The following sermon is by John MacArthur, pastor, author, and Bible teacher with Grace

to You.

If you've never contacted Grace to You, we want to send you a free booklet by John that

unpacks fifteen Greek words in Scripture that explain a stunning paradox, how a God

of perfect justice can show mercy to sinners who deserve only punishment.

Request your free booklet titled 15 Words of Hope by writing to Hope at gty.org.

This offer is good in North America and Europe through June 2023.

And now unleashing God's truth one verse at a time.

Here's Grace to You, Bible teacher John MacArthur.

Turn to First Thessalonians chapter four and verses 13 through 18.

Let me read this to you and then we'll make some comments about it and dig down a little bit into it.

This will be a little bit more detailed look at the very specific event that is the resurrection of believers.

Verse 13, but we do not want you to be uninformed or ignorant, 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.

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep.

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with Him in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And so we shall always be with the Lord.

Therefore comfort one another with these words.

The details of what happens to Christians after they die were elusive in the early church and the Thessalonians were worried about that subject.

Where do Christians go after they die? What happens to their souls? And in particular what happens to their bodies?

This set of questions troubled young believers in the church at Thessalonica as we might assume because they didn't have the full revelation that we do in the New Testament.

...