1 Thessalonians 1:1-2
Please be seated. Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to Second Thessalonians. Today, we’ll be looking at chapter
one, verses one and two. So several years back, we began
in Luke’s gospel. Luke wrote to Theophilus, his
patron, to tell him all that Jesus had said and done. And
then he wrote the book of Acts, which we also considered. He
wrote the continuing work of Jesus through the apostles who
were sent to the ends of the earth. And then we’ve since been
looking at Paul’s letters in chronological order. So we went
through Galatians, first Thessalonians. We took a break recently for
our series on covenant since we went through the church name
change. And now we are back in 2 Thessalonians, probably written
just a few weeks after 1 Thessalonians. More questions, more answers
needed. Before we read, let’s ask for God’s help and blessing.
Lord, we do pray that in these moments where we are under the
power of your word, that we would see it as trustworthy. We would
see it as inspired and for our eternal good, convince and convert
to salvation and comfort and build up in our most holy faith. We do ask that you would do that. Let your word do the work, the
errand that it is sent upon. We pray in Christ’s great name.
Amen. Second Thessalonians chapter one, the first two verses, Paul,
Silvanus and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians and God,
our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Sometimes we say of a person,
if they, you know, are a little too optimistic, they see the
world through. Rose colored glasses. Well, after
the last eight or so weeks, I hope you see the world through covenant
lenses, covenant glasses. The idea being that God makes
and God keeps covenant. God loves with an everlasting
love. God gives his word and God keeps
his word. What he promises, he fulfills. All the promises of God are yes.
and amen in the person and work of His own Son, our Savior, the
Lord Jesus Christ. So we want to be those who look
at the world through covenant colored glasses. And as we jump
back into another letter of the Apostle Paul, I hope that you
will see the story of the Thessalonians, the lives of the Thessalonians
in the context of the great covenant that God makes with man. He comes
and says, I will be your God. And he says, you will be my people. And remember the blessings. He’ll
give us grapes. That’s kind of the promised land. He’ll give
us grandkids. That’s the offspring. And he’ll
give us good. That’s everlasting life. And so when we think of Paul
and his ministry to the Thessalonians, he is simply taking those covenant
promises of old to the ends of the earth. And he happens to
end up in Thessalonica. We have in 1st and 2nd Thessalonians,
we have one of the early New Testament books, probably the
third one, maybe third or fourth one. We have not only an early
New Testament book, but we have the very word of God himself.
We believe with all our heart that the word of God is inspired. It is God breathed. And he uses
holy men of old to write down the scriptures. They were carried
along by the spirit. And so what Paul writes here
has been recognized, or rather we should say received by the
church as the word of God. And so we, a couple thousand
years, receive it as such. It is the very word of God. In
fact, in a chapter or two, we’ll land on One of the most famous
and one of the best passages to help us understand why we
have to sit under the misery of preaching every week. Paul
will say to the Thessalonians, when we came to you, you received
our word, our sermons, not as the word of men, but as the very
word of God, which is at work in you. And so we have an early
New Testament book that would be written, delivered and read
aloud to the congregation. We’ll pick through it over a
handful of Sundays, but they would have heard the whole thing
in one reading and someone would likely have explained the sense
of it. Today, we want to look at the
first two verses. I always think these first early verses of Paul’s
letters or the other epistles and books of the Bible are so
loaded with good words. And so we have today the apostolic
greeting. Paul the apostle, Paul the sent
one into their part of the world to bring the covenant blessings
of God Almighty to the Greeks and to the Romans and to the
Jews came to them. And so as they were blessed from
heaven by God’s word through Paul, We hope and we trust that
we will be blessed from heaven today from God’s Word read and
preached. For those of you who are taking
notes, I got a bunch of peas. And we’ll start with preachers.
You’ve got Paul. And you’ve got Silas or Silvanus,
depending on the passage of the type of the version of scripture
you have. You have Paul and you have Silvanus or Silas and you
have Timothy. Think of each one of them briefly.
