Night Calls: The Call to Come Up 1Thessalonians 4:13-18
Introduction: The King is coming! At anytime, at any moment Jesus Christ may issue the call for His children to come up for all things have been made ready. Are we listening for that call or have we fallen asleep?
Illustration: A young lady busied herself getting ready for a blind date. This was not just dinner and a movie; her date had planned dinner at an exclusive downtown restaurant with live music and dancing. Wanting to make a good first impression she had taken the day off work. She cleaned her apartment; she went out that afternoon to have her hair done and get a manicure. When she got home she did her makeup, put on her best dress and was ready for her date’s arrival. His expected arrival came and went, but she continued to wait patiently.
Finally after waiting over an hour she decided she had been stood up, so she took off her dress, let down her hair put on her pajamas, gathered all her favorite junk food and sat down to watch TV with her dog. Sometime later there was a knock at the door; it was her date. He looked at her surprised and said, “What I gave you an extra two hours and you’re still not ready to go!”
Jesus is coming again. Will you be ready for His return, or will He catch you unprepared? - copied
I. The Sureness of the Rapture - vs. 15-16
A. “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive [and] remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.”
B. Note that verse 15 states that these truths iterated by Paul are by the "word of the Lord". The event of the rapture is a fact and it is coming by the authority of the Word of the Lord.
C. For the Lord Himself
1. Christ will send not a representative, emissary, or angel but will come Himself.
2. Acts 1:11 “who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”
D. John 14:1-3 “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And 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.”
E. With a Shout
1. The Shout of Authority – Shout = keleusma = to command or order. The term is only used here in the New Testament.
2. Keleusma was used to describe a shout implying authority and urgency. The idea is of a loud, authoritative cry, often uttered in the thick of great excitement. It was the call of a commander to his troops asking if the soldiers were ready for war. The troops would shout in reply "We are ready!"
2. Matthew 25:6 “And at midnight a cry was heard: 'Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!'”
3. John 5: 24-25 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live.”
F. The Trumpet Call of God
1. Revelation 4:1 After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things."
2. Throughout the Bible a trumpet or shofar blast was used by the Israelites to announce an important gathering of the people and to assemble them together before the presence of the Lord. It was used to sound an alarm to prepare people for war or judgment. In connection with the Jewish New Year Holiday, Rosh Hashanah, called the Feast of the Trumpets in the Bible, is also known as Yom Teruah meaning “Day of the Awakening Blast.
G. Christ will gather us with the sounding of the an Awakening Blast which will be a clear and certain sound that will be heard by all those who know Christ.
II. The Suddenness of the Rapture vs. 16-17
A. “And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”
B. The word rapture is not in the Bible. Rapture is a Latin transliteration of the Greek word Paul used when saying that those living at the time the Lord descends from heaven shall be caught up or harpazo. What in the world does harpazo mean? The word literally means “to snatch away” or “to take suddenly away.”
C. Jerome, in translating the Latin Vulgate, translated “caught up” to meet the Lord in the air as “rapere”- transliterated as “rapture.”
D. 1 Corinthians 15:52 “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”
• Paul makes use of the phrase twinkling of the eye. Paul has selected a movement of the body, that surpasses all others in quickness, faster than a blink (1/10th of a second) – a movement of the eye. The word used in Greek is atomos from which we get the word atom.
E. The return of Jesus Christ is imminent –
1. Jesus can come at any moment: there is no event which must transpire before He comes.
2. Imminency makes it impossible to know when He might come so the believer must remain constantly on the lookout in case the Lord were to return and find him unprepared
3. Matthew 24:42 “"Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.”
4. Revelation 3:3 “Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.”
5. One must strive to always be ready to meet Him in the air.
6. "The last day is hidden, that every day may be regarded" (Augustine).
F. 1 Thessalonians 5:1-2 “But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night.”
G. Amos 4:12 “Prepare to meet Thy God”
H. "Be careful where you go, what you say, and what you do. You don't want to be embarrassed when Jesus returns."
III. The Significance of the Rapture vs. 14, 16-17
A. 1 Thessalonians 4:14, 16b-17 “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus… And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.
B. He is coming for His Church – Note that Paul is writing to the “brethren” (vs. 13), the church at Thessalonica.
1. He is coming with those believers who have preceded those of us who know Christ in death.
2. He is coming that their “bodies” will be resurrected and reunited with their souls which are with the Lord.
a. Soul sleep – a Gnostic belief held by some denominations today.
b. It is the belief that the souls of the dead are unconscious until the Second Coming, and that no one is rejoicing in Heaven or burning in Hell right now.
c. II Corinthians 5:8 “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.”
d. Acts 7:59 “And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
C. His coming will mark the closing of the door on this age and the beginning of the Tribulation.
1. 2 Thessalonians 2:8-12 “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
2. When God raptures the church the indwelling of the Holy Spirit ceases to restrain the work of the “lawless one” Satan incarnate, the Antichrist, who will blind the eyes of those who have rejected the truth.
3. John Walvoord has written concerning this passage of Scripture, “First of all, it is clear that those who are deceived had opportunity to receive Christ, but they did not do it. There seems to be a principle of divine justice here that when a person turns away from the truth God allows that one to be led off into error... God will judge their hearts, and if they deliberately turn away from the truth He will permit them to believe a lie. They will honor the man of sin as their god and as their king, instead of acknowledging the Lord Jesus Christ. The result will be “That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (v. 12).” -
4. Matthew 25:10 “And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut.”
5. 2 Corinthians 6:2 “For He says: "In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you." Behold, now [is] the accepted time; behold, now [is] the day of salvation.”
6. Are you ready, Christian, ready, for shout and trump and voice?
Will His coming make you tremble or cause you to rejoice?
Are you walking, talking with Him daily, taking Him your care,
Do you live so close to heaven that a breath would waft you there? –
Quoted in Fairest of All, Herbert Lockyer, Eerdmans, 1936, p. 71.
Conclusion: Will you be ready when the midnight call echoes throughout the world in the ears of the saints? Listen…
The coming King is at the door,
Who once the cross for sinners bore,
But now the righteous ones alone
He comes to gather home.
The signs that show His coming near
Are fast fulfilling year by year,
And soon we'll hail the glorious dawn
Of heaven's eternal morn. – F. E. Belden.
