All right, I'm back. We're going to be in 1 Thessalonians 4, but that's in a little bit. We're also going to be looking at a couple other Scriptures. You've got them in your Sermon Companion Guide. Scriptures like Revelation 1:7, Revelation 19, and Matthew 24.

So, We're almost done. Like after today, there's 3 more weeks in this sermon series guide that we're going through that is all about Jesus. The whole Bible, everything from Genesis to Revelation is pointing us to Jesus Christ. That's been my goal from a year ago when I was writing this and working on it. And it's my, like, just, I'm hoping we finish well.

And one of the things that I became convinced of a long time ago was that the Scriptures are the best way to interpret the Scriptures. In other words, you're reading the Bible and you're like, "What's this mean?" You keep reading. You keep reading and you'll find some answers. Now, you're going to walk all the way through this life probably still having some questions. Like, you're going to hit eternity, if you've walked with Christ, you're going to be in eternity with Jesus still having things that weren't answered while you were walking this earth.

And I think it won't matter anymore. Like the puzzle pieces will all be complete, the picture will be made complete, and you'll see it all there, and you're like, "I don't have any more questions." Not that they were all answered to our liking, like that we had here on earth, but that God is just going to— it'll all be revealed, and you'll be like, "I see it now, Lord. You were working all the way through, like from the moment of creation, your plan was this beautiful eternity." God's plan wasn't just the Garden of Eden, perfect harmony between God and people, between people and each other, between people and the the world around them. That wasn't His only plan. His plan was that we would have an eternity with Him.

And the Garden of Eden was like His place where He met with people. It was almost like a temple, if you think of it. A temple is a place where you go to meet with God. And so it was almost like Eden was this temple, this meeting place where God would come down and be with the people. But eventually one day His plan— the Scriptures tell us that Jesus Christ was— even His crucifixion was was set in stone from the foundations of the world, that the plan for Jesus Christ to be our Savior, to be our way into heaven and eternity with God, that this was His plan all along.

And as we saw a couple weeks ago, the last time I was here, we talked about the marriage of the Bride of Christ, the marriage of the Lamb to His bride, the church being the Bride of Christ, and that the plan of God all along was that He was preparing a people to be the bride of His Son, to be together with His Son, that this is His gift to His Son Jesus Christ. And so this has been God's plan all along, and we see this throughout all of Scripture. In all of Scripture, we see from the beginning pages in Genesis all the way through, through the covenants that God had with people like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, through the covenants that He had with the people of Israel, the law that He gave them, all of these things we see Christ written on every page of Scripture. Yeah, there might be some verses where you're like, "What's that have to do with Jesus?" Maybe not that one verse, but I got to tell you, the Bible didn't have verses originally when it was written. The Bible as it was written didn't have verses, it didn't have chapters.

You just had the books of Scripture. Think of the Bible as a library with 66 different books, and each of those books was written by a human author under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. As the Spirit of God speaks through them, He speaks, writes through their experiences and their personality and through the the situation of the times in which they lived, even through the languages that they spoke. There's primarily 3 languages the Bible was written in: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. And the Bible was written by the hands of human beings, but under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to give us everything we need to know about Christ and about salvation.

And so while there will be questions that you don't have answers to, Your whole life you could spend studying the Scripture, and it's a worthy goal to do that. But you can spend your whole life studying Scripture and still have questions. And God answers many of them along the way, and many of those you find the answers by further study of the Scriptures. And so as we want to know about Jesus Christ, we start reading in the Old Testament, and it begins revealing Christ to us. The Jewish people, God's chosen people, were given wisdom and insight from the— from the mouths of the prophets, from people like Moses, and David, and Elijah, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Obadiah, and all these guys, and God is speaking through them, giving us insight into what at that time was the coming Messiah.

So when Jesus shows up, there were a lot of people who immediately believed that He truly was the Son of God. He was what they called the hope of Israel, the thing for which they had been setting their sights and their focus on. There were some who wouldn't believe. There were some that honestly believed, and yet Jesus got in their way because they were in positions of power and authority, and Jesus threatened that. Because if He truly is the Son of God, then everything about how they were living would change, and they would be without their position and their authority.