Paul, the artist formerly known as Saul, right? Remember breathing
murderous threats. He was on the way to Damascus
to kill Christians. He was putting men and women
in jail. He was, uh, uh, in hatred towards
Christ and his people. Remember, Jesus met him on the
road to Damascus and called from heaven, Saul, why are you persecuting
me? And thankfully, Paul’s heart
was changed by the grace of God. And over time, he became the
chief minister to the Gentile population. Jesus said, I will
show you how much you must suffer for my name. And we’ve seen that
in the book of Acts. We see that as we make our way
through his epistles. But Saul, who became Paul, name
changes are wonderful in scripture, aren’t they? Jacob becomes Israel,
Abram becomes Abraham, God changes the name. He changes your spiritual
condition. So there’s, there’s Paul, there’s
Silas. You’ll find his name mentioned
a handful of times in scripture. He will later be very useful
in the life of the church. We don’t, don’t know a whole
lot about him at this point, but he’s, he’s the one, remember
when Paul says it’s time for second missionary journey, Barnabas
wanted to take John Mark. And remember the last time on
a little trip, he had deserted Paul. So Paul says, nope, not
taking him. Barnabas says, not going without
him. And Paul says, well, you go your way. I’ll go my way. And so Barnabas and John Mark
went off one way and Paul and Silas went off the other. Well,
they pick up Timothy. As they’re making their way through
the region of Galatia, where Paul had ministered on his first
missionary journey, they find Timothy, a young convert. He
had a Jewish mom and grandmother, but a Roman or Greek father.
He had become a Christian by reading the Old Testament scriptures. Imagine that. Remember Paul writes
to Timothy in his second letter, the scriptures and all they had
at that point were which ones? Old Testament, they’re able to
make you wise unto salvation. And so they pick up Timothy,
who becomes like a son to Paul. He becomes his best ministry
assistant. And Paul is going to send him
from Athens up to Thessalonica to see how they’re doing. Timothy
will come back, give him a report, and he’ll write off 1 Thessalonians.
When the Ephesian church is in a mess, Paul will leave Timothy
there. And so these three preachers,
These three ministers, Paul, the apostle and Silas, who I
believe was given prophet status, maybe in the New Testament, he
could utter the word of God. That was a temporary sort of
blessing. But this is Jesus’ work on earth
continuing. Jesus has risen up to heaven,
but he has left and he has sent his apostles to build the church.
Remember, we say the church is built on the cornerstone and
that is Jesus Christ. And then the rest of the foundation
stones are the apostles who gave us the word of God until revelation
ceased. And then on that foundation with
Jesus as the cornerstone and the apostles as the foundation
stones, we as Christians are those living stones being built
into a house where God can dwell with his people. And so these
preachers come to bear witness to Jesus. These preachers come
and they suffer. Paul will say in another place,
I am filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.
So while Jesus is in heaven, the sufferings meant for him
on this earth come. against his apostles and his
ministers and his church. And so they are proclaimers of
Jesus from the Old Testament. When you read Acts chapter 17,
it gives several action verbs, you might say. They proclaim
Jesus as the suffering servant, as the suffering Messiah, and
who also rose from the dead. They reason with the people. explain and they prove and of
course the Holy Spirit must be at work to show in the minds
and hearts of these sinners that Jesus is the Messiah. So you’ve
got these three preachers Paul and Silas and Timothy and on
down the line through Christian history God gives to the church
his ministers or his preachers to proclaim the Word of God.
Now these preachers go to a place And what is that place? That
place is Thessalonica. And so the preachers, Paul, Silas
and Timothy are sent to a place. Remember this is second missionary
journey. The first one, Paul and Barnabas
and John Mark had gone to Crete. They’d gone up into Galatia.
That’s why the Galatian church got the first letter. So they’ve,
on the second missionary journey, passed back through there. They
want to stop in Asia. So they’re trying to expand westward,
as it were, and they want to go to the little region that’s
called Asia. Not what we think of as Asia today, but the place
where Ephesus and some of the other churches we know are. You
read the seven letters to the seven churches in the book of
Revelation. Those are the churches of Asia.
