Our Hope is in the Resurrection

Well, if you turn in your Bibles, please, to the book of 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4.

This morning we will attend to verses 13 through 18. As you're turning there, you may recall that this letter was written upon the occasion of Timothy's return from Thessalonica to where Paul was in Corinth, and he brought to Paul this good report of how well the

Thessalonians were doing. They were progressing well in the knowledge of the Lord. They wanted to apply the things of the

Lord to their life. They were doing so well that at least three times in this letter,

Paul simply says, keep doing this more and more, and yet do this more and more. Stay the course, as we said before.

These Thessalonians were so interested in how the gospel applied to everything, anxious to see

Paul once again expressing their love to him in many ways, and wanting to know more and more about Jesus Christ.

And in a moment we're going to read how the gospel applies to a situation they had that most of us have faced, and in all expectation will face, this difficult, this sobering event of life, which is, how does the gospel of Jesus Christ affect our view of death, our conduct when we go to the event of death, like a memorial or a funeral?

The answer, as we'll see, is the Resurrection. The Resurrection is the answer to all that.

This is what the Apostle Paul is going to say. He does speak in the verses I'm going to read in just a moment about Jesus' return and what that's going to look like and some of the signs surrounding it.

But I have to tell you, I'm going to leave a lot on the table in that regard because that's not the main point. We will come to that, but there's much that you're going to be wondering about that's another letter to another church and the subject

Lord willing for another sermon on another day here. We're going to stay with the

Resurrection of Jesus Christ and how that affects the way we view when people pass away.

So please stand now for the reading of God's word. 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 13 through 18.

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 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 will come, will descend from heaven with a cry of command, 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 and meet the Lord in the air.

And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore, encourage one another with these words. You may be seated.

You know, in December of 2016, while I was in the office here at the church,

I received what was perhaps the worst, the hardest -to -hear phone call of my entire life.

It came from my brother -in -law, Charlie, and it was a very short conversation.

And when the conversation was over, I was literally gasping for breath. I could barely breathe.

So I called a dear friend of mine, a brother in the Lord, he's been a friend since I've been saved, actually before then even.

And sobbing so hard I couldn't make sense, he just knew something was wrong. And it took him a while to calm me down so I could actually speak and give some coherent words.

And I finally told him that my only sister, my little sister, had died.

This is what her husband, Charlie, had called to tell me. There had been no warnings.

Her health was good. She was an accomplished musician. She was a successful orthodontist.

She and her husband, Charlie, took the family on these exotic vacations, like canoe rides up the Amazon River, of all things.

At the Olympic Club where they were members, my little sister, and she was a little thing, my little sister was the over -50 -year -old weightlifting champion of the

Olympic Club. She'd been an adjunct professor of dentistry where she went to dental school at UCSF.

And she was gone. No warning. Just, she's dead.

A week or so later, we all got together at Charlie's home in San Francisco.

And while we're milling around, after a while, my big brother, my older brother, called me over to him. He had been talking to Charlie and talking about what happened to Susie.

And he needed to tell me what he had just learned. And what he had just learned was that my sister had hanged herself. And a few weeks after that, we went to the memorial.

And for that, Charlie rented one of those big boats the size of those commuter ferries that ply the San Francisco Bay.

And before her ashes were scattered, we went into the upper deck. And there we had the memorial.

And that was where good words and nice memories were spoken.

Things like, well, she's in a better place. I'm better off for having known her. Thoughts and prayers are with you.

I wish I'd known her better. They meant well, of course. And you've been there, haven't you not?

And heard these empty words? No more substantive than when a politician, after a shooting like what we had at the

Valley Transportation Authority just a week ago. And they say, our thoughts and our prayers are with you. And we as Christians, as believers in Jesus Christ, go,

I know what you mean by that. But does it not leave you empty? Doesn't it leave you feeling kind of hollow?

Because there's nothing behind it. They're good words. They're nice words. They're nice memories.

I did finally stand and speak for the family. I spoke for Susie. But I spoke for Christ. And that's far more important.

I spoke about the salvation, the hope that I had in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the hope that I could explain to my sister.

And in the end, I was thanked for my words. But you know, the people who thanked me for my words, to them, they were just like all the other thoughts and prayers, just nice words during an emotional time.

I was left cold by that. It was a hopeless sort of thing.

Because there was no mention of Jesus Christ that really meant anything from the people there in general.

And when I spoke of Christ, it fell kind of flat. Not from my words, and God's word has power in and of itself.