And so we see in the Old Testament all these things pointing us to Christ, to our need for Christ, to what He was doing as He was preparing the world for His coming. And then we see in the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—we see the fulfillment of that hope as Jesus is born, as He's baptized, as He's ministering before the people. Jesus never left this small region of the world that we know now as kind of modern-day Israel, and it was the place where the people of Israel lived. He never left this region. He traveled no more than just a few dozen miles from His home in His entire life.

And yet for right now, almost 2,000 years since His death, He has had a bigger impact on the entire world than any other human being to ever live. For sure, He has the biggest impact on eternity because He holds the keys of eternity in His hands. And so Jesus Christ, the Gospels tell us about Him. The book of Acts shows what Jesus was doing after He had ascended into heaven what he was doing through the power of the Holy Spirit ministering to the believers and through the believers. The book of Acts tells us what the Holy Spirit is doing to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world.

The rest of the New Testament after that, all these different books, these letters that we call a book of the Bible, they were letters that were written to different groups of believers, and most of them was to a church within a city, and that church might have been broken into multiple home churches or small groups, but it was considered the church of— for instance, today we'll be in the book of Thessalonians. Good luck spelling that. There's a lot of letters in there, you know. Anyway, the book of Thessalonians was written to a people of the group in the church in the town of Thessalonica. And you can see that in the book of Acts.

It talks about Paul's time there. I think it's Oh shoot, I remembered it yesterday. I think it's Acts 17 or 18, it's right around in there. And he didn't start out— like he started out well there and he didn't have like the best of time there. You know, sometimes people go on a vacation and it's miserable.

Well, Paul went on this mission trip and along this leg of his journey, like there was some good stuff. Clearly a church was planted and formed out of that. Also though, the people there wanted to kill him and his believers, his the people leading the church there that he set up as the brothers, they called them, the brothers like, "Okay, Paul, it's time to go." And at night they escaped him out of town. They took him out of town and snuck him out for his own safety because the people there wanted to kill him. Like, not the Christians.

That'd be pretty bad, right? Like, you've heard of churches sometimes like having a beef with somebody within the church, maybe turning on their pastor or leadership or something, but not like right away, you know? Like, a guy plants a church and they're like, "Okay, get out of here." It wasn't like that. It was the Jewish believers that were living in that city around him that were jealous of Paul having such an impact and convincing people that Jesus was in fact the Messiah, that He was the hope of all of the Scriptures and the hope of Israel fulfilled in this one man, Jesus. And of course, Paul would make other enemies as well, enemies of— that were people within leadership of the Roman Empire.

They didn't like him because of the message that he proclaimed, that there was another king besides Caesar named Jesus. We'll get into that in a minute. But the Scriptures, they talk about what God was doing through the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, and then we have this fun book that I'm sure is the top of y'all's reading list at the very end of your Bible called the book of Revelation. By the way, there's no S on the end. That's just a pet peeve of mine.

It's not Revelations. It's just one. It's the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Or some things like maybe King James talks about the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ. Apocalypse is such a fun word, isn't it?

It brings to mind a lot of stuff, scary stuff, stars falling out of the sky, sun and moon turning to blood, horsemen, destruction, wars, all this stuff. It's your favorite, isn't it? A couple of you are like, "Yeah, I love it." Some people love the book of Revelation like so much that it gets a little bit scary. It's like, okay, now just calm down a little bit. There is also 65 other books.

Let's balance out a little, you know? And so I get it, I get it. But the Bible is this collection of writings that are inspired by the Spirit of God that are all talking about one thing, and that's Jesus Christ. And that becomes of central importance to a church and to a group of people, especially when they are being persecuted. The people in Thessalonica weren't immune to persecution.

Persecution is simply— it's not something that we're very familiar with here today in America as Christians, We've certainly had people that are oppositional to the church or to Christians. I see a time right now, and maybe you witnessed it, where that seems to be toned down a little bit. Praise God for that. Like, there's a move of Christ, a revival that's beginning to happen, it seems, where people are actually like, you know, on fire for Christ. They're sharing their faith openly, and they're not immediately like shouted down or called an idiot of some kind.

And so it's a— I see a good time coming up right now that we're living in. But we haven't really experienced persecution like they did in their day. In that day, they were experiencing things like people being beheaded, burned alive, crucified, all these ways that they would kill them and martyr people for their faith in Jesus Christ and for their testimony. And this actually started from within the Jewish people being jealous of followers of the Way, or Christians, And they were— they killed Stephen, was the first one. We talked about him a few weeks ago.

