Editor’s Note: This is a lightly edited transcription of the audio message. Thanks goes to Marilyn Fine for the transcription work.

Introduction

This week, as you know if you have been attending the services, I have been trying to get you excited about the Rapture of the Church. Of course, one of the important elements of that is to persuade you that the Bible teaches that Christ could come very soon. I want to review this just a bit. Then, I want to turn to the Book of Revelation to see what the Rapture has to do with the Second Coming. Finally with the time left we will have some questions and answers.

Review On The Coming Of Christ

Now, what have I been teaching you? First of all, I pointed out that the Rapture, wherever it is located in the Bible in the New Testament, always speaks of it as the next event. There is nothing preceding it. This is quite in contrast to the Second Coming of Christ to the earth where there are all kinds of important and world-shaking events that precede. The Rapture – never. It is always presented that we should be “looking for that blessed hope” (according to Titus) not for some preceding event.

Then, we also examined I Thessalonians 4 and 5 and we found that when the Rapture occurs, the Day of the Lord begins and the Day of Grace, such as we have in our present dispensation, ends. People will still get saved, but this is a time of divine judgment on a world that has rejected Christ and eventually recognizes the antichrist as their god and as their savior. God is going to pour out the terrible judgments that the Bible describes.

Then, we saw also how the false teachers came into Thessalonica and taught them that they were already in the Day of the Lord. Paul had said they would never get into the Day of the Lord because the Rapture was first. Thus this new teaching upset them and Paul wrote II Thessalonians.

What did he tell them? He said you are not in the Day of the Lord. Why not? Because the man of sin, the lawless one, the antichrist, has not appeared. You see, the first major event of the Day of the Lord is the emergence of this man of sin. He said you are not in that day because he has not emerged. Of course, he cannot emerge until the Day of the Lord begins. The Day of the Lord cannot begin until the Rapture occurs. So, in effect he is saying that you cannot have this period of trial and trouble following the Rapture until the Rapture itself occurs. Hence we have an order of events that are necessary—the Rapture first, the Day of the Lord beginning next, and then the antichrist appearing.

Now, when will he be recognized? Obviously, as he moves on toward the end time it becomes more and more evident that he is the antichrist. But I think he is recognized first of all when he conquers three of those 10 countries in the revived Roman Empire. This empire is going to emerge about the same time as the Rapture. When he conquers the three countries, then all ten, it is rather obvious that he is that person.

According to Daniel 9:27, when he gets to that position of power he makes a seven-year covenant with Israel. Get the chronology of this. Seven years before the Second Coming, he makes the covenant. Before he makes the covenant, he has to conquer those ten countries. Before he can conquer those ten countries, he has to appear. He cannot appear until the Day of the Lord begins and the Day of the Lord cannot begin until the Rapture occurs. So we have a Rapture that is more than seven years prior to the Second Coming. That wipes out the post-Tribulational view, it wipes out the mid-Tribulational view, and it wipes out the partial-Rapture view. You see the Rapture occurs more than seven years before the Second Coming. That is what II Thessalonians teaches as we put together all the scriptures.

We also went into the Book of Revelation yesterday and looked at this idea that the Church has to go through the Tribulation. While the post-Tribulationists, before World War II, just said it was all past and that there was no tribulation ahead. Now, they say there is tribulation ahead. Now they have to face the facts that the Bible teaches that we are not subject to wrath.

When you get into the Book of Revelation it is very obvious that the wrath is there. Chapter 6 states that the wrath of God is there. The fourth seal in Chapter 6 wipes out a fourth of the world’s population. If that is not the Great Tribulation I do not know what is! Then, when you get down to the trumpet judgments that follow the seal judgments you find a third of the world destroyed in the sixth trumpet. Then, on top of that you come to Chapter 16 and here they pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God on the world and there are devastating world-wide judgments. The last one of which in Chapter 16 is an earthquake that levels the cities of the Gentiles (apparently not Israel). On top of that islands disappear, mountains disappear, the whole world is in convulsions. Can you imagine the loss of life, the destruction of property, the tidal waves, all the catastrophes that add up through this end-time scene? Then, on top of that, we are told that the world is peppered with a hail storm, with the hailstones weighing 100 pounds each. I do not need to tell you that that is absolute destruction. If you go to fictional books you could not imagine a more awful time.

Now, the post-Tribulationalists want us to believe that the Church goes through this unscathed! But, that is exactly what the Book of Revelation contradicts. While the 144,000 are preserved (12,000 from each of the 12 tribes), in Revelation Chapter 7 beginning in verse 9 Scripture pictures the scene in Heaven and John sees a great multitude of people from every nation and kindred and tongue. He asks where did they come from? They came out of the Great Tribulation. These are people who were saved after the Rapture – millions of them, perhaps— but now they are facing the awful judgments of the end time. The world ruler is going to try to kill every one of them. Behead them, according to scripture, because they will not worship him. Then, they are also subject to all the catastrophes that overtake the world in pestilence, famine, war. These do not just single out unsaved people. So, there is going to be a great mass of people who got saved after the Rapture that now seal their testimony with their own blood. It does not sound to me like the Church is going to go through this period unscathed. There will be some who escape, but I take it the percentage is small. The evidence seems to pile up that most of those who come to Christ in the Tribulation time will die a sudden, catastrophic death of one kind or another. So, that is what the Bible teaches. So, there is not any room for a post-Tribulational Rapture.

The Book of Revelation

Now, I want to turn to the Book of Revelation. I want you to see that this is not something I foist on the Book. This is what the Bible teaches. It is all related to the Second Coming of Christ. You see, the traditional post-Tribulationist view says that when Christ comes from Heaven in His Second Coming, that the Church rises up to meet Him and then turns around and comes back to earth with Him. The problem is where is that in the Bible? It simply is not there. I want you to see that.

In Chapter 19, first of all, we are introduced to the great glory of Heaven and the announcement is made in verse 7, “Let us be glad and rejoice and give glory for the marriage [and it should be the marriage feast] of the Lamb has come and his wife hath made herself ready. So, blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

The Greek word is “gammos” in both cases. They did not have a marriage ceremony in Christ’s day like ours. They had a marriage supper. In understanding the traditions of the times there were three stages to this. There was the first stage where the parents of the bridegroom would pay the parents of the bride a dowry. When that dowry was paid, the young people were legally married. Usually, they did not start living together for at least another year. Then, there came the second phase when the bridegroom, as illustrated in the parable of the ten virgins, would claim his bride. That would be phase 2. The third phase was the wedding feast. What do we have here? The wedding feast.

So, it is very clear from Chapter 19 that the Rapture has already occurred. The bridegroom has already claimed his bride. You see, there is no room for a subsequent event like that when they are celebrating the marriage feast. That, of course, is the point of the ten virgins. The ten virgins, of course, assumed that the bridegroom has paid the dowry. He did that when He died for us on the cross. Then, the bridegroom claims his bride, but that is not the point of the parable. The point of the parable is to tell us who is eligible to attend the wedding feast. That is where the ten virgins come in. Of course, as you know, the five virgins were wise and went into the marriage feast and the others, who were not ready because they did not have oil in their lamp, were shut out.

In other words, the issue and the point of the whole parable was not so much to discuss the dowry or the Rapture of the Church because it does not really detail that. But it does teach the people who are going to face the issue to ask “are we ready for the marriage supper of the Lamb?”

There is a lot of debate as to when that occurs but hereafter more than seven years have gone by and it has not occurred yet. So, apparently, it probably is in connection with the first days of the Millennial Kingdom. That is as near as we can get to an affirmation. Now, you bear in mind and you have all seen this picture of this unending table which goes out into infinity. Are millions and millions of people are going to sit down to a wedding feast? Well, I am a literalist, but I find that a little bit hard to understand. I cannot imagine millions of people sitting down to a supper. So I take it that is what it is talking about is that we are all going to enjoy the blessings of Heaven-the bride and the bridegroom are there, of course. Then, all the others that are not part of the Church are also going to share in the blessings of eternity. They are going to be there and enjoy the Millennial Kingdom. That is why I think it is called a marriage supper. It climaxes Christ coming for His Church and taking her to Himself.

Let’s go on to this because in verse 19 and following we have a picture of Jesus Christ coming back in power and glory. In verse 11 and following, and I want you to listen as I read this—(Bear in mind the contrast between this scene of the Second Coming and the scene of the Rapture in I Thessalonians 4. What happened at the Rapture? Well, Christ appeared, oddly in Heaven. He calls Christians who have died to be resurrected; living Christians to be changed. They meet Him in the air and go to Heaven. He never touches the earth. The earth is not affected at all. In fact, there is no clear evidence that anybody in the world knows what is happening because the Rapture is an instantaneous event. Suddenly, every Christian is gone. It is going to be quite a traumatic experience for a person who is not a Christian to be talking to a Christian who suddenly disappears. I take it that the Rapture is going to really jolt some people into finding out what the truth is. I believe many of them will come to Christ as a result. Millions of people will accept Christ after the Rapture. That seems to be what the Bible teaches. Now, many of them, as I pointed out, will be martyred, but they will be saved and will be with Jesus forever.)—Here is the picture of what He saw in verse 11,

“I saw Heaven open and, behold, a white horse. He who sat on it was called faithful and true and in righteousness He judges and makes war.”

