01 Introduction to 1&2 Thessalonians

Krisan Marotta: Good morning. Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the first talk in our series on Paul's letters to the Thessalonians. We're going to cover background today and we'll dive into the letter next week. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below this podcast. The lecture notes contain information I would give you on a handout if I were teaching you in person. You can also find those lecture notes by going directly to wednesdayintheword.com slash Thessalonians 1. Welcome to all the new listeners out there and thanks so much for listening. Well, this is a new series on Paul's letters to the Thessalonians, and New Testament letters have a format, just like letters today have a format. If we were to write a letter today, we would begin, dear recipient, write the body of the letter and then sign our names. New Testament letters, which we call epistles, follow a different format. First the author identifies himself, then he identifies the recipients, and he gives a greeting. This greeting is usually followed by a prayer or some kind of thanksgiving, then we get the body of the letter and finally a final greeting or a farewell. So the first verse of First Thessalonians starts like this Paul, Sylvanus and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace. So from 1 Thessalonians 1 1 we learn that the Apostle Paul is writing this letter along with Sylvanus and Timothy to the Church in Thessalonica. Now for some of you that statement might be meaningless because you have no idea who Paul is or anything about the church at Thessalonica. For others, everything I'm about to say might be review. Whenever we begin studying any letters, we want to know something about the author and the original recipients of the letter, and if we can find out the relationship between them. Typically we find that information in the book of Acts, and often we find information in the letter itself. So first let's meet Paul, the author. I have a chronology of the life of Paul on my website, which I'll link to in the lecture notes. It contains dates and a timeline plus links to the various passages in Acts where we learn this information. When we first meet Paul in the book of Acts, he is called Saul. He was a Jewish Pharisee. The Pharisees were the intellectual elite among the Jews at the time of Jesus. They excelled in their observance of religion and as exacting keepers of the law. They insisted on both individual and communal adherence to the Mosaic law in every detail, and they were popular with the people and a political force to be reckoned with. Well, Paul was a Pharisee who was persecuting Christians. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, Paul traveled from town to town seeking to arrest and execute anyone who admitted to following Christ. While on the road to Damascus, and this is roughly 15 years before he writes this letter, the risen Christ appeared to Paul, and Paul became a follower of Jesus. After several years of learning and maturing in Christ, Paul settled at a church in Antioch. That church sent Paul and a man named Barnabas on a long trip to plant churches and spread the news of the gospel around Asia Minor. And we call this Paul's first missionary journey. It happens about four years before he writes this letter. Sometime after Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch, Paul decided to return to all the churches around Asia Minor and see how they were doing. But he and Barnabas had a disagreement and they ended up going separate ways. So Paul recruited Silas and Timothy to join him on the second trip, and those are our other two names in the in the first verse. Paul calls him Salvanus. In Acts, Luke refers to him as Silas, it's the same person. And Paul will write these letters during this second trip. Now Paul intended to go around Asia Minor again, but on that second trip he received a vision of a man in Macedonia calling to him for help. And this is Acts 16, eight through twelve. So passing by Mycia, they went down to Troaz, and a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia was standing there urging him and saying, Come over to Macedonia and help us. And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. So setting sail from Troaz we made a direct voyage to Samothrace and the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city some days. So Paul was traveling through Asia Minor with Silas, and they meet Timothy on the way, and Timothy joins them for the rest of the trip. They travel through Galatia and they stop in Troaz, and then the Lord tells Paul in a vision to go to Macedonia instead. And notice there's an interesting pronoun shift in these verses. There is a switch from they in Acts 168 to we in 1610. Now Luke is the author of the book of Acts, he was also a physician. Scholars take this pronoun shift to mean that Paul and Silas and Timothy meet Luke in Troas, and then Luke goes with them into Macedonia. Tradition has it that Luke stayed with Paul to the end of his days. They were separated at times, but according to church history and tradition, Luke was Paul's physician, and Luke took care of him through the rest of his life. With all the beatings Paul suffered in his journeys and his travels, it was probably very helpful to have a physician traveling with him. Today what we call Greece takes up the entire western and northern shore of the Aegean Sea. In Paul's time, the northern part of Greece was called Macedonia and the southern part was Achaia. Today that region is the one country of Greece. And I have a map of this journey, which I'll link to in the lecture notes. It shows all the cities that I've just mentioned and the region, and you can find those lecture notes again on wednesdayintheword.com slash Thessalonians 1. Now this vision happened roughly about a year before Paul writes these letters. Paul immediately changed his plans. He travels west across the Aegean Sea into Macedonia to preach the gospel. And if you stop to think about it, for those of us of European descent, this is one of those pivotal points where the gospel begins to spread west into Europe. Instead of staying in the east, Paul is called to go west. He crosses the Aegean Sea, bringing the gospel to Greece and Macedonia, and from there it's going to spread to Rome and all of Europe. Since I'm of European ancestry, I'm grateful for this decision. This is one of those places where we see the gospel begin making its way