The apostle Paul is writing to Christians to encourage their faith to grow further and deeper. While the Christians in Thessalonica are doing well, he is urging them to excel still more (1 Thessalonians 4:1). We have noticed that Paul is looking at areas in the Christian life that might be easily overlooked when trying to be pleasing to the Lord. Paul has written about holiness, exposing the problem of sexual immorality. Paul also wrote about love, exposing the problems of not aiming to live a quiet life, not minding your own business, and not working with your own hands. But in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 the apostle Paul is going to shift his discussion to the second coming of Christ. It seems in our religious culture that there are two perspectives when it comes to the second coming of Christ. One perspective is to scare everyone, suggesting that every world event or every change in the country’s culture must mean that Christ is coming back today. I think this has led to the other perspective which is to suggest that the second coming does not matter at all. The suggested idea is that it does not matter what we believe and there is no reason to study it because God wins in the end and he is going to come back. What we are going to notice in our lesson today that the apostle Paul did not subscribe to either of these perspectives. Paul did not ignore the topic but also did not try to instill a constant fear in these Christians either. What do we need to know about Christ’s return so that we can be pleasing to God? What hope are we to have in knowing that Christ is coming back? Please open your copies of God’s word to 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 we are going to look at how we can excel even more in future hope…
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