The Next Event on God’s Prophetic Timetable, Part 1

the return of Jesus Christ sad to say seemed to be a subject treated with pretty much indifference in the evangelical world today and yet it is not only a cardinal truth of Christianity but it is essentially the ultimate truth of Christianity because everything is moving toward our Lord's return one could argue that this is the most important of all doctrines because every other doctrine ultimately consummates in Christ returning for his people and judging the ungodly and setting up his kingdom and then creating the new heaven and the new earth where we will dwell with him forever the end of the story is the whole point of the story there are so many who ignore the end of the story which is in a tragic perspective in all regards and an irresponsible one as well I think the Bible is crystal clear on what is to come in the future and this is our hope we don't need to be living in this world worrying about what is going to happen to the planet or to the nations or in the future politically or economically or on any other level because the final chapter of human history has already been written in Scripture we know what is coming and we know our Lord is on schedule God's sovereignty is of course ultimately vindicated when the end of the story is written in history that's what we live for we call it the Blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior the Lord Jesus Christ we are waiting for the return of the Lord Jesus the Messiah has already come we're not looking for another human deliverer we're looking for the one Redeemer the one Savior the one deliverer to come back and take his own to be with him judge the ungodly and established the glorious kingdom promised to the Saints and then to go into the new heaven and the new earth and worshiped for ever and ever in perfect joy and peace that is what the Bible promises Christians so I want to talk to you about that over the next couple of weeks and I want to dig down a little bit into these things because I know there are a lot of people who have different views about this where it's gonna take what God said in the Bible and it's very straightforward and not at all difficult to understand so for a beginning point we're gonna talk about the next event on God's prophetic timetable the next event on God's prophetic timetable human history is unfolding seemingly in an inexorable long drawn out pathway to further and further disaster but the end has been written and the end has been written in detail by God himself in his word and is available to us so we're gonna be looking at what the scripture says about the coming of the Lord and the elements of the end now there's a lot that could be said we could spend years dealing with this I'm not going to go back through all of it but I do want us to look at what the Apostle Paul in particular has to say about Christ's coming in first and second Thessalonians so we're going to kind of confine it to those two brief epistles and they will open up a world of understanding for us now on the occasion of our Lord being in the Upper Room with his disciples as recorded in John 13 through 16 he told them the really sad news that he was leaving he was going away this was crushing to them heartbreaking to them he was everything to them they could not imagine life without him but that's what was going to face them imminently he was leaving they were in grief about that their hearts were troubled over that they could not imagine life without him with them interpreting everything in life and speaking to them the truth every time he opened his lips their hearts were broken and so he said to them even when I'm going I am going to take care of you because I'm going to send the Holy Spirit I'm going to send another member of the Trinity the God himself God the spirit and he's going to come he has been with you in me he will then be in you and we all know that when the Lord went back to heaven he sent the Holy Spirit who came on the day of Pentecost and took up residence in the believers of 120 of them that first day and subsequently the the Spirit of God lives in every believer since that time and he is the Spirit of Christ he is another like Christ he is the Spirit of Christ in fact and with the coming of the Spirit to dwell within believers we also receive all that the Spirit of Christ would dispense to us and so in those chapters in that Upper Room discourse the Lord promised the disciples that even in his absence they would have the Holy Spirit and with the Holy Spirit would come truth and wisdom and understanding and knowledge and love and joy and peace and all their prayers that were prayed in the will of God would be answered and all their needs would be met and with the Holy Spirit would come protection and would come power power to do beyond even what he had done in terms of its extent and all they would need would be available to them in side of them in the indwelling Holy Spirit for them to live out the gospel in the world but even with the promise of the Holy Spirit there was a heavy burden of grief that swept over them because their Lord was not going to be there and so for them I'm sure the best of those promises if you go back to John chapter 14 was when Jesus said this John 14:1 two three do not let your heart be troubled believe in God believe also in me zyk waiting himself with God He is God in my father's house are many rooms if it were not so I would have told you for I go to prepare a place for you if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am there you may be also