Our Grief Is Not Without Hope!

This sermon is NOT an original, as I have borrowed from an outline I discovered in my studies...This was an actual funeral sermon but I have removed the name...

Date Written: November 1, 2006

Date Preached: November 2, 2006

Sermon Details:

Sermon Series: Funeral Service for ________________

Sermon Title: We Grieve, but it is Grief with a Hope!

Sermon Text: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

13 But 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. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 15 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. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout , with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 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. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.

1 Thess 4:13-18 (NASB)

Introduction:

Today we are all here hurting and mourning the loss of a loved one. To her family, she was momma, or maw-maw… to me she was a wonderful lady who loved me in spite of my flaws and failures.

Today we come together to grieve the death of _____________________. Today there is great pain in our midst. Today there is emotional suffering; physical anguish and our hearts are wounded to the point where we think that it could NEVER be mended.

For many of us here this event comes as a shock and we just simply cannot believe what has happened and what is not happening. This was a death that came upon us so much quicker than we ever could have believed… it caught us all by surprise and left us all speechless and hurting.

For many of us here this may even seem like a bad dream and we are hoping that we are going to wake up soon and all will be like we would hope for it to be… but the reality of life is that death is something we struggle with and something we have to ultimately face up to and deal with…

Even though it brings feelings of anger and frustration and the extreme unfairness of it all, we still have to come to the point where we have to face death… even when we do not want to…

We face the anger, we come to the realization that it is real and then depression sets in and we have to deal with the depression of losing a loved one. Long after the funeral and all our family and friends have gone, we have to face death alone… and in that moment there is great fear because we don’t know if we can do it!

But this morning I want to share with you that even though death seems to have won the victory here, I am here to tell you that this victory is merely temporary for death over ______________, because we know that she had accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior and we know that God has promised that those who ‘go to sleep’ in Him shall NOT be forsaken, but they shall be redeemed in glory.

The Apostle Paul wrote that… “…for me to live is Christ but for me to die is gain…” He understood that our life here on this world was to be dedicated to Christ but that our life after this life was something that all believers should actually look forward to because it was something so much more than this life!

The Apostle Paul also wrote that when we die and are absent from our bodies that we are present with the Lord. When we die, we do not enter into a ‘soul sleep’ we do not enter into a purgatory to await God’s final judgment on our lives… for those who know Christ as Savior, we have a promise that we will be with Him.

So this morning I want to share with you that even though as believers we grieve over the loss of our loved ones, our…

1. Grief, is a grief with hope

The grief of the believer is real, but the grief of the believer is short because we have the knowledge that our loved one is with Christ and is now no longer suffering the pain and difficulties they had in this world.