to Europe. So Paul, Silas, and Timothy cross into Macedonia, and the first city they visited was Philippi. When Paul got there, he preached the gospel, but he and his companions were beaten and thrown in jail. Paul angered some local merchants who had Paul and Silas arrested on the charge of throwing the city into confusion and proclaiming Jewish customs which are unlawful for Romans to accept. In Acts 16, 24 through 40, we learn that Paul and Silas are praying in jail when an earthquake shakes the prison and breaks their bonds. When the jailer learns that his prisoners have remained inside, even though the doors have broken and are open and their chains are off, he rushes in and asks, What must he do to be saved? The jailer believes and he takes Paul and Silas to his home and treats their wounds. The next day the city magistrates order Paul's quiet and secret release, but Paul insists on a hearing, as is his right, as he is a Roman citizen. The magistrates, fearing retribution for treating a Roman citizen so badly, apologize to Paul and ask him to leave the city. Apparently, the leaders of the city were scared of these people whom some god saved by an earthquake, so they sent them away. We could also speculate on Luke's part in all of this. We have another pronoun shift. Notice 1640 says they departed, and we don't get the pronoun we again until Acts 20, verse 6. On a later third missionary journey, Paul comes back to Philippi, and when he departs, from there it says, we sailed from Philippi. And then the pronoun stays we for a while in Acts. So scholars speculate that Luke stayed behind and taught the church in Philippi, and then he rejoined Paul later on. After leaving Philippi, Paul goes to Thessalonica, which is about a hundred miles away. Now what do we know about Thessalonica? The town itself is very old. In about 315 BC, the Macedonian king Cassander, who was a son of Antipater, enlarged and strengthened the city, and he named it after his wife Thessalonica, who was the daughter of Philip II and a stepsister of Alexander the Great. The city quickly became a wealthy metropolitan center with an important harbor and a large import and export trade. Thessalonica is the modern city of Salonica. It became the capital of Macedonia and it was a free city, which means it was ruled by its own citizens under the Roman Empire. It was on the main east-west trade route and it served as a hub of political and commercial activity in Macedonia. And scholars think the population in Paul's day was probably around 200,000 people. So Thessalonica was a more Greek and commercial city. It had a seaport, it was a free city, so it enjoyed a certain amount of autonomy and its own constitution. And as a free city, it did not have to house a Roman garrison, so its culture was more Greek influenced. It minted its own coins, and a large number of resident Jews lived in Thessalonica, and they had a synagogue there. As was his usual practice, Paul starts his ministry in the city by preaching first in the synagogue, and I'm going to pick up that story in Acts 17, verse 1. Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, and as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, This Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ. And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. Now when the text says that Paul reasoned with them from the Scriptures, it's talking about the Old Testament. And what Paul did was show them that God predicted a Messiah who would suffer. Christ is the Greek word for the Hebrew word Messiah. So Paul's message in a nutshell is that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Messiah, and God demonstrated this fact by raising Jesus from the dead, which was predicted by the Old Testament prophets. When it says he taught for three Sabbaths, he probably stayed longer than three weeks. It's quite likely that he stayed a month or more. But he only preached three times in the synagogue before they kicked him out. After his access to the synagogue was cut off, he stayed and continued to minister to the Gentiles and the Godfearers. And we don't know how long he stayed. The longest estimates are that he spent only a few months there. Notice that three groups respond to his message. Some Jews, many Gentile Godfearers, and a number of wives of the prominent families. Now Gentile Godfearers are people who were not born Jewish and they have not converted to Judaism, but they believe in the God of the Jews. They go to the synagogue and they listen and they learn. And these Godfearers appear to be the largest group of converts in Thessalonica, and that is often the case in Paul's travels. Gentile God fearers are often the first group to respond to Paul's message. The Jews seem to be the smallest group that responded. And then Luke tells us how the rest of the Jews responded. We're going to pick up in Acts 17 5. But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. Let me pause there. The them is Paul, Silas, and Timothy, and the crowd, the rabble want to bring them out, probably to beat them to death. Going on, and when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers from the city authorities, shouting, These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying there is another king, Jesus. And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things, and when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue. So the Jews in Thessalonica become so enraged by Paul's teaching that they form a mob and come to have him beaten and arrested. The charge against Paul this time is trying to replace Caesar with another king. They can't find Paul and his friends, so they drag his host out of his house, Jason. Now the money that Jason paid was probably similar to what we would call bail. It was an assurance that something like this wouldn't happen again. If enough time passed without incident, he might get his money back. Otherwise, it would be kept as a penalty. So when things quiet down, Paul and Silas slip out of town. And I love how they describe Paul in this story. These men who have turned the world upside down. That's an incredibly strong thing to say. These three men who had just been beaten and jailed in Philippi are now being accused of turning the world upside down. That clues us in that a lot of people knew that something about Jesus was causing disruption in many different cities, but it was just so challenging and threatening to too many people. So the message of Jesus was turning the world upside down, and that's probably the reason why it was so easy to stir up the city against Paul. This then is Paul's first experience with the church in Thessalonica. He was only there a short time. He started in the synagogue, and then when they kicked him out, he continued to preach in the city to the Gentiles. He left a church whose founding members were mostly Gentile Godfearers, along with some Jews and prominent women from the city. However, many of the Jews in the synagogue were extremely hostile to this newfound Christianity thing. So the church that's there is going to have to grow and survive in the midst of that kind of hostility. In fact, the Jews of Thessalonica were so hostile to Christianity that they followed Paul to the next town, Berea, and they made trouble for him there. This is Acts 17, 10 through 15. The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds. Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there. Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed. I've always loved how Luke describes the Bereans. They were more noble minded because Paul taught, and then they would go search the scriptures to see if he was right. When it says they were more noble minded, what's being contrasted is the response of the Jews in the two synagogues. In Thessalonica, the majority of the synagogue responded with hostility to Paul's message and kicked him out, but in Berea, the majority of the synagogues seemed to listen and then search the scriptures to figure out if what Paul was teaching is true. And yet, even with that kind of positive response, Paul still runs into trouble because the Jews from Thessalonica, who are still so incensed by Paul's teaching, they follow him to Berea and stir up trouble again. And we have indications in these letters that the Jews that troubled Paul continued to make trouble for the new church in Thessalonica. So at Berea, Paul has a similar experience to Thessalonica with a number of conversions among the residents, followed by hostility and persecution. So the Bereans send Paul on his way, but he leaves Silas and Timothy behind. From Berea, Paul goes to Athens. Silas and Timothy rejoin Paul in Athens, and they send Timothy back to Thessalonica. Silas appears to have returned to Philippi, and Paul goes on alone to Corinth, where Timothy rejoins him, and Paul writes this letter. So Paul is writing this letter from Corinth about nine months after leaving Thessalonica. This is probably around 51 AD, shortly after writing the letter to the Galatians, which makes these two Thessalonian letters among his earliest. Now I said 51 AD, the dating of the New Testament letters and events are debated. Different scholars have different dating schemes, and I'm not going to go into all that. You can read about that in the commentaries. But just to give you some perspective on what these timelines mean, Paul is writing about 17 to 20 years after Jesus was crucified on the cross and was resurrected. For perspective, for us today in 2023, that would be when the top two TV shows were 24 and the Sopranos, and George W. Bush was president. For us, that's about the same length of time as between the time of the resurrection and when Paul writes this letter. Paul is writing the letter about seven to nine months or so after leaving Thessalonica, and he left rather abruptly. He had to leave before he had a good idea of how well the church was planted there. He doesn't know how it's going to turn out. So he sends Timothy back to find out how they're doing. Timothy has now reported back to Paul, and Paul writes this letter in response. So he starts, Paul, Sylvanus, and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians, in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace. So Paul is the author of this letter. Sylvanus or Silas, it's the same person, and Timothy are with him. Paul is probably dictating to one of them who is writing this down. Silas and Timothy are with Paul as he writes, but they are not co authors. The ideas and the content are Paul's. So Paul is writing to the church in Thessalonica, and he describes them as a group of people characterized by two beliefs. They are an assembly or a church, a group of people. People who believe in God the Father, the creator of the universe, as opposed to, say, the Roman or the Greek gods, and they believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one sent by God the Father to be the Messiah which qualifies him to be Lord. So these two beliefs characterize this group of people. They believe in God the Father, and they believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah which makes him Lord. He's the one to whom we owe our allegiance and obedience. So to summarize, the Apostle Paul founded this church during his second missionary journey. Three groups of people responded to his message Gentile Godfearers, some Jews, and some women from prominent families. But the majority of Jews were hostile to the gospel and they ran Paul out of town. And in fact, they were so hostile when they heard Paul was preaching in the next town over, they went to that town and stirred up trouble for him there and got him run out of that town. Paul is writing then to a very young church of people from different ethnic groups. They've only understood and believed the gospel maybe nine months to a year, and they have to exist in a city that is intensely hostile to them. They are probably being pressured to forget all this stuff Paul taught and renounce their young faith. And Paul has heard how they're doing, they're doing fairly well, and he's writing to encourage them to persevere in the faith, and he's going to answer some questions or on some issues that they seem to be confused about. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word. This is the podcast that explains not only what a passage of scripture means, but seeks to show you how to figure that out. You can hear all the episodes in this series on my website, wednesdayintheword.com. There's no charge, no spam, no ads, and no requests for donations. It's all free to help you improve your study skills and understanding of scripture. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen, but most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite singer-songwriter Reggie Coates. You can find all of his music on heartfeltmusic.org. And if you ever have a chance to hear him lead worship, you should take it. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.