of all the promises that he gave them that must have been the one that carried the most hope you're coming back and you're going to take us to be in the place with you that you have been preparing for us and we all know that forty days after our Lord's resurrection he ascended into heaven and since that ascension he has been doing exactly what he said he would do preparing a place for us and the next event on God's prophetic timetable is for him to come back and get his own and take them to glory again I say this this particular doctrine is not just a cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith it is perhaps the most essential because it is the ultimate doctrine it is the ultimate truth that defines the whole purpose for all other actions of God in human history it is the great culmination and as for all things is the ultimate expression of the glory of God our Lord Jesus will return he will return for his people to take them to heaven to the place he has been preparing for them he also will return to judge the world and the ungodly in the world he will return to judge Satan and unholy angels he will return to execute all who are evil he will return to establish his kingdom of righteousness and he will rule the world for a thousand years his revelation makes clear he will finally then at the end of that thousand years reap judgment on a rebellious population that have developed during the time of his kingdom and he will bring them into eternal judgment then he will destroy the universe as we know it and create in its place a new heaven and a new earth wherein only righteousness and holiness is present and all who are righteous and holy will dwell with him there forever this is not fantasy this is not wishful thinking this is pre written historical fact he will come and according to Matthew 24:44 no one knows the hour no one but when he comes all of these things that I've just mentioned will take place and they will take place over a period of time he will come for his church and there will be judgment across the earth in a time known as the tribulation the final half of the tribulation is called the Great Tribulation it ends with Armageddon when all the ungodly are destroyed and sent to eternal hell then he establishes a thousand year millennial kingdom and at the end of that the new heavens and the new earth that's the flow so he comes and then there's at least seven years of tribulation and then a thousand years of his glorious Kingdom before the final creation of new heaven and new earth but what is the beginning of all of it we don't know the exact hour but where does it begin and what are we actually looking for there is one thing that we are looking for and it's described in 1st Thessalonians 4 open your Bible to 1st Thessalonians 4 verse 13 and this is so important I want you to understand it as Paul says we do not want you to be uninformed brethren about those who are asleep so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus for this we say to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep for the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout and with the voice of the Archangel and with the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so we shall always be with the Lord therefore comfort one another with these words the next event of our Lord's prophetic timetable is intended to comfort us it has given us as a comfort as an encouragement and is that event that has just been described it's often called the rapture of the church and that comes from the verb in verse 17 caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air it's the Greek verb our pods oh it's a very strong word I don't think caught up really does justice to it nor do I think the word rapture does justice to it because rapture can have the idea of some kind of emotional feeling now this is a historical event the closest English word we would have to it is snatch so if you want to replace the rapture with the snatch that would actually be accurate let me tell you why I say that listen to the usages of our pods oh this will be helpful to you in chapter 11 of Matthew's Gospel and verse 12 we read about John the Baptist and it says from the days john the baptist's until now the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and violent men take it by force this is a verb our pods oh it's it's a violent act it's an act of seizing something violent men do a violent act when this verb is used in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew and again verse 19 we have the familiar parable of the sower and the seed and when the when the seed is sown on hard ground we read this verse 19 when anyone hears the word of the kingdom and doesn't understand it the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart that the picture in the parable is seed lying on hard ground and a bird comes and snatches it away and this is what Satan does - the word lying on the surface of a heart its snatching again and in the sixth chapter of John to continue to take a look at this word verse 15 so jesus perceiving that the crowd where he had as you remember fed everyone by creating a meal perceiving that they were intending to come and take him by force coming and snatching him by force he uses the same verb verb to make him King withdrew again to the mountain himself alone and then over in the tenth chapter and just a couple of others which will I think be helpful to you chapter 10 verse 12 our Lord is talking about how he holds on to his sheep as the Good Shepherd and verse 12 of John 10 says he was a hired hand