They killed plenty of other people. The Roman leaders, like King Herod, killed plenty of Christians. One of them he just killed for the fun of it, James, one of the apostles, just because he thought it would be fun to do, and some of the Jewish leaders were happy about it, and he says, "Well, cool. My constituency's happy. I'm happy.

Let's go kill some more people." He arrested Peter. We didn't talk about this passage, but it's kind of neat. Peter's in jail, And the believers gathered together to pray for him. And God does a midnight jailbreak. He's done this a couple times in the Scriptures.

He breaks Peter out of jail, leads him out, an angel leads him out. Peter's thinking he's having a vision or a dream. But he gets out, and when the gates open all by themselves, like we have that all the time, like you go into a store and the doors open. They didn't have that back then, you know, so these gates just open. He's like, "Oh, this is cool." And then when he gets out, he's like, Oh, this is real.

I'm actually here. This isn't just me dreaming. Like, I'm a free man. So he goes to this house where all the believers were gathered in prayer, knocks on the door. This servant girl, not too many servants are named in the Bible.

They named her. Like, this chick, bless her heart, her name is forever memorialized: Rhoda. I hope nobody, like, names their kid Rhoda because it's like, really? You named her after the servant girl that forgot Peter outside? She's like, it's Peter!

And she just leaves him hanging out there, goes in, she's like, guys, it's Peter! 'Is that Peter?' And they're like, 'No, it's not. You're crazy. Herod probably killed him and it's his ghost or his angel or whatever.' And it's like, 'Oh, you guys were into some kind of out-there stuff back then, weren't you too?' Like, we think people that look into the paranormal are weird today, and yeah, they are. But, you know, okay, I don't look into ghosts and stuff, but I like paranormal things now anyway.

It's like the latest thing I'm on. I'm not gonna preach about it, don't worry. But anyway, it's just fun to see like, what is it that people are getting into these days, you know? And so there's a lot of that going around in our day, but it was really popular back then. They really believed in like, I don't know so much about hauntings, but they believed in ghosts, like somebody dies, but they're still kind of hanging around for unfinished business or something.

And so they're like, "You're crazy, Rhoda. That's just Peter's ghost. Herod already killed him." Can you imagine being like the same people that walked with Jesus Christ and talked with Him are already like, they're in a prayer meeting and already not believing that what they're praying for is gonna happen? Now I've been in some church prayer meetings where I know people prayed some faithless prayers, you know, prayers that they really didn't believe were gonna come true. Some of you guys do that every day.

You pray for things and don't believe that God's actually gonna do it. May God increase your faith. You had enough faith to bring it to Him. Now have enough faith to believe He's going to do it. Peter keeps knocking on the door.

She insists that it really is Peter, and then they're like, "Open the door and prove it." She's like, "Oh yeah, I could have done that," you know? So she goes and opens the door and proves it, and it's Peter, and he encourages them, and then he leaves because he doesn't want Herod to go looking for them in the most obvious place where all the Christians are. So they experienced a lot of persecution, and the church in Thessalonica was not immune to that persecution. They had had it as well, and they had some very troubling feelings or thoughts about what was going on because they knew some of their loved ones, some of their friends from church, had been targeted for being killed. They had been persecuted and killed, and they're wondering what's going to happen to them.

What's going to happen to them specifically when Jesus comes back? You see, they understood because Jesus had said some things that they, I think they misinterpreted. Either they did or we did, it's one of the two. And I think history tells us that it was them. They heard Jesus say, "These things will happen while some of you are still alive in this generation." They thought He meant His return, His coming back would happen again while this generation was still alive.

What He was actually talking about was the coming of His Kingdom in power on this earth, and He was saying, "You guys will still be alive while it's happening." And so they believed that the return of Jesus was imminent because as they're getting older and some of them dying off, they're thinking, okay, Jesus has to come back pretty soon. What happens to those people that were killed for their faith or those people that already died? Because Jesus, you know, like, like when he comes back, they're not alive when that happens. Are they going to miss out on his coming? Are they going to miss out on his return?

And so that's some of what Paul was dealing with as he was writing to them in this book. But I want to cover a couple other things real quick. I want to— those scriptures that I told you that are in your Sermon Companion from Revelation and from Matthew, I want to just, rather than read all them, I want to give you a few facts from those scriptures, things that you can trust and believe that are real in our life. The first thing is that— Jesus spoke this, angels spoke this— Jesus will return the same way that He left. Now, if you're not familiar with that, He led His disciples out of Jerusalem after He had risen from the grave.

