Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Dozens of screaming fans reportedly were outside the fence at Love Field to welcome the Texas Rangers baseball team back to Texas two Thursdays ago, and the next day hundreds of thousands of people celebrated the franchise’s first World Series championship with a public parade and ceremony in Arlington. You do not have to be a Rangers fan or even to care about Major League Baseball in order to understand that, after the airport meeting, the fans and the Rangers stayed in Texas and did not return to Arizona where they had come from after beating the Diamondbacks two days earlier. Similarly in today’s Epistle Reading with the coming of the Lord, when the Lord Himself descends from heaven—with a cry of command, voice of an archangel, and sound of the trumpet of God—and the resurrected and still living repentant believers are caught up to meet the Lord, like an innumerable official welcome delegation, they then presumably come with Him to earth for the judgment, which results in the condemnation of the resurrected and still living un‑repentant un‑believers, who afterwards will always be apart from the Lord. The Epistle Reading does not teach a secret return of Christ and “rapture” of the Church before the Great Tribulation, as dispensational premillennialists have imagined only for some 200 years (among other false teaching), but the Epistle Reading is consistent with everything else that we know about the Last Things from the Word of the Lord, emphasizing especially “Comfort concerning Christ’s coming”.
Today’s Epistle Reading is a part of our series of Reading’s more-or-less continuous use of 1 Thessalonians, begun three weeks ago and continued next week, although interrupted last week by our transferring to that Sunday our observance of All Saints’ Day. The portions of 1 Thessalonians that we heard today and will hear next week speak of the “coming” or “day” of the Lord. You may remember that St. Paul’s ministry in Thessalonica was somewhat cut short, and, as a result, he may not have been able in person to teach the Thessalonians as much as he might have liked to have taught them about the Lord’s coming and its implications. So, after hearing about their grief that their fellow believers, whose bodies had fallen asleep in death, would somehow miss out on the Lord’s coming, St. Paul wrote the encouragement that we heard today, about the resurrected repentant believers’ joining the living repentant believers in welcoming the coming Lord.
You and I probably do not have the same concern that the Thessalonians had about the coming of the Lord. We probably know that the souls of believers whose bodies have fallen asleep in death are still awake and alive and already have preceded us, in some sense, being with the Lord. But, our knowing that reality does not mean that we do not still grieve as others do who have no hope, nor does our knowing that reality about the souls of believers whose bodies have fallen asleep in death mean that we are not uninformed about other things related to the coming of the Lord. The Divinely-inspired St. Paul expects that the Thessalonians and we can reason from our faith in Jesus’s death and resurrection to faith in believers’, including our own, deaths and resurrections. Yet, we struggle to fully appreciate the implications of Jesus’s death and resurrection for us, even as we still struggle with sin. Because of both our sinful nature and our actual sin, we deserve nothing but the death of our bodies now and torment of body and soul for eternity. But, out of His great love, mercy, and grace for the sake of Jesus Christ, God calls and thereby enables us to repent and believe and so to be forgiven and saved.
As we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Amos 5:18-24), some people wrongly think that the Day of the Lord will bring them better circumstances, for they do not repent and believe, and so they just go through the motions of worship and do not do good works. But, like the wise virgins in today’s Gospel Reading (Matthew 25:1-13), we who are watching and ready with repentance and faith will go out to meet the Lord and enter with Him to His marriage feast. When we repent and believe, then God forgives us our sinful nature and all our sin, for Jesus’s sake. Our Lord Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, died on the cross for us, in our place, the death that we deserved. As St. Paul writes a few verses after today’s Epistle Reading, our Lord Jesus Christ died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep in death at the time of His coming we might live with Him (1 Thessalonians 5:10). Notably, St. Paul does not use the euphemism of “sleep” to refer to Jesus’s death for us, Jesus’s fully experiencing the horror of the death that is the wages of our sin, by which death of His He made our deaths a sleep of the body that will end when awakened at the resurrection of all flesh, as He was resurrected on the third day. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading, through the work of Jesus, God brings with Jesus all believers.
We become believers and are kept believers by God’s working through His Word in all of its forms. In today’s Epistle Reading, St. Paul refers to the Word of the Lord in a way that stresses the Lord’s authority through that Word. That Word with the water of Holy Baptism unites us with Christ and His death and resurrection for us, and it helps us know that we likewise will be resurrected (Romans 6:3-5). That Word with the rite of Holy Absolution on earth forgives our sin before God in heaven just as validly and certainly as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself, for in that way He has chosen to deal with us (John 20:21-23). And, that Word with the bread and wine of the Holy Supper make present Christ’s Body and Blood and so give us already now a foretaste of the marriage supper of the Lamb in His Kingdom that has no end (Revelation 19:6‑9).
Forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation—God’s Word gives us all these things already now, even if we do not yet fully experience them. Still, the Day is coming with the Lord when we all will fully experience them—forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Notably in today’s Epistle Reading, St. Paul refers to those whose bodies were at that time sleeping both as those who, at that time, were sleeping presently and as those who, at the time of the Lord’s coming, had been sleeping in the past. The coming of the Lord will bring the resurrection of the body, its reunion with its soul, and so full enjoyment of both the Lord’s presence and all of His gifts, enjoyment not only in soul but also in body. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, we all may not have our bodies sleep in death, but we all will be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For our perishable bodies must put on the imperishable, and our mortal bodies must put on immortality. Then, death is fully and completely swallowed up in the victory that is ours through our Lord Jesus Christ! (1 Corinthians 15:51-56.)
As excited as Rangers fans were after 63 years finally to have a World Series championship, much-much more excited will resurrected and living repentant believers be after thousands of years finally to welcome their coming Lord and fully experience their victory in Him. In today’s Epistle Reading, St. Paul made clear the Thessalonians’ and our “Comfort concerning Christ’s coming”. Living each day with repentance and faith, with the Church of all times and places, we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +