1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11
Tom Shrader walks through 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:11, addressing two questions the Thessalonian church had: what happens to believers who die before Christ returns, and what the day of the Lord means for both believers and unbelievers. Drawing on Paul's teaching that the dead in Christ will rise first and that believers are children of light who need not fear God's judgment, Shrader grounds the passage in the comfort Paul himself intended, urging the congregation to grieve with hope rather than despair. Speaking personally from the recent loss of his wife Susan, he illustrates what it looks like to live in that hope practically, and closes with a direct appeal to those who do not yet know Christ to respond.
“If I know Christ, this is as close to hell as I'm ever going to get. If you don't know Christ, this is as close to heaven as you're ever going to be.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: In Light of His Coming
Recorded: 2011 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 42 min
Themes: grief, hope, death, comfort, resurrection, heaven, loss, evangelism, grieving a spouse, loss of a loved one, fear of death, questioning what happens after death, new believer, seeking comfort, unbeliever considering christ, walking through suffering
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Ephesians 1:3-13, 2 Corinthians 5:8, John 3:16-20, 1 Thessalonians 1:3
Theological Themes: eschatology, second coming, rapture, day of the lord, resurrection of the dead, justification, sanctification, union with christ
Full Transcript
Introduction to the Passage
If you have Bibles, I want to invite you to open to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and the guys will get one to you. If you get a Bible from us, it is page 641. Either way, you are going to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.
We are looking today at 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 13 through 18, and then 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verses 1 through 11. It is a big section. Rather than moving verse by verse straight through, I am going to make some general observations first, and then we will come back and unpack and apply the passage. In most of your Bibles, you will find section titles. In my Bible, leading into verse 13 it says, "Those Who Died in Christ," and beginning chapter 5, verse 1 it says, "The Day of the Lord."
Two Groups in the Room
Before we go further, I want to acknowledge that we always have two groups of people in the room — those who know Christ, and those who do not. To those of you who know Christ, this will hopefully be very comforting, very encouraging, and very practical. I will tell you, first hour there were tears around the room and up here too, but it is comforting.
To those of you who do not know Christ, you are going to derive hopefully no comfort from me today. My hope is that you will be unsettled, and that the Holy Spirit of God would move in your life. After every service here at Redemption, we have people at the front of the room available to speak with you.
If you are here today and you do not know Jesus — you have never come to the point where you acknowledged your sin, acknowledged that your sin has separated you from God, and come to Christ in repentance and faith believing that Jesus is who He said He was — then today is the day to take that step. It may be that you have never heard this before, and even after today you will have more questions than answers. That is fine. Come to the front and get answers, get clarity, or ask someone to walk you through it.
If you are feeling tension today, if you are feeling a yearning and a desire, I want to tell you what that is. That is not me. That is the Holy Spirit working in your life. You ought to come to the front when this is over and say, "Tell me what he meant. I want to respond." You may have important things on your calendar — I have things planned on mine well into the future — but nothing on your schedule comes even remotely close in importance to responding to this message today. If at the end of this time you are not sure what was said, assume it is my fault and I did not explain it clearly. Go to the men and women at the front and say, "What did Tom mean?"
Background: Paul and the Thessalonians
Now, the background. Paul, on his second missionary journey, came to the city of Thessalonica and did what he typically did — he went to the synagogue and began to teach and work with the people there. He was in Thessalonica three or four weeks, and out of that time he established a church. He later sent Timothy back on a reconnaissance mission to bring a report back to Paul, and now Paul sits down to write in response to what Timothy has reported.
The Phrase "In Christ"
The section from verse 13 through 18 of chapter 4 talks about those who died, and the specific phrase Paul uses is "in Christ." If you were with us when we studied the book of Ephesians, we said that phrase was one of the key phrases in that entire book — if you do not understand it, you are not going to understand the book. Going back to Ephesians chapter 1, we see it in verse 3: "in Christ"; verse 4: "in Him"; verse 7: "in Him"; verse 10: "in Christ" and "in Him"; verse 11: "in Christ"; verse 13: "in Him" and "in Him." The idea is simply this: a believer. To be "in Christ" is to be someone who knows Jesus as Lord and Savior.
these words. And then verse 11 of chapter 5, therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.