But you understand that it fell flat to those to whom I spoke. I was left feeling just empty and saw the hopelessness.

And why was it hopeless? Because what they were saying, the thoughts and the prayers and the better place and all these things had no substance.

And what's the substance that we have in it? It's the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. This past year and a half for all of us has brought kind of a flurry of death and destruction.

We've lost loved ones. We've lost friends. Our friends have lost friends and loved ones. Most of us have been there.

We've been in that place where only Jesus Christ and our hope in Him can see us through.

We've been at memorials full of warm and can we just say fuzzy words that leave us cold.

Because ultimately they don't mean anything. They have no factual basis. They're only grounded in emotions of the moment.

The Thessalonians that I just read about, they had suffered much the same sort of thing. They were new to the faith.

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy having been there for three, maybe four weeks. There were issues that they had and Paul addresses them in this letter.

But among those issues and one that he addresses in a way of a profound way that is kind of unique is this very question about our attitude, our demeanor, our conduct, but mostly our inner belief when we face what

I'm what I was discussing with my sister and what we've all faced this year with the pandemic. And even if it wasn't the pandemic, just people growing old, getting sick, and dying.

So how do we grieve our losses? We don't know how this question quite came to Paul.

We don't have any evidence that the Thessalonians had written a letter like we have a third Corinthians and there was some letter that was written that Paul alludes to there.

We have nothing like that here. But the question is, the question behind what he wrote here seems to be, how do we grieve our losses?

And the short answer is, well, not as you once did, especially them in Thessalonica who had been pagans.

The longer answer is, your grief, as is all else in life, must be the outflow of your faith, and here especially your faith, your belief, your certainty in the resurrection of the

Lord Jesus Christ and derivatively your own coming resurrection. You know, there's never more clear a contrast between this life and the next when we face the end of life.

And we face it so often, do we not, in the news with COVID -19 being in virtually every news segment every day for a year and a half now, we read or we hear of people who have died, family, friends, and even here in the church as we grieve together for those who have lost loved ones to the pandemic or to other causes.

It is at times like that when the distinction between this life and the next and our hope in the resurrection comes to bear in a way like no other, and we all need to be ready for that.

We need to be ready for that phone call. We need to be ready to hear about a wife, or a husband, a son, or a daughter, a mother, a father, a brother, or a sister, a friend, or even yourself.

We need to prepare for that. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is that sustaining hope, your faith in Him.

In these verses we have before us in verses 13 and 14, Paul assures the Thessalonians, he assures us that the dead in Christ are now and will remain with Jesus.

And then in verse 15 he speaks of we the living by a special word from Jesus Christ.

Verses 16 and 17 assures them, assures us that when the

Lord Jesus Christ returns, we will be with Him forever. And finally verse 18 tells us these are words of encouragement that we should speak to one another.

Regularly, and often, and on the right occasion. These are words of encouragement we need to speak.

So the basis of our hope is the resurrection. The source of our hope is the Word of God.

The object of our hope is to be with Jesus Christ. That's the way these verses will break out for us this morning. The basis of our hope is what?

It's the resurrection. And when you face this, either your own coming demise, or hear about something about somebody else close to you, and the apostle

Paul says you need to have hope. Don't grieve as who has no hope, which means to grieve as one who does have hope.

Hope in what? Hope in the resurrection. 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.

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

Bring with him, brethren, that's the resurrection. The Thessalonians had experienced losses just like we have.

And since the Thessalonians up to this day, people experience losses. Some commentators theorize that some of the

Thessalonians had actually been martyrs, had died for their faith. We can't be certain. We don't know exactly how this question was presented to Paul or what the exact situation behind it was.

We do know that whatever happened, however it happened, it exposed their ignorance about the fate of those who died and their failure to bring the resurrection to bear upon how they looked upon that.

We can be pretty sure that those who passed away were close to the ones that they lost. This is what grieving is, grieving for someone close to you, someone who meant something to you.

You know, I grieved for the nine Valley Transportation Authority employees who were massacred.

It wasn't a tragedy, it was an atrocity. It was sheer murder. And I grieved for them, but not grieved for people who

I knew. I grieved because sin is in the world, because such wanton violence happens for no apparent reason, that people are suffering and that families are ruined and are mourning over something that really should not have happened.

I grieved in that way, but I didn't grieve as I did for my sister, before my sister, for my parents, after my sister, for my nephew,

Robbie. Many of you were here the day that I got, my wife and I got the news that our nephew had died.