And so Paul and Silas and Timothy are making their trek through
this region, and the spirit says, no, no, no, you’re not gonna
preach here, you’re not gonna teach here. They were prevented
by God from ministering there. And so they go on up to the north
and to the west, and they end at Troas, where Paul has the
Macedonian dream. And the person in Macedonia says,
come to us, we need your ministry. And so leaving Troas, they go
to Philippi. And we know about the Philippian jailer, we know
about Lydia. And then they raise such a stir,
they’re run out of town. they go off to Thessalonica and
say, well, we’ll be better treated here. Well, about three weeks
in, Paul is roughly run out of town. Silas and Timothy stay
behind, but a mob comes and says, we don’t like you. You can’t
be here. And so they try to beat down the door of Jason, their
host. Paul is snuck out by night, makes his way to Athens. And
that’s sort of the setup, but the place Thessalonica. Some
of y’all think like to go eat at Mykonos. And I love their
motto, A Taste of Grease. I guess that’s a play on words,
right? And you know, you’re sitting in there eating your… Hey,
some of y’all are a little slow, aren’t you? But while you’re
sitting in there eating, they got the, you know, the little
lute music playing and strumming, and they got their videos of
all their beautiful places. You know, all the places you
could go on the earth. Why would you pick Myrtle Beach
when you’ve got Thessalonica? All these beautiful, well, it
costs more money. But you’ve got all these beautiful
places. That’s where Paul went with Silas and Timothy. Now,
Paul was not there to sit by the ocean and look at the blue
water and Facebook and Instagram and tell all the friends, I’m
here and you’re not. Got one of those Christmas cards
with that in it this year. He was there to bring Christ. He
was there to minister Jesus in a very pagan city, quarter million
people, major trade route, major port, an independent city, independent
of Roman authority. And he was there to go to the
Jew first and then the Greek. He was there to proclaim Christ.
He was there to reason from the scriptures. And so Thessalonica,
a thing, or I’m sorry, a place that we think of from the pictures,
was a major stop on his second missionary journey. He’s going
to go back later. He’s going to send other people
there and they’re going to be a long lasting church. So you’ve
got preachers going to a place and then they minister to people.
They minister to those at Thessalonica. Now remember, The Jewish population
had been scattered. There was the diaspora, the scattering
because of persecution and famine in Jerusalem. And so the Jewish
population in Jerusalem had scattered all over the Roman Empire. And
so everywhere Paul goes, he looks for a synagogue. He looks for
the place where they gather together to read the word. And for someone
to explain the word, what a natural place to go to plant the beginnings
of a church of the Lord Jesus. And so you had this great population
center, a quarter million people. That was big in those days. These
were a free people, big, big in trade, but they were also
big in idols. In fact, when Paul writes to
them in first Thessalonians, he says, I thank God for you
every day. When I remember that you turned
from serving idols, to serve the living and true God. Isn’t
that what we thought of a few weeks back with the life of Abraham?
Abraham was living in Ur of the Chaldeans and he was worshiping
idols. And God said, leave your country,
leave your father’s house, leave your family and go to Canaan
and there worship me. And so what does Abram do? He
leaves all that behind. He goes to Canaan and he builds
an altar and he calls on the name of the Lord who promised.
that he would have offspring outnumbering the sand on the
seashores. He would have all the blessings of God. And so
that’s what the people who are living in darkness, that’s what
the people who are living in idolatry, that’s what the people
who are there at Thessalonica receive from God. through the
preaching of the word from Paul and Silas and Timothy. Now the book of Acts tells us
that some Jews believed, some Greeks believed, and some leading
women. And so the people there heard
the word and became children of the living God. They heard
the word and they were adopted into the family of the living
God. And so now they were part of
the people of God. I want you to make for a second
the connection between the Old Testament and how God names or
calls people and the New Testament, especially as we look at ourselves
now, but we look at the acts of the apostles all through the
scriptures. God says, you’re my people, you’re
my beloved, you’re my servants. And he has all these terms of
endearment. And you get to the New Testament and some people
will say, oh, that’s the Old Testament people. The New Testament
people are different. But I challenge you, read all
of Paul’s epistles and especially read Peter. Peter and Paul, but
mostly Peter is good at it. They take Old Testament terms
of endearment, Old Testament names of affection. And they
refer to the Greeks and the Romans and the barbarians and those
who come to faith in Jesus who aren’t children of Abraham by
birth. And he gives them that name. And so these people, are
now God’s people because the preachers came to their place
and preached the good news to them. Well, how did this happen?
