The Coming of the Lord (Part 2 of 6)

Bob Lepine: When you bring up the topic of Christ's return and the Rapture, it often sparks curious questions and speculation. And while this may fuel intriguing conversations, today on Truth For Life, Alistair Begg points us to the central truths that Scripture makes clear about this anticipated event and tells us what our priority ought to be while we're waiting. Let's open our Bibles to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 where we're beginning with verse 16.
Alistair Begg: Now, from the return, we go to the resurrection. "The Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command," and so on. End of verse 16: "And the dead in Christ will rise first." At creation, God spoke and it came to be; you can read that in Psalm 33:9. At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus spoke and Lazarus came out. Even the sister said, "Jesus, I don't think you want to go to the tomb. Our brother has been dead now four days and his body has begun to show the signs of decay." And Jesus stands outside the tomb and he cries, "Lazarus, come forth!" And the gathering crowd must have looked around and said, "Finally, we know that this Jesus is crazy, because he is now speaking to the dead. And we know that the dead cannot hear." And suddenly out of the tomb, still bound hand and foot, walks the relatively embalmed body of Lazarus himself. And people must have looked at one another and said, as did the disciples on the Sea of Galilee, "What manner of man is this, that even the dead can hear his voice?" Thursday at Lakeview Cemetery, I was pondering this as I anticipated preaching it. As I drove all around there—what a place to get lost, incidentally. You go round and round and round, you never come out the same way you went in; at least I never do. I'm grateful to come out for the time being. I know there's a day when I won't come out, but on that day, I won't be worried about it. But as I wandered round all those tombstones, I said to myself, "You know, 1 Thessalonians 4 says that the dead in Christ will rise first." I mean, there's going to be some funeral procession going down round there when all of a sudden it all cuts loose and people start coming out of those places, just unbelievably, dramatically. You've got a believer in the hearse all of a sudden, bam! The guy's out of there, the girl's out of there. Hey! You say we can't believe this, this is far-fetched. Let me tell you something, we can believe this. We do believe this. We must believe this. We need to preach this. And Jesus himself taught it in John chapter 5 in teaching concerning life in his name. He says, "I tell you the truth," verse 25 of John 5, "a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live." People must have been saying, "I wonder what he means by that?" In verse 28 he says, "Do not be amazed at this. For a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out. Those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned." He speaks and listening to his voice, new life the dead receive. You see, think about it. Why would we have the conviction that we are going to be united with Christ in this way? Well, think about it. We were blind and dead, weren't we, in our own trespasses and in our sins? We weren't seeking God. We were lost in our own confusion. We had nothing to look forward to and no God to whom we might turn. And then God shone the light of his word and the truth of his Son into our hearts, illumined the dungeon of our existence, showed us our sin, showed us a Savior, and we laid hold of his mercy and his goodness, and we were brought from darkness into light. In the same way, into the darkness of the tomb in which we are laid will come the very voice of Christ, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Now, you see, this was the great concern of the Thessalonians because they were wondering about what would happen to the people who had died. They knew that Jesus was going to come back again, and they were concerned that they would miss the event. What a shame that our friends and our loved ones have died and they're going to miss the great day. No, no, says Paul. The dead in Christ will rise first before the events of verse 17. The resurrected Christ will be accompanied at his coming by his resurrected people. That's something along the lines of verse 14. 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. What does that mean? It mean a number of things. It may mean that Jesus returns and he brings with him the souls of those who have been with him in heaven to this point. Or it may well mean that instantaneously as the bodies are resurrected, and as Jesus comes with the souls of those who have been eternally with him, instantaneously they are reunited. So when we hear and we look up into the skies, suddenly there's a great crowd of people coming, not just Jesus on his own. But he is bringing his gathered people. He's picked them up from here, there, and from everywhere. They've all been gathering together, and like a great swarm across the sky. Do you see why I say this is a cosmic event? We haven't even begun to imagine what this is going to mean. We haven't got into the dimension that this is going to take us when this happens. I'm convinced of it. This is going to so far exceed anything we've ever known. It’s going to blow the mind of the unbeliever in a moment and totally freak out the Christian as well. There is no possibility that those who have died in Christ will ever be separated from Christ. We are indissolubly linked to Jesus. We are inseparably linked to Jesus. Think about it. If by nature we are without God and without hope in the world, that we are the objects of his wrath, Ephesians 2. And then the light of the glorious gospel of Christ shines into our lives, and we respond in repentance and faith, then we become as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, a new creation. