Good Grief (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)
Gary McManus, 02/19/2017Part of the Life With Jesus is Better series, preached at a Sunday Morning service
February 19, 2017 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Good Grief!
Since the end of December, the Pastor
has been to five funeral callings,
conducted one graveside service and two
funerals.
A conversation the Pastor has never been a part of. . .
And a fellow Duke graduate who has got it all wrong.
Cry; it’s the human thing to do!
The Bible states grief is a part of life’s plan.
(Ecclesiastes 3:1-4, Lamentations 3:19-24)
The Bible states that God supports us in
our grieving. Our culture and society do
NOT support us in grieving.
Our society has an official “Get Over It Day”!
It was invented by a GRIEVING man!
Our culture often shames people who are grieving.
This can only mean that most people and sometimes
even our friends are uncomfortable with OUR pain.
It wasn’t always that way.
. . .Marriage is a threshold of life experience.
Death is a threshold of life experience.
All grieve differently.
Grief is not just for death. . .
grief occurs at the end of anything.
We mortals live our lives trying NOT to think of
something that has ALWAYS been true and remains
a part of God’s truth for us—death.
Paul’s church in Greece (Greeks and Romans)
seem to have caused a great deal of ANXIETY
about death. (But then, they were not schooled
in the Old Testament).
So the Apostle Paul wrote
1 Thessalonians 4:13
( Paul says elsewhere (1 Corinthians) if you
don’t believe in the resurrection as Christians
do, you have no hope. [1 Corinthians 15:12-19])
1 Thessalonians 4:14 ff
Pastor always emphasizes for those attending
the funeral that the promise Paul wrote about
is plural!
The living will have sorrow.
The dead, the dying should have hope!
What do the hymns state that we sing. . .
“Blest be the tie that binds. . .”
“. . .When we ALL get to heaven. . .
what a day of rejoicing THAT will be.”
Amen
Recommended helps:
Living Through Personal Crisis by
Ann Kaiser Stearns
Heaven is Real by Don Piper
90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper
Heaven is For Real by Todd Burpo
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