Letter to the Thessalonians

Letters to the Thessalonians

Prayer and Perseverance

Call to Worship: Revelation 19:6-8

Then I heard something like the voice of a vast multitude, like the sound of cascading waters, and like the rumbling of loud thunder, saying,

Hallelujah, because our Lord God, the Almighty, reigns! 7 Let us be glad, rejoice, and give him glory, because the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has prepared herself. 8 She was given fine linen to wear, bright and pure.

For the fine linen represents the righteous acts of the saints.

Intro: There has been a it put on hold this year. We are all waiting for the coronavirus to be over and we try to do our best to have a normal life. But one of the bigger world events that got put on hold is the Olympics.

Athletes train for years, compete to make the national team to represent their country to see how they stack up against others in their reactive sports. Imagine doing all the preparation and then you have to wait.

Imagine getting to the world stage and then an injury happens that can derail your life’s work. And that can be daunting and shape how you react or choose to act to get through it. Is going on worth it. The decision to participate in something like the Olympics is one thing, but doing everything necessary to make it come true is quite another. I will give you one name for now. Wilma Rudolph and as we go we will see her perseverance helped her achieve her goal.

William Perkins explains that we have two different needs: an individual’s need for justification or outward righteousness. And we also have the pursuit of sanctification or inward righteousness. We talked about the First one, our outward righteousness last week in the letter to the Galatians. But this week, with the letters to the Thessalonians, Paul focuses a little more on sanctification.

Read Verses: 1 Thess 1:1-10

1 Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy:

To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace to you and peace.

Thanksgiving

2 We always thank God for all of you, making mention of you constantly in our prayers. 3 We recall, in the presence of our God and Father, your work produced by faith, your labor motivated by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, in the Holy Spirit, and with full assurance. You know how we lived among you for your benefit, 6 and you yourselves became imitators of us and of the Lord when, in spite of severe persecution, you welcomed the message with joy from the Holy Spirit. 7 As a result, you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. 8 For the word of the Lord rang out from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place that your faith in God has gone out. Therefore, we don’t need to say anything, 9 for they themselves report what kind of reception we had from you: how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

Main Point: Prayer Increases Your Ability to Persevere

If you want to see the origins of the church at Thessalonica, Luke gives us the story in Acts 16:1-17:15. After going in/through the Galatians region and picking up Timothy on his missionary team, Luke records in Acts 16:9 that Paul had a vision about a man Saying Come to over to and help us Macedonia. So they went to Phillipi first and then to Thessalonica. Paul made converts and Luke notes that many of them were devout Greeks or pagans and not a few of the leading women.

It is Is important to note that The Jews tried to have Jason and some of the brothers to the authorities because they were proclaiming another King other than Caesar, Jesus and they were Turing the world upside down. Paul and Silas sneak out of the city To go to Berea. And so Paul Keeps in touch with the church via two letters that we have. Paul wrote the letters with Silva us or Silas and Timothy around 50 AD.

Orthodoxy

1. God Is Preparing You For Your Christian Life on Earth

2. God Is Preparing You For His Return

Both of these actions require patience and the best way to keep up with the need for patience is prayer.

The first, that God is preparing you for your Christian Life on Earth

1 Thessalonians 4:1 of the first letter Paul says Finally then brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus That as you received from us how you ought to walk and to Please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.

And this echoes chapter 2 verse 12 of the same letter when Paul reminds the church that he charged them to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and Glory

For God has not called us for impurity but in holiness. But that journey is sometimes difficult. Sometimes we want to go back to playing in the mud so to speak, to get the world’s dirt on us because it feels good.

Paul received good reports about the church he left so suddenly. But he wanted to give some instruction to the church. This was while they were steadfast in the face of persecution,and exhibited a good deal of charity and faith, they did have struggles in their new Christian life, particularly in regards to sexual relations being confined to a Christian marriage, which was a change from their previously pagan lifestyle.

