The Importance of Knowing the End

Two topics that are almost sure to draw people’s attention and curiosity are death and the end of the world. Think about how many movies have been made connected to those subjects, both for grown ups and now even for kids.

But it’s not just movies that want us to think about the end of the world. Higher education and the media want us to focus on it as well. According to The New York Times, scientists say that the arctic climate is warming, glaciers are melting faster, and the ocean levels are rising. I took that from a headline published on May 30, 1947. People have been talking about a coming crisis for a long time.

In thinking about death and the end of the world, there is a fear and a wonder and a sadness and a curiosity. For Christians, however, we could add two more words to that list. God wants us to have confidence and certainty.

We can’t answer all the questions people have about life after death or the end of the world, but there are some things we should be confident about. Jesus wanted His disciples to know certain things about the end. We know that was His desire because He gave messages specifically focused on the end times, and because we have a book focused on that in the New Testament. That’s the book of Revelation.

In addition to those dedicated sections, we also have scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments prophecies and teachings concerning life after death. Our study today is one of those passages. And we’ll be staying with this topic through verse 11 of chapter 5.

Paul wants to teach the Thessalonian church something important about life after death and about the future of Christ’s plan.

Before we get into the details of Paul’s teaching, however, it’s important to notice Paul’s pastoral heart. In terms of an outline, we are going to get to the instruction, but first I’d like us to focus on the motivation. This can be the first heading in your mind or in your notes: the motivation.

In speaking of the motivation, I’m talking about the heart we should all have for one another in the church, and it’s a particularly important model for church leaders. Paul’s instruction is concerned with those who have died, but his motivation is pastoral care. This is what we see in verses 13 and 18—the first and last verse of this section.

Paul’s first motivation is a doctrinal one. He wants to teach them something. Verse 13 starts by saying that he and his team do not want the Thessalonian believers to be “uninformed.” A less flattering translation uses the word ignorant. It means you don’t understand something. You don’t know the truth. And so, to correct that ignorance, Paul writes to teach them. He wants them to know something about Christian doctrine.

Second, connected to Paul’s doctrinal motivation is his emotional motivation. He cares about the way these people feel and respond to what they see around them. The purpose of teaching them is not simply so they would know the truth, but sp that in knowing the truth, they would not—as verse 13 says—grieve as others do who have no hope.

Paul connects hopelessness and grief. There is a kind of grief that is common to all people, but worse than that, there is hopeless grief, and that is what Paul does not want the church to experience.

If you skip down to verse 18, you see the emotional motivation again when Paul writes: Therefore encourage one another with these words. He says the same thing in verse 11 of chapter 5— “encourage one another.” Paul intends his teaching to comfort and to bring joy, and he intends the people to keep using the truth to encourage one another.

So, again, there is a doctrinal motivation, and there is an emotional motivation. In order to give them hope and spare them a certain kind of grief, Paul needs to inform them. He needs to teach them. A true pastoral heart has both a doctrinal concern and an emotional one. Along the same lines, a mature Christian with a healthy life is going to have healthy doctrine. That’s an important principle we see in this verse.

People who live without hope, or with overwhelming grief, do not have a strong, healthy understanding or acceptance of Christian doctrine. The truest and most profound solution to sorrow or anxiety is not going to be found on a bumper sticker or in a meme. It’s going to come from Christian theology. You don’t solve sorrow by avoiding a topic, you address it by flooding your mind and your heart with God’s truth concerning what has happened.

Some people care a lot about doctrine, but their teaching isn’t rooted in helping people or helping themselves have joy in Christ. On the other hand, plenty of leaders and teachers and Christians want to feel good and help others feel good—they want to bring comfort—but that desire is not connected to true or healthy doctrine.

Empty doctrine or empty emotional support is ineffective, and it’s not what Jesus’ church is supposed to be about. We are supposed to have both a doctrinal concern and an emotional one.

When you want comfort, or when you talk to your spouse or to your kids or to your neighbor, you need to make sure you have and convey the right concern and the right doctrine. That’s the approach that honors Christ. That’s what it means to speak the truth in love.

Our previous studies in this letter showed us that love was one of the Thessalonian church’s main characteristics, and Paul wanted that to continue and to improve. He said he wanted them to abound in love more and more.

This section, then, is not an abrupt change in topic. It’s an extension of Paul’s love for the church, and it’s an example of how people can love one another.

