There is no substitute for the preaching and teaching of God's Word.

Each weekday on enjoying the journey, Scott Pauley leads us in a brief study of scripture.

Today, on the weekend pulpit, we are happy to share a full-length Bible

message given through Scott's pulpit ministry. These messages were recorded live in a local

church or gospel event in recent days. It is our prayer that the message will be a help to you today. And we come in this hour to First Thessalonians chapter four.

And we have been in the first three chapters already.

Let's review class just for a minute, all right? What is going on? That's what everybody

keeps asking. What's going on in this world? And what is happening around us? Well, we can't

answer all those questions because we don't see from God's vantage point, but we can at least

speak with certainty about what God has plainly given us in

his word. And first and second Thessalonians are two of the books that really speak to this.

There's a lot of prophecy in scripture, but these books really speak to the local church,

and they're deeply practical. I'll show you that in just a moment. But just flip through with me

for a second. Look at chapter one. Notice every chapter

mentions the coming of Christ, but specifically in First Thessalonians, it seems it's at the end of

these chapters. More often than not, it's like it builds to that. So in chapter one, we learn what

we're waiting on. What are we waiting on, church? We're waiting on his son from heaven.

That's what the end of the chapter says.

Then when you come to chapter number two, we learn at the end of the chapter, of course,

that he's coming, but here we learn what really matters in the end. He has a whole chapter

on the difficulties of life and the stress and strain and struggle of it all. Maybe you've

done with some of that today, and everybody's got problems and there's spiritual warfare going on and we get weary at times. But when you get to the end of the chapter

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