WWUTT 511 Those Who Have No Hope?

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Jesus Christ is our hope. Without Christ, life is hopeless. It is meaningless.

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We are a vapor that appears for a moment and then poof, we're gone. But in Christ, we will live forever when we understand the text.

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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When We Understand the Text is an online ministry dedicated to teaching the

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Word of God in context, promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty. Here's your teacher,

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky, and greetings all. Well, today in our study of the book of 1

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Thessalonians, we finally get to the section that's the whole reason why you even cracked open the study of this book in the first place, right?

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Okay, maybe not, but this is the draw in a study of 1 Thessalonians where Paul talks about the return of Christ, the day of the

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Lord, in the latter part of chapter 4 and early half of chapter 5.

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So let's go ahead and read our text first, and then we'll go back and talk about where we've been up to this point.

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So 1 Thessalonians 4, starting in verse 13, and I'll read to the end of the chapter. The Apostle Paul says, 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.

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For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

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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

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Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.

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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

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Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

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Therefore, encourage one another with these words. Now this is the section of the

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Bible where we get the word rapture from, and it's there in verse 17 where Paul says that we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them.

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So that word caught up in the Latin, it's the word raptura, which means to seize or a kidnapping.

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And so this is where we get the word rapture from, from that Latin word raptura. Now in the

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Greek, the Greek word that appears there is harpagus omitha, which means we shall be caught up or we will be taken away.

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Now you might say, I always heard that the word that appears there is harpazzo. Well, yeah, if you were to look it up in your

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Greek dictionary, that's the word that you would find. This is a variation of that word, but it's particularly the

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Latin word. Raptura is where we get rapture. That word, the English word rapture does not appear in your

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English Bible anywhere, but it's the Latin word for being caught up or being taken away that we get the whole concept or the, or at least the, the biblical vocabulary word of rapture.

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But Paul has been talking about the day of the Lord all the way through this letter. In fact, in every chapter of first Thessalonians, we have had a mention of the return of Christ in chapter one.

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It was right at the end of the chapter, verse 10, where Paul says that the testimony of the

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Thessalonians has gone throughout all the region and Achaia and Macedonia about how they turned from worshiping idols to worship the true and living

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God and a hope that has welled up in them to wait for his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead

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Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. So that's the first time that Paul has mentioned the return of Christ there at the end of chapter one, he mentions it again at the end of chapter two in verse 19, he says, for what is our hope or joy or crown of, of boasting before our

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Lord at his coming? Is it not you for you are our glory and our joy talking about the

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Thessalonians, how they turned from idols and worshiped God and therefore, uh, for the apostles, what they boast in is not that they've gained some sort of riches or wealth.

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It's the souls that they've won here on earth. So because they, they have praised

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God, this is their boasting before the Lord, the fruits of their labor, the work that they are doing to spread the gospel.

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And they can point to the Thessalonians and say, see these people turned from worshiping idols to worship the true

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God. And then in chapter three, we had another mention of the day of the Lord. And again, it was at the end of the chapter in, in verses 11, 12 and 13.

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Now may our God and father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you.

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And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all as we do for you so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our

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God and father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

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This is very similar to something that Paul said to the Philippians. I am confident that he who began a good work and you will be faithful to complete it at the day of Jesus Christ.

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And so this is sort of the same thing that Paul has said here to the Thessalonians talking about being fully sanctified for that coming of our

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Lord Jesus with all of his saints on that great day of glory. And here we have finally come to the description of what that day will be like.

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First Thessalonians 4, 13, Paul begins describing that day by saying this, 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.

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Now, the apostle Paul is speaking into a very Epicurean understanding of death.

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Epicurus was a Greek philosopher, lived about the third century BC, and he taught that there was no immortality.

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There was no afterlife that we could attain. When the human body died, the person just ceased to be.

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There was no spiritual being aspect of the person that continued to live on in some sort of eternal state.

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Now, he did believe in the human soul. He believed that the soul was what gave a person more than just an animated body that allowed a person to think deep thoughts and enjoy philosophical conversation or find pleasure in a good meal or happiness and satisfaction from doing something nice for somebody else.

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That's what we experience in the human soul, as opposed to an animal who does not have such a soul.

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But the soul was just as mortal as the body. When the body died, so did the soul.

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There was not any continued cognition beyond the death of the body, and there was nothing to fear of death, because just as you could not think of anything or remember anything prior to your physical existence when you were born, so you do not continue to think thoughts or have any concept or idea of anything beyond the death of the body, couldn't remember anything before your birth.