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation." So now I am in Christ. For how long am I in Christ? Forever. Therefore, I die in Christ. Therefore, I rise in Christ. Therefore, I will be eternally with Christ. "His forever," says the hymn writer, "only his. Who the Lord and me shall part? Ah, with what a rest of bliss Christ can fill the loving heart. Heaven and earth may fade and flee, firstborn light in gloom decline, but while God and I shall be, I am his, and he is mine." The return, the resurrection, the rapture. What is this? Verse 17: we're going to be seized. "After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up," seized, grabbed, snatched, carried off by force. Where do we get the word "rapture"? We get it from the Latin. The Latin word *rapere*, r-a-p-e-r-e. And so our English word has entered to the parlance of the church as a result of the influence of the Latin. The word is descriptive of a sudden swoop and usually of one with such a force that cannot be resisted. And so we anticipate this. The people who are still alive when there is the loud command, the voice of the archangel, the trumpet call of God, and the resurrection of the dead in Christ, the people who are still alive at that point will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. The Greek word is *harpazo*. That's the Greek equivalent of the Latin *rapere* and the English "rapture." Now let me say a word to you, and it's a word both of caution and encouragement. This is the only place in the New Testament which speaks unambiguously about this event, namely the Rapture. That may be a surprise to some of you who have got the Rapture appearing all the time and everywhere. But this is the only place in the New Testament that speaks unambiguously to the issue of the Rapture. I want to quickly add that there are other places in the New Testament which can justly be said to refer to it when, of course, this is established as the foundational premise. But none of those other verses in the New Testament, absent 1 Thessalonians 4:17, can establish this fact on their own. So this is it, right here in one verse. Everything else may cross-reference it, but nothing else on its own may establish the fact by itself. You say, "Well, why do you make the point?" For this reason: that we better be careful with such limited information about being unduly dogmatic about things that we can't be dogmatic about. Leon Morris says, "Had we an abundance of detail recorded, we could say a great deal. But we have no more than a few simple facts, and we must not read our pet theories into them." I put it to you that most of the preoccupation with the return of Jesus Christ has been characterized by the emphasis of pet theories and the deemphasis of absolute verities. Because what is secondary becomes primary and therefore what is primary inevitably becomes secondary. That what is peripheral becomes central, and therefore the central event begins to become peripheral. The precise words that Paul uses here in verse 17 don't take us very far in our understanding of the details, do they? Don't you find yourself with a lot of questions? "After that, we who are still alive and are left," and are left for how long? Doesn't say. "Will be caught up." How? Doesn't say. "In the clouds." Will we be suspended? Doesn't say. Will we be able to sit on the clouds? Don't be stupid. And so on. There's a whole ton of stuff. Is there going to be enough room for everybody? Will we all be there at the same time? What about Moses? Is he going to be there? And so on and so forth. You find you've got more questions than you've got answers. And so the history of the Christian church, especially in America, if I may be so bold as to put it to you, has determined that it will supply all the details even though the details ain't there. Because it's far more fun to get all the details than it is to live with the bold assertion of the central verity. Namely, there's definitely going to be a return. There's definitely going to be a resurrection of the dead in Christ. And there's definitely going to be a rapture whereby those of us who are still alive in that moment will be gathered up together with those who have had their new resurrection bodies. Now, it is legitimate and it is obvious that students of the Bible are going to ponder this and they're going to draw their own inferences from it. And so they do, and so we might, and so we must. However, it does not give to us the license to condemn others