That was a different kind of grief. That's the kind of grief that the Thessalonicans were suffering from.

And Paul says, we don't want you to be ignorant about those who are asleep. Sleep was a very common euphemism for death.

It was common in the Greco -Roman world of that day. It's very common in the Old Testament and the

New Testament alike. In the Old Testament, we read over and over, for example, with the kings of Judah.

If you go through the books of Chronicles, that one died, and he's said to have slept with his fathers. Then that one dies, and he sleeps with his fathers.

He slept with his fathers, and so it goes. They had much the same belief in the first century world where the

Thessalonican church was founded. And in that day, the philosophers, the traveling charlatans would tell grieving people something like this.

Well, don't grieve too much. It doesn't do any good. It was sort of a stoic, just keep your chin up, old boy.

Nothing you can do about it. And most pagans, which the Thessalonians until just before this time had been, they believed in a sort of a shadowy existence that is the afterlife.

I'm trying to picture what this is like, and the only picture I can think of that really makes it clear is if you remember in Lord of the

Rings when Frodo put on that ring, and he'd go into that kind of underworld thing where it's kind of shadowy, and there's like spirits around, and it mimics what's real and above, but it's different, and it's dark, and it's shady.

Maybe something like that, and that's what they believed was the fate of those who passed away, died, fell asleep.

Well, whether it was that desultory underworld or cessation of existence, there was this one common factor.

What these philosophers, what these charlatans would tell, and what caused apparently this confusion with the

Thessalonians. No hope. There's no hope in that message.

Don't grieve too much. It doesn't do any good. Yeah, there's some hope. Oh, they're in this shadowy underworld, and they're just shades there, and it's just kind of strange and odd, and oh, there's a message of hope, is it not?

No, there's no hope at all. They spoke, as does the

Bible, of people being asleep, but that euphemism fails to soften the hard edges of death.

At least it fails when it's used in their framework. In their framework, it's just a warm, fuzzy, thoughts and prayers kind of a thing.

Well, Paul fills in what is missing. What he brings in doesn't transform the old beliefs, it utterly blows them out of the water.

You see, the gospel completely redefines and transforms even so stark an event as death, even something so final.

And as often, we've all been to memorials, been to funerals recently in the past, and we need to anticipate that again.

And there's something that's still shocking, even if we know it's coming, about the sheer finality of death.

Well, there's a reason that Paul, for that matter, Jesus and the other apostles in the New Testament, used sleep as that euphemism for death.

He's not being unrealistic about what happened. You'll not hear from Paul that platitude about thoughts and prayers being with you.

He's saying there's sleep, and it's very interesting that he uses a physiological function, which is sleep, we all need sleep, to describe the end of all physiological function.

Sleep is a necessity. But what our New Testament authors had in mind is not the refreshment we get from sleep, that we get refreshed by sleep.

I've always wondered what it is about sleep that makes you strong again. You think of a weightlifter or an

NFL lineman. They can bench press 500 pounds. But if he's sleepy, if he's tired, he might not be able to. And if he sleeps for eight hours, not get stronger, not doing more exercise, just sleep and wake up refreshed, he can do it again.

That to me is one of those fearfully and wonderfully made things that we read of in the psalm. But that's not what the apostle or what

Jesus has in mind when he calls death sleep. What they had in mind is that it's a temporary state, just like sleep.

Except for extraordinary circumstances, when we go to sleep, we do wake up. It's a temporary thing to be asleep.

And Paul doesn't deal here in these verses, pardon me, with the state of the being of people who are with Jesus after death.

He doesn't say what they're doing. He doesn't say whether they're conscious. There's none of that in these verses before us. They are conscious.

But as I said before, that's another letter to another church and for another sermon in this place.

The believer in Jesus, as Jesus himself said in John 11, 25, though he dies, what?

Yet he shall live. They live in him immediately, absent from the bodies, to be present with the

Lord, and they will never stop living with him. So we shall be with the Lord, he says. Their sleep, in quotes, their sleep is their time out of the body and spiritually with Christ.

Well, that temporary state ends when Jesus returns. So the hope is still in the resurrection here.

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.

Well, we could say here, seeing that we firmly believe and understand the historical fact of Jesus' death for my sins and his resurrection for my justification, we know that they will be with him when he returns.

The temporary state, the sleep, ends when they're reunited to their bodies and made to be like Jesus. And I ask you, is this not a great hope?

This hope we have in the resurrection? This hope in the resurrection that overcomes even death?