It happened through power. Remember the apostle Paul, when
he writes his letter to the Romans, he says, I am not ashamed of
the gospel. I’m not ashamed of the gospel
because in it, in the gospel itself is the power. It’s the
power of God unto salvation. When the word is read, when it
is proclaimed, And when the spirit convinces and when the spirit
converts, men and women and boys and girls, no matter their place
or station or religion, drop to their knees. And like Saul
on the road to Damascus say, yes, Lord, what must I do next? Or when Jesus preached the gospel,
what must I do to be saved? And so the power of God When
it is proclaimed, when we reason from the scriptures, when it
is explained and proven, the Spirit shows to us our sin, our
misery, and shows that our covenant-making, covenant-keeping God cannot by
any means overlook sin. And so how has He overcome that
dilemma? He has laid our sins on His Son,
the Lord Jesus at the cross, and those sins past and present.
and future are paid for. This only comes through the power
of the gospel. It’s not through preachers just
going places. It’s not through people opening
their Bibles. It’s not some magic thing that
happens. The reading of the word, the
preaching of the word, the ministry of the word, our evangelism must
be accompanied by the power of God, the power of the spirit.
And that’s exactly what took place here. But hasn’t that taken
place in our own lives? It’s not by might or by power
that we are saved, but it is by the spirit of the living God. And that puts us in a position.
It puts us in a position where we are in Christ, that little
preposition in, in Christ, in God is so prominent in many of
Paul’s opening letters. And so when these preachers come
to their place and preach to these people and the power of
God comes, it changes their position when they are no longer apart
from Christ. They are now in Christ. And so they are the church of
Christ Jesus, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. They are the
church in God, our Father. The Jewish folks trust in the
Messiah they’ve heard about for a long time. The devout Greeks
hear a strange new teaching. but their hearts are stirred,
their minds are opened, and the spirit of the living God gives
power to the reading and preaching of his word. And these people
are no longer apart from God in their own sins, but they are
now alive in Christ. They are part of the church of
God, the church of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And
that’s why they’re persecuted. If you’re following along all
these peas, the preachers come to the place and to the people,
the Thessalonians, the power of God accompanies their ministry
and their position is now no longer apart from Christ, but
in Christ. And you come to Jesus, you name
his name, you’re going to be persecuted. Jesus promised it. All the prophets show us that
in their own history. We see it in the life of Peter.
We see it in the life of Paul. In fact, all the apostles, all
the disciples met some demise at the hands of tormentors. What
is the saying? The blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the church. You know, we live in America
where Christianity is the bigger you believe in God, the richer
you get, right? That’s kind of what’s out there,
the hokey stuff. And the bigger you believe in God, the healthier
you will get. We call that health and wealth.
Where is persecution in the mix? Where is suffering in the mix?
Where is all the hard stuff Jesus promised and many of our forebears
have experienced? To be a Christian doesn’t always
mean to be oppressed or persecuted, but it generally does. We’re
very blessed. We’re blessed to live in a land
where we have the freedom to worship and live and obey God
largely without trouble. We’ve seen some trouble beginning
and hopefully have pushed that back. But there are countries
in the world where you die in church. There are places in the
world where you suffer even death for naming the name of Jesus.
