Intro to Thessalonians

Sermon

Key Passage

1 Thessalonians 1:1 NIV

Paul, Silas and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you.

Acts 17:1–4 NIV

When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.

Series Introduction

Today, we begin a series in the books of 1 & 2 Thessalonians

I hope this will be a beneficial journey for us all.

Help find the books of 1 & 2 Thessalonians

The Thessalonian letters are a couple of very small books of the Bible in the New Testament

I don’t want to assume that everyone in the room knows what this means, so I will start from the very beginning.

At Real Life Selkirk, we build all of our teaching from the Bible

We believe the Bible to be the inspired and authoritative Word of God

We don’t want to twist the Bible to say what we want. We adjust ourselves as individuals and as a church to what the Bible says.

Let’s find 1 & 2 Thessalonians

Find a Bible

You may have come to church today and hear me say that we are preaching from the Bible

You may not have a Bible and you may not know where you can find a Bible.

If you need a Bible, please leave something on your connection card and we would like to give a Bible to you so you can follow along in our services.

Or, if you are a tech person, you can find a Bible app on your phone.

I RECOMMEND THE BIBLE APP THAT LOOKS LIKE THIS

It provides audio versions of the Bible and also our notes each week are loaded into the app so you can better follow along.

The Bible is divided into two sections, the OT and the NT

The OT is the first 2/3 of the Bible and the NT is the last 1/3 of the Bible.

The NT begins with the life of Jesus and for that purpose we spend most of our time there.

That doesn’t mean that the OT is not valuable. It is equally the inspired Word of God, but Jesus is the centerpoint of all human history and for that purpose, we keep our focus on Him.

As you flip through the NT, you will find a series of books called Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians.

1 & 2 Thessalonians are immediately following those books.

If you get to 1 & 2 Timothy or Titus, you have gone too far.

Why Study 1 Thessalonians?

We are going to turn our focus to 1 Thessalonians and do another intro to the book of 2 Thessalonians.

They each have unique context that we need to look at individually.

At a basic level, we will study 1 & 2 Thessalonians because it is a part of the inspired Word of God.

2 Timothy 3:16–17 NIV

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

All Scripture is God-breathed

Teaching

Rebuking

Correcting

Training in Righteousness

Equips us for every good work

As sinful human beings, we need this from a Holy God.

Here is a little preaching tip. This is the effect of all Scripture, so it really makes preaching pretty simple.

Is this teaching? Rebuking? Correcting?, etc.

Discipleship

1 & 2 Thessalonians have become something of a manual for discipleship in the NT.

We will uncover this reality as we tell the story of the Thessalonians this morning, but they were presented with the Gospel and they acted as disciples

Matthew 4:19 ESV

And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Matthew 4:19 Definition of Disciple

A disciple follows Jesus (Head)

A disciple is being changed by Jesus (Heart)

A disciple is on mission with Jesus (Hands)

We will discover that this church heard the Gospel about that Jesus Christ is King, and they placed their faith in Him.

They allowed their hearts to be changed, in spite of persecution.

They lived out the mission of Jesus and made more disciples. In doing so the world around them heard about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Genre

I’ll be very brief here, because we are going to get into the genre as we explain the introduction to this book.

Although this is called a “book” of the Bible, it is actually a letter (epistle).

It is written by a guy named Paul and two of his friends, Silas and Timothy.

Paul had visited this city and preached the Gospel in their Jewish synagogue.

This caused some uproar.

Some followed Jesus

Others passionately rejected Paul and searched to have him arrested.

They ran Paul out of town and even began chasing him through nearby towns.

Because Paul had to leave in such a hurry, he sent Timothy back with a letter for them to encourage them and continue to teach them what it means to follow Jesus.

This is that letter.

Author, Audience & Date

The author is Paul

There are a few places where there are some questions about the authorship of the letter.

This is not one of those letters.

Paul says he wrote it.

It sounds like everything else he wrote.

Other people confirmed that he wrote it.

He wrote it.

The audience is the Thessalonian church

As we just mentioned, there were some circumstances that necessitated the letter, but it is clearly to the Thessalonian church.

1 Thessalonians 1:1 NIV

Paul, Silas and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you.

Date

This is one of the earliest letters written by Paul

Very likely Galatians was his first and this was his second.

