Because He Lives

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series,

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Hope Rising, from the book of 1 Thessalonians. Let's listen in. Well, good morning.

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Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. I'm glad that you've gathered together as God's people here in Matawan this morning.

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I hope that you also are glad that you have come to this place, too. God has drawn us together on this summer

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Sunday morning to grow together in faith, to take in his word. What I mean when I say grow in faith, by the way, is that we take in his word, we believe that it's true, and we go out and we live our lives based on that truth that we uncover there and discover that his spirit is communicating with us.

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So we come together to grow in faith, but we also come together to grow in community and relationships with others.

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You can take in God's word. You can grow in faith on your own. Did you know that? But the way that God has designed us to grow best in faith is to grow in community and relationship with others around us that we might see that we're not going it alone.

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And I know that a lot of times during my week, I can feel alone out there. I think you can feel alone in your workplace or whatever and just kind of slogging through the

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Monday through Friday or Monday through Saturday of the week. But we come together on Sunday to remember that we are together in this whole thing of life.

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And then we also want to grow together in service, that is, that God has placed in you something that is of value, something that is of benefit to others.

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And so we learn that as we come together, an opportunity to serve one another. The S in RECAST, RECAST is an acronym, by the way, for our core values.

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I recognize that some of you are new here. This may be your first time. So you kind of might wonder what the name RECAST means.

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The R in the E stands for replicating. The C stands for community. The A stands for authenticity.

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The S for simplicity. And the T for truth. And those are our core values of what we're trying to accomplish here.

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And the S, as I mentioned, stands for simplicity. And just a little explanation of that real quick. We are seeking to follow here at RECAST a simple plan of growing that sets us apart from some other churches that maybe you've attended.

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And again, it's not an arrogance that we're doing things right and they're doing things wrong or whatever. It just happens to be the pathway that we've chosen for this church.

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When you start a church, you have the freedom to kind of set some direction and some goals and things like that.

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And so it's a little bit distinct here. We are intentionally avoiding the multiplication of programs that often keep

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Christians busy on every night of the week. I think many of us have that maybe history or some experience in church that churches can tend to just provide a program for you every night of the week and a bunch on Sundays and a bunch on the weekends.

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And eventually you find your calendar is filled up, especially if you feel really spiritual, then you'll be very busy in the church, right?

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And so we have set out to try to simplify that. So instead of having multiple programs, we have a worship gathering every

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Sunday morning for you to grow in faith. We have community groups that meet throughout the week in people's homes to grow in community.

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And we encourage everyone to find your area of service either inside the church or outside of the church.

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Sometimes your service isn't here. Sometimes your services in evangelism or in outreach are doing things outside of the church, but that everybody finds that thing that you're designed and made to do to serve and then doing that.

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But another byproduct of the idea of a simple church or simplicity is the reality that we don't get to spend a lot of time together.

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With more programs comes more connecting points and more of that opportunity. And so that's one thing that we kind of sacrifice a little bit here.

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And so we seek to maximize our Sunday morning with exposure to God's Word together.

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Again, that idea of growing in faith together by taking in His Word. And we believe that this

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Word, the Bible, is true and powerful. That is to say, we believe that the

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Bible is right in what it says, but it also has the ability to shape and fashion us as we study it, as we believe it's true, and then allow what it says to shape our daily lives.

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But this morning we're going to encounter an issue that faced the church in Thessalonica. Again, we're looking at this letter that Paul wrote to a new church that had been established through his sharing the gospel there.

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And it was a thing that models this issue that we're looking at here in our text this morning, models an issue that many of us face day in and day out.

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See, many scholars believe that the Thessalonian church knew about the resurrection, but had not applied it to their situation.

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They knew something in their heads. They knew about it, but they didn't understand the outcropping of that in their day in and day out routine lives.

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And that's an age old problem that I think affects many of us even here today, is that we can know, how many of you would admit that there's times where you've known something to be true and still not lived it out, still not let it affect your emotions, not allow it to affect the way, and I think that's all of us, and some of you are just waking up so you didn't raise your hand.

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But I think everybody probably knew that that was true of them. And so we can hear the truth, we can study the truth, we can even, hear me carefully, we can even believe the truth, but do we live it out?

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Do we let it really impact the way that we look at things, the way we see things, the way we think about things, and the way we do things?

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In our text, Paul seeks to correct a misunderstanding about the resurrection. But in this correction, he's not just trying to give the

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Thessalonians more information, but he seeks to offer for them comfort in the midst of applying it to them specifically.

