soul goes to be with Jesus, we are finally perfected – all our sin, its impact upon us and its consequences for us and its pollution of us – all our sin is taken away. The Bible paints a picture of those in heaven wearing white robes, robes washed white in the blood of Jesus Christ. If you remember, Jesus died upon the cross, bearing the punishment of God upon sin – He died to take away our sins, He washed us in His blood. No more sin, no more transgression, no more consequences, no more impact, nothing – only righteousness and purity. We will be dressed in white robes. 1600 years ago, St. Cyprian wrote of the effect our perfection has upon mourning, ‘the black garments should not be taken upon us here, when they have already taken upon them white raiment there;’
See then the hope we have for Christians who die. It is not the bleak darkness of Muse, “it scares me … and the end is all I can see; it scares me.” It’s the burning certain and sure hope which comes to us through the Word of God.
2. Future – but there’s something else in this text other than death – something that may come between a Christian believer and death. What I am saying is that not every Christian believer will die – up to this point, every Christian has; but a day is coming when something so dramatic will happen it will completely destroy death so that no Christian shall ever die again. The Lord Jesus Christ will return, descending from the heavens with a shout of command and the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God. This Jesus whose life we admire, whose death we benefit from and whose resurrection we believe in – He is coming again; not this time as a helpless baby, but as a dread Lord, King and Judge. The shout of command by the archangel is the deafening voice of the general of the armies of heaven calling the whole of creation to attention; the trumpet sound is the entrance chorus of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. The whole of creation will see the Lord Jesus descending from heaven – with the glory of a thousand suns and the roar of a million waves. Every eye will see Him and every ear will hear Him coming. He is coming again – that is the plain teaching of the Scriptures. Just as one day in the past He was born in a stable, one day in the future, I don’t know when, He will appear in the sky to wrap up time and to place a seal upon the scroll of history.
But for the Christian, what will His second coming mean? What will happen to us when Jesus returns? The answer can be summed up in one word – ‘reunions’.
· Reunion of Body with Soul – death separates body from soul. In the moment of death, the soul of the Christian goes straight to heaven. On that great day of the Lord’s second coming, we read in 4:16 that the dead in Christ shall rise first – they shall be reunited with their bodies, but no longer bodies of weakness and fragility; but bodies of vigour and strength – glorified bodies which can never die again. There will be no more pain, cancer, blindness, paralysis or disease – these things will all be gone. The God who created mankind from the dust of the earth will pull together from every corner of the universe the particles which went to make up our bodies and will remake them, but this time glorified and perfected.
· Reunion of Living with Dead –The cruellest thing about death is the way it rips apart life-long marriages, it rips a father away from his children or child away from its mother. On the day when the Lord Jesus returns, we are told in 4:16, 17 that ‘the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we, the living one who remain at the same time with them shall be seized in clouds’. The return of Jesus Christ shall signal the reunion of the living and the dead. You will see those Christians whom you love again. The son will see his father. The mother will see her daughter. The man will see his wife. Who are you looking forward to meeting again on that day? When you speak to people about their dead loved ones, they inevitably say, “well, I hope I’ll see them again one day”, but in reality knowing and loving Christ is the only sure way that you will ever see your loved ones again.
· Reunion of Christian with Christ – in a sense we will never be re-united with Jesus, because the bond which joins us won’t be severed by death, because even death cannot separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, my Lord. But we will see Jesus face to face, and we will love Him and adore Him. More than anything else, it is meeting the risen Lord Jesus which will make that day so special for us. We’ve lived for Jesus; we’ve longed for Jesus; we’ve died for Jesus, and on that day, we’ll have Him once and for all. He’ll never be taken away, and we’ll never be taken away – we are told in 4:17 that ‘we shall be with the Lord for ever’. No God of wrath here – and no empty universe with empty eye sockets and howling screams – just the loving face of Jesus Christ forever.
Can you not therefore see why we Christians can not just cope with the thought of death and what lies beyond, but actually look forward to it? It beats the darkness of this world and its hopelessness hands-down. Can there be any more beauty to the future of any man than that which is predicted in the pages of the Bible?
[C] The Proof of the Future
These are nice thoughts – great thoughts. But you ask, I could have made all that up. So far, through this series on Why I Am a Christian, I have been, at every stage, presenting you with hard evidence for the truthfulness and rationality of the Christian faith. What evidence can I give to you to convince you that what Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4 about our futures isn’t just pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die romanticism with no more truth than the Viking’s Valhalla or the Buddhist’s Karma? But before you think that because these things haven’t yet happened, there is no possible way I could present you with any evidence, after all, I bet you’ve never met anyone who has come back from the dead to tell you what lies beyond, before you think it’s impossible, I want you to realise that Paul has you second guessed. He bases this whole teaching of what lies in the future for the Christian believer upon the hard evidence and fact of the only man who ever has died but come back to tell us about what happens after you die – that is the Lord Jesus Christ. In vs. 14 we are told that the certainty of the second coming of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of our dead bodies is of the same variety and type as the certainty attached to His death and resurrection. In other words, if you believe that Jesus died and rose again – no, if you have been persuaded, by the Holy Spirit and His use of hard, historical evidence through the Word of God, then you have all the evidence you need that Jesus is coming again and that all Paul says about the future in these verses is true.
After all, did not the risen Jesus say, “Behold, I am coming again soon”. You know what I’m saying here – there can be no misunderstanding, what I am saying is perhaps the most important thing you will hear all week, all year, all decade, all century – The death and resurrection of Jesus is a simple historical event – it happened. Paul is here saying that because of that death and resurrection, we can know for a certainty that Jesus is coming again to take His people to be with Him. No wonder Paul concludes by saying, “encourage each other with these words.”
But in closing, to those of you who aren’t Christians – please, don’t delay putting your faith in Christ. I’ve given you 7 very strong reasons why you should become a Christian and believe in Christ. But what terrifies me is the thought that you will put your decision off until you are older, or until you have sown your wild oats and had your fun – but do you not know that at any minute the Lord Jesus could return – His return is absolutely certain – not an if, but a when, and He tells us in His word, “I am coming soon.” That soon could be today and your cry throughout all eternity will be this, “I was persuaded but I did not come and now it is … too late!” I don’t wish to bushwhack you into the kingdom of God, rather to woo and attract you there – come now so that when Jesus comes you’ll be ready and you’ll want to be with Him forever and evermore. AMEN.
