I invite you to turn with me tonight to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, as we begin reading at verse 13 through verse 11 of chapter 5. You read this portion of scripture in connection with our confession with regard to the last article in the Apostles' Creed dealing with our Lord's exaltation. That he will come again to judge the living and the dead. So if you would also, when you find 1 Thessalonians 4, turn back to Psalter Hymn, page 26. Page 26. Last week we considered questions and answers 50 and 51. And tonight, question and answer 52 of Lord's Day 19, page 26. So we confess together this answer. Question 52 asks, How does Christ return to judge the living and the dead comfort you? In all my distress and persecution, I turn my eyes to the heavens, and confidently await as judge the very one who has already stood trial in my place before God, and so has removed the whole curse from me. All his enemies and mine he will condemn to everlasting punishment, But me and all his chosen ones he will take along with him into the joy and the glory of heaven. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 beginning at verse 13 as we hear now the word of God. 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. We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him. According 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. For 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, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After 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, and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore, encourage each other with these words. Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you brothers are not in darkness, so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then let us not be like others who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But 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. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with Him. Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up just as, in fact, you are doing. Dear people of God, grieving with hope. Now that may sound a bit strange to put those two things together, grieving with hope. But you see, that is the blessing of God to the believer when we face the death. of a believer. Even in this week, some of our very own families have grieved and are grieving with hope. That's the blessing of God when we face the death of a believer that in the midst of tears and sorrow and emptiness and a void that has been left, we are filled with hope and with joy, a kind of hope and joy that is unknown, that is strange to the unbelieving world. Yes, we know that the believer's soul is with the Lord in death, But even more than that, the child of God has the comfort of Christ's coming, that he is coming again. Now, Paul's letter to the church in Thessalonica very well may have been, it is believed, the very first letter that Paul wrote. It is certainly one of the earliest of the New Testament writings, possibly some 20 years or so after the ascension of Jesus Christ. This letter to the Thessalonians is a letter of encouragement because they have stood firm in the faith. They have been blessed with growth in the faith. Yet, while they have been looking for and while they have been waiting for the return of Jesus Christ, they began to worry about those who had already died. You see, there was a bit of an expectation. It hadn't been that long since this Jesus had ascended into heaven. And there was a bit of an expectation that He wasn't going to be gone that long. That he might come back sooner than later. That he might come back even in their lifetimes. And therefore, they began to worry. So what about those then who died, but who were believers? And as he begins to answer this question, Paul states this fact in verse 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. Indeed, Paul says, we grieve. But in answer to your question, in answer to your worries, we do not grieve as those who have no hope. Without Jesus Christ, there is no hope. But see, physically, dead or alive, believers, one and all, have hope. And therefore, he is teaching these believers in Thessalonica that with regard to those who have died in the Lord, you do not need to worry as if by death the enemy actually got them. You do not need to worry that they will miss out when Jesus Christ returns. You do not need to worry that they have lost all possibility of hope. And with regard to the when, Jesus is going to come again. Paul says in chapter 5, verses 1 and 2, Now, brothers, about times and dates, we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief into the night. And the words of our Lord, recorded in Matthew 24 and Mark 13, He says, no one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. And he says in Luke chapter 13 that He will come at a time when the world does not expect Him. Yet as Paul makes clear, true believers, though we don't know when He is coming again, we do expect that He will come again. And therefore, when He does come, God's people will not be caught off guard. But all believers from the beginning to the end of time enjoy the comfort of Christ's coming because of its grand announcement, first of all. In verse 16, Paul says, For 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. The grand announcement of our Lord's coming will be characterized by pomp and circumstance, just as that's what will characterize His very coming. You see, beloved, it's going to be a big deal. It's going to be a royal procession. It is going to be one of those hear ye, hear ye kind of events. And it is going to be anything but secret. Now our pre-millennialist brothers teach that Jesus is going to come for His saints. To rescue them out of the world, they call it the rapture, and that's going to take place before what they call the seven years of tribulation, to spare them from the tribulation. And at the end of the seven years of tribulation, he will come a second time with his saints to rule on earth for a thousand years. And