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You see, as we dig into this text, we're going to see that that church needed hope. How many of you would admit that maybe you need some hope?

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You need some hope. And I think that's true again of all of us. We need hope in our lives, something that will sustain us, a thing that is out there that we can trust in that is true and is bedrock and is stable.

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You know your lives are shifting. There's a lot of shift in our daily lives. There's a lot of unsettledness. Does anybody here ever read the news?

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Then you're unsettled. Then you're unsettled to some degree about something. There's some issue out there that struck you that it's like,

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I don't know, you're just kind of at the point where you like to turn the news off. I mean, it just can become overwhelming at times and all the different angles and twists and fake news and this and that and all different kinds of perspectives and everybody's got fake news from each side and all that kind of stuff.

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It can become overwhelming. We are a church that needs hope. Thessalonica was a church that needed hope.

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But what they needed, by the way, they had access to hope. You and I have access to hope.

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And we're identifying that we need it, but we have access to it. It's available for us. You realize that?

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It's there for you. It's available to you. But are you taking it and applying hope to your daily life?

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If our theology and think, theology can be a word that kind of makes people's eyes roll back in their heads and you might think of, you know, old people with really super long beards and like dusty tomes, you know, sorting through things in libraries.

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Everybody in this room has a theology. You have something that you believe to be true about God.

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Even if your theology is simply to say, I don't believe God exists, you still have a theology. You have a way that you view this thing, this

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English word called God. So if our theology, what we believe to be true about God, isn't impacting our lives throughout the week, then it's fair to say that we might not really be believing it.

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We might not really be believing it if it's not impacting the way that we live. And so let's turn in our Bibles.

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If you're not already there, you can kind of see where we're going from the front of that worship folder you got.

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But 1 Thessalonians 4 verses 13 through 18, 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18.

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If you don't have a Bible or a means to navigate to the Bible, I don't mind if you got your phone out and you're looking at that.

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I'm not super excited if you're like Googling things that I just said or something, and then you can do that later. But having the

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Bible out so that you can see the things that I'm reading are coming from there. 1

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Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18. If you don't have a Bible, by the way, or you don't have a means to navigate to it, Mike's got some that are open to that passage back here, and he'd like to just give you one.

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But the only way he knows to give you one is if you raise your hand. And so if anybody needs one of those, just slip your hand up and he'll bring you a copy of the word.

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And then you can take that home with you. We want everybody to have a copy of the word to read, and so you can take advantage of that.

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But 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 through the end of the chapter, through verse 18 there.

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In recast, I say this often and I sometimes feel like a broken record, but I think it's very valuable for us to just settle in our minds for a moment and remember that what we are about to hear is the voice of God.

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It's not my voice. I mean, obviously you're going to hear my voice, but you're going to hear what God has to say here.

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That's the power of this book, is what God desires to communicate to us is going to be said now.

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So let's follow along. But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others who do, 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. And 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. Therefore, in Christ's name, we encourage one another with these words.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your word that sets out principles and guidelines for our lives and that identifies for us the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that he died and that he rose again.

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A simple message, a simple message that is to have an impact on our lives today.

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And Father, that you have seen fit to record in your word hope. You've recorded for us the hope that we each can have based on faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

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And so Father, I pray that from a place of hope that your people here gather together in your name, that our voices would mingle together in worship and praise as we have an opportunity to sing these songs before you, that you would be honored, you would be lifted high as the great giver of all sources of hope.

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And that it all comes down to this one simple thing, that Christ is alive. That he was raised from the dead and that in him we also have hope of resurrection because he is our

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King and our Lord. And so Father, I pray that from that place you would motivate our hearts to worship you, not with our voices alone, not with just attention to the words alone in these songs, but with hearts believing that these things are true and rejoicing together in Jesus' name.

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Amen. There are times in our lives, and I think all of us recognize this, when our faith and our feelings don't line up.

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Have you noticed that? Times in your life when your faith and your feelings don't match.

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What we believe to be true in our heads at times is one thing, but what we feel like in our hearts is sometimes another.

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And I would suggest to you that the death of somebody that we love is a very intense circumstance that often leaves us in that type of circumstance, in that type of situation where our feelings and our faith don't always line up.

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You see, I believe that most of us here in the room, and certainly everyone who has given their lives to Christ by faith and have put their trust in him, knows in your head that God loves you.

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How many of you would testify that you believe God loves you? Praise God for that. We believe in our heads that there is hope, but it sometimes takes time for our feelings to catch up and line up with our faith.