He'd been with them for 40 days. A lot of people saw Him. At one time, a group of 500 people saw Him. This wasn't just some hallucinogenic trip that everybody was on together like some people have proposed as an idea. This was real.

He ate with them. He walked with them. He talked with them. He invited them to touch Him where He had been wounded in the crucifixion. This was a real resurrection.

And Jesus rose again. He walked with them for 40 days. Plenty of people saw this and bore witness to it. And then he led his followers out of Jerusalem, down into the Kidron Valley to the east of the city, up the Mount of Olives. And there they were.

You can see Jerusalem to the west, and they're on the Mount of Olives. And then he gives them some final words. He gives them this Great Commission, as we call it. And he says, "Go preach the gospel into all the world." And then He just ascends into heaven. He's like, maybe they thought we should have put a tether on Him, you know, I'm not sure.

And they're just staring into the sky like He's gone. And as they're contemplating this, these angels show up among them. It just says men dressed in white, and there they are. And they're like, hey guys, what are we looking at? You know, they're like, because I mean, if you go out on the street, you know, in a busy area, and you just look at something and maybe even point, people are going to look.

They're going to go, "What are you looking at?" You're like, "I don't know, I was just making you look." So these angels are like, "What are we looking at, guys?" They're like, "Jesus." It would be fun, wouldn't it? "Jesus, He just went there?" They're like, "Yeah, and He's going to come back the same way that He left." The Scriptures also talk about Him appearing from the Mount of Olives at His return, and so Jesus is going to return in the same place and from the same direction as which He ascended into heaven. He'll return, we believe, to the Mount of Olives from the heavens, from the clouds. And so as He's doing that, there will be the voice of an archangel. Karen and I were talking about this earlier.

It doesn't specifically say that angels will attend, although I believe there will be some nearby because why wouldn't there be? But it doesn't specifically say that, so I'm not going to say it's a fact. But there's another fact that the Scriptures do say, that everyone will see His return. Everyone will see the return of Jesus Christ. Somehow or another, His return will be visible both to those who are followers and to those who are His enemies.

And when you think about the enemies of Christ, first of all, you don't want to be one. You don't want to be an enemy of Jesus Christ. There is a time before you had received His salvation, confessed your sins, and become a believer There was a time where you were an enemy of God. The Scriptures tell us that there was a time when we were God's enemies. And folks, you don't want to be an enemy of God.

He is a kind, benevolent, and loving God, but He is also the sovereign ruler of the universe, and He demands that we live a holy life unto Him. And if you are an enemy of God, it will not go well for you in eternity. No matter how much comfort you might acquire and build for yourself on this earth, eternity will not be a place that will be good for you if you're an enemy of God on this earth. And there are people who not just are enemies of God, but there is a spiritual battle that's been going on. When God created humans, Satan tried to put an end to that.

When God created humans in His image, Satan wanted to mess that up. And ever since then, Satan's been at war against God. He had angels that we call them fallen angels, but they left the throne of God and they decided to dwell on this earth and to live here and to do as they please. Displeased. And these angels that were supposed to be kind of watching over the earth decided they wanted to be part of it.

And so those are the ones that are the enemies of God. And as they are working against God, and there are people who are following them, some of them are possessed by them even. We've met people that were possessed by an evil spirit. The Scriptures are full of them. And those people that are the enemies of God, they will all see the return of Jesus Christ.

Both the believers and those who are His enemies. And they will see the enemy, or they will see the return of Christ, and His enemies will be, they will weep and mourn at His coming because they know that their time is at an end. They know that their time on this earth has come to a close and they are no longer given the freedom to live as they've wanted and to do the work against God. They know their punishment is near. In fact, they know there is an appointed time.

This just came to me, I was just thinking about this. You remember the story where Jesus goes across the Sea of Galilee and He goes and there's a man that's possessed by— he's called a legion of demons, like as a military term, like a whole bunch of them. And he's possessed by all of them. He lives in the catacombs. He's naked.

They can't chain him up. He's just— he's like extra-human strength. He's crazy as can be and he's not in his right mind at all. Jesus cast the demons out of him, but as He's having this conversation with with the, it seems to be like the leader of the demons that are in this man, and He says, "What is your name?" And he said, "Legion, for we are many." And then they begged Him not to cast them into the abyss before the appointed time. In other words, there is a time that is appointed that all of the evil forces that are against the things of God will be once and for all finally sealed into the abyss and into hell and for eternal torment.