toward the end of those thousand years, Satan will be let loose for a time, and then after that, the lost will be raised, and then the judgment. Now, we believe that all of that is due to a faulty interpretation of Revelation 20. But as well, premillennialism uses our text in the sense which does teach of a rapture. It does teach, this is the only place it talks about that kind of a rapture of God's people being caught up to meet Him. And it is used then as proof that Jesus takes believers out of this world and they say it will be secretly. You've seen the bumper stickers. In case of the rapture, this car will be without a driver, and so forth. However, beloved, the Bible nowhere teaches that Jesus is coming two more times. First, secretly, and then publicly. And this text, in particular, says nothing of a tribulation. It says nothing of a thousand-year reign, and especially it says nothing of a secret rapture. Again, the only place where a rapture of believers is talked about in the Bible is here like this. And believe me, as we read it, it is not going to be so secret. And that's because the Bible in Jesus Himself teaches that He will come a second time, but when He comes, it's going to be the last time. And it will be audibly, it will be visibly, it will be cosmically as lightning is seen from one end of the heavens to the other end. There will be nothing secret or silent about it. And Paul's point here is that the living believers to whom he was preaching, and even you and I today, his point is that living believers have no advantage over those who have died. And that's because Jesus Christ is coming for both. And He's coming in pomp and circumstance, announced with a loud command, the voice of the archangel, the trumpet call of God. That loud command, some versions translate it as a shout, and the idea there is of a ship's master. At that time, a ship's master giving a loud shout of command to the rowers of the ship. Or of a military officer giving a loud command to his soldiers. But it includes the idea, a shout of authority. And some say that it goes with the next part, the voice of the archangel, that archangel is the voice that gives the loud command and speaks as a herald. But Jesus says in John 5 verse 28, he says of the Son of Man, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his, the Son of Man's voice, and come out, all who are in their graves. I believe that King Jesus is the one who is going to give the loud command, a loud command possibly of wake up. The time is now. But Paul also speaks of the voice of the archangel, most likely the archangel Michael, whom the Bible teaches is the leader of the good angels and is the defender of God's people. And some again suggest that it is the archangel's voice connected with the trumpet call of God, that it is the archangel's voice represented as sounding that trumpet call of God. Again, we don't know. But when it comes to the trumpet call of God, we know that that trumpet call comes with the power of God and that trumpet call will penetrate like nothing else all the way to the dead. This grand announcement will be, as it were, a heavenly alarm clock. In Matthew 24, verse 31, Jesus says, And 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. And if we think back to the Old Testament, we remember that it was a trumpet blast that signaled God coming down to meet with his people on Mount Sinai. And in prophecies of Zephaniah and Zechariah, we are told that it is a trumpet blast that signals the rescue of God's people from hostile forces. And we also know that it was a trumpet blast that announced the year of Jubilee. Here, when that grand announcement comes, it is that trumpet blast which will announce the everlasting jubilee, that everlasting freedom for all the children of God. And you see, beloved, when that sound comes, for believers, it will be a sound full of cheer, not terror, as that grand announcement comes with glory belonging to God alone. with pomp and circumstance, but also with glory belonging to God alone. As that announcement is with power, even as His coming will be with power. Power to raise the dead. Power to change the living in the twinkling of an eye. Power to clothe the mortal with immortality. Power to draw His people to Himself. You see, the idea of power is very much included in being caught up. That word for caught up, which can be translated as rapture, means to snatch up suddenly with force, with power that cannot be resisted. Paul gives us the comfort, beloved, of King Jesus bringing His own, as it were, magnetically to Himself. And there is not one thing that can hold them back. he's coming with power. And he's also coming in royal procession on the clouds. The clouds point to his throne, they point to his majesty, and he's going to be coming with his entourage of angels. A whole host of angels. Paul in 2 Thessalonians 1 verse 7 says, The Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. And Jesus in Matthew 16 verse 27 says, For the Son of Man is going to come in His Father's glory with His angels, and then He will reward each person according to what He has done. This grand announcement, beloved, of our Lord's coming will be with pomp and circumstance. It will be with glory belonging to God alone, and it will reveal the only Savior. That grand announcement will reveal that the one coming is the Lord Himself, as Paul says in verse 16. He makes no mistake, you see, about the identity of the One who is to come again. He makes no mistake about that identity. He makes no mistake about the One that we are to look for. The One that we are to expect. In chapter 1, verse 10, he says, And to wait for His that is the true God's Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus who rescues us from the coming wrath. This very same Jesus who took upon himself human nature, who walked this earth in the midst of a sinful world, who suffered, was crucified, died, and was buried, who rose again, is the very same one. That's what we confess. Question 52 asks again, How does Christ return to