Watchword: Daily Text
August 9, 2013
I Thessalonians
4:13-18
Grief is an insidious monster. If you take a walk though God’s Acre and
stroll through the choirs, i.e. the
arrangement of the burial plots you will notice that the loss comes with human experience. Married men … married women …single men…
single men … single women …boys… girls…babies. No human is exempt from the pain
of death. When I blogged about my dad’s
death and funeral, I mentioned that Moravian funerals seem to be imbued with
hope. The band surrounds the grave of the deceased and hymns of glory echo into
the air. Even the burial grounds are a picture of hope.
They call their burial ground “God’s Acre.”
Those who enter normally pass through an arch with words from Scripture
inscribed. Hope radiates throughout
God’s Acre. From the earliest days at
Herrnhut, God’s Acre was a sacred place,
because those who were laid to rest merely awaited the resurrection spoken of
in the text today. They knew the Savior and they had hope. [1]
The Apostle Paul addresses that in the daily text for today.
Many of the Christians at Thessalonica were in deep grief,
because many of them had lost loved ones. They saw no hope beyond this present
life. Paul breaks through their grief with
glorious news – the Lord Jesus is returning and He will resurrect those loved
who were saved. The same message applies to those of us who know Jesus and are
grieving the death of a loved one. That’s the simple version. Let me explain further.
Paul does not want us to sorrow as those have no hope.
Hopeless sorrow is a terrible state. He
presents a glorious promise –those who have saving faith in the Lord Jesus will
be witnesses to a glorious event. Those who “sleep in Jesus” (vs. 14)[2]
placed their faith in Him as their Savior prior to death are with Him in spirit
as their bodies “sleep” in the ground, awaiting the cry of resurrection.
Pau describes the events that will occur in the future and
the reason for hope.
1.
The Lord will descend from Heaven with a cry of
command
2.
There will be
voice of the archangel
3.
There will be the trump of God
4.
Those who have died in Christ will rise first
(remember the reference to those asleep in Jesus?)
5.
The living Christ will be caught up along with
them in the air
Paul enjoins us to comfort, encourage, admonish, to cheer
one another on with these words. Grief is not forever! Jesus is coming to take the children of God
home. The watchword for the day would be… do you know Him?
[1]
J.E. Hutton. A History of the Moravian Church, 1909, p. 147. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hutton/moravian.html..
[2]
Holy Bible, King James Version, 1611.
[3]
Holy Bible, English Standard Version,
2007. (Adapted).
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