Biblical grief: The grave is not the last word

I Thessalonians 4:13-14

Sunday, November 21, 1999

Introduction: The Pope met with his cardinals to discuss a proposal from Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister of Israel. The issue before them was an invitation by Mr. Netanyahu to a game of golf with the Pope to show the ecumenical spirit of the Jewish and Catholic faiths.
The Pope wanted to accept the invitation but he had never had a golf club in his hands. “Have we not a cardinal who can represent me in the game with the Israeli leader?”
“None that can play very well,” he was told. “But there is a devout Catholic by the name of Jack Nicklaus who plays very well. We could offer him a cardinalship, ask him to play as your representative, then we would be showing a spirit of cooperation, and we’ll also win the game!”
The idea was approved. Nicklaus accepted the offer to become a cardinal and agreed to represent the Pope in a game of golf.
The day after the game, Nicklaus arrived at the Vatican to report on the ecumenical match. “I have some good news, and some bad news, Your Holiness.”
“Give me the good news first, Cardinal Nicklaus.”
“Well, your Holiness, I don’t like to brag, but even though I’ve played some terrific rounds of golf in my life, this was the best I’ve ever played. I must have been inspired from above; my drives were long and true, my irons were accurate and purposeful, and my putting was perfect. With all due respect, my play was truly miraculous.”
“So what’s the bad news?” asked the Pope.
Nicklaus sighed, “I lost to Rabbi Tiger Woods by three strokes.”
Now friends, the game of golf is seldom a life and death matter, but we come today to a topic in our study of I Thessalonians that is exactly that, life and death. The topic is grief.
I doubt there is a soul here today who has not had an experience of grief. I remember my bitter sense of loss when as a young boy my uncle Arthur died as a result of an accident on a road repair project. When our 3 day old daughter died in Indonesia, it seemed I had a brick in my stomach for two weeks. Recently we had to have our dog put to sleep after 11 years with us, and I confess I wasn’t prepared for the emotional hit I took that day. And many of us have suffered grief to a far greater extent than I have, losing brothers, sisters, parents, spouses, and children. So what can we to do in the face of this all-too-common experience called grief?
How do we handle it? As followers of the Lord Jesus, what can we do to honor Him in the face of the wrenching emotions of grief? How do we not only bear it, but how do we conquer it? What do the Scriptures offer us by way of counsel for this most difficult of experiences? Are we doomed to continual defeat in the face of this monster, or is there a basis for hope?
Let’s consider what Paul says here on the subject, then let’s draw some conclusions, some lessons for life. Out of these lessons we can be encouraged, we can have hope as we journey through life, and especially when the journey takes us through the valleys of death.
Our text, I Thessalonians 4:13,14,18—“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.” And then verse 18: “Therefore comfort one another with these words.”
The first observation we can make here from Paul’s statement is that he wrote so they would be both informed and comforted. Verse 13 and then verse 18 make these points. “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep…therefore comfort one another with these words.” And this observation leads us to our first lesson (1) in dealing with grief—Truth is the key that unlocks the prison door of grief. We know from all kinds of experiences that grief is very much like a prison. It locks us up as genuinely as the heavy metal doors of the Grant County jail confine inmates there. In the early stages of grief, often we cannot function. I say ‘often’ because it’s not always so. Over the years, I’ve been with many members of this church family in the corridors and waiting rooms of the local hospitals. Reactions vary to that first news of the death of a loved one, in part because we are all different--different in our personalities, different in our temperaments, different in our maturity levels, different in our closeness to the Lord Jesus, different in our experiences with death.
We see the same differences in the men and women of the Bible. Abraham is dry-eyed and fully functional as he prepares to deal with Isaac’s impending death. No tears prevent him from seeing the ram in the thicket that will become the alternate sacrifice. Ezekiel sheds not a tear as he is told by God this message: ‘“Son of man, behold, I am about to take from you the desire of your eyes with a blow; but you shall not mourn and you shall not weep, and your tears shall not come. Groan silently; make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban and put your shoes on your feet, and do not cover your mustache, and do not eat the bread of men.” So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. And in the morning I did as I was commanded.’ (Eze.24) On the other hand, we see Peter in Luke 22 weeping bitterly in grief as the rooster crows and he comes to grips with his denial of the Lord Jesus. We know from Philippians 2 that Paul would have known ‘sorrow upon sorrow’ if Epaphroditus had died from his illness. We can imagine what forms that sorrow could have taken, knowing Paul as the emotional man that he was. So when grief comes, it takes different forms and expressions because we are different people in the way we are made.
But it is not uncommon that often we are in such a state of emotional shock we seem to have little control over much of anything. But with some time, in the course of the passing of some hours or days or weeks, what we know to be true, what God has said, is able to prevail over what I am feeling. Truth, what God has said, becomes for us the key that unlocks the prison door of grief. That’s exactly why Paul writes, “Therefore, comfort one another with these words.” There is comfort in the truth of what God has said.