It was likely written later during his missionary journey while he was staying in Corinth around 50-54 AD.

Location Context

The city of Thessalonica is very interesting because it still remains a city today.

Many ancient cities are nothing except archaeological sites today. But Thessalonica still exists exactly where it was during Paul’s visit.

Thessalonian Map

Thessalonica has an ideal location in the Mediterranean Sea area.

It is on the banks of a natural harbor in the NW corner of the Aegean Sea

The three main ports in the provinces of Achaia and Asia during that time were Corinth, Ephesus and Thessalonica

Thessalonica had an additional advantage because it was on the Egnatian Way.

The Egnatian Way was the Roman road that led to the Orient

It was a crossroads for all sorts of international travel as well as international trade through its harbor.

Population

Around the time of this letter, the population of Thessalonica was around 200,000 people.

Most were native Greeks (because they were in Greece)

But there were segments of Romans, Jews and other nations there as well.

1 Thessalonians speaks to the moral climate of that city by talking about pagan Greek religions.

It was built in 315 BC and was named after the half sister of Alexander the Great, named Thessalonica

More recently, in WWII Nazis extracted 72,000 Jews from the city and executed them.

Today, only around 1,000 Jews live in the city.

It still exists today and it is called “Salonica” short for Thessaloniki and has a population of around 300,000 people.

Outline

Chapter 1- Greeting and Encouragement

Chapter 2- Gospel Given, Gospel Received

Chapter 3- The Effect of the Gospel

Chapter 4-5- Holy Living (Purity, Rapture, Attitude, Relationship)

Sermon

1 Thessalonians 1:1 NIV

Paul, Silas and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you.

Our opening passage introduces us to the key characters involved in this letter.

Paul, Silas, Timothy, the Thessalonians, and Jesus.

I would like to take a few moments and introduce you to all of these characters today.

Paul

In order to understand this text, we need to understand who Paul is. (Remember, Paul is the author of the letter to the Thessalonians)

We tend to think of Paul as a Hall of Fame type Christian.

He wrote much of the New Testament. He planted churches and went on a bunch of missionary journeys.

The things Paul did were incredible.

But what God did in Paul was even greater.

Paul was a devout Jewish man. We can see this as he describes himself:

Philippians 3:4–6 NIV

though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

In an earlier letter, Paul describes himself in this way.

He was a Jewish man who followed the Jewish law from birth.

He was a Pharisee

He knew the law of God. He didn’t just know it. He lived it and was the religious police of that time.

He was passionate about his ways of following God

He was so full of zeal, that anyone who opposed his way of thinking or his interpretation of the law, he would persecute.

This included the church.

We can read where Paul (known as Saul at the time) even oversaw the killing of an early disciple of Jesus (Acts 7).

As for following the law, he considered himself faultless.

Paul before Jesus was by the book a righteous man. But He didn’t follow Jesus.

Paul knew there was a massive separation between following the religious rules and following Jesus.

He did one nearly to perfection. And he was no closer to hope and salvation than anyone else.

Despite all of his zeal, his passion, his education, his application of the religion, Jesus knew that Paul needed the Gospel.

Salvation would not be found in our performance. Salvation would be found in Him.

Paul describes what Jesus did in this way:

Acts 22:6–16 NIV

“About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’ “ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked. “ ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. “ ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked. “ ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me. “A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. He stood beside me and said, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very moment I was able to see him. “Then he said: ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard. And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.’

Paul converted from deep religion to following Jesus.

He even finished his statement of how religious he was in this way.

Philippians 3:7–8 NIV

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ

After meeting Jesus, Paul felt that knowing Jesus outweighed everything in this life.

Even things that are good.

He gave up on the law, but didn’t give up on the law.

Here is the Gospel He found.

I want you to see this. Paul was a rule follower to the max.

After following Jesus, he didn’t say, “Well now I am free to go kill people and lie and cheat.”

He continued following the tenets of the law.

However, it was not out of obligation and servitude to the law.

It was out of obedience to Jesus.

Jesus was everything to Paul.

Paul knew that righteousness would not come from his own actions.

His actions were great, but he discovered that he could never earn a right standing before God.

Therefore, everything that he did that tried to earn right standing before God only served to justify himself.

