Today we are going to be looking at 1 Thessalonians chapters 4 & 5. This whole second coming idea is one that is filled with confusion and distractions, so I want to ask you to open your heart to what God’s Word has to say. Let’s set aside all the confusion on the issue, and let God’s Word simply speak to us today. Starting in 1 Thessalonians 4:13, I’d like to tell you three reasons why the promise of Jesus’ coming is so important and so significant in our lives. First of all,
The promise of Jesus’ coming brings expectant hope for the Christian, whether that Christian is dead or alive.
This entire passage is intended to encourage Christians who had been confused about various aspects of Jesus’ second coming. In each of three sections from 4:13 through 5:11, he begins with the word “Brothers.” And each time he says, “brothers,” he is offering a teaching or an encouragement to his readers.
So first of all, he says in 4:13, Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.
So he starts with two encouragements here: he says, “I want to make sure you understand the truth about what happens to Christians who die” (that’s what he means by “those who fall asleep”), and, “though you will grieve over lost loved ones, your grief is to be different than people in the world who have no hope.”
Now this one verse is a great nugget. It is only in our understanding of God’s promise that we have any hope. As believers in Christ, it is ok and expected for us to grieve, and mourn, but that grief has a much different flavor than those who have no hope. Can there be anything more sad – more depressing; than a funeral of a person who was not a Christian? There is no celebration, no victory, and no hope. The ancient world knew this hopeless despair just as much as our world knows it.
A famous ancient Greek tombstone had these “encouraging” words: “I was not; I became. I am not: I care not.” Life without God’s promise means no hope. But life with God’s promise changes everything. Look at verse 14:
14We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
It is because of Jesus death and resurrection that hope is even possible. That is the hope and the victory –Jesus proved at the resurrection that death was defeated.
But the Thessalonian Christians were confused and worried about the fact that some of them had died before the Lord’s return. Now this may be hard for us to appreciate almost 20 centuries later, but they were truly anticipating the Lord’s return. We see that even more in 2 Thessalonians. In their expectant hope, they became disheartened as some of their loved ones died.
So Paul is trying to set the record straight, and remind them of the hope that Christians, whether alive or dead, have in the promised second coming of Jesus Christ. Here is the really awesome part of this: those Christians who have died will be just as much a part of the second coming as those who are alive: Look at the next verse:
15According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
What follows in verse 16 is a simple description of the sequence of events when Jesus returns. This passage is without a doubt the clearest, most concise explanation of what is going to happen when Jesus comes again. Many times people have said to me, “I just can’t even begin to understand this whole second coming thing. I’ve read Revelation and it just scares and confuses me.” I always say to those folks, “start in 1 Thessalonians 4 & 5.”
An important principle of Bible interpretation is to let the plain, simple, clear passage explain what the difficult and confusing passage means. The Bible has one coherent message. God did not write a bunch of conflicting stuff in His Word – it is all tied together in perfect harmony. So we use the more clear passages to help us understand the less clear passages.
This passage in 1 Thessalonians was intended to clarify confusion. It was one of the earliest written New Testament books, written before the great Roman persecutions of the church. It is not like the book of Revelation, which contains word pictures, subtle Old Testament references, and coded language to protect Christians. Thessalonians contains a simple description of the most important aspects of Jesus’ second coming. If you read it simply and don’t try to force other ideas into it, it is not hard to understand.
With that said, let’s look at this sequence of events, written clearly and concisely with the express purpose of giving the believer hope. The sequence starts in verse 16: 16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God… So when Jesus comes, he will come out of the sky, descending, just as he visibly “ascended” into heaven in Acts 1. This is a physical, literal, visible event.
This great event is accompanied by three “sound effects” – just in case someone might think that this be a quiet, secret, in the dark thing, three times we are told that there will be loud noises – a loud command, or as in the KJV, a “shout.” This word meant a spoken order or command that was loud and clear – it is a loud, authoritative shout. In case you missed the shout, there is also the voice of the archangel.
This is the chief messenger angel of God, proclaiming out loud that Jesus was coming, just as the angels proclaimed Jesus birth to the shepherds, so Jesus second coming will be heralded by the voice of the archangel.
And just in case you missed the shout and the angel’s voice, there is also the trumpet call of God. God used the trumpet in the Old Testament as His instrument of choice in calling His people together. There was a trumpet blast at Mt. Sinai in Exodus 19, along with the clouds and smoke and thunder and lightning – God gave His people an overwhelming audio/video demonstration that they needed to pay attention and listen to Him.
I think God likes using the trumpet to get people’s attention for the same reason that I loved to play my trumpet when I was a kid in school. It forced everyone out of the house and made the dog howl. There was no escaping it, even for the poor neighbors. The trumpet call of God is surely going to get everyone’s attention and there will be no way to avoid it.
So after the Lord’s descent, accompanied by all the loud sounds, the next part of the sequence is at the end of verse 16: and the dead in Christ will rise first. So in sequence, we have Jesus coming from heaven with loud obvious sounds, and then Christians who have died are resurrected. The same thing happened when Jesus died. Matthew 27:52-53 says the bodies of many holy people were raised to life, came out of the tombs, and appeared to many people after Jesus’ resurrection.