who do not draw the same inferences. And in a way that has not characterized the church ever before twentieth-century American Christendom, American Christendom has failed to understand that. You say, "Well, who are you? Who are you to come here and tell us this?" I'm just Alistair and I'm just here to tell you this. The debates, the divisions, the discussions, and the questioning of the integrity and the validity and the certainty and the commitment of Christians in relationship to a view of the Rapture have totally paralyzed great sections of the church in the United States. In Britain, in other places in the world—and I'm not going to argue in favor of this, but I'm just pointing it out factually—the issue there is not to disagree over peculiar inferences as to what is plain, but is to unite over what is plain and to respect the inferences which other people have. But as soon as we raise inference to the position of orthodoxy, then of course, anyone who does not share our inference becomes unorthodox, and since we cannot unite with those who are unorthodox, therefore we cannot unite with them. We have to allow legitimate room for differences of opinion on things about which the Bible is not dogmatic. You say, "Well, can you apply that for example to the deity of Jesus Christ?" Absolutely not. Can you apply that to the humanity and the deity of Christ? Absolutely not. Can you apply that to the authority of Scripture? Absolutely not. Well, you say, "How in the world could we arbitrarily apply it to the return of Jesus Christ?" We are not applying it to the return of Jesus Christ and saying this. We are stating categorically and absolutely that the return of Jesus Christ is an absolute certainty. That it will be personal, that it will be visible, that it will be cosmic, that it will be glorious. That there will definitely be his return, there will definitely be a resurrection, that there will definitely be this rapture as of 1 Thessalonians 4:17. But when it gets down to the details about which the Bible then no longer possesses the same clarity, we have now moved to the realm of inference and away from the position upon which we can be dogmatic. You're going to have to think that out. You'll notice that we'll be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. I mentioned earlier that it is in the air that the demons hold sway. Satan is regarded as the prince of the power of the air in Ephesians 2:2. And when we are gathered up with the Lord in the air, he's going to demonstrate his power and his reality on the home turf, as it were, of the devil and his hordes. He's going to establish graphically, cosmically, his mastery over them. We've got to hasten to a conclusion. The fourth word is the word "reunion." "And so we will be with the Lord forever." "And so we will be with the Lord forever." This is the main thing. Everything leads up to this. And after this, there's nothing more to add. His return won't be local; as we said, it will be universal. You can read that Luke 17:23 and 24. It will transcend all that we know of time and space. What's the toughest thing in life? I think the toughest thing in life is saying goodbye. That's what makes it hard for kids to leave for college. That's what makes it hard for lovers to say goodbye at the airport. That's what makes it hard to look into the eyes of a loved one and know that they will be taken from us in death. That's what makes it hard to watch as our friends and our neighbors are scattered throughout the country; it's parting. And if we could deal with parting, we could deal with everything. I've got good news for you. It's all dealt with. We will be with the Lord forever. We're all going to be there and we're all going to be together. And I, for one, am keenly looking forward to that, because I'm tired of saying cheerio to people. Don't you wish you could get all your friends together for one night? Don't you wish you could gather them all up, the ones that have gone, the ones that have left, the ones that have died, haul them all together in one room and just have a big romping worship service? Don't you wish that we wouldn't have to say cheerio anymore? Don't you wish that it could all be over once and for all? Don't you wish that we were all going to be with the Lord forever? We are! We are! Now, I don't know how it's going to be. I frankly don't know how you're going to get around everybody. I haven't the foggiest idea, but I do know this: it's going to be fantastic. It's going to be better than the best thing you ever conceived of, the most wonderful party you ever dreamed of, the best reunion you ever created. Imagine your most favorite family reunion, add in every friend you ever loved in all your life, put them all together for one night and multiply it to the nth degree, and you still haven't come close to what heaven is going to be like. There's going to be a great big reunion. In Scotland as a kid, we used to sing a song. You have heard of little Moses in the bulrush, you have heard of fearless David and his sling. You have heard the story told of dreaming Joseph, and of Jonah and the whale I often sing. There are many, many others in the Bible. I should like to meet them all, I