and not a shepherd who is not the owner of the sheep sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees and the wolf snatches them and scatters them he flees because he's a hired hand the wolf obviously false teachers snatches the sheep later in that same chapter down to verse 28 on the contrast to that is the promise of our Lord verse 27 my sheep hear my voice I know them they follow me and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand my father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand I and the father are one again you get the picture of this verb it's a very strong violent act of snatching someone now it's used one more time that's instructive for us and that's in Revelation 12 5 and in this text it is used to describe the Ascension of Christ in the vision that John has sign in heaven we read in verse 5 she gave birth to a son a male child who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron this is Christ and her child was snatched up to God and to his throne that's referring to the Ascension and the Ascension is the snatching of the savior from Earth into the presence of the Lord and it happened as Sachs once says in clouds and that's exactly what it says go back to 1st Thessalonians 4 will happen to believers when they are snatched in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air now the Thessalonians believers knew about the return of Christ all early believers did and they all were eager for that to happen they all wanted to believe it would occur in their lifetime in the first chapter of Acts the disciples said to Jesus will you at this time bring the kingdom is it going to happen right now they were eagerly anticipating that the Thessalonians knew the Lord was going to return go back to chapter 1 and just take a look at what they had been taught at chapter 1 says in verse 3 that they were marked by work of faith labor of love instead fastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father they were hoping to see Christ they were hoping to be reunited with him down in verse 9 Paul says about them they had a marvelous testimony because he says you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for his son from heaven whom he raised from the dead that is Jesus who rescues us from the wrath to come they were waiting for Christ to return they were like those disciples in the upper room Jesus said I'm coming back for you they were waiting for him to return chapter 2 even refers to the second coming in verse 19 who is our hope or joy or crown of jubilation is it not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming and then in chapter 3 verse 13 he refers to establishing their hearts without blaming holiness before God our God and father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his Holy Ones they were living in the light of the coming of the Lord then in chapter 4 verses 13 to 18 he refers to that event the snatch or the rapture and even in chapter 5 the first two verses he refers to the coming of the Lord this was in a critical place in their thinking Jesus was going to come back he was going to return to take them to be with him now this anticipation was a very purifying reality in their lives that is exactly what it says back at the end of chapter 3 there's a final few verses that really are so instructive starting in verse 11 now may our God and Father himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another and for all people just as we also do for you so that he may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before God and father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all the saints paul says i want you to get your spiritual act together i want you to increase and abound in love because love for one another and for all people produces holiness blamelessness and that's what you want when jesus returns first John 3 John essentially says the same thing see how great a love the father has bestowed on us that we would be called children of God and such we are for this reason the world does not know us because it didn't know him beloved now we are children of God and it has not appeared what we shall be we know that when he appears we will be like him because we will see him just as he is and then this and everyone who has this hope fixed in him purifies himself just as he is pure if you knew that Jesus was coming this afternoon it would alter your behavior this morning if you knew that he was coming tomorrow it would alter your behavior the rest of the day if you knew he was coming in a week it would alter that week dramatically that's how he wants us to live so that when he comes and we can't know when Matthew tells us our Lord said no one knows the day nor the hour so we need to live in every moment as if he were coming in the next so that we will be found blameless and holy at the coming of our Lord Jesus so Paul has said so much to them about his coming they're eager they're waiting they're ready but they have a dilemma and it others them deeply he's going to come and he's going to take us to heaven to be with him but what about the believers who have already died what about them what is going to happen to them did those who died miss the coming of the Lord was their death a kind of punishment not gonna let you experience that much like maybe first Corinthians 11:30 where some believers literally died because of the desecration of the Lord's table would they miss the gathering into heaven would they just forever in heaven float around as disembodied spirits never be there in bodily form like the resurrection body