This is not a peaceful venture. The white horse, of course, is symbolic of victory. A Roman general when he won a victory would ride through the streets on a white horse and the prisoners of war would follow them in the streets. It says that he in righteousness judges and makes war. It is a time of judgment.

“His eyes are like a flame of fire. On his head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood and His name is called the Word of God. The armies in Heaven clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses.”

They are part of the victory, you see.

“Out of His mouth goes a sharp sword goes a sharp sword that with it He should strike the nations and He, Himself, will rule them with a rod of iron. He, Himself, treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of almighty God and He had on His robe and on His thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”

This is an awesome, awesome picture and the scriptures tell us that the whole world is going to see it. Millions of saints and angels accompanying Christ from Heaven to the earth to assist in His Millennial Kingdom, His reign on earth. It is going to be a glorious thing and the heavens are going to be ablaze with the glory of God. I take it there may be a processional that will last for 24 hours because the earth turns. It says the whole world is going to see it. Now, it happened in an instant in one place in the Holy Land and the other side of the world could not see it. It says every eye is going to see it. They are going to know what it is. They are going to know it is the Second Coming of Christ and they are going to know that they are not saved. It is too late. There comes a time when it is too late. It is a time when the glory of Christ appears in Heaven. It’s too late to turn to Christ and be saved.

The verses which follow do not describe any rapture. In fact, I do not think there is a scrap of evidence that there is either a rapture or a resurrection on the day of Christ’s Second Coming. It is commonly held that is when it is going to occur. Try to find it in the Bible. It simply is not there. The resurrection comes a few days later, but there is not any rapture at all. You see, at the Rapture of the Church there are two things: there is a rapture of living people whose bodies were instantly changed,(according to I Corinthians 15, and made suitable for Heaven) and also there is a raising of the dead Christians from the dead and their souls reentering their new body. Those are the two things necessary for a rapture.

There is another resurrection but only one rapture in the Bible. So this is what happens at the Rapture of the Church. But there is no rapture here in Revelation 19 and there is no resurrection. We follow here in verse 17 that the “vultures, the birds in the midst of Heaven are invited to come and gather together for the supper of the great God that ye eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men” and so on. In other words, when Christ uses the sword out of His mouth, these armies which have been fighting it out for power and were brought there by Satan have all turned to try to fight the army from Heaven, but it is all absolutely futile. There is no war. Christ just speaks the word and all these millions of men involved in this final struggle and their horses are instantly killed. The judgment of God is not pretty. It is awful! That is one of the awful judgments here. The vultures are invited to feast and have their supper. This is in contrast to the marriage of the Lamb in the early part of the chapter, you remember, where the wedding feast is for the saved. Now, this is the vultures feeding on those who are lost.

It sums it up in verse 20, with the beast (that is the world ruler) and the false prophet (who worked with them and caused the people to worship him) are both captured alive and cast into the lake of fire. At this point, there is nobody in the lake of fire. To this point when unsaved people die they go to what we call “Hades,” a place of the dead. We have this place Hades described in various passages such as Luke 16 where the rich man and the poor man go to glory and they are separated and the poor man is in torment in Hades. Well, that is where they go now, but here is the first one that is cast into the lake of fire. We learn in Matthew 25 that the lake of fire is prepared for the devil and his angels. That is its primary purpose. That is where they are going to end up. But those who reject Christ are going to share that awful fate as the Bible makes very plain.

Certain things follow the Second Coming. It is amazing to me how Bible scholars mess this up. In Chapter 20, verses 1-3, it pictures the binding of Satan. You know what the Amillennialists try to tell us? That Satan was bound at the first coming of Christ. That is not what my Bible teaches. You remember in I Peter it tells us that the “devil is as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour”? If the roaring lion came down that aisle here you would lose interest in my sermon in a hurry, wouldn’t you? A roaring lion is not something you can tamper with. That is what Satan is doing. Do you realize? I do not think many Christians realize it, but if Satan had his way he would kill every Christian. He would ruin every Christian work. He would spoil everything and make it impossible. The only reason why we preachers survive and the only reason why you survive as a Christian with any testimony at all is because God protects you. That has always been true.

Do you remember the Book of Job? He was a godly, righteous man and God called Satan’s attention to him. Satan said, “well, it is because you are so good to him. Let me at him.” You know, God said “all right. You can get at him but you cannot take his life.” The first thing that Satan did was to kill every one of his family and all his herds. They were carried away and he was robbed. He was left with nothing except a wife who told him to curse God and die. The devil left her because he could use her. A sad thing, isn’t it?

Then, Satan said “let me get at HIM” and God said “all right. You can get at his body, but you cannot kill him.” He had terrible sores and we have the long record of how his friends tried to figure out what was happening. Now, this illustrates that Satan can get at us if God permits it. Satan told God “you have built a hedge about him that I cannot get at.” The only reason you have any peace and tranquility at all is because God has marvelously protected you. When you get to Heaven, you are going to discover all sorts of things that were kept out of your life by the power and grace of God that Satan would have loved to have brought in and just wrecked your life in every which way. So, here, we have some cast into the lake of fire where the Devil and his angels are going ultimately.

Now, in Chapter 20 we have Satan bound. I am distinguishing in this passage what John saw and what he heard. He saw an angel come down from heaven with a big chain and He bound Satan and put him in the abyss (that is the home of the demon world) and put a seal on the top and shut him out. That much he could see. What he did not know was the purpose. He heard that. It was revealed to him that what he was seeing is that Satan would be bound for 1,000 years. You cannot “see” those details. That had to be told to him.

Now, I believe that on the one hand we have to interpret what we see, but, on the other hand, when God says “this is what it means” then you are not free to “tamper” with that and say it does not mean what God says it means. The devil was bound here. For the entire 1,000–year reign of Christ, following His Second Coming, Satan and the demon world will be inactive.

People say, “why is there a Millennial Kingdom anyway?” Well, you know God has been trying the human race. He has tried them out in innocency and they sin. He tried them out with conscience—go down through the dispensations, He has tried every means possible! Now, people say, “well, it is the devil that tempted me.” All right. The devil is going to be bound. Are men still wicked? Yes, they are. We read that some, in spite of everything, with Christ visually present in the world, and His glorious nature. Yet they attempt to conquer the city of Jerusalem, the capital city, by force. Of course, there is a tragic end for them because fire comes down from heaven and destroys them. It illustrates that man, even under the best environment, with all the information that he needs to lead a holy life, is still basically wicked. Apart from the grace of God, there will be no salvation, no sanctification, no Heaven, and no grace of God is manifest in their life.

Verses 4 to 6 are especially interesting to me in regard to the Rapture. He said,

“I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness of Jesus and for the Word of God who would not worship the beast or his image, who had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands.”

Now, who are these people? These are people who lived in that last three-and-a-half years prior to the Second Coming of Christ. It says here that when this beast, this world ruler was in power, that they refuse to worship him. The result was they were beheaded. They were killed one, two or three years before the Second Coming of Christ. Now it says that they lived and reigned with Christ 1,000 years. When were they resurrected? After the Second Coming of Christ. They had just been dead a few years. Now they are resurrected and resurrected from the grave. Do you know what the amillenarians do with that? They say this is simply the conversion of the unsaved. Where in the world is that in that passage? I cannot understand how competent scholars, godly men, can come up with such a strange interpretation. This is not the conversion of unsaved people. This is the resurrection of people who are born again and have died as martyrs and now are being restored. For what purpose? To live and reign with Christ for how many years? 1,000 years. You see, I am a pre-millenarian and I believe that Christ comes first and the Millennium follows. The reason I do is because it is taught in this verse. These people are going to reign with Christ for 1,000 years.

Now, it goes on to say this is the first resurrection. Wait a minute! Is this the Rapture? Well, of course not. What does it mean the first resurrection? You know it is amazing to me how post-Tribulational books land on this and they say this must be the Rapture. It has been explained again and again and again in pre-Tribulational books that that is not what it means. I have yet to read a post-Tribulational book that will acknowledge that they know the other answer. See, the word “first” occurs in different ways. It is not number one resurrection, but it means that something is done first. For instance, the housewife will say “I am going downtown to shop but first I am going to put the supper in the oven.” That is not the first time she did it. What does she mean when she says it is done first? Well, it is done before. There are two events here: going downtown is the second event, but the first event is putting the meal into the oven. Now, here are two events, too. Here is the resurrection of the righteous martyrs who died. That is first. The second resurrection is at the end of this chapter where the wicked dead, 1,000 years later, are raised from the dead and cast into the lake of fire. You see, one, two.

One of the strange things that theologians have tried to perpetuate is the idea there is one great final judgment and one great resurrection. The Bible does not teach that. You have just got to ignore what the Bible teaches in order to arrive at such a strange conclusion. You see, there is another resurrection in the Bible. What is the first one? Christ. Was He raised from the dead? Yes. Then, in Matthew 27 it tells us there was a token resurrection where a few were raised. Why? Because when Christ was raised He was the first fruits, plural, and so there are others raised to illustrate this and they were raised in Matthew 27.

Then, we have the Rapture of the Church. That is resurrection number three. Then, in Revelation 11, we have the two witnesses that witnessed for three-and-a-half years and God allows them to be killed. While the world is gloating over their death, they are lying in the streets of Jerusalem, suddenly they rise from the dead and are sent to Heaven. They are resurrected, too.