The Questions Behind the Letter
So Paul is writing to the Thessalonians, and he pens first and then second Thessalonians to encourage them. One of my favorite things — the first lesson I ever taught in Scripture — is how he talks about their work of faith and labor of love and their steadfastness of hope. You can just hear, in the proper sense, how proud he is of them. So he writes to encourage them.
Last week we saw that in verse one of chapter four he exhorts them to walk in the way they are already walking. What he is saying is: here is how you are to live. As you are living life and following Christ, I want to encourage and exhort you to live this way. But also, as we said last week, he is writing back to answer questions and concerns that they have. That is what we are going to look at today — he is responding to some questions, and he is talking about future events.
There is something in us where we always want to know a little bit about what is going to happen. What is the stock price going to do? What is going to happen in the business community? Who is going to win this election? Even personally, people go to an astrologer or a palm reader and say, "Help me sort this out. Do you see a man in my future? Is it a husband? Do you see a woman?" I went back this week and glanced through a book called *Megatrends 2000*. If you are sharp, you are thinking, "Wow, you are eleven years late." But the book was written twenty-one years ago, and I was going back to see how much of what they wrote about — not necessarily predicted, but said, "If we look at trends, here is what we see" — how much of it came to pass. They were amazingly accurate.
We know that as those trends and projections come up around us, they affect us. I was listening to Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, and he said in an interview — I do not know if it was forty or fifty percent — but he said that within three to five years, Starbucks will do more transactions by scanning a smartphone than by cash or credit card. I do not know exactly what it means, but it means something. We have all of those kinds of things swirling around us.
What the Thessalonians Had Heard
Paul sees a group of people who are curious about the future and are responding to what they have heard. Here is what they heard: they heard that Jesus is coming again. They heard from the Old Testament about something called the Day of the Lord. They knew there was anticipation surrounding it and sensed it was coming, but it raised questions — chief among them, when is this going to happen?
It is the same question the disciples had. Right before Jesus ascends into heaven, the disciples say to Him, "Lord, is this the time that you are restoring Israel?" And He said, "It is not for you to know the time." So we have been wondering about this all along. God saved me in 1980, and right around that time Hal Lindsey and *The Late Great Planet Earth* were coming on the scene. But since the time of Christ, there has been this idea that Jesus is coming, and He is coming soon. In fact, that is what He said: "Behold, I come quickly. Behold, I come soon." The problem is He said that two thousand years ago, so we need some definition there. We know from Scripture that a day is a thousand years. So when He says He is coming soon, He has only been gone two days. He is coming again.
Now here is the specific question the Thessalonians have. Look at verse 15 of chapter four — Paul refers to "we who are alive." It seems as though even Paul himself was thinking, "He is going to come, and I might still be alive." So they clearly believed this was coming soon. But time was passing, and believers were dying. That raised the natural questions: What happens when you die? And, more practically, we are supposed to be with God, and Jesus is not here yet — so what about that?
Two Big Questions, Two Big Mistakes
So you have these two bucket questions: What happens when you die, and what about the end times? Now I want to make sure I get this in, because I wrote it down. A lot of people have a huge interest in this topic, and I am not one of them — not because I am uninterested in the topic itself, but because people just study and study and study and study this. And I am making no negative comment about that; being in God's Word is good. But there are two big mistakes we can make here. One is to ignore this topic completely, and that is bad. But I think it is equally bad to become so absorbed in it that you are the person saying, "October 12th, He is coming." We have to know at least what Paul has for us here, because he is writing this for a reason.
The Pattern of Both Sections
Look at the pattern across both sections we are going to examine. In chapter 4, verse 13, Paul says, "We do not want you to be uninformed." He is signaling that there is communication coming. Then in chapter 5, verse 1, the second section, he says, "You have no need of anything to be written to you, for you yourselves know." So what he is doing is this: I want to communicate information to you — not my information, Paul says, but God's information. I want to tell you what God has to say about these two big questions.