And yet they knew that their time was coming, and yet they said, "It's not time yet. Why are you here? Are you trying to give us a hard time?" And so they begged to be cast into these pigs, which were being raised as pagan Canaanite sacrificial offerings. The Canaanites would offer up pigs on their altars to all these demon gods. And they said, "Can you just cast us into the pigs?" And so they did, but then the pigs ran off into the water, which to me is kind of funny because it was kind of like going into the abyss anyway.

So it's like, yeah, sure, go for it, guys. See how that works out for you. But there is an appointed day where the enemies of Christ will see His return. We believe that Christ actually, when He had gone into the realm of the dead, when He was dead, that He had— the Scripture and the creeds tell us that He was descended into Hades. It wasn't that He went there for punishment or torment.

He went there to proclaim His victory over them and to say, "I won." Talk about a victory lap, you know? How cool is that? NASCAR guys, they just do a little burnout, you know, or do donuts in the infield. Jesus goes to hell and says, "I win. It's over for you guys." By the way, here's another thing in Revelation, just while we're talking about how cool Jesus is.

It says He'll rule with an iron rod. Now, to me, an iron rod doesn't seem like that intimidating. As far as like compared to like chemical warfare and nuclear weapons and just like tanks and stuff like that. Except if Jesus has already put all of His enemies to rest, you know, you don't want to be around if He's swinging an iron rod. Like He can take you out.

And all the terrible and just evil weapons of war that we have come up with, Jesus rules with an iron rod. It's strength, it's stability, but you don't want to be at the bad end of that. He'll rule with an iron rod. And it also says in Revelation— this is cool, most of you missed this, I'm gonna help you out— Jesus shows up ready for battle with tattoos on his legs. You didn't know that, did you?

You didn't read that part in Revelation. It says he has a name written on his thigh that only he knows about. In other words, it's covered up by his clothes, and so you didn't see it. You didn't see that in any of the pictures, but Jesus is tatted up now. So some of you guys, you actually didn't realize that when you got tattoos on your legs and stuff, that you were following in the footsteps of Jesus.

So anyway, he shows up to battle. Also, his robe is dipped in blood. Like, he's tatted up and dipped in blood. Like, his clothes are bloody, not because he's like, "You know, I'm going to do a new fashion statement. You know, like if what's-her-face, that crazy singer, could wear a meat suit one day, I'm going to do a robe dipped in blood." That's not what it is.

It was dipped in the blood of his enemies. As he went to battle and destroys his enemies, he is covered in blood. And tattoos. Jesus is pretty awesome, and yet he still shows up like a lamb that was slain. See, he's meek and gentle, and yet he's fearsome, and we should have appropriate fear of Jesus Christ because when he shows up, he's proclaimed as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Now let me tell you a little bit about what it was like to live in Rome. I'm not an expert. There's some guys that study the Roman Empire, I was talking with my nephew in Tennessee, and he loves history, and so he was talking about the Roman Empire, and I just questioned him a few things to see if he really did or not, and like he had some knowledge of it. I'm like, pretty cool, and there was stuff I'm like, I don't even remember this. Like I was just asking, he's like, no, what happened here was this.

I'm like, good job, keep it going. But the Roman Empire, they decided that Caesar, the top king, was the— that he was the king, the ultimate king, In fact, they said that he was the king over all of the other kings, the king of kings. Now, Jesus comes forward, he's proclaimed as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. I always read that as saying like he is like the top king with more power than all the other kings. He's the Lord that's in charge of more than the other lords.

Yeah, it's that, but it's also like he is the king to which all those other kings have to bow down. He's not just stronger than them, or more mighty and powerful than them, or more conquering than them. They have to bow to Him. The Scriptures say that in the end every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. All the kings of this earth, all the presidents, governors, rulers, magistrates, whatever title they've had, will one day bow and admit that Christ is Lord.

Some have admitted that on this earth, and they've called Him their Lord and Savior. Some will do it, I would say, begrudgingly, knowing that yes, He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But in the Roman Empire, you've got this teaching, this belief, this doctrine that Caesar is king. And Caesar, what they did was, see, Rome would come in and conquer your area. If you were in the Roman Empire, they came in with overwhelming force, they conquered your land, they said, "This is Rome now." Good news, it's Rome.