Here is the resurrection of the martyred dead—still another resurrection. This is resurrection number five if you want to keep track. Then, in Daniel 12 it mentions the Old Testament saints as being raised into the Tribulation. We are not told specifically what day it is, but that is the next one so there are six. The seventh resurrection, of course, is the resurrection of the wicked dead at the end of this chapter.

I want you to notice something, though, here. When does this resurrection take place? It takes place several days, apparently, after the Second Coming. In order words, there is a resurrection here, but there is no translation. You see, the saints that live on the earth at the time of the Second Coming go into the Millennial Kingdom in their natural bodies. They are not raptured. They still are in their natural bodies and the Bible pictures it that way. You read Isaiah 65. They are going to plant crops, they are going to build houses, they are going to bear children, they are going to live, they are going to die, they are going to sin. You see, they are still in their natural bodies and that is the way they are going to enter the Millennial Kingdom. So, there is no Rapture at that time.

If they have all been raptured at the time of the Second Coming there would be nobody left to populate the millennial earth in its natural way. So, there cannot be a Rapture at this time and there is not any. So, the first resurrection is the resurrection that is first in the sense that it is before the resurrection of the wicked at the end of the 1,000 years. It reminds us again they shall reign with Him 1,000 years. Verse 7 also tells us when the 1,000 years are expired Satan will be released from his prison and he will go out, as I have indicated earlier, and cause people who are not saved to rebel against God even in the Millennial Kingdom. And they are destroyed by a fire from heaven. Then follows the great sad, great White Throne Judgment of the wicked. They are cast into the lake of fire because their names are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Now, you see there is just no Rapture here. We saw yesterday how in the judgment of the nations that the Gentiles the sheep are still mixed with the unsaved, the goats, after the Second Coming of Christ. There was no Rapture at the Second Coming. There was no separation, but it did occur later when those that were unsaved were taken out because they were not worthy to enter the Millennial Kingdom. But the righteous stay on earth, just the opposite of the Rapture, the righteous stay in and the wicked are taken out and they go into the Millennial Kingdom.

So, as you examine these scriptures there simply is no Rapture. There just isn’t any. Those who say that there is a Rapture at this point have to create it out of whole cloth. They do not have a single verse of the Bible to support their position.

Question and Answer

Now, we are going to have a little question/answer hour, as I promised, and our system is going to be very simple. Raise your hand. and I will ask you to state your question. Then, I will try to repeat it because they are going to try to record this. We will see if we can get a few questions answered this morning. Who will be first? Stand up so I can see you. All right.

Q: The question is where do people go into the Millennial Kingdom?

A: Now, the Bible does not give us much information on this, but it does tell us that when the present earth and Heaven flee away and are destroyed the New Jerusalem descends from God out of Heaven. In contrast to the new heavens and new earth which are said to be created, the New Jerusalem is not said to be created. This has raised the question. Is it in existence during the Millennial Kingdom? It is 1,500 miles square. It obviously would blot out the whole Holy Land if it was on earth. So it cannot be on earth. The theory is that there can be a city like that as a satellite city. The Bible does not tell us this. They are just manufacturing this in trying to figure it out. But there are some that think that resurrection and raptured saints will have their residence in the new Jerusalem.

Just like a person who has his residence in the country and goes into town to his office so we will commute from that to the earth to carry on our functions because we are going to work in the world. There is so little scripture on this that I would rather say I do not know and leave the matter up to God when the time comes.

There is much that God has not seen fit to reveal. Why has He not revealed it? Because we do not need to know. It is amazing how we all want to know the things we do not need to know and the things we ought to know sometimes we neglect. That, unfortunately, is the case in the study of prophecy. There are a lot of things that are not revealed. So, I cannot really answer your question with finality because the Word of God does not answer it. Next question.

Q: The question is, is the Holy Spirit taken out of the world at the Rapture? The resulting question is how can people be born again if the Holy Spirit is taken out?

A: Of course, you cannot take the Holy Spirit out. God is omnipresent. There is no way that that can be changed where He is not present in a part of His universe. So, He is going to be there. According to II Thessalonians 2, they Holy Spirit is going to be taken away in the sense that He removes the restraint. Now, you see in the present age the Church indwelt by the Holy Spirit is God’s principle means of holding down the floodtides of evil. While we are a small minority we, nevertheless, are the fountainhead for morality and rule of life and things that are right and wrong. We still point to the Church. The Church is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Now, if the Holy Spirit’s restraint is removed, the only way this could be accomplished is by the Holy Spirit to be taken out with the Church.

You see, before Pentecost the Holy Spirit did not indwell every Christian – now He does. As far as I can tell from scripture, once the Rapture of the Church occurs, the Holy Spirit does not indwell people in the Tribulation time. When you get to the Millennial Kingdom, then, again, the Holy Spirit indwells. So, we have to be very careful how we observe exactly what the scripture says and exactly what it does not say. You cannot remove the Holy Spirit. The fact is, as I brought out, millions of people will be saved after the Rapture. This cannot be accomplished without the Holy Spirit. Of course, the answer is how? Well, how were they saved before Pentecost? You see, the Holy Spirit was in the world there, but He was not in us. So, what changed is the indwelling of the presence of the Holy Spirit and His restraint upon the world of sin as a whole. That is going to be changed in the Great Tribulation. God is going to allow the human race to manifest how terribly sinful it really is. It will be a time of unprecedented lawlessness summed up, of course, ultimately in the worship of Satan and the world rulers. So, I take it the Holy Spirit is omnipresent, but He does not exercise the qualities He is doing now. Next question.

Q: The question is will the pope be able to bring together the various churches?

A: We have the so-called ecumenical movement that came to a head in 1948 when the World Council of Churches was formed and the purpose of this is to unite all Christians under one gigantic organization where the power will be in a hierarchy at the top. It has not worked out very well because it is largely in the hands of liberals, although there are some evangelical Christians involved in it. The world church movement is not prospering.

I take it when the Rapture of the Church occurs and every true Christian is taken out of the world, including out of the world-Church-movement, all who will be left will be apostate teachers. I take it this fulfills what Revelation 17 described as a harlot astride a scarlet colored beast. This is a world Church movement that is utterly wicked and utterly departing from God. In fact, the woman is described as drunk with the blood of the saints. He is going to put to death those who are actually born again.

So, there is a world Church movement in the world today. It is one of the major things I did not get to this week along with the work in the Church, the true Church, the Rapture of the Church, and then the nations of the world, the changes in Europe and the formation eventually of the Roman Empire. Then, we saw in Israel the fact that Israel is in the land—all these things are important and the world church movement is another aspect of that. So, I take it that that is part of the end-time picture. Now, put this together, if you will. In 1946, the United Nations brings the idea of a world government which, of course, characterizes the end. In 1948, Israel is given their 5,000 square miles. Israel is back in the land. In 1948, the World Council of Churches is formed. Here you have the three major areas of God’s prophecies – the Church, the world, and Israel – all affected in a very short time after World War II. It is just as if God is saying that the stage is getting set and the time is drawing near. It could be that the Rapture of the Church is very, very near.

Conclusion

Now, our time is up and we want to conclude this service. Let us bow in a word of prayer.

Our Father, how grateful we are that while there are many things we only know in part and many questions which cannot be finally answered, the things that are important have been answered. We know how to be saved. We know how to look for the Lord’s coming. We know that when He comes He is going to catch us out of the world and take us to Heaven. We know we are going to be in His presence forever. We are the objects of His love and grace and will illustrate through all eternity what the grace of God is. So, help us, Lord, to get excited about this and be looking for this precious hope and then be living in the way that is well pleasing to the Lord as we face this great future. We ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.

October 16, 2016

A student once walked into Dr. Howard Hendricks’ office at Dallas Seminary and announced, “Prof, I’m dropping out of school.” “Why is that?” asked Dr. Hendricks. “Because I’m convinced that the Lord is going to return shortly and I want to get involved in a ministry before He comes.” Dr. Hendricks replied, “If there is something that you would be doing differently if you knew that Jesus Christ would return tomorrow, then you’d better be doing it!”

Dr. Hendricks wasn’t suggesting that the student drop out of school and go out preaching on the streets. If he believed that, he wouldn’t have been committed to training men for the ministry at Dallas Seminary. He was saying that we should live every day with an expectancy of the Lord’s near return and yet also live in a normal manner. As Martin Luther is reputed to have said, “If I knew that the Lord was returning tomorrow, I’d plant a tree today.”

Throughout church history, there have been both individuals and groups that have gotten so caught up with prophecy about the Lord’s coming that they have acted strangely. Some have sold everything, quit their jobs, and waited on a hilltop for the Lord’s return at a predicted date. Harold Camping thought that Jesus would return in 1988. Others were sure it would be in 2000.

Apparently some of the Thessalonians had gotten a bit carried away and decided that in light of the Lord’s near return, they should quit their jobs and spend their time proclaiming the end of the world. In the meantime, if they had need of the world’s goods, well, other Christians were commanded to help them! So they were not working and were sponging off the church. This problem was probably only in its earliest stages when Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians, so he just mentions it in passing. But by the time he wrote 2 Thessalonians, the problem had grown, so he deals with it there more extensively (2 Thess. 3:6-15).

In our text, Paul gives some practical instructions about how to live until the Lord returns. He says that …

We should work at loving one another more and be showing God’s love by our behavior at work.