From verse 14 through verse 17 of chapter 4, Paul answers the question: What about Christians who die before Jesus comes again? Then in chapter 5, from the end of verse 1 all the way through verse 10, he talks about the Day of the Lord — how it applies both to those who do not know Christ and to those who do. And notice that both sections end with essentially the same idea. Verse 18 of chapter 4 says, "Therefore comfort one another with these words." And then verse 11 of chapter 5 says, "Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing."
Comfort as the Goal
Whatever is going on here, Paul's intention as he writes to people like us is that we would find comfort. The same thing is true in chapter 5, verse 11: "Therefore, encourage one another, build one another up, just as you also are doing." He is not saying they aren't doing this. He is saying he wants to answer these questions, and his ultimate goal is to give comfort.
Informed Rather Than Ignorant
Look at chapter 4, verse 13: "We do not want you to be uninformed." Literally, uninformed means ignorant. If you have a choice between being ignorant and being stupid, take ignorant, because ignorant simply means you don't yet know — and that can be fixed. He is saying, I don't want you to be uninformed. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that you don't know something.
The antidote to fear is knowledge. What you know trumps what you feel. Paul is going to address their fears directly. They have a fear about the coming day of the Lord — what will that mean? And then they have this practical fear: when I die, what happens? And what about those we love? Imagine someone you love desperately has died. What happens to them in light of the fact that Christ is coming again? Are we ever going to see them again? Paul says, here is what I want to do — I want to give you some information.
Those Who Are Asleep
"Brethren, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who are asleep." He doesn't mean literally asleep. He is using a euphemism for those who have died — those who have died in Christ. The word "asleep" carries a subtle but important meaning: they will awaken again.
So the statement is this: I don't want you to be uninformed about those who have died, "so that you will not grieve as do those who have no hope." Notice carefully what Paul is not saying. He is not saying we don't want you to grieve. He is saying we don't want you to grieve as those who have no hope.
The Believer's Condition at Death
What Paul is talking about here is the body. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 8, he says, "To be absent from the body is to be present" — or at home — "with the Lord." At death, the believer's body goes into the ground, or the ocean, or wherever, but consciously we are ushered into the presence of God. That is why Jesus could say to the thief on the cross, "This day you will be with me in paradise." Though the body goes one way and decays, there is this consciousness — those who have died in Christ are consciously aware, somehow, that they are with Jesus.
Paul says this experience of grief is different from what the world knows. He wants believers to grieve, but to grieve with hope — not like those who have no hope. That was exactly the condition of the world surrounding these believers.
The Hopelessness of the Ancient World
William Barclay, in his commentary, describes how pagans faced death in that time and place. It was a world filled with despair. Death was met with grim resignation and bleak hopelessness. Barclay quotes a couple of the ancient writers: "Once a man dies, there is no resurrection." And another: "There is hope for those who are alive, but those who have died are without hope." One ancient tombstone read: "I was not. I became. I am not. I care not."
People Who Fabricate Hope
There is a whole group of people who have no genuine hope, yet they tend to create one. You find people who come up with something — some idea about what happens when you die. But when you engage them in a dialogue and begin to work through these things, and you ask where that idea came from, it turns out to be something they essentially invented. If they had the courage, they would say, "Well, if I were God, this is how I think it would unfold."
Applying This to Susan's Death
This next part is autobiographical, and I want to be honest — I didn't script it. Susan and I were two people who loved each other deeply. We were together thirty-five years. So it only makes sense that when she died — and in the long period leading up to it, because this did not happen overnight — there was a deep sorrow. For our daughters, this was their mom. There is a hole in their hearts that no one at any time will ever replace.
Here is the question you can play out a thousand times. Every time I walk across campus, go into the commons, or go about my daily life, everyone asks me the same question. And I appreciate it, because I believe you ask because you care — and the fact that you care means so much to me. I recently went through stacks and volumes of cards. People have been reaching out constantly, wanting to bring food, wanting to be present, and my friends have been telling me how hard it is to keep everyone at a distance.
Grieving With Hope
I have said on a couple of occasions that I am lonely, but I do not think people are the answer. I am processing things. So to answer the question — how am I? I am really, really good. The second question I get is: how are the girls? The girls are doing really well.
