Sermon Tone Analysis

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*Intro*
I don’t remember if it was while we were attending Harvest Bible Chapel or if it was at Moody Bible Institute, but I heard Dr. Joe Stowell speak one day about his father.
He said his father was deeply convicted of the fact that once a year he should preach about the return of the Lord Jesus.
He said it was a neglected message in the church and should be preached more often.
Well, I said to myself that if I ever become a pastor, I want to do that as well once a year, preferably at the beginning of the year.
However, I will not be here next Sunday, so I thought to preach it today!
The other motivating factor for this message is because a year and a few months ago, a friend of mine died in a hit-and-run accident.
I was surprised to find that many in the church he attended, even believers, were unsure about the believer’s hope and the life after this.
So again I was convinced that we as believers need to know more about what we are waiting for, or better yet, /who /we are waiting for.
So the title of the message today is, “Ready or not, here He comes!” and it from 1 Thess.
4:13-18.
As you think about 2009, do you have certain hopes?
I bet some of you are hoping to graduate this year.
Perhaps some are waiting for the special someone to walk into his~/her life.
Maybe you are hoping this year business will pick up or you will get that raise you have been waiting for.
Others of you maybe are hoping for an addition to your family.
Others are excited about college.
It is not wrong to hope in these things, but the number one thing the Bible tells us to hope for is the return of Jesus Christ.
Besides perhaps 2009 is the year He will return?
Or perhaps 2009 is the year that any one of us may leave to be with the Lord, if we have truly known Him.
My intention is not to sound morbid, but to be realistic as possible.
2008 is almost over and we are one year closer to seeing Jesus!
For the Christian, Titus calls this our blessed hope (Titus 2:13).
It is not wishful thinking, like, “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow.”
No, biblical hope is an absolute, confident, deep-seeded assurance of what God has promised.
He said it, I believe it and that settles it!
Every once in a while, I hear people talking about the fact that churches now need to be like an early church.
This is a noble desire and I know what they mean, but sometimes they say this forgetting that the early churches all had their problems.
But if I had to pick an early church to be a part of, I would pick Thessalonica.
All of the churches had problems, but one thing I love about this church is that they were a people who longed for Christ’s coming.
They did abused this doctrine by just sitting around and not working and Paul rebukes them for that, but nevertheless, they had a longing to be with Christ again.
What an example for our churches!
I feel we have lost that passion.
Do we long for Christ to come back?
Do we wake up in the morning thinking that day might be the day?
Most people have hope, but this hope is that they will get married, or climb the corporate ladder, or hope that they win the lottery or buy that dream house or car.
But biblical hope as CS Lewis said, is “a continual looking forward to the eternal world.”
In Thessalonica, a young church had many questions about the future.
Paul had taught them when he was with them of the glorious kingdom that God was going to establish.
They expected Christ to return in their lifetime (Paul uses “we” a lot here).
However, what about believers who died?
Will they experience the Kingdom too?
To correct some misunderstanding, Paul teaches them some things about the matter.
His primary objective was to comfort them as well as to teach them about end times.
Firstly,
*I.
The death of a Christian is a temporary separation, so we grieve with hope (1 Thess.
4:13)*
Paul begins this section with an announcement of something very important.
He says he does not want us to be ignorant or uninformed about what he is about to say.
In other words, pay attention.
The issue is about Christians who have died.
Notice the word used as a euphemism for death: sleep.
If you were sleeping over at my house tonight and I said good night to you, what I’m saying is “it’s been good hanging out with you, but we shall be temporarily separated and we will soon hang out again.”
But when it talks about sleep, it is only the body that sleeps, not the soul.
Some groups teach “soul sleep” that when believers die they go into a state of unconscious existence, and the next thing that they are conscious of will be when Christ returns and raises them to eternal life.
This is incorrect!
Jot these other references down.
When Paul thinks about death he says, "We would rather be /away from the body and at home with the Lord"/ (2 Cor.
5:8).
To be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord.
He also says that his desire is "to /depart and be with Christ/ for that is far better" (Phil.
1:23).
And Jesus said to the thief who was dying on the cross next to him, "/Today/ you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43).
He didn’t say, “after thousands of years of sleeping, I’ll see you then.”
The author of Hebrews says that when Christians come together to worship they come not only into the presence of God in heaven, but also into the presence of "the spirits of just men made perfect" (Heb.
12:23).
So as one pastor said at my friend’s wake, “we don’t say goodbye to Binil, but we say good night.”
We say “see you later” in other words.
However, unbelievers do not go to sleep either.
They are in a temporary hell, called Hades (Luke 16:22, 23).
They will be raised up on the last day to account for their sins (Rev.
20:11-15).
Paul goes on to say that he does not want us to grieve like the unbelievers.
By the way, it is not wrong to feel sorrow.
It is NOT a sign of the lack of faith.
Look at Acts 8:2, which records the death of Stephen.
There was a “great lamentation.”
Also, Jesus “wept”: literally “burst out into tears” in John 11:35.
We grieve because we love (a good reason for not “grieving” the Holy Spirit in Eph 4:30).
So if you are faced with the death of a believer, you will grieve.
Take time to do so.
Grab your Bible, a journal and go somewhere to think and write.
Meet with other believers and reminisce.
Memorize Scripture.
Send a card or email to the family.
Visit them.
What is the basis of this hope?
Secondly,
*II.
The resurrection of Jesus is the basis of our hope, so we believe with certainty (1 Thess.
4:14).*
Look at the next verse.
Paul makes a statement of faith.
God has given us assurance of the past because Jesus died and rose again.
Because of the past, we have hope for the future that, “through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.”
Notice that Christ “died,” but we “sleep.”
Christ tasted death and transformed death to sleep for us.
When believers die, their spirit goes immediately into conscious fellowship with the Lord, while their bodies temporarily sleep in the grave, awaiting the Rapture.
THOSE WHO DIED “THROUGH JESUS” WILL COME BACK WITH JESUS.
Jesus is bringing the dead in Christ WITH THEM.
God didn’t abandon Jesus to death, he will not abandon the Christian dead either.
On the contrary, he will raise them as he raised him, and he will then bring them with him, so that when he comes, they will come too.
Illus: A boy and his father were traveling in a car when a bee flew through the open window.
The boy was so highly allergic to bee stings that both he and his father knew that his life was in danger.
As the boy frantically jumped around and tried to avoid the agitated bee, the father calmly reached out and grabbed the bee.
When he opened his hand, the bee began to fly again, terrorizing the boy once more.
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