And so one of the issues that the Thessalonians dealt with
was persecution. Remember, Paul’s ministry there
was very short. He ministered, according to Acts
17, about three Sabbaths. And so he would have been with
them on their Saturdays, reading the word, explaining the word,
leading them to Jesus. And then he began to disciple
them as Christians, go into all the world, Jesus says, and make
disciples. You baptize them and you teach
them everything I’ve commanded you. So he began the work of
discipleship, but the Jews became jealous. Acts chapter 17 tells
us. And they went out to the rabble
of the city. They raised up a mob. They attacked
their host home, Jason. And they demanded that Paul be
given to them. They tell him what would have
done, beat him, killed him, whatever. Instead he sneaks out and he
goes on to Thessalonica, Berea, and then Athens. But persecution
does come. And when it does come, we remember
that it is the way of the master. And so it is the way also of
his disciples. And then we have the reason for
the letter. There’s problems at Thessalonica. Paul can’t stand
the fact that he had to be run out of town and he couldn’t continue
the work. So Timothy and Silas stay a little
bit. They join him in Athens. And then when they’re in Athens
a little while, Paul can’t stand it any longer. First Thessalonians
tells us, I sent Timothy to you. I was willing to be without Timothy,
my good helper, so that he could come see you, find out what’s
going on. So Timothy went up there, helped
them out for a little while, came back with some questions.
So 1 Thessalonians, here’s the answers to your questions. 2
Thessalonians, letter carrier comes back, more questions. So
2 Thessalonians. And two really big problems.
They were dealing with persecution, yes, but they were also dealing
with false teaching about the second coming. I think they had
their own left behind series, if you know what I mean. Some
people had been telling them, you’re, you know, you’re really
not the Christians you think you are because Jesus has already
come and you’re stuck here. And you, of course, that’ll mess
your head up. But there was also this idea
of the second coming is really saying we don’t need to work.
And so that’s the problem of the idlers or the lazy people
that Paul will confront. And so you think of this little
letter Paul writes, sends to the Thessalonians, their beloved
preacher. They miss him. He writes him
a letter. He hopes to get back to them someday. And what does
this letter do? It’s meant to comfort them. And
it’s meant to build them up in their most holy faith. And so
as you look at this little bitty intro, Paul, Silas, and Timothy,
the church of the Thessalonians and God our Father, and in the
Lord Jesus Christ. He gives the simple. words of
greeting, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. Those are such wonderful words,
grace and peace. What do we say about grace? It’s God’s riches at Christ’s
expense, right? That’s the little an acronym
grace. It’s undeserved or unmerited favor. We don’t deserve anything
from God except his wrath. and his curse due to us for our
sin. But instead of wrath, he gives
us his grace through his son, the Lord Jesus. And then we have
peace, we have shalom, or you might can understand peace as
the covenant blessings. We get the grapes, we get the
grandkids, we get the good, we have rest from our enemies. Life
holistically is wonderful, but here’s the big thing. We are
no longer at odds with God. Peace with God has been made
through the cross and through the eternal blood of our Savior,
His Son, the Lord Jesus. And as we come to the table today,
I think we should remember this well. We only can hear the words
grace and peace because of the blood of the Lord Jesus. Let’s
think on that as we prepare to meet with our Savior at the table.
Pray with me. Lord, we thank you that in this world you have
set your love and affection on a people and you have sent them
everything they need to hear of Jesus and to grow in Jesus.
And we thank you for your son, our Savior, leaving heaven, coming
to earth and seeking and saving the lost. And we thank you that
apostles have been sent, now preachers have been sent. And
we thank you for our little fellowship here, how you fully furnished
us with all we need to proclaim the goodness of God in Christ
and to grow in the grace into the full measure of the statue
of our Savior Jesus. Help us now in this hour to realize
that we who were not a people are now a people because of the
blood of Jesus. Peace has been accomplished through
the blood of Jesus. And as we come to the table now,
Lord, set apart The bread set apart the cup from uncommon to
sacred use. May the emblems of the suffering
and death of Jesus and may the spirit of God at work in us lift
our souls up to heaven. May we understand more and more
how great and how high and how wide and how deep is the love
of God, the covenant love of God you play for keeps. We’re
unfaithful, but you are faithful, and we see that now. Show it
to us in the sacrament, we pray in Christ’s mighty name, amen.
We want to prepare to come to the Lord’s table. You should
have a song insert, weary of earth and laden with my sin.
Let’s stay seated and sing together.