of Christ would they therefore be marked out forever as inferior now they truly loved each other look at chapter 4 verse 9 as to the love of the brother and you have no need for anyone to write to you for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another for indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia but we urge you brethren Excel still more they loved each other and it was that love for each other that caused them grief they were sad because they thought that if a believer dies he misses this great event they also knew about the day of the Lord that is addressed in chapter 5 look at the opening verses now as to the times and the epochs brethren you have no need of anything to be written to you for you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night while they are saying peace and safety then just struction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child and they will not escape but you brethren are not in darkness that the day would overtake you like a thief for you are all sons of light and sons of day we're not of night nor of darkness they knew two things were going to come the Lord was going to come for his people and the day of the Lord was going to come to judge the world day of the Lord is an Old Testament concept that always means judgment always means judgment throughout the prophets in the Old Testament as well as the new it means judgment now many of these believers were suffering you can read about some of their suffering back in chapter 3 they were struggling verse 3 and 4 mentions their affliction verse 5 mentions the struggle with temptation so they were confused they were waiting for the rapture but people were dying what about them they were waiting for the rapture which is the next event but it felt like they were suffering immensely and being persecuted and therefore did this mean that the day of the Lord had already come and they had missed the rapture and to confuse them even more somebody had written a fake letter saying they were already in the day of the Lord and claimed that it was from Paul now understand put all this together they were waiting for the Lord to come they were not waiting for the Antichrist to show up they were not waiting for the day of the Lord of judgment to come they were waiting for the Lord if they were in the day of the Lord if they were under judgment then what happened to the rapture that was to deliver them from the wrath to come and then that other question what about the believers who died was that a kind of punishment that left them disembodied in the presence of the Lord forever now let me just draw a conclusion for you while you're thinking about the chronology here all of this implies that they believed the rapture would come and then the day of the Lord if they had been taught that they were going to go through the day of the Lord or go through the tribulation persecution would not have been hard to understand nor would the death of believers be hard to understand because many many believers will be killed in the time of the tribulation many many martyrs but they believed that they would be taken by the Lord into glory before the day of the Lord began you see the chronology even in the way the rapture appears in Chapter four and the day of the Lord in Chapter five they believed in what we would call a pre-tribulation snatch they expected Christ not Antichrist they expect expected comfort hope to be realized in the presence of the Lord in a room in the father's house that had been prepared for them they did not expect divine wrath so what happened if this is in fact the day of the Lord what happened to the rapture and what about those saints who died what about them so this passage and the rest of Paul's teaching on the subject is built around those dilemmas the passages are more pastoral and Theological there is theology here there's eschatology here but it's more to deal with their grief and let's look at that in verse 13 for we do not want you to be uninformed brethren about those who are asleep so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope they were grieving they were grieving over the death of the ones they loved this is not just normal grief normal grief is normal grief and we are to weep with those who weep blessed are those who mourn Matthew 5:4 says Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus John 11 there's a place for normal weeping when someone dies but there was a long arduous grieving going on with these people because they were afraid that the ones they loved who had died missed the great rapture and the home gathering of the saints it come to some conclusion in ignorance that those people who already died would be something like second-class floating spirits while all the rest of them who were alive would be taken to heaven and receive a glorified body like the resurrection body of Christ so Paul wants to straighten all this out and that's why he says verse 13 we do not want you to be uninformed brethren and by the way that is a formula that he uses a lot to introduce a new topic and here it's not just switching topics it's introducing actually new teaching this teaching is new it's new this is new teaching the only the only revelation they had about this event was what Jesus said I'm coming back I'm going to take you to the place I've prepared for you that was all there they knew so Paul is going to now eliminate their ignorance by giving them more revelation this is not only a new subject this is new teaching on a new subject I don't want you to be ignorant on the other hand I want