This resurrection that allows Jesus and the apostles and us to look at death and say he's asleep.

And the world could look at that and deride us for it, but we know that when one dies in Christ, they're in a temporary state.

We know they're with him. And as I said, we may cover that some other day when we get through the book of 1 Corinthians. It's the best place to go for that.

Is this not a hope that will see us through these hard times? A hope that sustains even when we're grieving one who is not present with the

Lord, like my sister who showed no interest in the gospel of Jesus Christ? Yet this hope, this faith that none whom

God gave to his son will be left, this got me through the most hopeless memorial

I've ever attended. I ask you, do you believe that Jesus died and rose? Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins and rose again from the grave?

If you do, then you have a hope that can see you through the hardest and most heart -wrenching occasions, even the passing of a loved one, even your own impending departure should you get that phone call about yourself.

So our hope in the resurrection, the source of our hope is what?

The source of our hope is the word of God, the word of the Lord, that's verse 15. How do we know this?

Because Christ says so, because Christ made it so clear. Verse 15, 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.

The previous comforting word had to do with those who had died in Christ. They will be brought with him when he returns.

The question behind verse 15 seemed to be something like, well, what about us? If those who died in the faith are asleep and will return with him in the resurrection, what about us?

Did we miss it? Did the resurrection come and go? That's a letter we have, that's a thought that we have to deal with in 1 and 2

Thessalonians, and we'll get to it as we go through them, that there seemed to be some idea there that they had missed Jesus Christ's coming.

And this is sort of behind what Paul answers in verse 15. You will not be left behind.

Answering, did we get forgotten? Did the Lord come and forget us? Did the

Lord come and we missed it? No, nothing of the sort. Paul assures them by this personal word from the

Lord Jesus, they hadn't missed anything. Their faith in Christ, their hope in the resurrection, your faith in Christ, your hope in the resurrection, for them was not and for you is not misplaced.

It's a matter of order. Who comes first? Those who are with him when he comes back.

In a way, that's very logical. Otherwise, he leaves them in heaven, comes back here, pulls us up out of the grave, or makes us who are alive like himself, then goes back and gets the ones in heaven.

It gets kind of convoluted. I don't mean to make fun of it, and I'm not making fun at all. It's just a matter of order.

He comes with those who are with him now, he collects those who are not with him at that time, and then they're all together.

So if you're alive when he returns, we who are alive, as the apostle puts it, you will not be forgotten.

This is part of that resurrection hope that we have, that the resurrection includes all for whom it was intended, much like the cross, that Christ died for those whom

God had given to him by name before the foundation of the world. That's in Ephesians chapter one, verses three through 14.

You can read the whole thing. You will not be forgotten. I remember when

I was a boy seeing the old black and white movie for the Pied Piper. Now, I never read the book.

Not then, not now. I've never read it, so I don't know how accurate the movie was, but you remember this story? There's this town that has the plague, because the rats came in and brought the plague with it.

So they hire the piper, and he's got flutes or pipes or whatever he plays, and he knows how to play them to get the rats to come out, and I guess they drowned in a river.

And after he does this, he plays his pipe, the Pied Piper. He's got a paia cap type of thing, and he entices the rats to drown themselves in the river, much like the pigs that go over the cliff when

Jesus let the demon go into them or the demons go into them. But then the town refuses to pay, and so the piper plays his pipe to bring all the children out of the homes, and he brings them to this cave, and there's this one boy who's got a crutch.

He's got a disability sometime, and he can't keep up. He so much wants to follow the piper's pipes, but he can't keep up.

He wants to be with his friends, but his crutch makes him go too slow. All the other kids go with the piper into the cave.

The boulder comes down, and he's left out. He's forgotten. He got left behind.

1 Timothy 2, verse 19, says that the Lord knows who are his. John 10, verse 14,

Jesus Christ says, I know my own, and my own know me. None will be forgotten.

Not one will be left if your faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Then the answer to this question that they had in verse 15, what about us?

Did we get forgotten? No, the Lord knows who is his, and if you have faith in the

Lord Jesus, if you've repented of your sins and come to him for forgiveness, this resurrection hope is yours, and you will not be left behind.

No allusion to the series of books meant by that. It's as if he said to them, but you

Thessalonians who believe in Jesus, if you die before he returns, you will be with him. If you are alive when he returns, the same is true.

This is the hope that he gives. This is the hope that sees us through these dark times, these memorials that we are all going to go to, or most of us will at some point, where there's sadness and there's emotions, but there's no gospel.