judge the living and the dead comfort you? In all my distress and persecution, I turn my eyes to the heavens and confidently await as judge the very one who has already stood trial in my place before God and so has removed the whole curse from me. Every eye, as Zechariah 12 verse 11 says, will look on me the one they have pierced. The one who is coming is the one of whom the angels said to the disciples, to the followers, the same Jesus. Whom you've seen, go. He is going to come back in the very same way that you saw him go. Beloved, the believer's comfort is that the one coming to judge the living and the dead has already taken upon himself my judgment and your judgment as believers. He's already taken our punishment upon himself. That is gone, never to come upon you and me. The one who is coming is the one whom we have believed on by the grace of God. He is the one for whom we may have suffered. He is the one we may have been laughed at about. And he will be coming to usher his people into the glorious inheritance that is awaiting them. And that points in the second place to its great accomplishment, the great accomplishment of Christ's coming. He's coming to accomplish something, as Paul makes clear. He is going to gather those in Christ. He is going to fulfill the promise that he made in John chapter 14 when he said, If I go, I will come again and take you to be with me. He will gather those in Christ beginning, as Paul says, with those who have died. And again, Paul's purpose here was to give comfort to those who were still alive. To give them comfort that the dead in Christ are far from being left behind. They're far from being forgotten. They're far from losing out. In fact, they're going to rise first. They're going to come forth. They're going to burst forth from the graves. They will be reunited, their bodies, with their souls. But along with them, Christ will gather those who are still alive, those who are left at his coming. And they will join together as one great host with those who have been raised. And they will be caught up together with the Lord. Now notice, Paul does not tell us in this text what happens next. He doesn't tell us where the saints and where the Lord are going to go once they meet in the air. That's not his purpose. Again, his purpose is to give his hearers comfort that together all believers will be with the Lord. And as well, he doesn't say a word here in this text about unbelievers, what happens with them, when do they rise, and that kind of thing. However, we are allowed to take a little Scripture interprets Scripture liberty and go beyond the text because of what the Word of God teaches. You see, the idea of being caught up and meeting in the air has this idea. For example, dignitaries, the president, let's say, boys and girls, who is visiting, coming to visit Escondido, visit the city. And on his way here, before he gets to the city, the citizens of the town, or at least the delegation, a representation of the citizens, go out to meet him and welcome him to escort him back to his destination, back into the city. That's the idea of the word meeting here, and that's the idea when we read it a couple other times throughout the New Testament. Going out to meet and to escort back. And I believe, therefore, we have a reason to understand this, that believers will be caught up with Jesus and by the power of Jesus as He is descending, as He is coming to judge the wicked world. And those in Christ will be caught up in joy with Him while the wicked will be filled with terror at His sight. As the Bible says, they will cry out for the mounds to cover them because He is coming as well to put away those who are not in Christ. Again, Paul doesn't say anything about that here. But nowhere in Scripture are we led to believe that the dead in Christ will be raised, and a thousand years later, the dead who are not in Christ will be raised. Scripture teaches us that they will come forth from the graves together at the very same time. Again, in chapter 1, verse 10, Paul talks about believers escaping the coming wrath, which means that there are some who will not escape the coming wrath. We quoted from John 5, verse 28, that those who are in the graves, all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come out. And then verse 29 includes, those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned. They're going to rise together, only to different ends. In Matthew 25, the story of the sheep and the goats, when Jesus Christ comes in all of His glory with His angels with Him, He will gather the nations before Him and He will separate them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. It will happen at the same time. And really, that's our confession too. The second part of answer 52, all His enemies and mine He will condemn to everlasting punishment, but me and all His chosen ones He will take along with Him into the joy and the glory of heaven. beloved on that day all those who rejected jesus christ all those who rejected the call to repent of their sins and believe on him who wanted absolutely nothing to do with that him all his enemies which ought to be my enemies as well all those who who may have caused my distress and my persecution and my suffering for the faith all who shoved their wickedness in my face and tried to force my tolerance on their evil ways and to try to get me to go along with it on that day, they will see the truth of the cause and the cross of Jesus Christ. They will see the truth that He is who He claimed to be. They will see the truth of the believer's confession and they will see the truth that they were wrong all along, but it will be too late. Again, with regard to being caught up, there is a suddenness and a swiftness to it. But along with that, just as suddenly as believers will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, just as suddenly as believers, one and all, will be separated from unbelievers just that fast, the opportunity to repent and believe will be over. It will be gone. There are no second chances