1. We should work at loving one another more.

1 Thess. 4:9-10: “Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; for indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more ….”

Paul began this letter commending the Thessalonians for their “labor of love” (1 Thess. 1:3). But he didn’t want them to rest on their laurels and become complacent about this most important quality. Note three things about loving one another:

A. Love for one another should be the distinguishing mark of the church.

In contrast to lust (4:3-8), Paul now turns to Christian love. Probably their culture, like ours, often confused the two. Sexual lust is never loving. It’s always selfish and harms all tainted by it. But Christians are not to be characterized by the passion of lust, but rather by fervent, pure love for one another. Paul uses the Greek word “philadelphia” (v. 9) which was used in secular writings for affection between natural brothers and sisters in a family. But in the New Testament, it is used of love between the members of the family of God, the church. Paul wasn’t correcting the Thessalonians for a lack of love, but rather encouraging them to keep working at it. Leon Morris (The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians [Eerdmans], p. 129) observes,

Something which should give modern Christians much food for thought is the way in which the early church was characterized by love. “Behold how these Christians love one another” is hardly the comment which springs spontaneously to the lips of the detached observer nowadays. But if our manner of life was based on the New Testament picture something like it would be inevitable.

Jesus commanded His disciples to love one another even as He had loved them. Then He added (John 13:35), “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” He also said that love for others is the second greatest commandment, after love for God (Matt. 22:39). Paul said that “love is the fulfillment of the law” (Rom. 13:10). John said (1 John 3:10, 14), “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother…. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death.” So love isn’t optional. Genuine love for one another should be the mark of the church.

B. God is the One who teaches us about loving one another.

Paul says (v. 9), “you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.” He has just mentioned that God gives His Holy Spirit to you. In Romans 5:5, he states that “the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” So when he says that the Thessalonians are taught by God to love one another, he’s probably referring to this work of the Holy Spirit, whom we receive when we trust in Christ. As 1 John 4:7-8 states, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

More than anywhere else, we see God’s amazing love demonstrated at the cross (John 3:16): “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Paul writes (Eph. 5:1-2), “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”

Based on these and other verses, I developed this definition: Love is a self-sacrificing, caring commitment that shows itself by seeking the highest good of the one loved. God so loved that He gave. Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us. God’s love involves self-sacrifice. Selfishness is the main hindrance to love. Husbands are exhorted to love their wives even as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us (Eph. 5:25). It’s easy to grandstand and say, “I’d lay down my life for my wife if someone was attacking her.” But what about sacrificing your time and inconveniencing yourself to serve your wife each day? What about thinking of her needs and her perspective above your own? That’s where biblical love has to show itself. It isn’t just talk; it requires observable action.

Also, love is caring. This is the emotional element of love. It’s not just cold, perfunctory service. The actions of love are done out of a heart that genuinely cares about the other person’s well-being. Love is a caring commitment. With regard to marriage, it’s a lifelong covenant before God to your mate. Although you should feel love towards others, even when the feelings aren’t there you should act in love because you’re committed to them.

And, love seeks the highest good of the one loved, namely, that he or she would come to know Jesus and be conformed to His image. The goal of love, both in the family and in the church, should be to encourage and help the other person to know Christ and to grow in Christ. Our model for love is our Lord and Savior, who gave Himself for us on the cross while we were yet sinners (Rom. 5:8). He teaches us to love by His own example.

C. Love is an action that always requires improvement.

Paul has repeatedly commended their love, but they still needed to excel even more (cf. 1 Thess. 1:3; 3:6, 12; 4:1). Since Christ’s perfect example is our standard (John 13:34), we always have room to grow. We can always love our spouse more, our children more, our family members more, our fellow Christians more, and our neighbors more. This is not automatic; it doesn’t come naturally to any of us. It requires deliberate thought and effort. If you’re not deliberately thinking about and working at loving others more, chances are you’re not improving at this commitment.

One practical way to work on this is to write 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 on an index card and read it over every morning until it governs all of your interactions with people that day. Begin applying it to your immediate family, but extend it to all you have contact with. Ask yourself hard questions about each quality:

“Love is patient.” Would my family or co-workers describe me as a patient person? Do I have a “short fuse”?

“Love is kind.” Am I kind and gracious toward others, especially when they fall short of my expectations?

“Love is not jealous.” Am I competing with others by trying to get the attention, relationships, or possessions which they have?

“Love does not brag and is not arrogant.” Am I self-focused, always trying to impress others with my achievements, my opinions, or my knowledge?

“Love does not act unbecomingly.” Am I rude? Do I often interrupt others? Am I considerate of their feelings and points-of-view?

“Love does not seek its own.” Am I selfish? Do I think about others’ needs ahead of my own?

“Love is not provoked.” Am I easily offended? Do I get angry when people don’t do what I want them to do?

“Love does not take into account a wrong suffered.” Do I keep score? Do I remind others of past sins or failures? Do I hold grudges? Am I quick to forgive?

“Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth.” Am I glad when others fail or sin, because it makes me look good and I can use it as ammunition against them? Am I truly happy when I hear of others’ victories in the Lord?

“Love bears all things.” Do I bear with people in their immaturity or shortcomings or do I always correct them?

“Love believes all things.” Am I suspicious of others? Do I trust them unless there is good reason not to do so?

“Love hopes all things.” Do I “write people off”? Do I believe that God can work to change the other person?

“Love never fails.” Do I give up on others who have wronged or hurt me? Am I committed to help that person become all that God wants him or her to be?

Even if others who know you would say that you’re doing fairly well at loving others, there’s always room to grow because our standard is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ.

But Paul was concerned not only for love in our homes and in the church, but also that God’s love would be seen in the workplace. The connection between verses 9-10 & 11-12 is not immediately obvious. But Paul seems to be showing how we should demonstrate God’s love (vv. 9-10) in the workplace (vv. 11-12).

2. We should be showing God’s love by our behavior at work.

1 Thess. 4:11-12: “and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need.” Note four things:

A. Showing God’s love at work requires goal-oriented behavior, not mindless drifting with the culture.

What is your goal at work? You say, “To provide for my family’s needs.” That’s a worthy goal, since Paul says that if you don’t provide for your family, have denied the faith and are worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5:8)! That’s a serious warning! But if your only goal is to provide for your family, how do you differ from the world? That’s why almost everyone works. They’re trying to provide enough for their family’s needs and wants.

Paul says, “make it your ambition.” That phrase implies a goal and some effort toward that goal. The goal isn’t to climb the ladder to success or make a pile of money or beat your competitors. The goal is to be a godly witness to those without Christ. In LifeWork ([YWAM Publishing], p. xxi), Darrow Miller writes,

As the so-called developed world enters the twenty-first century, too often we Westerners find that the secular worldview has reduced work to a career and life to an endless consuming of things. As a result we live without hope and purpose, and both our work and life itself carry little if any meaning…. When we see our worth as determined by the marketplace and the amount of money we make, we often sacrifice what matters most—family, friends, marriages, Christian fellowship—in pursuit of success, prestige, fame, power, and other goals prized by the world.

So the point of “make it your ambition” is that you need to think biblically about your goals at work. Your aim should not be to become rich or successful. Rather, it should be to display the love of our Savior to those who wrongly think that making a lot of money or becoming successful at work will bring lasting happiness.

B.The means for showing God’s love at work is to lead a quiet life and to attend to your own business.

What does Paul mean by “lead a quiet life”? He uses a similar phrase in 1 Timothy 2:2, where he says that we should pray “for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” Peter mentions a similar quality when he enjoins wives with unbelieving husbands to win them without a word, specifically “with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Pet. 3:1-6). In both contexts, the goal is godly witness, not through preaching, but through behavior that demonstrates contentment and peace in Christ. Because we are content with food and covering and don’t seek to get rich (1 Tim. 6:9-9), we can exude the quiet contentment that stands in contrast to the self-seeking, money-oriented values of the world.

“To attend to your own business” means that we should not be busybodies or gossips, meddling in matters that are none of our business (2 Thess. 3:11-12). He does not mean that we should not care about others’ problems, but rather that we should be known as those who can be trusted with confidential information without blabbing it all over the workplace. Both phrases imply that a Christian’s witness at work should primarily be through godly behavior, not through preaching.

C. The motivation for showing God’s love at work is to see the God-given dignity of work that is done for His glory.

The Greek culture in Paul’s day looked down on manual labor, which they viewed as fit only for slaves. But the Bible consistently upholds the dignity of all work. God gave Adam and Eve manual labor in the garden before the fall. Godly men in the Old Testament worked as farmers or shepherds. Paul made tents. He told slaves that they could do their menial work as unto the Lord (Col. 3:22-24). And, our Savior was a carpenter. When Paul says to work with your hands, he’s not prohibiting an office or professional job, but he is elevating manual labor as a dignified endeavor.

Some Christians erroneously view work as a curse. But God didn’t curse Adam’s work after the fall, but rather the ground that he tilled (Miller, p. 107). Work is now more difficult, but it does not lack dignity if we do it as unto the Lord. While some jobs may not be as satisfying as other jobs, we need to see work itself as being our calling from God. If you view work as a curse, you’ll try to avoid work and you won’t do your best on the job. You’ll only do the minimum required. But that hinders witness. Paul’s concern is that every Christian, including slaves, would (Col. 3:23) “do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men.” Why?