Now, what is the specific problem the Thessalonians are having? What is causing them a certain kind of sorrow? Verse 13 tells us the grief is connected to “those who are asleep.” That is a reference to the people who have died.

Obviously, sleep can refer to that normal activity that ideally would take up almost a third of our day, but the word is also used as a euphemism for death. Matthew 27 says that the tombs in Jerusalem contained the bodies of those who had fallen asleep. In Acts 7, we read about Stephen who was murdered by the Jewish mob, and after crying out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them,” it says he fell asleep.

Acts 13 says after David served the purpose of God in his own generation, he fell asleep. There are several more examples, but I think I’ve proved my point. Sleep is a way of referring to those who have died.

Now, some religious groups teach that the use of the word “sleep” means that the soul of a dead person is sleeping. They call it “soul sleep.” Maybe some of you have heard that idea. That is not what the Bible teaches.

Hebrews 9:27 says it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment. Jesus pointed to that judgment when he shared the story about the poor man and the rich man. The rich man went to Hades, and the poor man went to be at Abraham’s side. Their souls weren’t sleeping.

In 2 Corinthians 5, the Apostle Paul says that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. In Philippians 1, he says death is to depart and be with Christ. We also have Jesus’ words to the repentant thief on the cross next to him. Jesus didn’t say, “Rejoice, because today you’re going to sleep.” He said, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

One final reference to disprove the idea of soul sleep is Revelation 6 where, after the fifth seal is opened, those who have been martyred for their faith, cry out to God for justice. The spirits of the dead are not asleep. They either go into divine judgment or divine joy.

From an earthly perspective, the word “sleep” makes sense because, similar to sleep, at death the physical body stops being active. The dead person appears to be asleep.

But there’s another reason sleep can be an appropriate word for the dead. The reason is that sleep points to something that is temporary. Generally speaking, when a person is asleep, they will eventually wake up. The same is true with the dead; eventually, that body will wake up. The dead person will rise.

Death is the word we use to describe the separation of a the body and the soul. A dead body stays here, but the spirit departs. That condition, however, is not permanent, and the word “sleep” helps us remember that.

Jesus made that point in John 11, when He said, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.” Jesus was speaking figuratively, but His disciples didn’t understand. Lazarus’ death was not going to be a permanent condition.

This is the reality that the Thessalonian church didn’t fully understand. People had died, either due to natural causes or maybe even because of persecution, and the church was grieving. Again, this wasn’t the natural sort of grief that we all face, this was grief due to a lack of hope.

Remember, the Thessalonian church was largely made up of Gentile converts. They weren’t raised having learned what the Old Testament teaches. They were raised with a Greek understanding of the afterlife, which didn’t provide any comfort.

As young Christians, however, they had learned about Jesus’ power over death. The end of chapter 1 of this letter says they turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

So, the church was waiting for Christ’s final salvation, but they apparently thought that those who had already died were going to miss out on something. Evidently, they believed that Jesus would one day return and glorify His people and transform the world, but they thought that the transformation Christ was going to bring was only going to affect those who were alive at the time.

Maybe they thought that there was some kind of heaven for those who died, and there was another kind of heaven, a greater heaven, for those who are alive when Christ comes for them. And what that meant was that anyone who died would be separated from Christ and the rest of the Church forever.

That kind of belief would produce grief. In that scenario, when someone died, you’d possibly be saying goodbye forever, and the dead person would never get to experience the fullness of Christ’s victory and dominion over the earth. There was no more hope.

That belief, however, was wrong. The church’s doctrine was deficient; therefore, their hope was deficient. And now, Paul is going to correct that. In order to encourage them and comfort them and give them true hope, he’s going to give them true doctrine.

So, let’s move from the motivation to the instruction. What is Paul’s instruction here concerning those who have already died? What’s does he want them to know?

Verse 14 is the beginning of the instruction. Let’s read it one more time—For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

There are two major components to that verse. The first part is the premise, and the second part is the conclusion. The premise is something we covered last week for Easter. It is a foundational and necessary aspect of the Christian faith: Jesus died and rose again.

This isn’t new instruction; it’s a reminder. There’s almost a rhetorical question here, as if Paul is asking, “You believe Jesus died and rose again, don’t you? Isn’t that what you believe?”