The reason the girls are doing well, and the reason I am doing well, is the doctrine laid out in this passage. The reason I have my phone is not because I am ignoring you and checking football scores. Here is a text I got from Haley, Friday afternoon at 2:29. Here is what it says: Braden is in his room singing, "Take this world and give me Jesus. This is not where I belong." Braden has just turned six, and that was the opening song from Susan's memorial service. Haley wrote after it, "Missing her today."
At almost the same time, on the same day, I got a text from Sarah. She wrote that the girls' party at school was a success — one more thing off the list. Then she added: "Wanted to call mom to tell her Reagan gave Santa a big hug." They miss Susan. Every family is close, but these girls are really close. They miss her. They are grieving — but not as those who have no hope. They know they will see her again.
Someone the other day, who does not know Christ and did not know what to say, told me, "I'm sorry for your loss. Susan is in a better place." Yes — but I do not know how you could possibly know that. And I know how risky it is to say all of this, because everybody responds to grief differently. I am simply telling you my approach.
Seven Years of Preparation
I had seven years to get ready for this. That does not make you ready, but it allows you to be somewhat prepared. Three of those years were intense, and the last year was very intensive. From seven years ago, I knew that what happened on October 30th was going to happen. The doctors told us the cancer was not operable but treatable — meaning they could postpone it.
God was extraordinarily good through all of it. When we started, we prayed that God would let Susan see Braden be born. She saw Braden, Gracie, Yale, Brooklyn, and Lucy — six of them. God was very, very gracious. Do I miss her? Sure, I miss her. But it was amazing.
Susan died on October 30th. October 31st is Halloween. We have little kids. So what do you think we did? We went trick-or-treating. Life goes on — and I do not mean that in a callous way, as though I will never think about it again. I mean that life has to be led. There are things we need to be about, things God has called us to do — you, me, all of us.
Where do I find the hope? I find it in understanding that Jesus is coming again. That is what Paul is talking about. What happens when we die? He is saying everything will be all right. Ultimately, he is saying we are going to see them again.
The Day of the Lord
We are going to do something a little unusual and move from chapter 4 down to chapter 5, because what Paul addresses there is somewhat different. He is talking about the Day of the Lord, and we will return to chapter 4 in a moment. The Day of the Lord is an important biblical concept — it is mentioned nineteen times in the Old Testament and four times in the New Testament. It is also spoken of as the day of vengeance. It deals with the immediate and near expectation of God's return for the purpose of judgment.
In chapter 5, Paul says: "Now as to the times and the epochs, brethren, you have no need of anything to be written to you." He is saying they do not need anything further on that subject. "For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night." It is going to come in a sudden and unexpected way. A thief does not announce that he is coming.
He then says: "While they are saying, 'Peace and safety!' then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape." He is talking about unbelievers here. It will be like a woman giving birth — she knows it is coming, but she does not know exactly when, and when it comes, it comes like this. Paul says this is something you can count on.
Destruction and Separation from God
What is coming for those without Christ is destruction. The word destruction here is not the idea of annihilation — it is not that the person ceases to exist. It is the idea of separation from God. One author puts it this way: it is not the destruction of being, but the destruction of well-being.
I was listening to a story on the news the other day. Someone was driving along, had a car accident, and died. I heard from someone who knew this person — they did not know Christ. Think about this: you are driving along, you have Andy Williams on singing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," and then — bam. The next thing you experience is separation from God, with no hope, for all eternity.
Paul wants us to grieve, because grieving is healthy. But he does not want us to grieve like those who have no hope. He is now talking about those who have no hope — those who are headed for destruction, for separation from God. They came into the world as children of wrath, sons of disobedience, separated from God, and they died that way.
Then, in verse 4, Paul draws the contrast. You are not in —
Sons of Light, Not in the Dark
Let me read you verses 4 through 6 from The Message, a paraphrase: "My friends, you're not in the dark, so how can you be taken off guard by any of this? You are sons of light, daughters of day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand. So let's not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let's keep our eyes open." He says you know this is coming. He uses words in verse 6 like "be alert" and "be sober," and he contrasts dark and light. It's the same idea that Jesus Himself had.