We have what we call the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. Sure, it's not peaceful as we're conquering you unless you just kind of like, Like, "We surrender," which is the smart thing to do, probably. It's hard to fight Rome. But as they would come in and conquer an area, they would say, "This is Rome now. You're part of our thing.

We're going to put our king or governor in charge over you. He's going to be the one that governs you, but he governs underneath the authority of Caesar, who is the king of the kings." And the good news is there is peace because now you don't have to worry about other nations coming and fighting against you. Rome is now your defender. Rome fights for you. The armies of Rome are here.

We're going to build post offices and highways and, you know, like you can actually have mail delivered. We're actually going to bring plumbing in. Like, you know, like, what's that? Yeah, I know. It's the same thing that they're going through in Kentucky right now.

You know, anyway. Oh shoot, I just met somebody from Kentucky yesterday. No, they're not here, I don't think. Sorry about that. Anyway, I lived in Tennessee for 11 years.

You always pick on the state that's close to you. And so we would just pick on Kentucky. So when I grew up in Michigan, we would pick on Ohio or just all of Canada. Sorry, Elaine, but anyway, it's an easy target. Not Indiana so much.

Indiana's pretty cool. They don't like get too, you know, they don't call their university like the Indiana State University. They just, sorry, the Ohio State University. I never understood that, weirdos. Anyway, even when I lived in Tennessee, we had some the Ohio State fans.

And it was just awkward, you know. So anyway, it's a good thing that I don't really care about most sports in general, nor like especially college sports. It doesn't mean anything to me. And so I don't care. It's just fun to make fun of people like that.

And that's what I was doing. I would say I don't mean any offense. I don't know what I mean by it. It's just fun for me. And I'm the one up here with the mic.

All right. I'm saying that because I'm trying to remember where I was at. Oh, the plumbing thing. The Romans bringing in plumbing. They would bring in like aqueducts and all this.

They're like, "We can help you water your fields. We can help you bring water into the city." Like, the Pax Romana is a real thing. It's a good thing. And so the people in Rome were like, "Hail Caesar! Praise be to Caesar!" And then in this little tiny area in the scope of the Roman Empire, it's the most, you know, kind of backwoods, uncared about place just before you get down to Egypt.

You've got Israel. And they would put some rulers there, and they cared about it a little bit, and they would put some money into building infrastructure and different things, but really nobody cares about Israel until people start proclaiming that there's another king. When Jesus is crucified, Pilate puts on the cross above Him a sign that says, "This man is the King of the Jews." The Jewish leaders were like, "Don't say that! We don't think that! Just say He's He said He was the King of the Jews, and Pilate's like, "I wrote what I wrote." I don't know if he believed it or if he was just too lazy to have it changed, you know what I mean?

Like, "Ah, it looks good enough. Can't see it from my palace," you know, that kind of thing. Well, anyway, Jesus gets proclaimed in Jerusalem as this new king, but then Paul goes around and starts preaching, and he goes all over the Roman Empire and starts saying, You know, there's another king besides Caesar. By the way, the news of Rome, the Pax Romana, when they would conquer an area, they would bring a proclamation to it that they called the Gospel of Rome, the Gospel of Caesar, the good news that Caesar is now your king and that you're under the peace of Rome. Paul goes around and says there's another gospel, there's another king.

He is the King of all kings. He's the King that even Caesar bows to. This King Jesus is the Lord of all lords. And the only true peace is found in Him. Now here's the problem.

They want to put a stop to this message. And for sure, Paul was persecuted plenty of times, but he can't like show them this King Jesus. There's no like actual guy that they can say, okay, well, if we take out that king, you know, then they can't say anything else now. There's no rival to the throne because Jesus isn't physically there anymore. But he's proclaimed as if he's still the king.

And so, like, they're like, what do we even do with this message? And so they just kind of tolerate it for a long time until they end up arresting Paul later on. He's— the Scriptures don't tell us this, we go from like historical accounts that he, we believe he got released after 2 years of prison in Rome, house arrest kind of prison, that he did what he wanted to do, which was to go to Spain, literally to the ends of what he thought was the known world as far as he knew. He wanted to get as far as he could preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. They end up arresting him again, and actually after a couple years after his initial release, they end up killing Paul, and in the same general time frame, in the same area, they kill Peter the Apostle as well.