do declare. By and by, the Lord will surely let me meet them at a meeting in the air. For there's going to be a meeting in the air in the sweet, sweet by and by. I'm going to meet them, meet them over there, in that home beyond the sky. Such singing you will hear, never, ever heard by mortal ear. It will be glorious, I do declare, and God's own Son will be the reigning one in that meeting in the air. Let the pessimist look down. Let the fearful look over their shoulder. Let the Christian lift his eyes and look up. What's it going to be? His return, the resurrection of the dead, the rapture of the believing, the reunion of all. So what? Because of the final word: responsibility. This is not to allow us to go away and sit in a corner and pat one another on the back. No, he says, here's what to do: encourage one another with these words. Someone is downhearted. Someone is going through difficult days. Someone is just overwhelmed by the events of the week that await them. Listen, encourage them with these words. Remind them of this ultimate triumph, of this certainty which gives meaning to our existence. Jesus is the rock that doesn't roll. He's the rock that rolls our blues away. He's the rock of my salvation. And finally, the responsibility is expressed not only in the encouragement that we are to give to one another, but it is expressed in the fact that we are to encourage one another purposefully, as the New Testament says, to love and to good deeds. We are to encourage one another to purity because when he comes, he's coming for the holy. He's coming for the five wise virgins, not the five foolish ones. We are to encourage one another in watchfulness and keeping short accounts with sin. We are to encourage one another in zealous evangelism. Can I give you a word of encouragement? Jesus is coming back. Men and women have got no hope. They live in a no-hope generation. Somebody's going to have to tell them. How about you? Seize every opportunity. Every time somebody does something for you, give them one of these. Happened to me yesterday at the driving range, hitting golf balls. Lady, perspiring like fury, but her head blowing up like a balloon, getting hotter and hotter with every left-handed surge at the ball. I was frightened she's going to explode. After a little while, she comes across to me and she says, "Here, I think you should have these balls." I said, "Well, I know I need the practice," I said, "but what's the problem?" She says, "Oh, I haven't done this for five years and, you know, I'm about to die." And I said, "Well, let me give you some money for them," which was an uncharacteristic act of generosity on my part, all the time hoping she would do as she did and say, "No, thank you." And I said, "Oh, well, okay then, I can take them." So she poured the balls out for me and she went away and hit the lingering two. And as she went, I said, "Hey, hang on, let me give you something." She said, "What?" I said, "I want to give you an invitation to church." She said, "I don't go to church." I said, "You're just the girl I'm looking for. Stay there." I got these things, the sheets and everything, got them out. And I said, "When's the last time you went to church?" "I don't go to church. Never." I said, "Well, hey, you come to this and you bring your friends." Now, she may not come. I hope she comes. But she'll remember at least somewhere along the journey of her day that somebody cared enough to invite her. Can I encourage you? He's going to return, there's going to be a resurrection, there's going to be a rapture, there's going to be a reunion. Therefore, we've got a responsibility. All the saints who've rested from their labors, they've done their part. Now it's up to us. Will you commit yourself, not just to this task, but to the challenge?
Bob Lepine: You're listening to Truth For Life with Alistair Begg. You know, if we're going to rise to the challenge and the responsibility of encouraging one another in anticipation of the return of Christ, it's important that we continue to grow in our faith. Have you ever wondered if you're growing spiritually the way you should? Well, today we're excited to offer a new book from Alistair. It's titled *We Will Be Changed: Nine Inner Glories the Spirit is Cultivating in You*. This is a book about the fruit of the Spirit. Alistair explains how the Spirit produces godly traits like love and patience, kindness, faithfulness in a believer's life. You'll find encouraging chapters on how to develop a gentle spirit, what true faithfulness looks like, and how the Spirit trains us in self-control for the fight against temptation and sin. Ask for your copy of Alistair's book, *We Will Be Changed*, when you donate today to support the Bible teaching ministry of Truth For Life. You can give online at truthforlife.org/donate or call us at 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lepine. We are glad you've studied God's Word with us today. When the church was first established, there were already people wanting to know the day and time Christ would return. Tomorrow we'll find out why this kind of curiosity is a futile waste of time. I hope you'll join us. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.