Leave your finger right there — we'll come right back. I just want to familiarize you with a passage of scripture. Honestly, this is the most familiar of all passages probably: John 3:16. So if you have a Bible from us, it's page 577. "For God so loved the world, gave His only begotten Son, whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." Then He talks about God coming into the world. God sent His Son into the world not to judge it, but that the world might be saved through Him.
Verse 18: "He who believes in Him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already." That is what Jesus will come to finalize. "This is the judgment: that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, for their deeds were evil." So they don't want to be in the light. Once they see God, once they understand truth and understand who they are, they see their sin. "For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light, so that his deeds may be manifest as having been wrought in God."
So when he goes back to this theme, he is saying: it's this light and this darkness, this contrast of spirit. Those in the dark are roaming around. You — be sober, be on the alert.
The Breastplate of Faith and the Helmet of Salvation
Going back to 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 8: "Since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation." So he identifies those big three: faith, love, and hope. "For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will be together with Him."
Here is the contrast he is drawing. On the day of the Lord, there will be judgment. Those of us who know Christ, who have put our faith and trust in Him, have the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of salvation. And as he talks about salvation here, he is not talking only in the past tense. He is not talking merely about that one moment in time when God saved us. He is talking about present and future salvation.
To use theological terms: in the present, he is talking about sanctification. In the future, he is talking about glorification. What he is saying about those of us who know Christ is that we should be in the ongoing process of being ever set apart from sin and set apart to God. And one day, we are going to have a glorified body.
Those of you who have been around for any length of time have heard it described: a place with no more sickness, no more tears, a wonderful place where you will have that body. My body right now is just — I am starting to bleed for no reason, like old people do. It is awful. I look at it and think, this is an earth suit. Because of sin, this is going to wear out. I am not getting better. I am not going to be healthier in ten years than I am now. I am closer to death now than I was at the first service. These are the things that occupy my mind all day long. But here is what he is saying: you have hope, because you have salvation. Sanctification is what is happening now, and this body is one day going to be put in the ground. If Jesus has not yet come, the body goes into the ground, and my consciousness, my soul, will be with Jesus.
The Certainty of Judgment and the Certainty of Salvation
He finishes that and says, here is our hope. He states it in verse 10: Christ died for us. Hold onto that for a moment, because we need to hold two thoughts together. Look at how he ends this section. He wants to encourage those who know Christ, those who are very afraid about the day of the Lord. They understand judgment is coming and they are asking, what about me? And he is saying, do not worry.
The judgment and the destruction are certainly coming. So if you are someone today who is thinking, I do not know Christ, I do not believe what you believe, I believe something else — here is what he is saying: your judgment is as certain as my salvation. If that sounds arrogant to you, you have misread it, because my salvation has nothing to do with me. It is God who saved me, as He will save you in the process of coming to Him in repentance and faith, if you come.
Grief, Hope, and the Cemetery
Now, back to that original idea — that was a bit of a parenthetical insert. Back to chapter 4: "We do not want you to be uninformed about those who have died. We do not want you to grieve as those who have no hope." He wants us to understand something: absent from the body, present with the Lord.
I have not gone up to the cemetery since Susan was buried. Honestly, I do not have much interest in it. She is in a cemetery, and I have a spot where they are going to stack me right on top of her. We are at Green Acres. I hate that name. All I can think of is that as we are driving in singing "Amazing Grace," I am thinking, "Green Acres is the place for me, farm living is the life for me." That is all I can think of. I hate that name. It is a terrible name. They should change that name now. But —
Grief With Hope
Her body is there, but she is with Christ. I am trying to be as honest as I can, and if it is too honest, I apologize. I seem to have people who feel like I should be more sad or something. I am simply responding to what Scripture is telling me: she is in heaven.
I talked to a man the other day who did not know Susan had died. He asked, "How's Susan?" I said, "She's great." He said, "Oh, is she off the chemo?" I said yes. He went through this whole litany — is she not going to the doctor anymore? I said no. He said, "What?" I said, "She's dead. She's in heaven." He is not a believer, but I believe that, and so it all has a perspective.