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You won't know of anything after your death, either. It's just the person just ceases to be now

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Epicurean or I'm sorry, Epicurus did believe in the existence of the gods of the

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Greek gods. It wasn't that he was an atheist, but those gods live so far from us that we cannot we cannot exist on their realm.

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We cannot reach them. They do not hear us. So he wasn't real big on the worship of the gods. But very few

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Greeks believed that when a person died, they would go to be with the gods. There was always kind of questions lingering about what happens to the human soul when a person dies.

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And at this particular time that Paul is writing to the Thessalonians, the Epicurean understanding was what was dominant among Greek thinking cultures.

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So the Thessalonians thought that when they died that they just didn't exist anymore.

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And so, therefore, their brothers and sisters in Christ who have already died, have they missed the chance to be a part of the great day of the

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Lord? Like we who are alive, we've heard about the return of Christ. It's not like the Thessalonians were clueless about this.

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They had heard about the return of Christ. But what about our dead friends? They've died, so they're not going to be able to be with us on that day.

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That was one of the deep fears and concerns that the Thessalonians had. And this is something that Timothy and Silas would have brought back to Paul after they had gone to visit the

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Thessalonians in, well, they left Achaia and they went to Macedonia to give a report on what had happened in the

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Macedonian churches. So Thessalonica was one of those churches. So they came back to Paul by saying, well, the

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Thessalonians are really concerned about the day of the Lord. They think their friends that have died, that have preceded them in death, are not going to be with them on that day that Christ returns.

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It's only those who are alive that will be participants in that day. And so Paul means for them to be informed, okay?

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Because he starts verse 13 here. We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep.

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So he means to give them hope about their brothers and sisters in Christ that they are going to be every bit a part of that great day as you will be.

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All of us who are in Christ Jesus will be fellow participants in the great day of the

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Lord. 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.

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So consider that Epicurean teaching about death, that the body just dies, the body just ceases to be, that there is no cognition of the person, that there's no thought or spirit or soul that continues to exist beyond the death of the body.

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We just die and that's it. How hopeless an existence is that?

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And this is not just something that was taught by Epicurus 2200 years ago, but this is a prevailing thought that exists even among agnostics and atheists today.

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I've had conversations with some of them when I have said, what do you believe is going to happen to you when you die? And their most common answer is,

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I just believe that I'm just going to die. I'm just going to go into the ground. I'm not going to have any thoughts or there's not going to be any spirit or soul in me that is going to continue to exist beyond this.

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I can't think of anything before I was born. And so there won't be any thought in my mind or anything like that.

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Even after I die, it's going to be the same as when I came into existence. I will just go out of existence.

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So this is a common thought, even among our developed world, that a person just goes into the ground, but there is no spirit that continues to live on.

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And that is a very hopeless outlook for the future. There really is no meaning in life whatsoever if that's what happens to a person.

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And you could literally do anything that you wanted, anything that would make you happy.

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If what makes you happy is making other people miserable, have at it.

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Because there's absolutely no judgment. There's no ramifications for anything that you do to another person, because when you just die, you die and that's it.

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And whatever you did in this life will not come back on you. You will not feel remorse for anything that happened in this life.

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Maybe maybe if the thing that made a person happy was being a serial killer and killing a bunch of people, 30, 40 people or so, they get caught.

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They go to death row. They get put into or they get strapped down on the table for a lethal injection.

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They receive a death sentence. They're going to be put to death because of the number of people that they put to death in their life.

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Maybe on that table, they will experience some kind of remorse because of what it is that they've done. But ultimately, even that little experience there doesn't mean anything.

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It lasts a few minutes, then the body dies and they cease to be. It is not a feeling of remorse that will continue to stick with them for all eternity because the mind just dies.

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It doesn't continue to live on beyond the body. So there's absolutely no recourse, no ramifications, no punishment, no judgment for anything that a person does in this life.

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If when the body dies, it just the person just ceases to be.

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It is a very hopeless outlook for the future. And it means that you could do anything you wanted and there will be no repercussions for that.

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But we know that there will be a judgment. And as a matter of fact, we can recognize it in the world around us that there are ramifications for the things that we do.

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So therefore, we know just as there are small judgments that we will experience in life. If you speed, you will get a speeding ticket.

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If you rob a store, you're going to spend time in jail. If you cause harm to another person, you break into another person's house and cause harm to those individuals.

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You'll spend an even longer time in jail or in prison. If you put another person to death, you might be put to death in return.

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So we can see in life that there truly are judgments. There are ramifications for the choices that we make and the actions that we do.

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Therefore, as we see, the greater the offense that is made, the greater the judgment that comes upon us.

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So we know we can conceptualize this. And Romans chapter one talks about it. We know that there will be an ultimate day of judgment.