you to fully understand because this will verse 18 provide you comfort now their ignorance was based upon the fact that believers had died so there was this concern about verse 13 says those who are asleep now let me talk about the word sleep koi ma o in the greek to cause to sleep this is reference to believers the word sleep is used in the bible this verb is used of actual sleep but it's also used of the bodies of believers resting in the graves may I'm gonna make that distinction very clear it's used of the bodies of believers resting in the grave it is never used of the souls of believers Lazarus John 11 slept that is his body was asleep in the grave Stephens body acts 7 verse 60 fell asleep 1st Corinthians 7 39 a husband who dies his body sleeps second Peter 3 4 goes back to the father's previous saints who fell asleep it simply means that bodies that fall asleep interestingly enough coin ah-oh is the Greek root for the English word Cemetery and it was Christians who came up with that word because Christians identified burial places as sleeping places sleeping grounds that was the optimistic name given by believers to these places who knew that there would come a resurrection so this was not final this was just a sleeping place let me hasten to say this never does it say the soul sleeps never when the rich man died Luke 16:19 parable he immediately was in torment when Lazarus vaguer died he immediately was in the presence of Abraham when the thief on the cross put his trust in the Savior hanging beside him jesus said today you will be with me in paradise it is far better to depart and be with Christ Philippians 1:23 far better to depart and be with Christ 2nd Corinthians 5 says it this way absent from the body present with the Lord there's no gap there's no waiting there's no soul sleep at all there's no purgatory there's nothing but a believer leaving this realm and instantaneously being consciously in the realm of the presence of the Lord the teaching of soul sleep some kind of unconscious existence in the afterlife is contrary to Scripture and is an accommodation to human fears of hell and eternal judgment and is a lie our Lord taught conscious eternal punishment in hell not sleep so he doesn't want them to be ignorant about those who fallen asleep why because it makes them sad he doesn't want them to grieve that's why I say this is more pastoral than it is theological Christians grieve when they love and they they grieve when they don't think there's going to be a reunion or they think somebody has permanently missed out for those who have no hope I can tell you and you you would understand this through the years have done many funerals the most difficult experience that anybody could ever have is to be at the funeral of a person who dies without God without Christ and goes to hell what can you say there is no hope there is nothing to say of any comfort people will reach back to occasions of life experience that individual good memories but in the end the realization that someone is suffering forever in hell is so horrific that it kills the heart they have no hope the ungodly have no hope so I don't want you to grieve like people who have no hope I don't want you to think like pagans think because we have hope and Paul is going to tell them the very essentials of that hope that will comfort them now there's only one other portion of Scripture the deals with this event and it's 1st Corinthians 15 you might want to look at it for a moment just introduce it to you because I want to show you the word that describes it Paul says in 1st Corinthians 15:51 behold I tell you a mystery we will not all sleep but we will all be changed that's that's the same snatching that's the rapture but it's a mystery what does it mean when it says it's a mystery mysterion it doesn't mean it's it's like a riddle that you have to solve Paul I use this mystery to speak of something hidden in the past and revealed by the Apostle himself there are a handful of mysteries in the New Testament where Paul distinctively uses that as a technical term to reveal truth that had never been revealed before so this is not in the Old Testament you won't find it in the Old Testament as I said there are only three places where it's even mentioned in the new and it's only introduced in John 14 by our Lord and then elucidated by Paul in first Thessalonians as we will see and also in this chapter as well here we find even more about what it means when it says we will all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye that's how fast this rapture will happen at the last Trump the Trump will sound the dead will be aged imperishable and we will be changed so dead what dead bodies the spirits of just men made perfect Hebrews says are in the presence of God their spirits are in the presence of God bodies in the grave and when this event takes place the sleeping bodies the Dead will be raised imperishable no matter how long they've been there no matter how utterly and totally decomposed they might be there will be a new resurrection body coming to meet that eternally glorified spirit and the perishable once perishable body will put on imperishable and the mortal will put on immortality and the perishable will have put on the imperishable and the mortal will have put on immortality and then will come about the saying that is written death is swallowed up in victory Oh death where is your victory Oh death where is your sting the sting of death is sin the power of sin is the law but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ Paul goes on earlier in this