And how do we as Christians hold it together? By our hope. This is a hope that he gives to you, the believer, to you, the living.

There are precedents for this in the Bible about those who are alive being taken up. I think only of Elijah, Enoch was one, but we'll talk about Elijah just very quickly.

Elijah didn't die. He was taken up in a chariot of fire. He is like we who are alive,

Jesus is coming. Of course, with man, this is impossible. With God, nothing shall be impossible. But God does take up to himself those who are alive, those who will not taste death, will not even fall asleep, to use the euphemism that Jesus and the apostles use.

The source of that hope is the word of God. This is a word from the Lord Jesus Christ to that church and to us.

He has not forgotten. He will not forget you. You will not be left behind if you are now in this life in Jesus by faith.

And what's the object of our hope? Well, it's to be with Jesus, is it not?

What's the resurrection all about? It's because when we're resurrected, we will be like Jesus. When we see him as he is, we will be with him.

Verses 16 and 17 again. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of this 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. Well, here's how it comes to pass, brethren.

Here's what happens. Jesus descends with a cry of command, the voice of an archangel, and the sound of a trumpet.

It's all the noise of war. I was listening to Aldous Bigg this week. One of the days

I was driving to the office, I don't remember which one it was. I don't know exactly what passage he was in. But he talked about how could there be a secret rapture with all this noise?

This is pretty loud. Everybody's hearing this. Everybody's seeing it. How could it be secret? Well, there's a lot of noise.

It is loud. It's dramatically loud. It's all the noise of war, but it's not the noise of the berserkers who, like whirling dervishes, got warriors so psyched out of their minds that they ignored the dangers.

It's nothing like that. This is the noise. This is the shout of victory for a triumph that's already secure.

This is the shout of a battle that's already been won. Do you remember

Israel's victory at Jericho? Well, we all know this story. I'll just read two verses from it.

Joshua 6, verses 15 and 16. On the seventh day, they rose early at the dawn of day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times.

It was only on that day that they marched around the city seven times. And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets,

Joshua said to the people, shout for the Lord has given you the city. Shout out and triumph now because the victory is yours.

God has said so. They shouted a shout of victory even while the walls were standing.

This is the cry of command. The voice of an archangel, the sound of trumpet. These are signs of God's presence.

These are signs of God's coming power. The cry of command is authority. The voice of an archangel.

This is Jesus's voice. Now, he's not an archangel. He's not an angel. He's higher than the angels. Angels were created.

Jesus was never created. He was never made. He is eternal. Jesus is God. But the voice of the archangel, not saying he's an angel, it's one speaking directly for God as Jesus himself said so often in John's gospel, whatever the

Lord commands me, whatever my father commands, that I speak. That's the voice of an archangel here.

And then the sound of the trumpet. The sound of the trumpet as at Sinai, Exodus chapter 19, 16, announcing

God's presence. It says on the morning of the third day, there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast so that all the people in the camp trembled.

This is Jesus's voice. It's Jesus Christ when he comes back with this cry of command, this voice of archangel, this sound of the trumpet.

This is Jesus's command. Jesus with the trumpet being announced as God coming, coming to collect his own, coming with his own and to collect the rest.

Do you want to hear that voice? Here it is from God in Matthew chapter 17.

When the voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, listen to him. And when the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces.

They were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, said, rise and have no fear. And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.

In our passage, what is happening? It is Jesus Christ collecting the fruits of his victory. It is his voice, the voice of many waters that so amazed

John in the apocalypse. It's the cry of absolute victory over sin and death and the grave.

Do you want to hear that voice? Do you want to hear the cry of command, the voice of an archangel, the sound of the trumpet blast?

John chapter five, verse 25. Jesus said this, truly, 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.

This is what Paul is writing about. This cry of command, this voice of an archangel, the sound of the trumpet.

We said earlier that Elijah is we who are alive when Jesus returns.

Elijah is that example we have that God takes the living and brings them immediately to himself who represents those who are dead.

Most of you will agree with me if I said Lazarus. Lazarus. Jesus told the disciples, our friend

Lazarus has fallen asleep. That's in John chapter 11. And there's our euphemism for death. He's fallen asleep, but I go to wake him.

And here's why it's a fitting euphemism because like sleep, death is temporary.

In Jesus Christ, death is temporary. It's the sound of the trumpet.

The trumpet announcing God's coming. Trumpets are throughout the book of Revelation, but I just want to give you two verses in the book of Revelation.