after this life, as some believe. The Bible says it has been appointed for man to die once, and then to face judgment. It'll happen with the suddenness, for example, of a car accident. If you've been in a fender bender, And you know it happens in a split second. You didn't see it coming. And even as you think back about it, you couldn't change it. It happened that fast. Beloved, Jesus Christ is not coming again to convert anyone. That time is now. But He is coming to judge the living and the dead. And therefore the call is now. and that call is don't wait because he will come without notice he will come without an appointment on your calendar as it were he will come like a thief in the night boys and girls you don't know when the thief is coming do you because if you did you'd have the police waiting there for him we don't know when Jesus Christ is coming again yet he will be coming suddenly he will be coming without mistake and his call is to be ready are you ready if he should come again tonight are you ready because when he comes there will be no second chances for those who have not been made ready by his grace when he comes no excuse will do well I meant to but you know I was just so busy ignorance will not be an excuse in Matthew 25 remember the goat said What if we had known it was you? Certainly we would have. But for those who have believed by the grace of God, Christ comes in the third place with its glorious assurance. And beloved, ours is a glorious assurance for eternity. And so we will be with the Lord forever. That glorious assurance for eternity includes the fact that we will be delivered from all that is evil, never again to participate in it, never again to be affected by it. That glorious assurance for eternity is that we will be with the saints, all the saints. We will be reunited with all believers. And truth be told, we look forward to that, don't we? Some of our believing loved ones who have been taken from us, we look forward to seeing them again in the glory of heaven. Yet, that is not what makes heaven glorious. And we must not act as if it does. Because the ultimate glorious assurance for eternity is that we will be with Jesus. It's not even the beauty of heaven that the Bible teaches, the streets of gold, the gates of pearl, the sea of crystal. That's not what we are to look forward to, first of all. But being forever with the Lord. Never to be separated. And this truth for Paul's original hearers was to remove all the grief that the Thessalonian believers, that their doubts and questions about the dead had caused them. Ours is a glorious assurance for eternity, but also a glorious assurance even for now. Paul says in verse 18, Therefore encourage each other with these words. And in verses 10 and 11 of chapter 5, He died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with Him. Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up just as in fact you are doing. Beloved, we can and we must say in confidence that Jesus Christ is coming again. And we can and we must encourage fellow believers, especially each other and especially those who are on their deathbed, we must encourage each other with the good news that we will be with the Lord. They will be and we with them one day. You see, that is the greatest comfort that believers have been given to share with each other. That we will be with the Lord. The facts are that Jesus Christ is coming again for a specific task. For our salvation, as Paul says, others will face His wrath. The fact is we don't know the day or the hour. And the fact is, we do know how it will be. It will be visibly, audibly, powerfully, cosmically, and unexpectedly like a thief. And we also know that for those who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, we will not be surprised, Paul says. We will not be surprised. But when we hear that grand announcement, we will be excited, we will be ready. By the grace of God, we will be waiting. And therefore, beloved, may we live expectantly, expecting Him to come again. May we live in anticipation of His coming again, and when He comes, may He find us in the power of the Holy Spirit, doing that which helps us prepare for His coming. May we live longing for His return. May we live encouraging one another in preparation for that day. And above all, may we live sounding forth the truth that there is only one comfort in life and in death, and there is only one comfort in that day when the clouds will be rolled back as a scroll and the trump shall resound. And that one comfort is Jesus Christ our Lord. Beloved, are you ready for Jesus to return? If you know that He paid for all of your sins with His precious blood, if you know that He has taken the curse that was upon you he has taken it from you and bore it himself if you trust him alone for eternal salvation the promise of god to you is that you are ready and if you have not yet turned to the lord jesus christ in faith in true faith only given lip service maybe the call to you tonight is don't wait humble yourself before him trust in jesus christ alone because this is god's promise to you that you will be ready and you will not be surprised by His coming but you will be filled with awe as He will take you to Himself forever Amen let's pray Father Father even as we consider the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. We must confess that sometimes we think, well, you know, it's kind of nice down here. Where we live and the time of life in which we live, we have it pretty good. So take your time, Lord Jesus. But Father, may it be that we would desire that you would haste that day. That You would continue quickly to complete the church of Jesus Christ so that the bridegroom will come again for the bride in all of His splendor and glory to take her to Himself in glory. And Father, please make each one of us here tonight, both young and old, ready for that great day. May we expect it. May we anticipate it. And when it comes, O Lord, may we glory in it. Hear our prayer, O Lord, for Jesus' sake and in His name alone. Amen.