But the disciples continue preaching that Jesus is Lord, that He's the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We also know— we're still on a couple facts from these scriptures, by the way— someday, somehow, there will be a time of tribulation. This is in the Matthew 24 passage that Jesus says there will be a time of tribulation, but He says, "And this time will be full of trials and difficulty and all kinds of things, but right immediately after that tribulation, Jesus will return." He also says the sun will be darkened, the moon will turn to blood, and all these things will happen, and you're like, "I don't see how we could possibly even be alive for a minute if the sun is totally darked out." And From what everything I've been told, that wouldn't work. You know, we wouldn't be alive long. So I'm thinking when he says immediately after this happens, it's like everything grinds to a halt at the word of God, and Jesus returns, and everyone sees it.

And at this point, these are the things that we can know and be certain of, and to not be afraid of any of it. See, that's the hardest thing, is to say like, okay, that sounds great, I have no fear at all. It's easy to say that now, but if persecution comes your way, are you going to be scared of that? Historically, believers in Christ, when they face persecution, they bear up under it, and they say, "I'm willing to endure that for the sake of the name of Jesus Christ, and even though you can kill my body, you can't get rid of me forever." And so they don't fear, but Paul writes to this group in Thessalonica saying, you know, that you don't need to be scared of these things. I actually want to encourage you.

I want to give you these words of encouragement. In Revelation 1:17-18, Jesus says, His own words, "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen.

And I have the keys of death and Hades." So these are the things that you can be sure of and take comfort in. These are the things that you can use to strengthen the faith you have in Christ and in the witness that you can share with others. But the people in Thessalonica were fearful. They were scared. They were seeing these things that were going on around them.

I don't know that they were scared of those, but they were scared of what had happened to their loved ones, those who had already died. They'd been run through the wringer. They'd been persecuted. Maybe they just died of sickness or old age, but they needed assurance of where they were at and what was going to happen with them. So Paul is their kind of spiritual father who has planted this church.

He stayed in touch with them. He's writing letters to them now. We believe Thessalonians was one of the first letters that, as far as the ones that are in scriptures, is one of the first letters, the earliest ones that was written, and Paul addresses them. He wanted to address the ignorance they had of the things to come. So I'm going to read now from chapter 4, verse 13, "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope." For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep as Christians.

I want to pause right there and tell you, we use worldly terms when we talk about the end of somebody's life. If they're a believer, we say, "Oh, well, they died." No, they didn't. They fell asleep. They passed on. They're not here among us anymore, but they are by no means dead.

Like, yes, their body might have expired, but those who have died in Christ are not dead in any sense of the word. They have gone to be in another place, in a good place. And Paul is saying, I don't want you to worry about those who have fallen asleep as Christians. "For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep." For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be suddenly caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

Therefore encourage one another with these words.

One of the things when a conquering king would go off to battle and return, or maybe somebody that was going to be given authority as king, when they would leave, maybe to go like to Caesar and be coronated as king over an area, when they would do that, they would return. They wouldn't just show up quietly to their kingdom, to the realm in which they were called, or put to live. They were brought back in with a lot of fanfare. Somebody would be like the town crier that would be shouting, alerting the city that their king was returning in power and in glory and in honor. They would blow a trumpet.

The people wouldn't just sit there like on their porch waiting for him to show up like watching a parade go past. You would rush out of the city to go meet this returning king. And Paul is painting a picture that as Jesus returns, He doesn't come from a road from Rome. He comes from the heavens where He has ascended, and now He's returning to His realm, His kingdom, His domain. He's gone to heaven to be coronated as King and given power and authority over the earth.

And as He's been given that, as He returns to earth, He's welcomed in by those who have believed in Him. And Paul says you don't have to worry about those who have died already. They're actually going to rise from the grave, and they will go to meet Him. I know we think of this, and if you've been a Christian a long time, you're like, "That's just kind of like— I'm used to hearing that." And if you haven't been a Christian a long time, it sounds odd, I'm sure. There's a lot of weird things in this world, but I'll tell you that this is the thing that you can trust in the most.

You can believe in this, that Jesus Christ is returning. He said He would, and everything Jesus ever said that He would do, He has done. He has always been faithful to do the things that He promised He would do. And He said He would do this, and even though it seems like a long time, Peter even addresses this in one of his writings. He's like, "It seems to us like the coming of the Lord is a long time." But he says, "A day to the Lord is like 1,000 years, 1,000 years are like a day." Like, whatever seems long to us is not long to God.