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In our text, Paul has received a report from Timothy that the small church in Thessalonica has lost some of its members to death.

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It may very well have been through the very intense persecution that that church faced from early on that has resulted in some of them going on to be with the

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Lord. Some of those dearly loved members of that local church have passed away, they've died.

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And the church doesn't know how to respond. This young church, this fledgling church, remember they can't pick up the

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New Testament and read this text right here. It's being written to their context, and so they don't have that to turn to.

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So what are they going to do? What's going on? And we don't even know fully, we can't really fully form, scholars try to form what is the question that Paul is trying to answer here, from his answer.

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Because sometimes you can read an answer and you can figure out what the question was. And we're not 100 % sure what the question was that the

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Thessalonians are forming, but I'm not sure if they were 100 % sure what the question they were forming.

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They are mourning, they are grieving, they have lost ones that they love. That's one thing we know for sure from this answer.

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I think some of the types of questions is maybe what will the return of Christ mean for those who we believe, and it's clear that they had already been taught about the return of Christ, and so what's that going to mean for those who have died?

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Every impression is that the early church had some notion that Christ could return at any time, and therefore their assumption was

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He probably would. And so some of them might have even thought, you know, I'm not sure if we're ever going to die if Christ isn't just going to return for us and take care of this whole thing, and here we are 2 ,000 years later.

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So what will the return of Christ mean for those who have passed on? Or even maybe another question that's a little bit subtle and a little shifted is, will they be second rate at the return of Christ?

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Will they miss it? In a sense of being able to take it in? I mean, I think you've got to think in terms of the return of Christ will quite possibly be the very most amazing and glorious event of all of history, and the fear was maybe some

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Christians are going to be left out. They're not even going to get to see it. They're not going to be present for it because they're in the grave, and maybe even though they believed in the resurrection and that they would indeed be raised to life, they thought, well, they're going to miss out on this amazing return of their

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King. Maybe even a more fundamental question that they had.

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They're not fully sure about all that they understood about resurrection. Are we going to see him again?

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Is that a question that you ask when you lose somebody? Somebody that you loved dies? Are we going to see them again?

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How many of you think that that's an important question to have answered? It's one that all of our hearts long to know.

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In that ancient and pagan culture that Paul was writing into, where the Thessalonian church was birthed out of that culture, most believed that death was the end.

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That was it. But even some of those who, many of those who believed that there was life after death, according to the

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Greek and Gentile culture in which the church was born, many believed that once the grave had you, once Hades had possession of you, there was little hope of getting out.

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Now, you might, but Hades had a pretty strong grip. So the structure of my message this morning, and really

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I'm trying to find Paul's structure here, and I think I've got it, is three simple points. And it's not, they're not even in the verses, but they're,

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I think they're very clear. Verse 13 establishes the need for hope. So hope needed, verse 13.

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Then the bulk of our text is hope defined, verses 14 through 17. And then hope applied, verse 18, wrapping things up.

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And so those of you who like to take notes there, you've got a little bit of structure for you, and you can run off of that. But it's clear to me from verse 13 that this church needed hope.

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And I just asked you to raise your hand if you thought that you needed hope earlier in the introduction. And many of you said yes.

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I think all of us need hope. And there's different varieties and different brands of hope, and different hope that we need at different times.

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Paul begins by indicating that he's going to give them some education on the subject of those who have died.

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There is an educational aspect to this. There is something lacking in their knowledge that was needed.

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To some degree, they were uninformed. He uses that word, uninformed. Which leads me to conclude that they were confused about things that Paul had not had time to talk with them about yet.

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They're confused about things that in his short time with them, he was not able to cover. So here in this letter, he's writing back to them to say,

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I didn't get to this, but here. Now you need it, and here I'm going to teach you through this text, through a letter.

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And he's going to write this. You know that uninformed is different than misinformed, right? Uninformed and misinformed are two very different words.

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They had not necessarily, it's not that they had accepted lies or that false teachers had swept in after Paul and had confused the church about what happens to those who die or anything like that.

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It's that they were uninformed. They didn't have teaching about this specific thing, what happens to those who die in the

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Lord, what's going to happen to them. They lacked the education on the way that the resurrection applied to the

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Christian life, and particularly to those who have died. They needed hope because some of their own people had, the text tells us, fallen asleep, and this wasn't taking a nap, obviously.

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You can see that in the text. I think we use euphemisms a lot, and we use euphemisms around categories that make us uncomfortable.

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Things that we don't like to talk about, we tend to come up with other ways to say it that soften it.

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Somebody passed on, they've gone to be with the Lord, but we don't like the word died very often, right?

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We don't like that word, and so it's an uncomfortable subject, and so we soften it with different words, and I think even

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Paul here is using a euphemism of his day for death. They've gone to sleep, he says.

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He's using a euphemism for death in that phrase, those who are asleep. But I think it's an intentionally softening and comforting euphemism.

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He's not using this accidentally. He's not merely just ripping this out of his culture. I think he's intentional with his word usage here.

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Scripture indicates that those who have died in Christ before us are conscious in spirit in the presence of Jesus Christ.

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They're conscious there. They're not sleeping, per se. It's not a literal sleep that he's identifying, that when you die, you go to sleep, and then you wake up at the resurrection or something like that.

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They are cognitively present with Jesus now. But they are at peace, and they are at rest, and it makes sleep a good metaphor for what's going on for them right now.

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The church in Thessalonica needed hope. So that they are not moved, the text goes on to say, to the abject and hopeless mourning of others in their culture.

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As a believer in Jesus, if we allow what we believe to be true about salvation, if we allow what we're learning about here and hearing about here from God's word about resurrection, if we allow this truth,

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God's word, to impact our life at the point where we experience the death of a loved one who is in Christ, we will still grieve.

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We will still grieve. But we will not grieve as one who is hopeless, as one who is without hope.

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I like what the theologian D .A. Carson says on this passage regarding grief. Talking about this very text, he says,

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The Bible everywhere assumes that those who are bereaved will grieve. The assumption is there that those who experience the loss of one that they love will grieve.

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And their grief is never belittled. The intention of Paul here is not to belittle grief.

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Paul is not telling the Thessalonian church to dry your eyes and get a stiff upper lip and just toughen up a bit.

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I mean, my goodness, why are you crying about this? He's not chastising them for grieving the loss of those that they loved in their midst.

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Instead, he's identifying in them the need for hope in the face of death. The need for hope for the church.

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So verse 13 establishes the need for hope in that little church, and in our church as well, the need for hope.

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But the second movement of this text takes up the majority of our verses this morning. It's from verses 14 to 17.

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Paul seeks to define the source of hope for the church. And rather than just say,

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I'm defining hope for you, he explains it in a way that basically tells us the story of God's love for us in a deeper way, and even tells us some of the future events on which to place our hope.

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And by the way, the hope that is offered to us here, we like to use different phrases for it.

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The hope that he gives is not in the place that we're often tempted to turn when comforting the bereaved.

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The place that we turn is the here and now too often. We like to mention that they are in a better place.

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You can finish the sentence for me because we've offered it so often. We've heard it so often. They're in a better place.

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We talk about the present. We are a very present people, and we like to find our hope in what is real and true right here and now, and that partly betrays our place of faith.

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Because our faith is a future faith. Our hope is a future hope for what is going to be, not what is now.

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Do you hear that? There's a significance to that that Paul is identifying for the church and for all of us that our hope is yet to be realized, but it's on its way.

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He is on his way. Not it, but he is on his way. We like to talk in terms of their present location.

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Paul likes to talk about their future. Jesus likes to talk about their future destination.

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Where will they be? So Paul begins, by the way, by going backwards in time for them, and he goes to the cross.

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Can you think of a better place to go for hope? The cross. He goes backwards for a moment. By the way, it is kind of like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth.

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The hope for the Christian is both in the future based on the past. So Paul is going to lay a foundation of making sure that you understand the past so that the future makes sense for you.

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That future hope is rooted 2 ,000 years ago at a cross outside of Jerusalem. Now, that might have been applied to your life at a specific time.

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We just talked about my wife giving her life to Christ at a five -day club, and we're hoping that kids will do that. And two kids gave their life to Christ a couple weeks ago at VBS.

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And you can identify where you were to some degree when Jesus broke into your history and you decided to follow him as your

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Lord and your Savior, right? But you were saved 2 ,000 years ago at the cross.

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That's the location of your salvation. That's the location of the foundation of your hope.

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So Paul takes us back to the cross, and he says, Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again.

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We believe that Jesus died and rose again. Paul begins with a fundamental non -negotiable creed of every church.

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Hear me carefully. That's something that I can tell you that if it is a church, it believes these two things. Jesus died, and Jesus rose again.

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Now, there's all kinds of varieties of churches. There's all kinds of brands. There's all kinds of denominations, but this is fundamental.