Remember our earlier study in chapter 2, verse 13, how the word of God has the power to change us? “…the word of God…which performs its work in you who believe.” When the Thessalonians believed what God had said, they were forever changed. And those Thessalonians now grieving would find comfort in what God said through his servant, the apostle Paul. The term ‘comfort’ here has the idea of strengthening in it. Literally we could read this verse, “Strengthen one another’s hands with these words.” We can never say enough about the importance of the Word of God in this matter of grief. I’ve asked Terry Brooks to come this morning and share with us a vignette out of her personal experience of loss and grief. Her mother and father were both killed in a plane crash when she was a teenager growing up in Kansas.
(Terry’s story: Making sure no one was around, I slipped quietly into Mom and Dad’s bedroom. I ran my hand along the wall in search of the light switch but decided against turning it on. The sunlight coming through the lines of the draperies was adequate. Crossing toward the dresser, I noticed Dad’s picture. He had given it to Mom to put up while he was at the State Capitol. Staring into the picture, I recalled the picnics and political gatherings we had attended as a family. “What will happen now since Dad won’t be able to run for the election next month?” I wondered.
My eyes scanned the dresser. Books, magazines, folders, and music were stacked neatly. Music. It was so important to us as a family. Many evenings had been spent singing around the piano for enjoyment or practicing for a recital, concert, or church.
As I turned from the dresser, my eyes beheld the paintings on the wall over the bed. An old plantation house in a cotton field composed the painting on the left. It was painted for Mom as a reminder of her childhood home in Mississippi. The painting on the right was for Dad, a golden wheat field and granary symbolized Kansas, Dad’s heritage.
Sitting on the bed, I smothered my face in my hands. Would all of this soon be a thing of the past? Experiences with the whole family flashed through my mind—laughter around the dinner table, Sunday afternoon drives, planting flowers in the garden, so many family times together. I wanted something to hold on to. Something more than sweet memories.
My eyes focused on the bedstand as I lifted my head. Yes, that was it. There it was, the thing I had come in search of. The black leather had taken on a look I had never noticed before. It was like new. Or maybe it was the newness I felt within that made it seem so. I lifted it from the stand. My fingers guided themselves along the gold lettering: Raymond and Yvonne King. Opening the book, I turned the crisp page to the title page. The Holy Bible. Yes, this was my treasure. No inheritance of tangible items would really be important without the Christian heritage passed down from my parents. This tragedy could turn to triumph by the strengthening of my faith if God. Sure, there would be grief and hard times, but the promises in God’s Word would be my hope.
A second life lesson (2) for coping with grief is also nestled here in this text. I’m sure you’ve seen it already here in verse 18. “Therefore, comfort one another…” The lesson is this: Fellowship is the fire escape out of the burning house of grief. This is one of 30+ verses in the New Testament where ‘one’ and ‘another’ are tied together. Oh, how hard grief is to bear when one is alone! I was reminded in reading John 11 this week in personal devotions that when Lazarus died, “many of the Jews had come to Mary and Martha to console them concerning their brother.” Grief is always more bearable in the context of fellowship.
If we tie the ‘comfort’ with the ‘one another’ in verse 18, we could also read this verse, “Come to the side of one another, strengthening the hands of one another, with these words. Come alongside one another with God’s words, and grief will begin to loosen its grip on hearts and emotions.” With friends, friends of faith, friends who know God’s words, friends who strengthen us with God’s words, there is a way of escape. I hope we are all about building the right kinds of friendships. They will be absolutely necessary in the day of our crisis. I hope we are all working to find our niche in the Body of Christ, for it’s there that we become a part of ‘one another’.
The third lesson (3) this text holds for us in found in verse 14. “For if we believe that Jesus died…” God’s son, Jesus, died. Have you ever thought about God the Father knowing the pain of grief? Our lesson is this: God is personally experienced with grief; to Him we ought to run when it becomes our experience. Let’s think for a minute about God’s experience with grief. It all began back in the book of Genesis, back in the garden of Eden.
The first death that is recorded in the Bible is recorded here, and the first person to experience grief is none other than God Himself! We have read in Genesis (2:16-17) that God had given to Adam the privilege of eating from any tree in the garden of Eden except for one. Adam was solemnly warned that if he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in that day, he would surely die.
And of course, we all know what happened. Eve was tricked by the enemy, she ate of the fruit of that particular tree, she shared the fruit with Adam, and he ate too. Then “they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’
Let’s put ourselves in God’s shoes for a moment. Dad, you’ve come home from work. All the way home you’ve been thinking about your wife, the delight of your life, and those munchkins, the gifts that God has placed in your quiver like arrows. You come in the door and announce, “Hey, I’m home!” The reason you went to work was to provide for them, to make it possible to meet their needs, to care for and support them. “Hey, I’m home! Tell me about your day!” But imagine that no one comes running. There’s no one there awaiting your homecoming. You ask, “Where is everybody?”
In one sense that is what happened to God. The Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” When the man responds from his hiding place, God knows something horrible has taken place. The man and woman have disobeyed by eating the forbidden fruit, and in their sinning, they have died spiritually.