And God is long-suffering. In other words, He has a long time of patience waiting for people to come to salvation and knowledge of Him. But He will return, and when He does return, those who have died who are believers in Christ will rise first. They will meet Him in the air. Why?

Because you don't wait for the king to show up, you go meet him, and you come back and welcome him to his domain, into his kingdom. In a couple weeks, we'll look into the end of Revelation and see that Christ also brings with Him what's called the new heavens and the new earth, the place that He promised in John 14 that He goes to prepare a place for us, and He says, "I'm going to bring the new heavens and the new earth with Me." All of this will be destroyed and rebuilt. It'll be made whole again. So your dead loved ones, or your ones who have passed away, won't miss out. They get to see Jesus first.

There's a whole bunch of people in line before you to see Jesus. Their reward for their life of serving Christ will come to fruition, and they get to see Jesus first. He will come back like a king who left for his coronation. He'll receive authority, return with great fanfare. And then He crushes His enemies.

He crushes His enemies under His feet, and it's a great passage to read in Revelation 19. I've been talking about a little bit. They go to fight Him though, and they just get destroyed. It's not even a battle. Like, they try to fight Jesus.

It says they line up. You've heard of Gog and Magog. They line up. It sounds like this great battle, and then there's no battle. There's just victory proclaimed.

Jesus just simply wins. I don't know how. He's already won the battle. The point is they want to fight Him and they don't realize they've already been conquered. Jesus is the King who has already conquered Satan, sin, and death.

And even though Satan has had a time now where he's still allowed to work evil on this earth, Christ is going to return and put all of his enemies under His feet, and then He will rule with the iron rod. These are encouraging words, they're comforting words. And even though we don't know when, Jesus even said you won't know, like, the day or the hour. And there's people that have tried to predict that, and they've gotten it wrong, obviously, every time. Don't even listen to those people.

But you can understand seasons. You can pay attention to what the Scriptures say and see that God has talked about the things that will happen before His return. And I'll tell you, I've grown up, I'm over 40 years old, and all my life I've been hearing people saying, "I think it's close." Granted, it's closer than it ever was before. That's how time kind of works, you know. But like, it feels like, "Okay, Lord, "Come soon." That is the prayer of the people of God saying, "Lord, come quickly.

We need you now." We need to have an urgency and an expectancy of wanting to see the return of Jesus Christ. I know when I was a teenager, I'm like, "But I've never even gone out on a date yet, you know, like I want to at least, you know, do all that, you know, like, Lord, can I at least like live life a little while before you come?" Listen, whatever things that you dream of accomplishing, the things that Jesus brings will be so much far superior and more enjoyable than anything you could have ever planned to experience on this earth, that your cry of your heart and your prayer should be, "Lord, come quickly. Lord, come soon." Not just when you're tired and worn out and you want to escape from it all. This hope of Christians is not what we might call escapism, where we're just trying to get away from this rotten old place that we live in. It's actually longing for the good things, the future, the eternity that God has in store for Him to bring it to fruition here on this earth, and that is the cry of our hearts as we look forward to that.

And so as we're looking forward to the return of Christ, the other thing that we must be about is to proclaim His return, to proclaim His coming, to say that Jesus Christ is coming back. You can believe it. You can trust in it. And if you're not a friend of God, you are right now an enemy of God, and today is the day of salvation, and today is the day that you must submit your life to Jesus Christ. Live with Him forever.

You live with Him in all eternity. You live with Him here on this earth. It's, it's better than anything else you ever could have wanted or expected. And the good news is those loved ones that have gone on before us, that they are in the bosom of Christ now. He promised that man on the cross next to Him that believed in Him, He said, "Today you will be with Me in paradise." I can't tell you exactly how that is or where that is.

All we know is this: to be apart from this body, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, means that you are with Christ. And that those are the ones that welcome Him to His earthly kingdom first, and then we get to tag along too, if we're still alive at that time. The good news is, if you've given your hope to Jesus Christ, if you trusted in Him for your hope of your life, that He has considered you a friend and a child of God. Pastor Kendall's gonna come up. I encourage you to be here the next couple weeks, especially because as we wrap this up, it's kind of building to a certain crescendo, and so I want you to be part of that.

Love you guys.