THE TRUMPET SHALL SOUND
1 Thessalonians 4. 13-18
1 Corinthians 15. 35 - 44
We were shopping the other day and amid the background noise, I heard someone whistling “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”. To me, it stood out from every other sound but clearly it meant little to anyone else around, as far as we could tell. My wife and I stopped and we caught each other's eye. “Can you hear that?” I asked. “Yes” she said and we both smiled broadly and shared together that brief but precious moment, that bond in the Lord that money cannot buy.
We have been taught that the Rapture (as it is called), the Lord's coming, will be something like that. We read about it in this Scripture in 1, Thessalonians 4. v 35-44
There will be those who will hear that trumpet against the background noise of the world but largely the world will not hear it. The world will carry on during that moment as though nothing momentous has happened and only realise some hours later, too late, that the Lord has returned and all believers have gone. Could it be on the breakfast news, lunchtime or evening news? How will they handle it I wonder?
This scripture uses the illustration of “A thief in the night”. It will be sudden and private and yet I believe it is not intended to catch the believer by surprise. If we stay close to the Lord it will not be a surprise to us. I believe the Holy Spirit will work powerfully in each of us and among us prior to that moment, preparing the bride for Christ. The word “Quickening “is used in scripture to describe what he is doing in our spirits now and what he will do with our bodies then.
We also know that following the coming of the Lord, Satan will be let loose upon the earth and be no longer restrained and there will be terrible judgements among the nations, direct and indirect, after which he will be bound and the Lord will come again (and we with him) and reign for 1000 years. Then again, Satan will be let loose and the extraordinary thing is that after 1000 years of blessing the nations will follow him again to his and their ultimate destruction.
Then when all is finally resolved, God will introduce the New Heavens and New Earth wherein dwells righteousness and God will be 'all in all'. We will have a part in these things because we will be with the Lord. It is not so much a question of our going to heaven during this period but being with the Lord. Imagine being close to him and watching all that he does through those momentous times.
Well, these Thessalonian Christians thought constantly about the coming of the Lord.
Paul taught that “We are converted to await the Son of God from heaven”. They believed that implicitly. To them, it could be any day. Their destiny was heaven…any day now. They saw some of their number die and were worried that having died, their friends might miss the coming of the Lord. Some had died as martyrs, others probably of illness and those that remained felt devastated that their friends had missed their appointment with the Lord, an appointment he had promised.
What wonderful simplicity. So precious and yet so lacking today.
We need to constantly go back to the beginnings of Christianity and our own conversions too and recapture these simple but profound truths and what they once meant to us.
After 2000 years of ecclesiastical meddling with the Christian faith, we are in danger of losing these great Christian truths or even beginning to doubt them
And yet he will come. It will happen.
I have known the doctrine for nearly 50 years but I have to admit it has not always been a living hope but I know it should be. It's a long long way from head to heart isn't it? Perhaps the longest journey in a man's life.
Will you and I hear that trumpet sound? Have you realised your need of a Saviour and accepted Gods provision of Jesus? There is no other way you know. It is Jesus or nothing. Saved or lost. There is no middle ground. Don't wait until you feel like it or understand it better. Those of us that were converted in our youth still can't fathom the gospel. Now is the moment to just simply and in faith, ask God to accept you in Jesus and hold you tight.
There are other trumpets in scripture you know. In the book of Revelation there are seven angels who will be given the task of pouring out the most awful judgements upon the earth and mankind and no hope of salvation then. The sound of each trumpet will herald each dreadful phase until the 'Last Trumpet', the seventh, when the history of mankind will close.
I don't want to hear those trumpets. There is no need for anyone to do so. Those who have heard this first trumpet will be safe and secure with Jesus and as the scripture says “Kept out of the hour of trial which is about to come upon the whole habitable earth”.
Well in Corinthians, Paul deals again with this issue of what happens to those who have died in Christ, making it clear that they are at no disadvantage with those that will be alive at his coming and that they will be raised at the sound of this trumpet with a changed incorruptible and imperishable body and they will join the living who belong to the Lord whose bodies will also be changed, then all will be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air and “Thus we shall be for ever with the Lord”
Some were questioning the resurrection because they knew the body corrupts in death and Paul points out that as with a seedling, what grows doesn't always look like what is sown and the thing that is sown has to be sown in the ground and die to produce the fruit but he also makes it clear that although the corruptible puts on incorruptibility and the mortal immortality, it is the same body, the same person that is changed.
I want to just say a few things about that.