D. The aim for showing God’s love at work is to be a witness to outsiders and to provide for our own needs.

“To walk properly toward outsiders” means that our witness to unbelievers by our behavior on the job should always be uppermost in our minds. You should not spend company time in verbal witness, which would not please your employer. Except for a brief word here and there that doesn’t interfere with work, reserve that for after hours. Your employer didn’t hire you to evangelize your fellow employees on the job! Your witness on the job should primarily be by your contentment and peace in Christ and your personal integrity. Other workers should see that you aren’t greedily trying to take advantage of others. They should see your moral purity, concern for others, honesty, and work ethic.

“To not be in any need” means that we should be responsible managers of our income: paying our bills, living within our means, being generous and ready to share, and not mooching off the government or anyone else because we’re lazy or trying to take advantage of the system. Christians should not be a burden to others, but rather be able to help provide for those with true needs (the disabled, etc.; Eph. 4:28). Your fellow workers should be able to see that you live simply and generously as a Christian. You’re not acting in love when you expect financial favors from other believers simply because they’re your brothers in Christ.

Conclusion

Thus Paul is saying that we are to work diligently at loving one another and we are to act in ways that show God’s love at work. The Russian author, Leo Tolstoy (Twenty-Three Tales [Oxford University Press], “Where Love is, God is,” pp. 131-146) tells a story about a lonely, old Russian cobbler who was reading in Luke 7 about the Pharisee who did not welcome Jesus to his home. He thought, “If He came to me, would I welcome Him?” Pondering this, he fell asleep. Suddenly, the old man heard a voice calling his name: “Martin, Martin, look out in the street tomorrow for I shall come.”

The next day, he kept watch out of his window as he worked. He saw an old man that he knew, invited him in by his fire, and gave him some tea. He told the man about Christ’s mercy as he had been reading in the gospels. The old man listened with tears running down his cheeks and left thanking him for his hospitality.

A while later, Martin saw outside a woman dressed in shabby summer clothes, trying to keep her crying baby warm. He invited her in to sit by his fire. She was destitute and had pawned her shawl the day before to get something to eat. He fed her, gave her an old coat to wrap around her baby, and gave her the money to get her shawl out of pawn. Later he helped reconcile a poor woman and a boy who stole an apple from her. So the day passed, but there had been no appearance of Christ.

It was evening now. Martin lit his lamp, and opened his Bible. He had intended to read where he had left off the night before, but the Bible fell open to another place. Before he read, he heard a voice call out, “Martin, it is I.” He looked up and saw the old man he had helped, and then he vanished. This was repeated with the woman and her baby, and with the woman and boy he had served that day. Then he read, “I was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me in.” At the bottom of the page, he read, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me” (Matt. 25). Tolstoy concludes, “And Martin understood that his dream had come true; and that the Savior had really come to him that day, and he had welcomed him.”

That poor cobbler was demonstrating God’s love in his workplace. Paul wants us to be working at love for others and to be showing God’s love at work.

Application Questions

1. Some would say that if love requires effort and is not spontaneous, it is not genuine. Why is this false?
2. What’s the difference between loving a fellow Christian and liking him (or her)? Are we obligated to like others?
3. Is it wrong for a Christian to have “getting rich” as part of a career goal? Consider 1 Tim. 6:6-11 in your answer.
4. Are “full-time ministry” jobs a notch above “secular” jobs in God’s kingdom? Why/why not?

Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2016, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

Introduction

In just a few weeks most of us will be hovering over a gastronomical feast preparing to eat much more than we should, appropriately celebrating the generosity of God towards us that is much more than we deserve.

Not long after, we will celebrate the most sublime example of that generosity, the greatest reason for giving such hearty thanks just weeks before—God come down. God getting low. God with us. Emmanuel.

Christmas starts the story of Jesus, the greatest tale ever told. But it is not really a tale at all, because the story is a true one. It is the most important part of the true Story of Reality.

What follows is an excerpt from The Story of Reality—How the World Began, How It Ends, and Everything Important that Happens in Between. In this part of the Story I answer the second of the two most important questions anyone could ever ask about the remarkable man from Nazareth: Why did He come? It is a question there is far too much confusion about, even for those who call the Story their own.

To answer that question I first want to tell what Jesus did not come to do. Then I want to tell you why He did come. It’s captured in the most important Christmas verse in the Bible you will never see printed on a Christmas card and you will never hear recited at a Christmas pageant. It tells of a rescue operation that formally started at Christmas, but ended in a dark event decades later. It tells the reason Jesus was born. It tells the reason God came down.

The Rescue

Now to our second question: What did Jesus come to do? Since there is more debate on this than there ought to be, we must first correct a misunderstanding. Sometimes knowing what Jesus did not come to do is almost as important as knowing what He did come to do, because a wrong understanding of the first can lead to confusion on the second.

So let us be clear. Jesus did not come to help us get along, or teach us to take care of the poor, or to restore “social justice.”¹ To some, this assertion is a bold stroke, since they have been told just the opposite. This is because there are many noble people who are drawn to Jesus for His moral excellence (as they should be). However, often their admiration of His civic virtue has distracted them from a more important matter.

Their mistake is thinking that Jesus came principally to teach us how to live a better life. He did not. God had already sent many before with the kind of advice we need to hear, and there was no point in His personally coming down merely to repeat what had already been said. No, Jesus came for a different reason.

What I am going to say next will come as a shock to some, but here it is. You can eliminate every single thing Jesus ever said in His life about the poor and social justice, and still you will not undermine His main message one bit. As severe as that may sound, this is precisely what one of Christ’s closest followers actually did.

The Gospel of John is the last biography written on Jesus, and it came to us from His last surviving Apostle, the “beloved” disciple John, a member of Jesus’ intimate inner circle. Many think it the most elegant summary and most definitive statement of who Jesus was and what He came to do. Yet you can read from John’s first sentence to his last and you will not find a single word about helping the poor or restoring social justice. Not one. In John’s lone reference to the poor, Jesus is actually somewhat dismissive of them.² That is not because He doesn’t care about them, but because He is comparing their situation with something far more important.

This observation about John’s account in itself seems enough to make the point about Jesus’ focus, but let’s go a bit further. Jesus gave four major discourses—the Sermon on the Mount, the Bread of Life Discourse, the Olivet Discourse, and the Upper Room Discourse.³ Only in the first does He mention the poor at all. Yet even here there are two qualifiers you must keep in mind.

First, in His Sermon on the Mount Jesus commends not the poor per se, but rather the poor in spirit. To them, He says, belongs the Kingdom of Heaven. There is a reason the Kingdom belongs to them—not because they are poverty stricken (their income is irrelevant to Jesus), but because they are morally broken and they know it.⁴ That is what “poor in spirit” means. Picture the tax collector in Jesus’ parable—hardly a destitute man—beating his breast pleading, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”⁵ This man proclaiming his spiritual poverty goes away justified, Jesus says, while the Pharisee, whose spiritual arrogance clouds his genuine spiritual need, does not.

The second qualifier I want you to keep in mind about Jesus’ comments on the poor is this. In the vast majority of cases where Jesus mentions the poor, He does so not to commend the poor as such, but to make a point about something else—hypocrisy, a widow’s generosity, Zaccheus’s repentance, the rich young ruler’s confusion, or a lesson about the afterlife.⁶ Even when He mentions them, the plight of the poor simply was not the focus of Jesus’ teaching.

Now, we must not conclude from this that Jesus didn’t care about the poor and so we need not care, either. He cared very much about them, and the Story has much to say about their situation. Do not miss, though, that He also cared about the rich and powerful. Jesus helped everyone and anyone who came to Him—poor beggar or prostitute, wealthy tax collector or Pharisee. The divide for Jesus was not between the poor and the rich, but between the proud and the repentant, regardless of income or social standing. Miss that, and you miss everything.

These are the facts we must face if we are to get Jesus right. “Social justice” is not the Gospel. It was not Jesus’ message. It was not why He came. His real message was much more radical. Jesus’ teaching—and the Story itself—focuses on something else. Not on the works of Christians, but rather on the work of Christ. That is what the Story teaches.

And so our question remains: Why did God come down? What was the reason He became a man? What did He come to earth to do? The Story tells us.

I want you to think for a moment about what the Story says about Christmas. Now when I say “Christmas,” I am not speaking of any of those things that usually come to mind when you think about the birth of Christ. I do not want you to think, for example, about shepherds or wise men or stables or mangers or anything like that. Those things all have their place, but they have nothing at all to do with my point.

I am talking about something in the Story you probably have never noticed. I want you to consider the most important Christmas verse in the Story that you will never see on a Christmas card, and you will never hear in a Christmas pageant because it is not in the accounts of Jesus’ birth at all. In fact, it does not appear anywhere in the record of His life. Instead, you find it in a dark and foreboding passage that speaks of blood and sacrifice and death. It is a section of the Story recounting a ghastly, grisly system of slaughter where bulls and goats were bled out, their innocent lives forfeit on behalf of others who were the guilty ones.

Now, I think it is obvious to just about everyone that animals can never really pay for people at all. The system of sacrifice God gave to the Hebrews, as important as it was, served only as a kind of sop, a temporary measure to cover man’s moral wound for the moment. It would never do in the long run, and it was not meant to. No, man owes the debt, and in the long run man, not creatures, must pay. And only a sinless man—someone with no debt of his own—could cover the debt of another. And only a man who was more than a man could ever pay for the sins of multitudes.