Living my life right now is pretty easy in that sense, though there is plenty I do not know what to do with. I know you are all watching everything I do, and I am sure I will screw something up. But I am sad. I do not grieve as someone who has no hope. I grieve in my own way — the way of a believer.
The Resurrection and the Rapture
Now Paul gives everyone hope. Look at verse 14: "If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus." He is speaking about those who have died — Susan and all believers.
"For this we say to you by the word of the Lord" — there is his authority — "that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep." He is talking about something distinct from what he addressed in chapter five. He is not talking about the Day of the Lord; he is talking about the Lord's coming again. The word we often associate with this is the rapture.
Here is the sequencing: "The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet of God." And here is what will happen — the dead in Christ will rise first. Those bodies that are in the oceans and in the ground will rise first. Then those believers who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and we will always be with the Lord.
So what happens to those who die? They are immediately in His presence. Then there is this moment where the body and the soul are reunited. And those who are alive — will they ever see Him again? Not only again, but forever. I do not know how all of that plays out. I just know that we are caught up with the Lord forever. That is your future.
No Fear in Death
I was talking to someone the other day and I said, yes, I know I am going to die. I do not know when it is, but I know it is coming and it cannot be that far away. Does that bother me? Not a drop. Does it scare me? The dying part does. Death itself does not.
Watching Susan die was very hard. But the only thing that made it digestible was knowing that after dying comes death — and there is a distinction there. Am I afraid of death? No. Am I afraid of dying? My golly, I numb my fingers when I trim my nails — I am afraid of everything. I kept saying I could not do what she did, but she did it, and I know I could too.
Here is the point: whatever that suffering is, it is momentary light affliction. As followers of Christ, we are in the land of the dying, but we go to the land of the living. That is the whole point.
Comfort One Another With These Words
What is Paul saying across chapters four and five? He told us plainly: "Comfort one another with these words." The saddest duties I perform are funerals for people who do not know Christ, or when I see a believer who is dying with a deep passion for their family who has no faith.
I got a call one day from a young woman who said, "Tom, I'm going to die — probably about six weeks away. Can we meet and talk about it?" So we met, and she said, "Here is what I want you to do. My parents keep telling me, 'Honey, we know you're going to die, but don't worry — we'll see you again.' Tom, they are not believers. They are not going to see me again. At the funeral, I want you to tell them they are going to hell." I said, "Really, sweetheart?"
I told her I was not going to do that — not because it is not true, but because it is not the loving thing to say to a grieving mother and father in that moment. She said she would write a letter and I could read it. I agreed, and I did, though I framed it carefully. I said, "I want to speak to the family right now, specifically her mom and dad. She loved you so much. You may think of ways she showed that love — a card she sent, something she did for you. But let me tell you how much she loves you." And then I read what she wanted them to know. We live in that reality.
A Pressure Cooker Refined to a Single Point
For me, this has been a thirty-year journey — intensely so in the last seven years, really intense in the last three, like a pressure cooker in the last one. Is this reality true? I am almost afraid to say the next sentence, because I know it could be thrown back at me someday. There is almost a sense in which, when Susan passed, there was a relief — because she is out of that agony. Am I sad? I am very, very, very sad. But she is in heaven. Do you see that?
Grieving With Hope
If you know Christ, when you die, it's not over. You will be with Him, and there will be this union forever and ever. If you don't know Him, there is destruction. Almost like a bumper sticker: if I know Christ, this is as close to hell as I'm ever going to get. If you don't know Christ, this is as close to heaven as you're ever going to be.
A Closing Appeal
I want to leave you with two things, and I beg you to do them. Number one, if you filled out that card, drop it in one of those boxes. Number two, and more important than the card: if you don't know Christ, these men and women in the front of this room are here to serve you when this service is over.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank you for these awesome, amazing truths. We love you, and even that is only because you first loved us. God, thank you for sharing with us, not leaving us ignorant and uninformed, but telling us what happens.
God, there is so much hope. I pray that everybody in here who knows Christ found hope and encouragement — even those now grieving. We grieve; there is nothing wrong with that, but we grieve with hope. God, I pray especially that Your Spirit would irritate the hearts and minds of those who don't believe this message, and drive them to discussion and maybe salvation. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.