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And by the way, if you find a church, you find yourself attending a church, you end up at a church, you hear of a church that doesn't believe that Jesus truly died and doesn't believe that Jesus truly rose again, you are attending something, but it ain't church.

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Okay? It's something other. There's something else going on there. But if it denies the death of Jesus, if it denies his resurrection, it is denying what it means to be a church, what it means to be a

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Christian. Paul takes for granted that these grieving

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Christians believe that Jesus died. Again, talking to their head, in their head a bit, and knowing you believe these things.

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You have testified to these things and that these things are indeed true. And although it's a brief mention, the believer in Christ cannot ever hear the phrase,

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Jesus died in isolation. Your heart should go other places. Even your mind should go and expand on that because when you hear

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Jesus died, you will have some level of theological reflection in your heart. As a follower of Jesus Christ, you don't ever hear that phrase in isolation.

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Jesus died. Oh, the sinless one died. The perfect son of God died.

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Jesus died for me. Jesus died for my sins.

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Jesus died in my place. Jesus died, the righteous for the unrighteous.

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Jesus died to cleanse me. Jesus died to reconcile me to the

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Father. You see, there's a lot of weight to that phrase, Jesus died, isn't there? There's a lot of glory and a lot of beauty and a lot of meaning to the one who understands it and has eyes to see.

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Paul is making just two -word reflection here, and it's deep, and I believe it's intentional.

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I think Paul means for the Thessalonians to go there in their thinking, to let that roll over their minds a bit.

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Jesus died. But Jesus also rose again. He rose the victor over sin.

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He rose victorious over the dire effects of sin, which are death and separation from God. And Paul begins with his definition of hope in the middle of verse 14 by making sure that we realize that this very resurrection of Jesus, that this historical fact impacts the future of everyone that believes that Jesus died and rose again.

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It impacts your future if you're in with Jesus. See, Jesus is returning, which, by the way,

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I don't know if you've ever noticed would be super hard if he remained dead. Have you ever thought about that aspect of the resurrection?

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His return is contingent upon, you know, the grave being empty and all that. He's returning.

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And in his returning, he says he will bring back to the living those who have died.

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They're coming with him. They're coming with him. They are with him now, cognizant in his presence.

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There's even pictures in the book of Revelation about those sitting beneath the throne of God and crying out, how long,

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O Lord, until you exact your revenge and your vengeance and finish this and bring us back?

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How long, O Lord? It's the image. They're there, and they're good. They're in a good place, but they're saying, can we go back?

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Can we go back? And I want you to hear carefully, this is fundamental to our faith, and it's something that so many of us have had wrong all of our lives with too many far -side cartoons.

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I don't know. Your destiny is not heaven. Your ultimate destination is not floating in the clouds.

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That is called the intermediate state, and that's a phrase that theologians use. The only people to ever go to heaven are those in between the times of God's final restoration and the beginning.

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So only those who have died, you and I may never go to heaven if Christ returns for us. He's coming back here to set up a kingdom forever and ever and ever.

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He's going to restore this earth. Whether he destroys it and makes a new one is kind of unclear, but he may renovate this, and I know it talks about it in fire and all those kinds of things, but this is our final destination.

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We are earthlings. We are made for earth. This is the place where we... And if that ruffles your feathers and you're like, man,

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Don, I'm not sure because I've been taught this all my whole life, and it takes a little time, I've got some resources I'd love for you to read that really dive into Scripture on this and would help clarify what

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I'm talking about. But it is fundamental to our understanding about where we are going. They actually want to come back.

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They're not like, oh, it's all good up here. Resurrection is the hope. Not some ethereal floating in the clouds, you know, like trying to strum on a harp, which you never thought about.

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How can a spirit strum a harp, right? You need a body to strum a harp. You never noticed that. And God has made us physical beings for a physical existence, and that will go on forever and ever with King Jesus as our leader.

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And all of that is a side note. I can get off my notes here just a bit.

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But Paul is giving us a definition of hope here. There are people that are with him now. They are eager to come back.

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And a day is coming when he gathers them all up and says, today's the day. It's time to head back home.

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It's time to go home. It's time for your personal Easter. It's the day.

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It's resurrection day, Jesus will say, and gather together because we're going home.

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And God the Father, through Jesus, the text tells us, will bring the souls of those who died in him from heaven back to earth, and they will return.

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And Paul seals this defining of hope with a solemn declaration. You see it there in the text.

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He says he wants you to be clear that these words he obtained from Jesus, Jesus taught me these things, he says.