And the people of the church would be nodding along saying, “Yes. That’s what we believe.” Okay, then since that’s what you believe, you also believe that those who follow Christ will die and rise again. God is going to lead His people through the same process as their Lord.

The key connection between the premise and the conclusion of verse 14 is the believer’s union with Christ. The church is following Christ’s footsteps in life and also in death. Just like God raised Jesus from the dead, He is also going to raise Jesus’ followers who have died.

Just so you know, the word that gets translated as “bring” in verse 14 could also be translated as “lead” which doesn’t necessarily indicate which direction they are being taken. I don’t think Paul is thinking about a specific event at this time; he's simply emphasizing that God leads His people, just like He led Jesus Christ. God brought Christ’s spirit back to heaven on the day He died, and He led His spirit back to His body on the third day. God was overseeing everything, and He is in complete control over anyone who dies in Christ.

For those of you who don’t have an ESV, you might have noticed a slight difference in the word order of the verse. That phrase “through Jesus” (or “in Jesus”) could be connected either to the people who fell asleep, or to God who will lead them. It’s not doctrinal difference, but it is a slightly different emphasis. In this case, I disagree with the way the ESV translated it. I think the other translations got it right. Paul is emphasizing that people go to sleep “through Jesus.” Whether in life or death or resurrection, those who belong to Jesus are always united to Him.

So, here’s the message of verse 14. Since Jesus died and rose again, those who belong to Jesus and die will rise again. Since God was watching over Jesus, He is also going to watching over all of Jesus’ people. Nobody is going to be lost. Nobody who belongs to Christ is going to be left behind in God’s plan. Christ and His people are united in death, and they will be united in a resurrection.

To add the certainty of what he’s teaching them, Paul appeals to the greatest authority possible, the authority of Jesus Christ. Paul is not speculating. He is not making this up as he goes along. Verse 15 says, For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord.

In the Old Testament, the phrase “the word of the Lord” expresses authority and certainty. The word of the Lord is powerful and true and sure.

Unlike with some of his other teachings in the letter, Paul doesn’t indicate that they had heard this already. What he’s about to say appears to be new teaching for the church. It may have even come to Paul or Silas by some direct revelation after he left the city. Whatever happened, Paul is filling in their deficient theology. Again, his goal is comfort, and he wants them to know that even if this teaching is new, it comes with Christ’s full authority.

Here's the teaching from verse 15: that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.

What does that mean? It means that the Christians who have died aren’t going to be missing out on anything compared to the Christians who are alive when Christ comes. The living Christians aren’t bumping the dead Christians to the back of the line so they can’t see what’s going on. The dead people don’t get bumped into the cheaper seats. Living or dead, it doesn’t really make a difference.

Like us, Paul didn’t know when Christ was going to come. That’s why he speaks in the first person when he says, “we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord.” I think he’s expressing his hope that he would be one of those people. He wanted Jesus to come during his lifetime.

Paul emphatically tells the Thessalonians, there is no way that those who are alive when Christ comes are going to step in front of those who have died. Your dead Christian brothers and sisters aren’t going to miss out on anything. There’s no need to grieve. There’s no need to lose hope.

In verses 16 and 17, then, Paul lays out exactly what the next steps are on God’s timetable. Jesus is coming for His people, and God wants you to know what’s going to happen. Lord willing, we’ll look at that next week. I hope you’re eager to learn.

The end of the world is fascinating stuff, and God wants us to know what’s going to happen. But as we continue on this topic for the next few weeks, I want you to keep something in mind. God didn’t tell us about the end of the world simply to satisfy our curiosity. Jesus wanted us to take His word seriously.

This life is not going to go on forever. One day, you will see Christ for yourself, either because you died, or because He has returned. And in that moment, you will either enter into eternal judgment or eternal joy. The difference will be whether you have surrendered to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

This world is going to last exactly as long as Christ has ordained, and so is your life. None of us know how long that’s going to be, but we know that Christ will be your Judge.

In Acts 17, when Paul was in Athens, he said to the people, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

If you bow before Jesus today in humility, He will show you mercy. Like we saw today, He will be with you forever, and rescue you when the time comes. But if you refuse to bow before Christ in this life, you will bow before Him in judgment and agony. That’s not what God wants for you. That’s not what we want for you.

If you want know more about what it means to follow Christ and be forgiven on your sin, talk to any of our church members or anybody you’ve seen up here today. We’d be glad to tell you more.