chapter to even describe this body he says in verse 42 there's the resurrection of the Dead so in a perishable body raised an imperishable body sown in dishonor raised in glory sown in weakness raised in power sown a natural body raised a spiritual body it's going to be different but the sleep referred to here is the sleep of bodies that God will raise from the grave so he's comforting these believers by saying this no one who belongs to me is going to be left out we're not going to be like those who have no hope there's going to be a coming and the catching away of those who are alive and the bodies of those already spiritually in the presence of the Lord they will receive their glorified body at that event when the Lord calls their bodies out of their graves people always ask me does that mean that people are heaven now floating around as spirits waiting for their bodies the best way to understand that is simple answer no because there's no waiting in heaven because there's no time there and I know it's impossible for you to get out of the paradigm you live in and think about timelessness but that's the way to think about heaven nobody's waiting for anything because there's no passage of time everything is an eternal moment that's what makes heaven so wonderful we would all wonder whether we want it to be some place forever but that forever is just a moment that never ends so nobody is waiting because there's no sense of time but at this moment Hebrews describes them as the spirit of just men made perfect and their bodies are to come when they're snatched out of the grave along with the living believers on earth that's the next event in God's prophetic timetable that's what we're waiting for now there are a number of points in this passage that I want to cover and we're not going to do it this morning so don't worry but I do want to give you at least an introductory point we're gonna look at the basis of this event the participants in the event the features of the event the benefits of it but at least we'll give you a little bit of a look at the basis of this event what is the basis of this event what is the foundation of this what has God done that creates the reality that this will happen the basis of the rapture the basis of the snatching of believers is found in verses 14 and 15 a for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus for this we say to you by the word of the Lord we'll stop right there three things are mentioned there upon which we can believe the truth of this event 1 if we are since we believe that Jesus died the first foundation for our hope is the death of Jesus why is that a foundation for why is death a foundation for hope because it was in his death that he bore our penalty for sin and the only way we could rise to live with God forever would be if sin had been dealt with so if we believe if we are among those who believe that Jesus died who believed that he bore our sins in his own body that he became sin for us that he died in our place if we believe that if we understand that he fulfilled our punishment in the full that he therefore met all the conditions to transform death into life then we understand our hope our hope had to be based on a death if we died for our own sins we have no hope we're eternally in hell but God offered the perfect sacrifice to die in our place we are given life through his death when he died we died he died in actual death and all of us who would ever believe in him through all of human history were in him when he died Christ entered into all that was involved in death and judgment for all believers he paid the penalty in full that's why what I just read is so strong Oh death where is your sting Oh death Oh grave where is your victory we have triumphed in Christ's death so the first pillar foundation stone holding up this doctrine is the death of Christ the second is the resurrection verse 14 if we believe that Jesus died and rose again why is the resurrection in poor because if he can't conquer death for himself he obviously didn't conquer it for us but because he lives John 14 we shall live also when God raised Jesus from the dead God was validating the sacrifice as being perfect and complete by one offering he perfected forever them that are sanctified the Father raising the son proved totally and triumphantly the Jesus conquered sin and death for every Christian and thus does Paul say if we believe that Jesus died and rose again even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus that's the first indication of what this event is God's going to bring back to heaven with Jesus all for whom Jesus died and rose again the death of believers does not take place apart from Jesus Christ we died in him we will rise in Him penalty of our sin is paid we triumph in his resurrection so he says even so just as God was satisfied with the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf and raised him from the dead that God is so satisfied that he will bring with Christ back to glory all who have fallen asleep in him so Paul is comforting these believers who think that maybe because some of them died they're going to miss the trip to glory not a chance not going to happen when the Lord comes down and goes back he's going to bring with him all those who have fallen asleep this this answers the point of their sadness and their sorrow that those who had died will not miss this great event they will not miss it second Corinthians 4:14 says he who raised Jesus will raise us also with Jesus so based on his death and his resurrection we have hope for our own resurrection