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There will be a final judgment in which we stand before an ultimate judge who is going to sentence us based on the things that we did in this life.

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And ultimately, what it is that God is going to judge us on is whether or not we knew his son. If we knew

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Christ, then all of our offenses will be washed clean. We were justified before God.

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We were sanctified in life, grown in holiness and sanctification. And so on that day of judgment and everybody will be judged whether you were in Christ or not.

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But on that day of judgment, those who were in Christ will be welcomed into his kingdom that was prepared for us from the foundation of the world because we worshiped the

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Savior who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave so that in Christ, all who died in Christ will live again in Christ.

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That's the promise that we have. And Paul goes on to talk about that here in First Thessalonians four. I'll get to that in just a moment.

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But for those who did not know Christ when they die, no matter what good they think they did in life, their entire life was an offense to God.

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For they rebelled against the one of whom it is said in Romans 1, 19 and 20, made himself plain to all, even his eternal power and divine nature in all that has been made.

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And yet they rejected the holy, righteous creator of the universe to instead exalt themselves with the breath that God gave them with the mind and the body that he gifted them with.

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They instead exalted their own glory and rebelled against the God of the universe. And God, who is holy and righteous, will not allow his name to be blasphemed in this way without being punished.

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And so judgment will come upon the person who in their life decided to rebel, decided that they were more important and their ways were higher than the very

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God who created all things. And because of that hubris and that pride and that offense against a holy

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God, they will be condemned for all eternity into a place of burning fire and sulfur, a place that was prepared for the devil and his angels because they followed the devil rather than Jesus Christ.

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That's what will happen at the final judgment. And we know this. We can perceive these things in all that has been made.

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Romans 1 18 says that the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven, so it can be perceived.

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It can be understood by those who live. It is not some mysterious thing that is beyond our grasp for God has made himself known in the things that have been made.

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What people don't inherently know is the son, Jesus Christ. They only know about that through the gospel.

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So we must take the gospel to the world so that those who are lost, who are in their sin, who are in willful rebellion against God, worshiping the created things rather than the creator, even if that worship is of themselves, that they would hear the gospel of Christ and know that judgment is coming by one whom

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God has appointed, and that is Christ himself. So they would turn from their sin and worship Christ the

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Lord and therefore be saved from that day of judgment and wrath and will be delivered with all those who are in Christ Jesus into his eternal kingdom.

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That is the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ that we have declared for us right there. So let us not go on living as those who have no hope, for we have hope in Christ.

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Even the person who is the serial killer or the person who is a dictator who puts millions of people to death, they live their lives in such a way without a fear of God because they have no hope for the future.

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And there is no hope for them if they do not repent of their sin and follow Jesus Christ. Let us not grieve as others do who have no hope, living their entire lives in grief.

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For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

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So we have this hope and this promise. Christ died on the cross for our sins so that we stand before God justified on that day of judgment, and all those who die will rise again with him.

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Just as Christ rose from the dead, we have this hope. And Paul said this to the

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Corinthians as well. First Corinthians 15. If Christ is not raised from the dead, no one gets raised from the dead.

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But Christ has, in fact, been risen from the grave. So we can know that all who are in Christ Jesus will likewise rise from the grave.

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This is our hope. Jesus Christ, the righteous and all those who are with him, who all those who are in Christ, though they have fallen asleep in the body, they will rise again in Christ.

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And notice that Paul uses that term specifically. They've fallen asleep. Not that they have died, because, again, that would have conjured up in the mind of the

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Thessalonians, the Epicurean understanding. They've died. The body is dead.

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The mind has just ceased to be. There is no human soul. No, no, no. The body has merely fallen asleep, because what's going to happen on that day of Christ is that even the dead in Christ will rise and be with the

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Lord. We will all be participants on that day, everyone who is in Christ Jesus. Praise the

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Lord. And we'll go on to talk further about what Paul expounds upon related to that day with the

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Thessalonians when we come back to this text again tomorrow. Let us pray.

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Lord, we thank you for this hope that we have in Christ Jesus. And I pray that whatever comes our way today, nothing shakes us from that hope or joy that we have in Christ.

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All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All of us deserve judgment.

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But what we have received, if we have heard the gospel and turned from sin and worship

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Jesus Christ the Lord, we have received mercy. And so we praise you for that and desire to have this hope restored in us all the more that we look forward to that day.

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No matter what happens to us in life, it cannot take away from us the hope that we have in Christ Jesus, the resurrection from the grave that has been promised to all those who turn from sin and believe in him.

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Forgive us our sins and grow us in sanctification and holiness as we walk.

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In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word when we understand the text.