The difference between those people being resurrected, and the resurrection that we are talking about when Christ comes again, is that those poor people who rose from the dead in 30 AD had to die again. (Talk about a bummer – dying once is no fun, but they had to die twice!)
The next time it happens, when Jesus comes, the resurrection is forever - into new, resurrected bodies that will never die. The text doesn’t say specifically how this happens, but Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that this resurrection will change the fleshly, mortal, perishable part of Christians into something that is imperishable and immortal.
51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.
So, in sequence then, we have Jesus coming down from heaven with the loud sounds, then the dead in Christ are resurrected. Verse 17 has the next part, starting with “After that,” so we can recognize that this is a sequence of events:
17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
Those Christians who are alive at the time of Christ’s coming will be caught up together with the resurrected dead Christians and together we will meet the Lord in the air – that is above and away from the existing earth, because, as we will see in chapter 5, destruction is going to come on the earth and those who are not with the Lord. The end of verse 17 carries on the sequence: And so we will be with the Lord forever.
Jesus said nearly the same thing about His return in Matthew 24:
30“At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. 31And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
Now some of you might be scratching your heads a bit and thinking “well, what about the rapture? Where’s the rapture part of this?” Many of you have heard a lot about this “rapture” idea because of popular books like the Left Behind series and popular TV preachers and authors like John Hagee and others who suggest that Christians (the church) will be secretly and quietly taken away in “the rapture.” You’ve probably seen the bumper stickers that say “in case of rapture, this car will be unmanned.”
When most Christians use the word “rapture,” they are referring to this idea of “poof – all the Christians are suddenly gone” and all the pagans that did not get “poofed” are left to figure out what happened. I call this unbiblical idea, the “poof-rapture.” This is the premise behind the wildly popular “Left Behind” series of books, and a couple of movies.
The word “rapture” is not in the Greek New Testament, but was in the Latin translation – a Latin word attempting to translate this word “caught up” in 1 Thess. 4:17. The real problem is that the concept of the secret “poof-rapture” is not in 1 Thessalonians or anywhere else. This is a simple passage that describes the second coming in clear terms – no “poof-rapture” is anywhere to be found.
Remember this sequence of events, Jesus comes down from heaven – a visible second coming - accompanied by loud obvious attention making sounds, then the dead in Christ rise with a physical resurrected body, then those Christians who are alive will join with them, meeting the Lord in the air. As we will see in chapter five, the judgment of the wicked begins on that same day. So this text in 1 Thessalonians says nothing of a secret “poof-rapture” but speaks of an open, noisy, widely seen event where the Church is brought together with Jesus forever in one moment.
Some people say that this text in 1 Thessalonians refers to Jesus’ “first second-coming” that is invisible, to “poof-rapture” the church away. That is pure nonsense. That’s like telling your kid that you will pick them up from school, only to say that your coming to pick them up will be invisible and that by picking them up you actually mean that they will be “poofed” away.
Let us allow this wonderful Bible text to tell us simply and clearly what will happen when Jesus comes again, allowing the Holy Spirit, who is much smarter than we are, to say what he wanted to say in clear language. It promises us that the entire Church, whether dead or alive, will be together with the Lord on the day of His physical and literal return. What a great hope we have in Christ!
That togetherness with the Lord and with those believers who have died before us is the great hope of the church. Chapter 5, verse 1 begins the next segment of the passage where Paul instructs his readers as “brothers,” and introduces the second reason why the promise of Jesus’ coming is so significant, and that is:
The promise of Jesus’ coming brings unexpected judgment for the unbeliever
Look at 5:1; 1Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, 2for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
Here Paul temporarily branches out from encouraging Christians (he’ll return to that) and begins reminding and instructing his readers that unbelievers will be judged when Jesus comes again. In verses 1 & 2 the brothers are reminded that it is worthless to even talk about the times and possible dates of Christ’s return. The important things to remember are that Christ’s return is imminent and Christ’s return will be unexpected to those who are not watching for it. It will be sudden and will catch the unbeliever completely off guard.
Now I think that God was very wise in making sure that no one would have any clue when his return would be. There were people in the first century that were watching and ready for His return and there are people today that are watching and ready for His return. How do you think people would respond if God had said that Jesus’ return would be at Midnight on April 15th, 2006?
I think that most of the procrastinators who waited to file their taxes on that same evening in previous years would wait until 11:30 PM or so to try to get in line down at the local church to be baptized. Can you imagine how long the lines would be? God does not show us his calendar because, in general, he wants us to live in readiness, not just make a last minute attempt at religion.
It’s kind of like the story of poor Calvin who was sitting at his desk at work, staring out the window and daydreaming about this, that, and the other thing. The boss came by, gave Calvin a puzzled look, and said, “Calvin, why aren’t you working?”