Friends, the first person in all the world to experience grief is none other than God Himself. There is no one better to turn to in the heartache of loss that God Himself. He knows how you feel. He has personally experienced what you have experienced. He knows your emotions. He made you in His own image. He has given us words of comfort to console us. He can give us understanding of “Why?” and “Why now?”.
So, how do we run to Him? We do the basic things: We find a place to be alone. We open His Book and read His words. We pray and pour out our heart to him. Perhaps we imagine Him in the chair across from us, listening to all our concerns and fears and loss and uncertainty. We reaffirm our commitment to Him. We ask Him to help us trust Him in the days ahead. We journal our thoughts and impressions as we read and pray. We record answers He has given to our prayers. Hopefully, friends, we are simply doing the things we’ve been doing all along the journey of life. Os Guinness, in his book, The Call, has a chapter entitled, “The Audience of One”. Guinness writes fundamentally about living in the presence of God, one’s Audience of One. He tells the story of General Charles Gordon, the peerless military strategist, the legendary commander, the mostly all-conquering victor who lived so closely before the Audience of One that when his time for death came, he had only a short step home. When Gordon was left abandoned to die at Khartoum, his friend John Bonar wrote to Gordon’s brother these words: “What at once, and always struck me was the way in which his oneness with God ruled all his actions, and his mode of seeing things. I never knew one who seemed so much to ‘endure as seeing Him who is invisible. Gordon seemed to live with God and for God.”
My friends, it will not be hard to run to God in our time of grief if we have been living with Him and before Him as our Audience of One. And it will not be hard to receive His comfort out of the His vast reservoir of consolation He can give, knowing full well exactly what we are going through.
There is a corollary lesson here in connection with lesson three (3a) that is not referenced in the Thessalonian letter: This lesson states: God authors good purposes in the pain of our grief. For example, one Biblical purpose of grief: Grief can be a wake-up call
Do you remember how Stephen was murdered in Acts 7, then Peter was imprisoned in Acts 12? We read in Acts 12 that the church was praying fervently to God for him. Why hadn’t the church been praying for Stephen? The church wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. To suffer the loss of Stephen was hard; to experience it again in the loss of Peter would have been doubly difficult. Grief is sometimes God’s wake up call to us. I don’t want to make that mistake again!
I heard Joe Stowell this week on WGNR talking about how trouble is an attention-getter. He was pretending that God was looking down from heaven, seeing a complacent Joe Stowell. Trouble or grief can shake us out of our complacency, out of our comfort zones.
I know a young man of this town who came to Christ at his father’s death bed. The thought of losing his father, the prospects of seeing him again brought the man to a saving relationship with the Savior. Grief is often a wake-up call. You have my attention, Lord. What is it you want of me?
Another Biblical purpose for grief: Grief enlarges our capacity for joy.
Hebrews 12 tells us that Jesus, for the joy set before Him endured the cross… Contrast that with His experience in the Garden of Gethsemane where He sweat drops of blood in agony and grief at the prospect of His death on the cross.
Tell me, who has a greater appreciation for the greatness of America? The one who has spent his whole life in a little town in Nebraska or the one who has traveled the world and seen slavery, poverty, corruption, and abuse? Grief is a God-given adventure that enlarges our capacity for joy.
Another Biblical purpose for grief is
Grief is a call to trust God and His mysteries.
Consider Job. Who can forget the old man sitting in a heap of ashes, his head shaved, and his clothes torn and ripped after he has received news that all 10 of his children have died in a terrible wind storm? Perhaps only in time did Job finally understand what the Devil had been up to.
Stephen Curtis Chapman has a new CD out with a song titled ‘With Hope’. It begins this way: “This is not at all how we thought it was supposed to be. We had so many plans for you. We had so many dreams. And now you’ve gone away and left us with the memories of your smile and nothing we can do can take away the pain, the pain of losing you, but…
Grief is a call to trust God in the mysteries of life. Grief is a call to us to recognize that God is about things that we may not understand at the moment, like Job, like Ezekiel, like David, like the early church with Stephen.
A final lesson: Lesson Four-- There is no hope in grief without God. I Thess 4:13 introduces us to a category of people who have no hope. Paul writes, “so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope…” Our hope is defined in this context as seeing our loved ones again! Vs. 14 says, “…even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.” We have the example of Mary and Martha in John 11 who received their brother, Lazarus, back again!
And Steven Curtis Chapman’s song, “With Hope” goes on in the chorus to say, “We can cry with hope, we can say goodbye with hope ‘cause we know our goodbye is not the end, oh no, and we can grieve with hope ‘cause we believe with hope, there’s a place where we’ll see your face again.”
Conclusion: I’m sure there is much more that could be said, from the Scriptures, about this topic of grief. But at least as Paul has touched upon the subject here in his Thessalonian letter, we have explored some of its dimensions. We can draw a number of conclusions from these three short verses: Only in God is there real hope for grief; because God is personally experienced with grief, we can run to Him for help and consolation; in the fellowship of others we find an escape; and truth is the key that unlocks the prison of grief to all who suffer it.

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