And this brings us to the most important Christmas verse you will never hear on Christmas. Here it is:

Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings You were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about Me in the scroll—I have come to do Your will, O God.’” (Heb. 10:5-7 NIV)

Note the opening words of this passage: “When Christ came into the world….” The Story is saying that on that first Christmas, in some incredible way the eternal Son of God in a baby’s body said to His Father, “Here I am. I will do as You have asked. I accept the body You have prepared for Me, the body that will bleed out in perfect payment for sin.”

And this is the answer to our question. This is why Jesus came to earth. God’s Son surrendered His sinless human self to be the future unblemished offering to perfectly and completely save sinners.

And this we do find in the birth narratives, everywhere. God tells Joseph that Mary “will give birth to a son, and you will give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.” In the field that first Christmas night the angel tells the shepherds, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord.” Zacharias prophesies over his son, the infant John Baptist, saying John would go prepare the way for “the Lord,” and “give His people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins.” Thirty years later John points at the Lord Jesus Christ and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”⁷

Each of these events echoes our unsung Christmas verse: “A body You prepared for Me.” The Lord. The Christ. The Savior. Emmanuel. God with us, who would die for us. The Lamb of God.

So, the Story tells us the precise reason the Son came to Earth. Not to teach love and peace and care for the poor, but to submit Himself to something unspeakably violent and brutal. That is why every crèche ought to have a cross hanging over it, because Jesus was born to die. And on this point Jesus speaks clearly:

• “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” (Jn. 3:17 NIV)
• “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Lk. 19:10 NIV)
• “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Lk. 5:32 NIV)
• “I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative.” (Jn. 10:17-18 NASB)
• “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” (Matt. 20:28 NIV)

I want you to think very carefully about Jesus’ last statement, because there are three questions we must answer to understand His meaning. The first is, “What is a ransom?” Well, a ransom is the price paid to purchase a hostage or a slave, of course. A ransom buys a body. Second, “Whose body does Jesus buy with the ransom?” He buys those who are held hostage. He pays a price to purchase sinners, rebels, and slaves. Finally, “What is the price He will pay?” Jesus will buy bodies by surrendering His own body. “A body You prepared for Me.” He will sacrifice Himself to save others.

So, Jesus came to earth to save sinners. The statement is so common to our ears, it is easy to miss its significance. “Save” means to rescue from imminent danger. Jesus came to rescue us because we were in danger. What was that danger? What was Jesus rescuing us from? Here is the answer. Jesus did not come to rescue us from our ignorance or our poverty or our oppressors or even from ourselves. Jesus came to rescue us from the Father. ⁸

Remember, the King is angry.⁹ He is the One who is offended. He is the One who is owed. He is the Sovereign we have rebelled against, the Father we have disobeyed, the friend we have betrayed. And that is a dangerous place for us to be. Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell.” Later in the Story we learn, “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”¹⁰

That is the bad news. And it is very bad news, to be sure. Yet, without the bad news, the good news is not good. And the good news is very, very good. Here it is: The Father has mounted a rescue operation. There has been an invasion.¹¹ God came down. “A body You prepared for Me.”

Jesus’ life was filled with many extraordinary deeds, so many, one of His disciples wrote, the world itself could not contain the books needed to record them.¹² But there are two very particular things Jesus did that were vital to the rescue.

First, Jesus lived the life we should live, but do not. We rebel; He submitted. We sin; He obeyed. We live for self; He lived for the Father. We falter; He succeeded. He had no hint of sin, no darkness, no shadow. As one has put it, “He remained free, uncontaminated, uncompromised.”¹³ Jesus never failed, obeying even to the death. This no one has ever done. There was no one like Him.

Second, Jesus made a trade. He took His perfect life and He traded it for our rotten lives. He gets our badness—and the judgment and punishment that go with it. We get His goodness. We take His place, and He takes our place.

If that seems hard to imagine (and I understand completely if it does), let me offer something that might help. On a flight from Jacksonville to Miami I spoke with a dear Muslim woman about the differences between the God of Jesus and the God of Mohammed. I said that both were holy and both demanded we be holy, too, and there will be justice to pay because we are not. But on this issue of justice, I said, we come to an important distinction.

I asked the Muslim woman to imagine our plane being hijacked and the terrorists trying to drag her out onto the tarmac to kill her in front of cameras for all the world to see. I then asked her to imagine that I put my own body between hers and the attackers and said, “Don’t take her. Take me instead.” She said she could not imagine anyone doing that for her.

Yet this, I told her, is what God has done in Jesus. To satisfy justice, God came down. Not Allah; Yahweh. Not Mohammed; Jesus. God stepped out of Heaven and dwelt among us—“A body You prepared for Me”—and said to the Father, “Take Me instead.” That was the trade.

The trade took place on a small outcropping of rock outside the walls of ancient Jerusalem. It was called Golgotha, the place of the skull. We know it as Calvary, the place of the cross. It was the reason Jesus was born. It is the reason God came down.

Taken from The Story of Reality by Gregory Koukl. Copyright © 2017 by Gregory Koukl. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.

¹ The term “social justice” is misleading. The poor only need justice if they have been wronged in some way. Otherwise, the Story teaches charity and mercy towards those in need. The view that all poor people are victims is a recent invention. It is not what Jesus taught, and it is not part of the Story.

² The single reference in John to the poor is found in Jn. 12:8: “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have Me.” (NIV)

³ Find the Sermon on the Mount in Matt. 5-7; the Bread of Life Discourse in Jn. 6; the Olivet Discourse in Matt. 24, Lk. 21, Mk. 13; and the Upper Room Discourse Jn. 13-17.

⁴ Jesus does make reference to the poor in Lk. 4:18-19: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” (NASB) Even here, though, it seems clear that, in light of the rest of the verse and everything that follows about Jesus’ teaching on “the Gospel,” He is principally making reference to spiritual benefits, not material benefits.

⁵ “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Lk. 18:9-14 NIV)

⁶ Hypocrisy (Matt. 6:2-3), a widow’s generosity (Lk. 21:2-3), Zaccheus’s repentance (Lk. 19:8), the rich young ruler’s confusion (Matt. 19:21), a lesson about the afterlife (Lk. 16:20, 22).

⁷ “And this we do find in the birth narratives….” Matt. 1:21 (NIV), Lk. 2:11 (NIV), Lk. 1:76-77 (NIV), Jn. 1:29 (NASB).

⁸ Jesus saves us from the Father, but His intention is not at odds with the Father since it was the Father who, out of love, sent Jesus to rescue the world in the first place.

⁹ The point about the King being angry is developed earlier, in chapter 15 of The Story of Reality.

¹⁰ “Do not fear those who kill the body…” (Matt. 10:28 NASB), “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31 NASB)

¹¹ The idea that the incarnation is a kind of invasion of enemy-occupied territory comes from C.S Lewis in Mere Christianity.

¹² “The world itself could not contain the books…” (Jn. 21:25 NASB)

¹³ “He remained free, uncontaminated, uncompromised,” John Stott, The Cross Of Christ (Downers Grove: IVP, 1986), 231.

Editor’s Note: This is a lightly edited transcription of the audio message. Thanks goes to Marilyn Fine for the transcription work.

We just have two more weeks of this series, and I hope that this series has been as much a blessing to you as it has to me. I have been so blessed in studying these songs, the stories of the writers, and all of the circumstances around each song. Today, we come to one of the all-time favorite great hymns of the faith. Today, we will be talking about the song, “It is Well With My Soul.”

Now, we know that this song is about peace. There is probably no other song that has been sung as frequently as this song at funerals, at times of bereavement, or at other times of grief. This is an all-time favorite. I think the reason why so many people choose to sing this song or have it sung, in times of turmoil, is that it so eloquently expresses the feelings and the faith of a Christian. That is one of the things about poetry, about hymns, about the Book of Psalms–they so eloquently express how the writer feels and we take those words and we say, you know, “that is exactly how I feel. I just did not know how to say it that way.” Have you ever read anything like that? “That is how I feel. They just put into words exactly what I have been feeling.” I think that is why this song is so loved.

Now, the song begins “when peace like a river.” Even though peace is not mentioned that much more in the song, it is really a song about having peace within your soul. I want to talk about that for a minute before we get into this in a little more detail. I am sure most of you are familiar with the biblical meaning of the word, the Hebrew word for peace. It is “shalom.”

I am taking Hebrew this semester. It is about to kill me. I had this as a vocabulary word last week and I know this word. It is the only one I know of about 5,000 words that we have to learn. Of course, I was especially interested in looking up the definition and looking at all the various meanings. You may be familiar with the word, shalom. It is not just peace. It also brings a strong, strong connection with wholeness or wellness. It can also mean help. You probably know that to those who speak Hebrew, “shalom,” is their greeting. It is what they say when they see each other. It is what they say when they say goodbye to each other. It is shalom. It means I wish for you or I pray for you peace. Not only peace such as a quiet spirit or happiness or things going well in your life, but a sense of wholeness that everything is in order in your life, that everything is as God intended it to be. So, there is really a much deeper meaning to the word “peace” as it is used in the scripture.