God is preparing you for the End times and the new life

It seems people are fascinated by end times. If you read the news, and try to line up what we think are signs, the end is near. I am not saying that it is yet, but we are in the end times. In the sense that Once Jesus ascended Athens beginning of Acts, the age was moved into the last days and we are waiting for the return of the Lord.

And it was no different in the first century. The Thessalonians seemed to grab onto the eschatology that they learned from Paul. By what is in the letters it seems that the church at large was convinced that Jesus was going to return pretty quickly.

At one point according to the second letter it seems that someone said the Thessalonians missed the rapture.Paul as to say do not be alarmed if you get a letter that seems to be from us saying the Day of the Lord has come.

But without getting too much into the Entire eschatology, Paul makes two things clear, There will be the man of lawlessness, who is the antichrist will come and he will deceive many. This coincides with What Jesus says in the Oliver discourse in Mark 13.

But the Second more important is that Jesus will return. Paul has a certainty because the prophecies were fulfilled for the messiah to come and be crucified and raised again on the third day as the scriptures foretold.

And he will conquer Satan and the antichrist. That is a foregone conclusion

We r just waiting for it to happen.

So until it does, we have to know how to apply this information.

Orthopraxy (Application)

Pray for God’s Work to be done in Your life

Paul reminds the Thessalonian church that they have suffered persecution well but it and Paul says he boasted about them.

Paul instructs the church to Rejoice always and pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances.

What does pray without ceasing look like? Does that mean you just stay in your room praying, and not eating, or drinking, or working?

Of course not. You need to learn to pray with your eyes open. Look at What God is showing you. How he is answering your requests. Maybe it is not what yo expected, but

We see Paul praying for the churches and giving thanks to God for the churches. And we see paul writing letters lending a hand.

It is an expectation to pray.

Pray for God’s Work to be done in Others’ Life

Paul Wants to restore harmony in the church and so in the two letters he gives advice on how to conduct themselves in the new society. Paul lets them know and many of the churches he wrote to, that he was praying for them.

We see that Paul imitates Jesus by praying for others. In the Garden, Jesus did not only pray for himself, but he prayed for others.

Praying for another person is indeed one way to show them love. A.W. Pink was convinced there was no better way, no more practical, valuable and effective way of expressing solicitude and affection for our fellows saints by bearing them up before God by prayer in the arms of faith and love.

Praying with your eyes open to others is To be aware of people and what is one on around you. Pray for people you hear get bad news. I’m not suggesting eavesdropping, but you can hear things that people need intercession. A mother overwhelmed with three young kids in the store. A car that looks like it going to crash.

Martin Luther on instructing laymen to pray said “The less thou speakest the better thou prayest. Prayer in spirit and in truth is the inward desire”—Martin Luther

How to improve your prayers:

Be Brief

Be Honest

Be Humble

Be Specific

Be Unceasing

Conclusion:

Paul was overjoyed at the church’s idea of being a church, exercising faith and charity towards others, but that the expectation of a handout while they waited for the Second coming of Christ was not a way to love your neighbor.

Paul encourages the Thessalonians that they are justified and they are being sanctified. But they need a little help and constant refining and shucking off the old.

The Name I gave you in the introduction; Wilma Rudolph. Who was she? She was born to a family of 21, and she had polio and did not have the resources one a professional female athlete in the 1950s.

By the time she was 12, she had overcome polio, started to walk again, to her doctor’s’ surprise, and took up athletics. Eight years later she was already an Olympic champion.

Wilma defied all odds and won three gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Rome, in 1960. She was a reader of the Bible and a follower of the one who said, "Nothing is impossible, if you have faith."According to a church page, She thought God had a greater purpose for her than to win three gold medals so she started the Wilma Rudolph Foundation to help children learn about discipline and hard work. She had faith and exercised it and did what she needed to while she waited to go home to heaven.

The Thessalonians and the Church now, exist in a time of now and not yet.

We must persevere while we wait. Prayer is your power cord, that recharges you when you plug into God. And the help we get comes from God, the Holy Spirit. The prayer and perseverance helps us keep a God-centered life which means making the quest for spiritual and moral holiness the great business of life.”