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The living at the return of Christ will not have a higher priority over those who have died, but the dead will be given a first place in the glorious celebratory return of the

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Son of God coming back to earth. And it's clear from this text that Paul held out hope that he might make it to the return of Jesus.

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I hope that's true for me. I think Paul, in writing this, using the word we in there, some have gotten hung up on that, thinking that, oh, see,

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Paul was wrong here, and I've had people tell me that. Paul was wrong in this text. Well, I don't think it's wrong to hope, because I would love to use that pronoun as well.

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We who are alive now, right? Is that an accurate statement? If Jesus returns now, we who are alive will?

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But then he goes on, there's two phrases that he uses in here. In verse 15, he says,

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We who are alive, which is a statement of fact as he's writing this, but then he modifies that phrase with defining that as being who are left until the coming of the

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Lord. I think he leaves some wiggle room there. Paul thought, and I believe this firmly,

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Paul thought that he might make it to the return of Jesus. Paul also thought it could happen at any time.

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But Paul also left room for it to be later as it has been. I want to point out too that when you get down into some of these nuances of things, you've got to remember that Scripture says that not even the

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Son of Man knows the day or the hour. Paul certainly didn't. It wasn't given to Paul to understand those things, and so he's not speaking emphatically that he's going to live until the end times.

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Paul goes on defining hope by describing a future event where the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shouted command.

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And in context, there's little doubt as to what will be shouted, at least what the results of that will be.

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Actually, we may not know the exact wording of what is shouted in this text, but we know it will be some kind of command to the dead to rise.

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It may simply be, and I like to think of this, I like to think maybe it's come forth, come forth, as Jesus had shouted at the grave of Lazarus.

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Which I like to think it will be, because that would just be kind of super cool, right? If you kind of run it full circle,

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Jesus said, and there at the grave of Lazarus, Lazarus, come forth. Now you guys watch what

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I can do. All y 'all come forth. Everybody. Let the graves all give up.

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Some of you that lived in Texas, you got that. I'll use guys. I'll use whatever.

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You guys come forth. Jesus will descend from heaven along with a shout.

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Something like, come forth. And the souls of those he brought with them will reunite with their bodies in the air.

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His arrival will be a loud event. I don't know if you noticed, and we talked about this back when I was going through the series on Revelation, which is all available online.

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If you want to check that out, you can check that out, and you can go to Sermon Archives on the website. The events of the end times are just emphatically loud.

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The Greek words that are used there are always loud. It's a loud thing. I kind of think it's funny.

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Everything seems to be loud there in the end. The command to the dead will be shouted with the voice of an archangel, and the trumpet of God will be sounded.

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And the dead in Christ will rise first. And trumpets blaring, and angels shouting, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

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The dead in Christ will rise. Don't pass quickly over that phrase.

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Let that saturate your mind. Let that roll over in your mind for a moment. Let that phrase have its way in your heart.

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Somebody you know that that's talking about. All of us know someone, right?

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There's somebody in there. In that phrase, the dead in Christ will rise.

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Those whose funerals you attended will rise.

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Glory. Who have you mourned over that this text is talking about?

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The text tells you. With the intention of providing you comfort, with the intention of providing you hope, the dead in Christ will rise.

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And those that are alive at this glorious event will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet with the Lord in the air.

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This word, meet the Lord, is a very technical, not very often used Greek word that is the welcoming of a dignitary with honor and fanfare.

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It is celebratory in nature. As if when a dignitary is coming into town, a group goes out into the countryside to meet them before they even arrive to the city gates to escort them into the city.

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That's the picture that is given here. And those who are alive will come to escort King Jesus.

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The final promise in verse 17 is breathtaking. And so we will always be with the

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Lord. And so we will always be with the Lord. Where is the hope? Where they are now? It's that we will all be together.

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We'll all be together with the Lord. The hope is amazing. The picture is that from that time forever, when

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Jesus returns, we will always be with Jesus. He will set up a new eternal kingdom on earth, but only after the tribulation and the final confrontations, all of that stuff that we studied in the book of Revelation last year and the final confrontation with evil and all of that.

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Again, you can go back to that series if you want more clarity on that. But notice what hope is held out for those who follow

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Jesus Christ and believe Him to be King and Savior. The reward is the eternal presence of our

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Lord and Savior. Consider what is the key of your hope? What is the centerpiece?

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What is the central structure of your hope? And I know that that could become convicting pretty quick and we could get off into finances.

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We could get off into weather. We could get off into starting a new job, children, family, all different kinds of things.

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But I'm even thinking about what could potentially be good thoughts. Consider the key of your hope.