Now, we know that in the Fruit of the Spirit peace appears. Dr. Brunson just preached recently a series on the Fruit of the Spirit. His message on peace was one of the best things I ever heard. I say that about all his sermons. It was so good. It is a great series if you are studying this. The Fruit of the Spirit is peace. In Romans 5:1, Paul tells us what we used to be in the past. We were at enmity with God because of our sin. But, when Christ came, then we had peace with God. So, there is peace with God in that sense.

Then there is peace with one another. The Bible talks a lot about relationships. Paul in his letter to the Philippians urged two women to get along with one another. I guess in biblical times sometimes women did not get along. He urged them…how would you like that to be your heritage, your name, in Paul’s letter for the rest of the world to know that you were in an argument with another woman! But, this carries the idea of peace with one another, a peaceful relationship.

I think more than that as we talk about this word today we are looking at it in relation to inner peace, a spirit that is not restless or troubled, but our spirits being at peace with our situations, with our circumstances. That does not necessarily mean that our circumstances have changed to give us peace. It means that we have become at peace with our circumstances and this is a much deeper meaning than we might ordinarily associate peace of mind with.

Now, you are probably very familiar with the fact that in this day and age, at this very time, the highest selling medication in this country is Prozac or Zoloft or medications that alleviate stress and emotional depression. I have a friend who is a nurse and she was the nurse at a youth camp last summer at a large church in the Metroplex. I saw her afterward and asked how did she make out. She said, well, let me tell you, I was prepared to deal with skinned knees and maybe a broken arm or two and sprained ankles, and that kind of stuff. She said all I did was to dispense medication. These kids are medicated. I literally could not even stop for a coffee break in the morning putting out everybody’s medicine. Much of it was this type medication. That tells us something about our culture, doesn’t it? Even though we have a great deal of affluence and things, we seem to live in a time where stress, emotional turmoil, unhappiness, and especially depression is really prevalent in our culture.

I think I told this story in here before about the time we were in North Carolina in the mountains. We went into a little health food store when I was in my health food stage (which I got out of pretty quickly. Stay in that for very long and you will want to get out of it, too!) So, at this counter they had these little stones and on these flat little stones were painted words like love and joy and peace and things like that. There was a little sign which said $3.95 apiece. I said, “What are these?” She said, “Oh, those, they are like crystals and if you take them and you buy one and you keep it with you all the time, whatever the word you have, that will happen to you.” I said, “Really, I want to talk about this. So, if I buy the stone that says, joy, I am just going to automatically have joy?” She started to get a little antagonistic as she could tell I was kind of making fun of her. I did not mean to, but it just burst out of me. She said, “Yes, that is true.” I said, “Well, is there a money-back guarantee? That is what I want to know.” She said, “No.” Of course, I just let it go, but I did say to her, “Do you sell these?” She said she couldn’t keep them in stock. That, people, is sad. That is sad. Somebody is making a lot of money painting on little rocks.

So, the song, “It Is Well With My Soul,” talks about this kind of peace, a peace of wholeness and wellness that does not come from an outside source, but it comes from faith in Christ. It comes from God’s gift.

Now, I want to tell you the story briefly. I am sure many of you are very familiar with the story of Horatio Spafford who wrote the lyrics to this song. It is a classic story. He was a successful attorney in Chicago in the middle 1800s. He and his wife had four daughters and a four-year-old son who about the time that all of this started taking place was lost to scarlet fever. The little boy died of scarlet fever at age four. Very soon after that, literally just weeks after that, the Great Chicago Fire occurred which consumed virtually the whole city. He lost most of his fortune. Everything was gone. So, he put his efforts into trying to rebuild the city and helping the thousands of homeless people who had nothing.

Well, later on in 1873, he decided his family needed a vacation because of all the stress and all of that. So, they were going to see some friends in Europe. He was detained by business and Spafford’s wife and his daughters went ahead. They were on this luxury liner, the Ville Du Havre, and you may know the story that during the night, off the coast of Ireland, the ship collided with an iron sailing vessel and the ship was sunk. You can only imagine as you read those words in the hymn’s stories. If you saw Titanic, that is what instantly came to my mind of the fear and the panic and the screaming. We can only imagine how it must be to know that your children, in this instance, or other loved ones died in that way. Well, his wife was rescued floating unconscious on a piece of wreckage. All the survivors were taken to Wales. She cabled home to her husband and her cable simply said “saved alone.” Of course, he immediately booked passage to Wales to be with his wife. When he got on the ship, he told the captain that when you come to the place where the Ville Du Havre went down, will you come get me? I need to see that. So, it was on a dark, cold December night, early in the morning, the wee hours of the morning, that the captain knocked on his door and said that he believed they were passing by the place where the ship sank. He walked out to the deck and stood there in the freezing wind, in the darkness with the black inkiness of the sky and the water. He wept in grief over his lost children that went down in that spot. When he went back to his cabin, he could not sleep, of course. But, as he sat, these words began to come to his mind and they began to overflow. He took a pencil and he began to write these words , “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll.” He had just been out there looking at the ocean, the giant waves. “When sorrows.” He saw those sea billows as metaphorical and the sorrows that just washed over his soul. Huge immense billows which came and washed over him. “When sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say it is well with my soul.” That is usually the end of the story, but the story goes that when he and his wife were reunited, they took stock of their lives and decided what they were going to do with the rest of their life. They decided to go to Jerusalem. They went to Jerusalem and they began a ministry there to orphans. They bought outside of the city walls a home of a sheik that had sold his home. It is now The American Colony Hotel. If you ever go to Jerusalem, you must go there because it is a lovely, lovely home. It is a little hotel now. There are pictures all through it. Pictures taken in Jerusalem in the early 1900s and around Israel. He and his wife gave their lives to ministering to orphans and the homeless and the helpless and the needy in the place where Jesus had lived. That is where they ended up dying. To this day, some of their descendants, the Spafford descendants, continue that ministry and it is located right within the Damascus Gate of the Old City.

So, he left quite a heritage not only in this song, but I think also of proving in the way he lived out the rest of his life after an unspeakable tragedy. The fact that his life could go on and he could still minister and he could still give and he could still have a degree of satisfaction and joy in this life.

[Bible.org Editor’s Note: Unfortunately the picture is not as rosy as it might seem. Before moving to Jerusalem the Spafford’s left their church and created their own sect which resulted in a number of deviant beliefs and practices over the years. Thus Horatio’s life can serve as both an encouragement and a warning.]

Now, we are going to watch this today on video. You cannot have a series on him without the Gaither Homecoming video. I know. So, you are going to sing…this is kind of the all-stars…and you will see famous people like Michael W. Smith and people like that. It opens up Bill Gaither’s interviewing Ruth Graham, Billy Graham’s wife. This is her favorite hymn so she talks about it and then they go into the song so I want you to listen to it.

Bill: Oh, the bliss

Ruth: Of that glorious thought

Bill: My sin, not in part

Ruth: But in whole

Bill: Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord

Ruth: Absolutely

Song playing….

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

So much goodness! I want you to note the train of thought in the verses of this song. The first verse he talks about when sorrows like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, God has taught me to say it is well with my soul. When there is personal grief and sorrow so great that I cannot even express it, nevertheless, it is well with my soul. I know that God is in control of my life. I know that God is with me. I know He will give me the grace to go through what I have to do. That is what He talks about in verse 1. I hear people often say, “oh, I could never go through what somebody has had to go through.” You know what. You do not have to. God gives you the grace to go through what you go through and you do not have to have the grace to go through what everybody else does. He gives you the grace to go through what you are going through at that time.

The second verse talks about my sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part but the whole was nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul. What is that? The peace of God. My sin. I do not have to bear the punishment and the judgment of my sin. Remember, we talked about that in here before. When you invite Christ to come into your heart and you give your life to Him, He took your judgment and your punishment in His very body on the cross. That is what we are talking about when we talk about giving your heart and life to Him. You are no longer under that curse of sin. So, what is he talking about here? Horatio Spafford is talking about his being at peace with God. I do not have to bear the guilt. Romans 8:1, “There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” I do not have to bear the condemnation. I do not have to feel guilty. I do not have to bear the punishment because Jesus has taken all of my sin on the cross.

Then, the last verse which is just such…can you sing those words or even read them without getting a lump in your throat? I cannot because I think of how many of God’s children in times of sorrow and grief have clung to these words with everything that is in them. There is a CD that has this that I listen to when I walk. I look up at the sky and I think, “God how many of your children who have had to walk through such horrible, difficult things have looked up at that sky and thought, ‘one of these days the clouds will roll back and the Lord shall descend.’” You know what will happen? He will come and it will be well. See, the contrast in this song is that he is saying my personal grief and sorrow are unbearable, but it is well. I will get through it. God will give me the grace to do it. My eternal security – it is well. The end of time when all of life…when it is all over, it is well. Either way, you see, no matter what, it is well with me. It is well with my soul because he had made peace with God and knew who and what He was doing. You know what? This goes back to the meaning of the word, “peace,” a wholeness. Not just a lack of conflict. When Jesus said, “My peace I give unto you.” He said I do not give you peace like the world gives you. Peace like the world gives is the removal of the bad circumstances, but I give you My peace. “My peace I give to you.”