In Revelation chapter 1 verse 10 and in Revelation chapter 4 verse 1, it is specifically

Jesus' voice that is the trumpet of God. He is God. And the trumpet that Paul speaks of announcing

Jesus is coming, it says God is coming. And is not God coming? He is in Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. Do you want to hear that voice?

Would you like to hear the cry of command, the voice of an archangel, the sound of a trumpet, the irresistible voice of authority, which even those in the grave cannot resist?

In John chapter 11, it says Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.

There's your cry of command. He commands you today to repent, to come out.

He commands you today to come out of a living death. As Paul says, for you were dead in trespass and sin.

The cry of command, the voice of archangel, the trumpet blast now, before Jesus returns from heaven, is the one that calls you to repent and come from death to life.

It's Christ with that loud voice calling you to come out, repent of your sin, your faith, your trust, your hope in Jesus Christ, your salvation secured by the cross and confirmed by this great hope that we're putting forth the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Just as I tell you this morning, Hebrews chapter two, verse 14 says that since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy the one who has power over death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

Slaves have no hope. Fear keeps you trapped. God has put eternity in your heart.

That's Ecclesiastes chapter three, verse 11. Why did he put eternity in your heart? You who do not believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ, you have eternity in your heart. You strive to know what's going to happen next.

You like to hear about thoughts and prayers. You like to say, well, they're in a better place, though you don't know it.

And I think Ecclesiastes 3 .11 and many other places in the Bible would say you know you don't know it.

Don't want you to be ignorant of these things. I don't want you to be uninformed about those who are asleep, about you who might be right now dead in trespass and sin.

But if you repent, put your faith in Jesus Christ, this resurrection hope is yours as much as it is mine or anyone else's who is in Christ.

Eternity planted in your heart so you would seek Jesus in whose hands rests your eternal destiny. The devil mangles that glorious truth into slavish fear.

Don't fear him, but fear God who can destroy both body and soul in hell forever. Don't be imprisoned by your sin, but be free of it by confessing it to God and repenting of it to Jesus Christ.

The work of the devil is to keep you in terror over something over which Jesus Christ has won a total victory.

He's won a victory over death and sin and all the works of the devil. And you can be free of that fear and you can have the same resurrection hope that I've been declaring to you.

Death is rightly called sleep because it's temporary. You will awaken either to condemnation or awaken to eternal life and be with the

Lord forever. But none will be forgotten. None will have a fate other than what is right and just in God's eyes, the judge of all the earth who can only do what is right.

Well, we'll close quickly with the use of our hope. What use is this hope?

This hope is given to us for a reason. There's a use of it. To encourage each other, to encourage one another, therefore encourage one another with these words.

And there's not much for me to say here, but that these words are meant as words of encouragement, words to be spoken to fellow believers.

They encourage us who are grieving. They encourage us who are waiting. There is comfort in knowing as well as we might that a loved one is with Jesus.

Yet the hope that Paul would see us to have and to share with each other this encouragement is from the living to the living.

Paul says encourage each other with these words. We don't pray for the dead. We pray for each other. We don't rejoice and weep for them, but for each other and with each other.

These words of encouragement. Matthew chapter 22 verse 32. Jesus says that God is not the

God of the dead, but the God of the living. These words are given to us from the Lord for us, the living, to keep us strong, to keep us focused on this hope of the resurrection, to be encouraged each other of its certainty, all mixed up with the joy of anticipating what is to come.

And this is for us today in the here and now for the living so long as we're here awaiting for Jesus.

So I'll close, finally close with the question and answer for question number 52 of the

Heidelberg Catechism. It asks this. What comfort is it to thee that Christ shall come again to judge the quick and the dead?

The answer is that in all my sorrows and persecutions with uplifted head,

I look for the selfsame one who has before offered himself for me to the judgment of God and removed from me all curse to come again as judge from heaven who shall cast all his and my enemies into everlasting condemnation, but shall take me with his chosen ones to himself into heavenly joy and glory.

Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the hope that we have in this resurrection.

I thank you, Father, that Jesus Christ has conquered even sin and even death. And Lord, by the resurrection, you have confirmed these things and given us faith to believe and understand them.

I pray, Lord, that this be an encouragement to us as we face whatever times are ahead. Only you,

Father, know them. Lord, the sure and certain hope that we have in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our resurrection to follow his will see us through.

I pray that you would keep us focused on that, that you keep us strong in the faith. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.