Calvin was shaken back into reality, and stuttering for something to say, said, “uh, because I didn’t see you coming?” This idea of the thief in the night is talking about the timing of Christ’s return and our readiness. Check out what Jesus said in Matthew 24:
42“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
Once our house was robbed in the middle of the night – we were doing remodeling at the time and we weren’t there, but I was so frustrated by the police officer who came over, because he just kept saying, “well, you should have known that a house being remodeled would be a target for thieves.” I understood his point, but I couldn’t help but think of Jesus’ words – well, if I had known when the thief was coming, I could have left out some milk and cookies for him as well.
Don’t ever listen to any person who says they know when Christ is coming – they are going to be wrong. All the famous “date-setters” in history only succeeded in destroying the faith of those who foolishly believed them. The truth is; it will happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Looking at verse 3, we see that the unbeliever who does not expect it will be swallowed up in destruction.
Going back to our sequence of events in chapter 4, we see that in context, this “day of the Lord” that comes like a “thief in the night” will bring destruction on the ungodly. This is the same day as the Lord’s coming and the resurrection of the dead believers. Many want to try to separate these events into different events, but again, reading this passage simply and letting it say what it says, these events are tied together. Like labor pains come so suddenly on a pregnant woman, so the destruction of that day will come suddenly and surely. While people are secure and cozy and comfortable, the day of the Lord will catch them off guard.
This passage, where people are saying “peace & safety” as the destruction comes on them reminds me of a scene from the movie Independence Day. Many of you have seen this movie, I know.
It is the part of the movie where all the big space ships move into position over the cities of the earth and everyone is trying to figure out what they are doing. One group of people decides that the spaceships are bringing nice, happy aliens who want to make friends, so they all get on top of a tall building and they have a big “welcome to earth” party. And they are dancing, and drinking, and having a great time while this huge space ship is overhead.
While the party continues, the ships fire up their death rays and begin frying all the earthlings. While they were saying “peace and safety,” destruction came on them suddenly. No second chances, no escape. How important is it for us to communicate this message?
Now I hope that you are beginning to see the significance of Christ’s promised return, but what does that really mean to me in my every-day-go-to-work-go-home-eat-watch-tv-life? This sounds a lot like deep theology – does it affect me? Paul goes back into his “encouragement” mode in 5:4, and here we see the next segment and the next reason why this promise of Jesus’ coming is so important:
The promise of Jesus’ coming demands a daily response of God-centered living
Check out verses 4-8:
4But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. 5You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. 6So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. 7For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. 8But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.
Following Jesus Christ and having the hope of his promised return means that we are to live our lives differently than the world lives. We do not know the day and hour of Christ’s return but we do know that his return is imminent. I personally believe that Christ’s coming could come at any second, and that there does not have to be any big “prophetic” event happen before Christ returns. It I think it is definitely possible that some things will happen first, but I really think it could happen right now.
I know many Christians don’t agree with that view of Scripture and prophecy, but I can also tell you that it is much better to live like His return is happening today instead of waiting until tomorrow. Paul’s analogy of light and “the day” for the Christian is the truth of the reality of Christ’s return - the “day” demands alertness, being self-controlled, not following the ways of the world. He may come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night, but those who are “sons of the day” know that it will happen, and live accordingly.
I know this sounds funny, but this passage makes me think of chickens. During the day, when they are out and about, they are constantly looking around for danger, strutting around, and ready to run if danger approaches.
I have seen them run from hawks trying to catch them. I gave up one day after trying for several hours with my bow to get one for our cooking pot. They quickly move the other direction when my boys come their way, and I have seen them run franticly from Tim Crain who was trying to herd them with a garden hose (that’s another story).
They are very alert to danger during the day, but at night, it is a completely different story. I am convinced they find some kind of alcohol to drink all day, because they act truly drunk at night. Once they fall asleep they are impossible to rouse and are very easy prey for predators.
In Paul’s analogy here of the “day” and the “night,” represents action based on belief. If you are a “son of the day” you are active, responding to God’s truth, and living out God’s truth. If you belong to the night, according to Paul, you are sleepy, not alert, and not following God’s truth.
The point is that if you know that Christ is coming and you really believe it, you need to live your life accordingly. Believe demands action. James says that faith without action is a dead faith. Here are some questions to consider:
Am I putting my hope in eternal things (Christ, His Word, his promise) or in earthly things (money, jobs, property, people)?
By my example and by my priorities, am I showing my friends, family, kids, neighbors, etc that knowing Jesus Christ and obeying Him is more important than worldly pursuits?
If Jesus were to come yesterday, would I have been ready? How do I need to be different today?
Am I saying I believe in Christ and His return, but living like I don’t believe?
I’d bet that most of you were paying attention when the tornado warnings sounded last Sunday night. And I would bet that many of you, like we were, were right in the path of danger. Why did you act? Why did you get in the basement or run to the neighbors’ house or drive away from the storm like we did? Because you knew it was coming.
When we knew it was coming we started waking up kids and throwing them in the car – one of the little ones was stark naked when I threw her in because she had wet the bed, but that didn’t matter. Action had to be taken. I believed that tornado was coming just like you did.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for us to live like we believe that Jesus is coming again. I wonder how the world would respond if Christians really lived that way.
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