Combined Memorial Service - Looking Forward - 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

What do we have to look forward to?

When I start a funeral, I generally start with reminding people that while we are here to grieve their loss, we are also here to celebrate their life and to glorify God. But this morning is a little different. Today, we remember and honor those who passed away without having the proper service they deserved. As we remember them, we want to look back. Back to their life, back to the special memories we have with them. But today we also have an opportunity to look forward in light of our grief.

One of the fun questions to ask around Easter time is, what happened on Easter? Someone will inevitably answer, Jesus died! No, that’s Good Friday. However, that’s can also be what we do around funerals. The grief of our loss can overshadow our hope for what is to come.

A friend of mine and current Dean of Ashland Theological Seminary, John Byron, writes ,“I was twenty-nine years old when my father died. He was fifty-one and approached his death with hope and confidence in the promises of God that death was not the final act. But for those of us who were left behind, it has not always been easy to hang on to that hope and confidence. Numerous times since my father died, I discovered that my grief would continue to well up again, and the fresh realization that he was gone reopened the wounds. At the same time, 1 Thessalonians 4:13 – 18 has been my go-to passage for finding some solace in his death.”

This morning, as we remember Cyndi Lohnes, Bob Wagner, Dorothy Smythe, Wilfred Everett, and Marjorie Smith, we grieve their loss and celebrate their life. We also know that grief is not something that ends when the memorial events around it ends. So in a special way, we are able to meet God this morning along the road of grieving. As we do so, we look toward what is to come for each of them, and for each of us. The question for us today is, what do we, as those who have lost ones, look forward to?

"...That you may not grieve as those without hope.” 1 Thessalonians 4:13

John Stott describes grief this way, “Bereavement is a very poignant human experience. However firm our Christian faith may be, the loss of a close relative or friend causes a profound emotional shock. To lose a loved one is to lose a part of oneself. It calls for radical and painful adjustments that may take many months.”

This is painful and radical adjustment is even more for our day and age. A Puritan by the name of Sam Sewell sat on the trial of those who were killed in the infamous Salem Witch trials. 5 years later, he repented of his actions. One part of this may be because he and his wife, Rebecca, lost 6 of their 7 children in infancy. The painful and radical adjustment following our loss may be even more severe in our day as death is no longer all around us as it was in the centuries gone by. It’s no longer right in our face as we move those who are dying into the confines of a hospital, a hospice, or a nursing home. Instead, we have to face it when it faces us.

F.B. Meyer says, “Scripture never condemns grief. Tears are valuable. They are God-given relief mechanisms. There are some who chide tears as unmanly, unsubmissive, unchristian. They would comfort us with a chill and pious stoicism, bidding us meet the most agitating passages of our history with rigid and tearless countenance. With such the spirit of the Gospel, and of the Bible, has little sympathy. We have no sympathy with a morbid sentimentality; but we may well question whether the man who cannot weep can really love; for sorrow is love, widowed and bereaved—and where that is present, its most natural expression is in tears. Religion does not come to make us unnatural and inhuman; but to purify and ennoble all those natural emotions with which our manifold nature is endowed. Jesus wept. Peter wept. The Ephesian converts wept on the neck of the Apostle whose face they were never to see again. Christ stands by each mourner, saying, “Weep, my child; weep, for I have wept.” Tears relieve the burning brain, as a shower the electric clouds. Tears discharge the insupportable agony of the heart, as an overflow lessens the pressure of the flood against the dam. Tears are the material out of which heaven weaves its brightest rainbow.”

The author of this letter to the Thessalonians is the Apostle Paul. Paul was not only a church planter, author of numerous New Testament books, but he was also a pastor. He was a pastor who cared for his people to the point of anxiousness. As the gospel spread around the Mediterranean world, people were excited for the new life they were experiencing in Christ. Then times passes. People get older. Some die. Those who mourn their loss start to ask faith questions. So Paul teaches them about is ahead of them. Verses 13-14 say, “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.” Paul teaches us that in our grief, we do not have to grieve as unbelievers. Rather, we grieve with the hope that we shall see our loved ones again.

1 Thessalonians 4:16

1 Thessalonians 4:16 ESV

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. And the dead in Christ will rise first.

The Second Resurrection

Paul starts with teaching about the difference that Christ makes in our times of grief. He then moves on to a picture of how we will see our loved ones again. Christ has promised to return a second time. Verse 16 says, “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. And the dead in Christ will rise first.” But this might confuse some people. After all, doesn’t the Bible teach that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord? Aren’t the loved ones who died with faith in Christ with the Lord, today? Right now?

The Westminster Confession of Faith helps to summarize the teachings of various scriptures on this. Chapter 32 says, “After death the bodies of human beings decompose and return to dust, but their souls, which do not die or sleep, have an immortal existence and immediately return to God who created them. The souls of the righteous are then perfected in holiness and are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory and wait for the full redemption of their bodies.” So we learn in 2 Corinthians that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Those of us who have suffered loss this past year can take comfort knowing that the souls of believers are today with the Lord. That is, our loved ones, today, are with God spiritually. Paul teaches us that our loved ones, and us after we pass away, will rise physically from our earthly grave. Our souls, which are with the Lord, and our bodies, which are in the ground, will be reunited in what we call the Second Resurrection. Christ’s resurrection was the first resurrection. Our resurrection, and the resurrection of the Christians we are honoring today, is what the Bible teaches as the second resurrection.

And what happens after that? Verse 17 tells us, “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.” The Christians who are alive when Christ returns will be caught up together with him, and they will return together. Once again, we get some help from our Westminster Confession of Faith, which says “By the power of Christ the bodies of the unjust shall be raised to dishonor, but by his Spirit the bodies of the just will be raised to honor and be made according to the pattern of his own glorious body.” Believers who die in the faith will be raised in honor, and their bodies will be according to the pattern of Jesus’ resurrected, glorified body. So if you want a snapshot of what our physical body will be like in glory, look at the scriptures that talk about Jesus’ body following the resurrection, such as the Road to Emmaus.

Conclusion

In his commentary on this passage, John Byron writes, “Death is a part of the human existence…death does not discriminate according to age, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status…unless we are still alive when Christ returns, we will all die.” Unquote. Nonetheless, the universality of death does not diminish the grief that we feel when we lose someone we love. And even more so, the universality of death does not diminish the feeling of being gypped when we are unable to have those end of life rituals of saying good bye that we deserve. Rituals such as a public funeral or a calling hours. Nonetheless, Paul gives us hope and encouragement. We grieve, but not as those without hope because we know that we will see them again. We know that not only is Christ’s resurrection sure, but the resurrection of our loved one and our own resurrection is sure. As A. W. Tozer says, “We who follow Christ are men and women of eternity. We must put no confidence in the passing scenes of the disappearing world.” Instead, we look toward the second resurrection, as those who grieve with hope.