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For some of us, it might just be getting out of hell. That's the extent.

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You haven't advanced much beyond that, getting out of hell. And unfortunately, many people are led to a hope that amounts to nothing more than escaping the flames.

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And I would suggest to you that that's fairly weak considering all the host of hope that is offered you in Scripture.

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That's one. That's one aspect of it. But that's like taking a diamond that's cut and looking at only one facet, just looking at this one edge of it.

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When the whole glory of the diamond is there to sparkle and dazzle, but in a dark room, you just want to look at the one facet and go, okay, that's enough for me.

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But so much more is available to you. That is not the hope that Scripture holds out for a lost and dying world.

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The hope that is held out is the glorious presence of the one who makes us holy, the one who loves us and died for us.

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And to have an eternity in his eternal kingdom where he wipes away every tear, he removes every pain, and he banishes sin and death.

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Absence of hell is good. Anybody glad for that at least? I hope all of us are at least glad for that.

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The absence of hell is good. But the eternal hope is an eternity together with our

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Savior. We will always be with the Lord. Glorious words.

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The hope described here is not a hope in the present. So often, again, our well -meaning comforts to those who are bereaved are short -sighted.

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They're not suffering anymore. They've gone to a better place. But the deepest hope is all in the future.

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It is Jesus who was raised is coming back to raise them. Jesus who was raised will reunite his kingdom, and death will no longer separate the living in Christ from the dead in Christ.

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And Jesus who was raised will dwell with his people forever and ever and ever.

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Once Paul has defined this hope, he then finally issues a command for us all to apply it.

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Hope applied in verse 18. And hope applied looks like encouraging one another with these words.

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Not to be a robot. When somebody you know has lost a loved one, and pull out this and read it to them. You know, it's not like, okay, oh, that's right,

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I'm supposed to do this at this time. I think this command is a bit of a corrective to our fears, by the way, that quoting scripture is a little too cliche.

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Some of our culture has gotten that way, right? Some of us, even in evangelical circles, is like, oh, no, no, you're not supposed to quote scripture.

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You're not supposed to say that. You're supposed to just only ever sit in the darkness with those who are mourning.

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How many of you know that's good? There's some good in that. But there's a little bit of kernel of balance that needs to be had there, right?

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Encouragement is appropriate. It's a matter of reading and knowing, and I think we do need to walk wisely.

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I think it's very good to sit with somebody who's mourning and to shed tears with them and to comfort them. But there comes a time where comfort comes from the truth, not from anything we can muster, not even from our hugs.

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Hugs are pretty limited when you've lost a loved one, right? It's good to have them, but they're limited.

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They're limited in what they can provide in terms of long -term hope. I've mentioned to you guys before that I got really angry at people who asked me what

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God was teaching me through the death of my mother when I was in college. Those questions came within just a couple of weeks of her funeral.

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Don, what is God teaching you? He's teaching me to punch you in the face. That's what

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I felt like at that time. And so I am suggesting to you from personal experience that there's times when you're going through grief that you can't see anything, and it's not the time for this.

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But what I found tasteless at that time and even somewhat offensive at that time,

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I can honestly say now from my vantage point, years removed from the death of my parents, that the scripture on resurrection is a lasting help and hope.

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I've lived this. This is my hope. This isn't some hope that is held out that I get to teach on.

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This is my hope. My parents are coming back in this. And you know someone too who you've had to say goodbye to in Christ will rise first.

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And thus, we will always be with the Lord, us and them, forever and ever.

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I don't think we should wait until tragedy strikes us to consider the comfort that these words provide.

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I don't think it should be just, okay, you know, well, this is good. This is good, Don. I've got this now. And so when I go through hard times,

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I'll pull this out and I'll relisten to it or I'll pull out my notebook and look at this.

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We need to let the death and resurrection of Jesus and His return to raise those who have died in Him saturate our thoughts about this very dark part of what it means to live in a fallen world.

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We live all of our lives in the valley of the shadow of death. The shadow is cast over everything.

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From how you deal with your time, how many of you feel a general push to get a lot into this life?

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Does anybody besides me feel that? I can find myself driving faster, literally, driving faster because I want to get more in.

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Anybody relate to that? Or am I psycho? Okay, a handful of us. But there's more. I want to pack in the next thing.

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I want to get to the next thing. I want to do the next thing. Why? Because I know in my head that there is this specter over me of limited time.

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And so we can live in a way that is not based on faith but based on fear.