and then there's a third pillar and it is the Word of God for this we say to you by the word of the Lord Paul is not just throwing some kind of logical conclusion to the death and resurrection of Christ although he could do that he could say that it's a logical conclusion that if he died for us and rose for us that we have died and risen in him we will rise that's the logical conclusion but he wants to go a step further this is not just a logical conclusion rather we say this to you by the word of the Lord I'm about to give you a divine revelation he's not referring to something in the past because all there was referring to this was in John 14 later he would write more in first Corinthians but he's saying I'm going to give you revelation from heaven I love that phrase the word of the Lord the Bible is always that isn't it the word of the Lord on the basis of divine utterance so on the basis of the death of Christ paying the penalty in full for our sins on the basis of the resurrection of Christ granting us life in him and by the testimony of the revelation of the word of the Lord I am Telling You the Dead will rise they will not miss Christ's coming to take his own to heaven don't grieve about the dead Saints this is new revelation that's why Paul in 1st Corinthians 15:51 said it's a mystery it had been hidden he is now fully revealed so our hope for the next event the coming of the Lord to take us to heaven our hope is based on the death of Christ the resurrection of Christ and the divine revelation we're going to look at in detail we have all we need for hope and as verse 18 says for comfort again I say this is the next event now after this event then as chapter 5 will unfold for us comes the day of the Lord the time of the tribulation we live in the light of Christ coming for his own again back to John 14 jesus said to his disciples I'm going to prepare a place for you I'll be back to take you there he didn't say oh but by the way before I do that you're going to go through horrible judgment he just said wait for me I'm coming back they understood that he meant to save them from the wrath to come so this is the strong strong basis of this glorious event it could happen at any time you say well it's been 2,000 years yes but as Peter says the day with the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day you say well what's he waiting for he's waiting until all the believers who have been chosen from before the foundation of the world are gathered in but we all live in the light of this and it's good that it's imminent because that kind of imminency is helpful to motivate us to godliness and holiness now that's just the start we're going to talk about the features of this the participants of this event and the benefits of it next time that with me in prayer Lord we are so astounded that you would be preparing the place for us what right do we have for such mercy grace magnanimous loving kindness this is just beyond henshin that you would actually prepare a room for every believer in your spa in your father's house where we can dwell with you forever in boundless incomprehensible joy thank you for placing our sins on your son and making him our sacrifice thank you for placing us in him so that we died in him and rose in him to newness of life as Paul says in Romans 6 we have died to the old we've risen to the new we belong to you thank you for giving us your word to explain this marvelous event this marvelous reality and we would say with the Apostle John even so come Lord Jesus the world is a wearying experience even at its best we're grateful for the heaven on earth we enjoy in the church and because of the Holy Spirit and because of fellowship we're grateful for that heaven on earth but we long for heaven in heaven and Lord we are so saddened by the way your name is dishonored the way your son is blaspheme your spirit is maligned your word is mocked and we would cry out like the martyrs in the book of Revelation under the altar how long O Lord will you allow this before you vindicate your name and establish your kingdom in the world we thank you that you will take us to be with you and then bring us back after the judgment to live in this world in the glory of your earthly Kingdom wondrous wondrous realities promised to us who are unworthy may we live in the light of this and not get caught up in the folly of the mundane in this world you created it you'll take it out of existence you pronounced the curse you'll bring the final judgment but before that you will rescue your people as you rescued Noah and his family before you drown the entire world you'll take us to be with you where we can enjoy fellowship marriage supper of the Lamb and then when the judgement is over you'll bring us back to reign in this world with you and then throughout all eternity in the new heaven and the new earth what marvelous truth this is and you are the god of truth and you have done everything you said you would do and this is why we live in hope fill every heart with hope in believing joy in believing peace in believing and for those who have not come to Christ as the only Savior draw them this very day so they will never experience the horrors of divine judgment do your work in hearts Lord we pray for your glory amen

Channel: Grace to You

Views: 343,097

Rating: 4.8143849 out of 5

Keywords: John MacArthur, Bible, Preaching, Christianity, Expository, Exposition, Sermon, Jesus, Christ, Pretribulation, pre tribulation, rapture

Id: WkE6Y3gmGQI

Length: 55min 2sec (3302 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 07 2019