I believe the importance and preciousness of the body and its burial needs to be understood by the believer. Burial is a foundational truth. In verse 3 Paul makes a statement “Christ died for our sins, was buried and was raised on the third day”. The burial of Jesus was part of the atoning work of Jesus. It was not only that he died for us and was raised for us but that he was also buried for us. In his burial he took all that was obnoxious about us, out of Gods sight. Burial was therefore a necessary, integral and deliberate part of God's plan for our full salvation.
So again, Paul teaches us, in this and other scriptures, that when the believer dies, though the body may corrupt and decompose, it is that same body that is acted upon in Divine Power, raised and given incorruptibility, raised a spiritual body.
It is the same body that was created most wonderfully when you and I were in the womb the Psalmist says. The same body in which the Holy Spirit (none less than God) has dwelt. The same body we are asked to present as a “living sacrifice” that will either be changed while we are still alive (if the Lord comes in our lifetime) or if we have died, be raised imperishable.
We have been reminded powerfully this morning of the coming of the Spirit and his power but have we stopped to think that the change that will take place in our bodies when the Lord comes will also be a manifestation of the Spirit's power? It is not said that the Holy Spirit himself raises the dead but it is clear from Romans 8 that he will be involved in that moment, quickening our mortal bodies. Perhaps one of the last great services he renders for us. Indwelling our bodies in life and then quickening them to make them suitable for the presence of Jesus when he comes, so…… that suggests to me that the Holy Spirit never ceases to have an interest in the believer's body, either in life or in death.
Some will say, well the dead person is no longer there, they are in heaven. I have no doubt that a believer who has died in the Lord is conscious of being with him and of their heavenly destiny but actually, scripture seems to suggest that we go to heaven when the Lord takes us there. Many Scriptures support that view.
You will remember that the Lord said to the thief, “Today you will be with me in paradise” but we know that it was some time afterwards that Jesus actually ascended into heaven. I have no doubt that the thief, after his death, experienced, in his soul, being safe in the arms of Jesus but if this scripture is to be believed, his actual entry into heaven will await the resurrection of his body and the reuniting of spirit soul and body when Jesus comes again.
It is in a body that both the saved and the lost will spend eternity. What form that will take we don't know but we will be aware of the surroundings in which we will find ourselves in eternity……through our bodies.
We need to test everything by Scripture. So much has been said about these matters. Much of what is said surrounding death is understandably to provide comfort and help to those bereaved or others facing death but it can be very misleading. Some is just unsound teaching.
Well, no doubt we will each have our own impression and vision of Heaven, from those who seem able to grasp that the natural order of things ceases and that Christ will be all and in all…….to those who would like heaven to be a recreation of the very best of earth and nature, including the perpetuation of the best of family life, male and female relationships and so on.
Again, I would encourage us all to test our thoughts by scripture and I believe we will find that if we let the scripture speak to us and sink in we will realise that heaven is going to be far more wonderful than we can imagine but we may have to let go some of our pre-conceived ideas.
Paul, you remember was caught up to the THIRD heaven and saw and heard amazing things, so wonderful that he wasn't to tell anyone and he was even given a disability to keep him humble about it. HE SAYS THAT OF HIMSELF, NOT ME. I WOULDN'T DARE and that was only the THIRD heaven. We are going into heaven itself!
More than anyone, Paul, must have had a pretty good idea what heaven might be like but even he was knocked for six.
Well you may ask, what about those believers who have been cremated, those in the sea, those blown to pieces, those burned to death. Well I have every confidence that God, who has created something out of nothing, is more than able to resolve those matters as he is also with a believer's body that has been buried for a long time. I strongly believe however that insofar that I still have the ability to will what happens to my body, I need to think about it in the light of these scriptures.
Personally, I believe the believer's body is very precious. Even in death. I can only speak personally and not for the Church. Let me make that clear, but to me the believer's body is not something to be discarded or deliberately destroyed if it is in our power to avoid that. It is to be buried awaiting the action of Divine Power upon it to raise and change it. It is sown a natural body and is raised a spiritual body, but it is the same body, the same identity.
Think about Lazarus. The Lord said, “Where have you laid him?” They said “He stinks already”. Yes, the body was beginning to corrupt and would only get worse, but Lazarus was still there in the tomb and it was a good job he was wasn't it? God in the person of Jesus, went to that village, to that tomb and raised that man out of it by name and bodily.
Well, we have been given plenty of food for thought this morning in relation to the Spirit's power and influence in our lives and now also in relation to his part in our final moments on earth when the Lord comes whether we have died or are living.
The good news is that the trumpet will sound soon you know. Both the dead in Christ and the living in Christ will be changed and caught up together to meet the Lord in the air and thus………….
“We shall be for ever with the Lord”
May we hold fast to these vital Truths