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And I won't get enough in. Maybe I won't be able to do enough. And this text provides comfort to take a chill pill for a minute, to put things in perspective.

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We need not face the fear of death alone. We certainly should not be uninformed about those who have died in the

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Lord. Instead, we should encourage one another with these words even now, even in your life when it's not needed, because this encouragement will be needed by every single one of us.

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So how much better to have this perspective firmly on board before the loss of a loved one even happens? So in this text, we have seen the need for hope so that we don't mourn like those who have none.

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We have seen hope defined as a future day when the Lord Jesus returns for His people and raises them from the dead to be with Him forever.

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And we've seen the command to use this truth as the basis of encouraging others by applying that hope to our daily lives.

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But let me make some observations about this text as we wrap up our time together this morning. The first is just simply to identify clearly for you that Paul didn't know when

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Jesus will return and neither will you. So many have looked at this text and scoured it for clues so that they can determine when and how the whole end times thing is gonna go down, and that does damage to the purpose of this text.

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That has been an abuse to this text. It is not given to us so that we can obtain the details of pre -tribulational raptures and planes left without pilots and cars suddenly veering off the road because the driver was raptured.

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Oh, that makes good cinema and makes good novels. But this text has one primary function that is overlooked by those types of books and that type of sensationalism.

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It is to take away the intensity of our fear of death by giving us cause for true hope beyond the grave.

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True hope is the purpose of this text. So where is your hope regarding the grave?

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Is your hope placed in the death and resurrection of Jesus? If not, there is still hope for you while you have breath, and it is simply this, that you would come to Jesus and accept

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His love and His forgiveness. He died on the cross so that you would not need to experience eternal death, but would be able to experience eternal life forever with Him, and He can remove the fear and sting of death.

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If you'd like to know more about how you can be forgiven, you can come and see me after the service, and I would love to talk with you about how you can personally start a relationship with Jesus Christ.

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Secondly, for all of us, I want you to consider the following observations about this text, and you can word them in a way that provides the application for you.

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Let the Spirit identify for you, as I read through this list of observations, which one

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He is identifying for you. The first observation is this cannot be comfort if it is not true.

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It can't be comfort if it's not true, and so the first step is believe it, to trust it.

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Second, if this is true, it is the most comforting thing available to you, so let me encourage you to trust it.

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Third, if this is true, this is the most important hope that is available. Trust this hope alone.

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Put your trust only in this hope. Fourth, if this is true, there is nothing in this world that is worth worrying about.

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Let me say that again, because I think this might be one that hits some of us. If this is true, if this is true, and thus we will always be with the

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Lord, with an eternity in the future for us, on the new earth with the new heavens, take comfort in this hope.

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If this is true, there is nothing in this world that is worth worrying about. Lastly, if this is true, there is nothing in this life that holds a candle to this hope.

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Seek no other hope. Let it all rest here. Our culture puts hope in pleasure, pleasure that's fleeting and fading and often becomes a terrible master.

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Our culture holds out wealth and riches as hope, but we are never satisfied, and the hunger for more becomes a terrible master.

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Our culture holds up beauty that only ever fades and is a terrible master.

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Our culture puts hope in fame that can never last. Scripture puts our hope in the future return of Jesus, who is gentle and he is a loving master, and he will never leave us or forsake us.

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So consider today as we come to communion where your ultimate hope resides, you personally.

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We come to communion to remember that he died for us. He loved us so much that he went willingly to the cross and his body was broken and his blood was shed in our place.

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And if your hope is in Jesus Christ, if your hope is in his death and resurrection for your salvation from sins, then come to one of the tables in the four corners of this room and take the cracker to remember his body broken for you and take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for you.

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Let's come to the tables. If you're in Christ, let's come to the table and celebrate the true source of hope today.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for hope.

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Things can get dark. Circumstances can crowd us out so quickly.

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And we can hear this message on Sunday and we can go about Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and the rest of our week living as though there is no hope, living as though it's all on our shoulders, living as though our circumstances of the urgent thing right in front of us is the end all of existence.

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Father, I pray that you would transform us, change us into a hopeful people who even when we're slighted by a business deal, even when we are backstabbed by a friend, even when we lose a loved one, even when the diagnosis is bad, we've got a firmly rooted hope in this future that is truly ours by faith.

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And I pray that anybody in this room who doesn't believe that this is true, Father, that you would work in their hearts to give them faith, to open their eyes to see the truth that this is hope and that it is available for them.

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And as we come to communion, Father, I thank you for the ultimate sacrifice of all for Jesus Christ and his death and his resurrection for us.