Once he saw that salvation comes from Jesus’ work and not his, he knew that everything he did was an effort to undo Jesus’ work at the cross.

This was Paul’s story.

He knew the peace of God and he knew the grace of God.

These things were foundational to his understanding of the Gospel

This is the picture of who Paul was. Now we see what Paul was doing for the Gospel in the world at that time.

1 Thessalonians 1:1 NIV

Paul, Silas and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you.

Silas

Silas shows up in the Bible in Acts 15.

We are going to use the book of Acts as a chronological baseline to understand the context of the book of 1 Thessalonians:

Acts is a historical account, not a letter.

It tells of the launch and events of the early church.

In it, we can find a series of events that piece together the spread of the Gospel.

We will find where the book of 1 Thessalonians fits in with the historical timeline of the church.

It appears he was from Jerusalem and was sent to Antioch to deliver a message from the church in Jerusalem about how Gentiles were to engage the Christian faith.

Did they need to become Jews first? Or was it ok for them just to become Christians.

Long story short, the letter said they didn’t have to become Jews first. They were ok just to come to Jesus as they were.

Silas was sent to deliver this message.

It appears he was a high quality guy, because Paul asked him to go on a journey with him to preach the Gospel around southern Europe.

Silas joined with him.

By the time they got to Acts 16, a guy named Timothy joined them (we’ll see his story in a minute), and they were off to preach the Gospel.

In one of their first stops, Paul and Silas cast a demon out of a girl who made money as a slave telling fortunes for her owner.

Once the demon was out of her, the owner saw that he had lost all ability to make money, so he had Paul and Silas imprisoned for the damage they had caused.

At midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing songs to God and there was a violent earthquake and all of the prison doors busted open.

When the jailer saw that the doors were open, he was ready to kill himself because of the prison break.

But Paul stopped him and told him that none of the prisoners had escaped.

The jailer then brought him from the jail to his house and asked, “what do I need to do to be saved?”

Paul says, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved”.

The man believed and he and his entire household were saved.

This was the story of Silas before he got to Thessalonica.

1 Thessalonians 1:1 NIV

Paul, Silas and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you.

Timothy

Timothy has a different role.

Timothy is a partner with Paul and a brother in Christ.

What we know about Timothy is that his mother and grandmother were Jewish and his father was a Greek.

He was brought up in the way of the law, knowing the Scriptures from his mother.

He was also educated in the way of the common practice by his father who was Greek.

He was a unique blend of skills that enabled him to speak authoritatively to the Jews as well as the Greeks.

He was saved and baptized and joined Paul in his ministry.

He was often sent on Paul’s behalf to do ministry.

Acts 16 Paul, Silas and Timothy begin their journey together.

The Journey

On the journey of Paul, Silas and Timothy, one of the first cities they visited was Thessalonica.

We can read about it in Acts 17:1-4

Acts 17:1 NIV

When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue.

Because of Paul’s background, he would begin in each town going into the Jewish synagogue.

He was trained to be a Jewish rabbi and pharisee. His education and life commitment to the Jewish ways made the synagogue the first likely place to visit based on familiarity.

Also, Jesus was Jewish and it was the Scriptures that were given to the Jewish people that were fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

The Jewish synagogue was as good of place as any to make the introduction to Jesus in that town.

Acts 17:2–3 NIV

As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said.

This was the custom of Paul. His first stop would be the synagogue.

Because of his pedigree as a Jewish rabbi, he would certainly have standing in any synagogue around the world.

For three Sabbaths (three weeks) he reasoned with them from the Scriptures.

What does this mean?

He presented the OT texts to them to prove that Jesus was the Messiah.

The entire Jewish culture was built from the Scriptures. They were people of the law.

This was not the Bible as we are familiar with.

Most of the New Testament about Jesus hadn’t been written yet.

In fact, part of the NT was about to be written when Paul wrote a letter the this city, Thessalonica.

He presented a Jewish case for Jesus, using the Jewish Scriptures to make each argument.

Acts 17:4 NIV

Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.

Jews and even Greeks who had apparently attended the synagogue were persuaded by Paul and Silas.

The message had impact.

Acts 17:5 NIV

But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd.

Some accepted, others passionately rejected the message of Paul.

They didn’t just say, “It’s not for me”

They started a riot in the city and started to search a guys house in search of Paul and Silas.