Now, very quickly, let us talk about a couple of these things. There are many things that disturb our peace – losses, the grief, the sorrow like Horatio Spafford went through and Job went through. I want to say this quickly because I want you to identify with people in the Bible who have had losses and who were in turmoil and disturbed worry. In Matthew 6, Jesus spoke about worry. There is a proverb that says, “Anxiety in the heart of man weighs it down.” I love the way it says that. Is it not just like a weight? Is it not when you are worried it is just a heavy weight on you.

Jesus said, before He was going to the cross, He said, “My spirit is troubled. I am troubled in My spirit and you can sense in Jesus Himself anxiety. These are normal things that trouble us and make us restless.

Disappointments. I was reading the other day the last chapter in Luke where the two people were walking after Jesus had been crucified were walking on the road to Emmaus and Jesus walked with them and they did not know it was Jesus. He said to tell Him what was going on and He tells them about Christ. They said we were so hoping He had been the one. We know the end of that story that He reveals Himself to them, but they did not. I think about that when I read that. “We were so hoping He had been the one.” That is something we had been so hoping in. We just knew it was going to happen and it did not. It did not happen. Your prayers were not answered the way you thought. Disappointment. These are things that rob us and destroy our peace.

Let me tell you something. There is a way that we can have God’s peace very quickly. First of all to understand God’s promise. In John 14, and I mentioned this verse before, Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled or afraid.” It is a gift from God. This peace that Jesus gives each one of His children is a gift. It is a gift that He gives us. Listen, how could Horatio Spafford bear this? God gave him peace. God gave him peace enough to write this song. God, I think, puts something on this song that makes it so that where it binds itself to your spirit. I mean I think so many people feel that way. I will say there are other hymns I am very much over that I will never need to hear again. This is not one of them. I could hear this 50 times a day and I start to cry every time I hear it. That is the way this kind of song is.

Jesus said, “I give my peace to you.” Well, let us think about Horatio Spafford. He gave him that peace. He wrote this song. He could express it. What else did He give him? He gave him a ministry. He gave him a ministry to people who had no parents, to people who had no children. He gave him a ministry of preaching the gospel and sharing the good news. He gives them still to this day even though he is in heaven he gives him a ministry of ministering to the down and out in Jerusalem. That is a gift from God, part of the peace, the wholeness. His life that was given to serve God.

Another way we can have God’s peace is to be spiritually minded, understanding and seeking to understand spiritual things and to make a choice to do that. In Romans 8:6, Paul said “to be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” As you fill your mind with songs and with the things of God it brings peace to your spirit and to your soul. Then, mostly importantly of all, to know God’s Word. Psalm 119 says, “Great peace have those who love thy law.” Great peace to those…have you ever been at worry or anxious or you are disturbed? What do you do? You go for your Bible, don’t you. Say, Lord, speak to me. Give me some comfort. Show me. Give me something to hang on to. Great peace have those who love thy law. God’s Word brings us comfort and brings us peace at a time when we need it. So, the peace of God is a gift and He gives it to us when we need it and He gives it to us. That does not mean necessarily that all of the bad things go away. It simply means that He gives us the ability to walk through those things and to continue to trust Him. I have looked at people who have gone through very difficult things. Even though they may be angry at God or upset or question or something, it is amazing to me how many people that are truly His still cling on to Him and say somehow I am not going to let go. They walk through that and God gives them an even greater ministry and even greater opportunity for their lives.

Now, a person such as that is Dawn Meade. Dawn is the Director of Women’s Ministry here. Many of you remember it was not that long ago when she was eight months pregnant with her little boy, Chandler. Her husband was on staff here with the prayer ministry. She came home from work one day and found him dead. You may remember how tragic that was and how we prayed for her. Chandler was born a healthy, good looking little energetic boy and if there is one word in watching Dawn walk through all of this, if there is one word I would use to describe her in watching from a distance it would be serenity. She does have the peace of God all over her. So, I want her to come and share for a few minutes about it. It is one thing to talk about it. It is something else to hear from someone who has walked it.

Dawn

Thank you. Thank you, very much. You will have to forgive me because tears come very easy to me. “That’s OK, we can do that here.” I have her permission so…

I told Susie earlier that I felt like I needed to call her yesterday and say “you do not need me to come up here to talk about peace. Not if you would have seen me traveling on an airline this Thanksgiving with a 17-month-old who had a stomach virus and a head cold.” What is it about 17 months old that you have to teach them how to share their toys, but they share freely their germs! So, I spent Thanksgiving myself with a stomach virus. You walk through that and you just have to do some praying: “God, I am clinging on to you because right now I am angry. I am hurt and I just do not understand, but I know that I know that You are in control and I know.”

I have those verses just like many of you do where you hang your hat. “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to give you a hope and a future.” We hang our hat on that. I heard a definition, or read a definition in the dictionary one time about peace and it was the absence of conflict. I think Susie alluded to that. That is the world’s definition. That is not God’s definition of peace. If you look through the Word it says we will have trials. We will have tribulations. Being a Christian is not an absence of those things. As a matter of fact, it is almost an invitation for those things because as we walk through those things, we have an opportunity to decrease so that He can increase because there is an outside world watching on asking, “is there something else to this life? Is there something more than this?” Oh, yes, the answer is yes! There is. I think Susie even alluded to the scripture verse. This is Jesus talking in John 14:27. I am leaving you with a gift, peace of mind and heart and the peace I give you is not like the peace the world gives. So, do not be troubled or afraid. The peace that the world has is not what His peace is about. His peace has nothing to do what is going on around here. His peace has to do with what is going on in here.

Since Crawford died on June 10th of 2002, raising as a single parent our son by myself has many of its own challenges. I know many of you are single parents and have walked through that yourself. I remember one night, it was a 3 am feeding, and I was exhausted, just absolutely exhausted. I was still nursing at the time and Chandler had finished nursing and it was that calm in the middle of the night and he was satisfied. In the quiet and the stillness, out of the corner of his eye, he looked up at me and he smiled. Just the sense of that moment of God being near was precious. Then, I sat him up and then he projectile vomited all over me and himself! You know, you just gotta’ fasten your seatbelt sometimes and hold on, but God was there in that part of it. He did not leave just because the moment changed or the moment got a little more hard or difficult. His presence was still there.

One of the verses that God gave me to know my salvation was 1 John 5:13. “These things I have written so that you may know that you have eternal life.” Hang your hat on it, ladies, because you can know that He is in control. You can know that He is sovereign. Let me tell you about one of the things God has led us through. Chandler is 17-and-a-half months old now and a very beautiful, vivacious and very active and investigative little boy— as many of you who have some 17 month olds know. The thing for me that is difficult is at the same time that I say 17-and-a-half months I also know it has been 17-and-a-half months since I lost my husband. So there is a precious, bitter-sweetness when I say the age of my son because it is also a reminder.

Since we are talking about hymns, let me share the one that I want sung at my funeral. I would like to read some of the words to it. It is the hymn, “Because He Lives.”

God sent His son, they called him Jesus,
He came to love, heal and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon.
An empty grave is there to prove my savior lives.

The second verse:

How sweet to hold a newborn baby and feel the pride and joy he gives.
But greater still, the calm assurance this child can face uncertain days because He lives.
Then, one day, I will cross the river,
I will fight life’s final war with pain,
and then as death gives way to victory,
I will see the lights of glory and I will know He lives.”

Any of you who have lost dear, precious loved ones know. Heaven is a little sweeter place because of it. Earth has lost a little bit of its shine, if you will. Yet we go on. We have much to be grateful for. We have much to praise the Lord for, but there are precious family members that are on the other side cheering us on and will be there when we see them, as well. So, what do we do? We hang our hats on His promises. We walk—sometimes one minute at a time. Sometimes it does not look the way we want it to look, but we can know that we know He has our best interest at heart. Those of you who know Him personally know then that at one point this is all going to be over and we are going to see Him face to face. We are going to see our loved ones again. One of the things I want to hear is “well done, well done, good and faithful servant.” Thanks! (applause)

Conclusion

Let me just end today with a couple of scriptures. In Philippians 4, the classic verse on peace it says that we are to “Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made know to God.” When that happens, what will happen? “Then, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” That is a great promise about the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. We do not know why we feel that way, we do not know how we are doing it. I am sure Dawn looks back and thinks “I do not know how I made it through those months,” but God’s peace will do that. That is a promise. It is a gift from God. Let me remind you about Isaiah 26. That simple little verse says, “Thou will keep him in perfect peace”….what?!… “whose mind is stayed on Thee.” As we keep our hearts and minds fixed on Christ Jesus, He will give us that peace within ourselves.

Let’s pray. Father, thank you for the gift of peace You have given us. We seek to understand what You mean when you say in Your Word, when You say that we have peace and we have these other gifts and, Lord, I thank you for the understanding that it is not just about things going right. It is much deeper than that. That we have peace with You. That we can have peace with one another in our relationships and most of all that we can have peace with our circumstances and peace with the fact that you are in control of our lives. So, Lord, I pray that today it would be well with the souls of every woman in this room. If there is anyone here today, Lord, that it is not well with them, they are troubled, they are not sure of their relationship with you, Lord, I pray that today would be the day that that is settled and it would be well with their soul.

Thank you for this gift that You have given us, Lord. I pray that we would be faithful to appreciate it, faithful to use it, and that we would also be found faithful, Lord, that despite what we go through that we would be experiencing the peace and the joy it is to walk with you. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

See you next week.