Acts 17:10 NIV

As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue.

We’ve heard this story before.

They slipped away at night to avoid being caught, arrested and likely imprisoned or killed.

They show up at a neighboring town that was around 50 miles away.

A significant distance, but not too far.

Acts 17:11–14 NIV

Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men. But when the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, some of them went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. The believers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea.

What do we learn about the city of Thessalonica from this interchange?

The gospel was received by some.

But how do you think church in the synagogue was after that?

Did the Christians step in without significant conflict?

Not likely

Those who had chosen to follow Jesus were likely going to experience some struggles and oppression by the religious leaders in that area.

They were likely going to be expelled from the synagogue. No talk of this Jesus guy in our church!

However, after only three weeks of hearing the Gospel presented and spending time with Paul, they were left alone.

This doesn’t seem like a very good recipe for success.

If you are Paul, you likely feel like this church doesn’t have much chance of success.

In Acts 18, we see that Paul makes his way to Corinth (southern Greece as opposed to northern Greece where Thessalonica is located).

When he gets to Corinth, he gets word from the church in Thessalonica and writes a letter to them.

These guys didn’t just take their lumps sitting down.

No they engaged the Gospel and grew in relationship and discipleship.

God showed up and built that church.

Paul writes this letter to encourage and instruct them as a new church in the world.

This is the letter we will be reading as a church.

Teaching

It is always difficult to preach the introduction to a book of the Bible.

I hope a few things by doing this:

I hope you have an excitement and understanding for the Bible, especially in its context.

I hope you understand the Bible is relevant to us today. We will discuss that more in a moment

I hope we discover that we can now wrap our heads around how the Thessalonian church heard their message to apply to their lives. We can identify with their interpretations because there are parallels in our world.

I look at the testimony of Paul

Sometimes, the very best of religion and the very worst of sinner end up in the same place

Here was Paul who was the most righteous of all, found himself to be guilty of what we would consider one of the greatest sins, murder. All while thinking he was pleasing God!

Was He a religious person or murderer? Yes.

And discovered that even the most religious and the most sinful equally need Jesus.

We sometimes step into life thinking that we have the deck stacked against us.

There is no one who is too broken and no one that isn’t broken.

At the end of the day, we all need a savior.

Desperation.

I look at the testimony of Timothy

I find this interesting.

He had a massive impact in the early church

His mother and grandmother were believers.

His dad was appeared to be a logical thinking Greek that didn’t point him to Jesus.

There may be single mothers or grandmothers who have children that are in blended homes of lordship.

Show your children Jesus.

I look at the testimony of Silas

Here is a man who didn’t allow imprisonment to define him.

His prison was physical, but he was also a human being.

Do you think he might have struggled with understanding God’s will?

We just walked through a series talking about hurdles in God’s will.

He had a big one.

In spite of his hurdle, he still chose to worship.

Not for His benefit, but for the glory of God.

You might be in a place where you feel like you are in prison.

A prison of confusion, a prison of fear, a prison of the consequences of sin.

Your response may not be to seek to get out of that prison.

Your response of worship will allow your control to be handed over to God. God will make your prison His redemption.

I look at the testimony of the Thessalonians

They heard a snapshot of the Gospel

They didn’t make excuses. They didn’t say, “we don’t know enough”

The put into action what they knew.

Theology isn’t for knowledge. Theology is for application.

They made disciples as we will see and impacted northern Greece with the Gospel.

Their impact is still being felt and will be felt in our church over the next couple of months.

If you feel like you don’t know enough, are not good enough, don’t have skill enough to make an impact for the Kingdom, may the Thessalonian church be an inspiration to you.

Real Life in Action:

Head- Where do you feel too broken or inadequate to be used by God?

Heart- Go to God in prayer and surrender your perspective.

Hands- Share the story of God’s redemption in your life with someone this week.

Head- We all have Paul, Silas, or Timothy moments in life...

Heart- We feel we are too… Surrender your “too”. You are broken, but not too broken. You may be sinful, but not too sinful. Allow God to set the limitations on your life. Surrender your perspective.

Hands- God’s redemption is seen in our lives because of our brokenness. To many, God seems distant or silent. Your story is a picture of God at work. Allow your story to be heard and God to be glorified.