This week we start the second oldest book in the New Testament as recorded in its publishing. We began with James on our year-long journey chronological study of the New Testament. Hence the reason we are calling this message series Chronos. It's a word that means “time.” We will be journeying through time back to the start of the early church. For the next few months we will be walking through the books written to those in Thessalonica.
Today, we open to the second chapter of this amazing letter to the church plant in one of the main travel junctions in all the Roman empire. A city of around 300,000 with some upper class but a great deal more working class people. The city was made up of Romans, Greeks and a powerful group of Greek speaking Jews.
The leadership collective (Paul, Silas and timothy), who had a relationship with this new church plant, were together reviewing the Christian movement and were sending this letter to the new church plant in Greece as encouragement and to correct some issues that had arisen.. Although Paul had only spent three to four weeks at this house church, he was impressed with the willingness of Thessalonians to live the mission when others would not.
Last week, Jennifer did a good job of relaying Paul’s concern for this new church and his warning to be ready for affliction and temptation. The truth is clear: the more you move closer to Jesus the more you will face persecution for your faith and temptation that leads one astray.
We pick up the scriptures in 1 Thessalonians 4: 1. Before we begin, let me remind you that we don’t have all the correspondence between the new church plant leaders and Paul. However, we have enough to understand the issues at hand.
As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. 2 For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.
3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; 6 and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. 7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8 Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.
These first few verses are reiterating the new believers have gotten a little off track. Thessalonica was a Roman stronghold both nationalistically but theologically.
William Barclay wrote: In Rome, for the first five hundred and twenty years of the Republic, there had not been one single divorce; but now, under the Empire, as it has been put, divorce was a matter of caprice.
Barclay continued his assessment by quotes Demonsthenes who said: We have courtesans for the sake of pleasure; we have concubines for the sake of daily cohabitation; we have wives for the purpose of having children legitimately, and of having a faithful guardian for all our household affairs.
As Seneca said, “Women were married to be divorced and divorced to be married.” In Rome the years were identified by the names of the consuls; but it was said that fashionable ladies identified the years by the names of their husbands.
Juvenal quotes an instance of a woman who had eight husbands in five years. Morality was dead.
In Greece, home and family life were near to being extinct, and fidelity was completely non-existent
They believed in many Gods and temple prostitutes were an accepted practice and profession. Paul is reiterating a point I’m sure he made when he was present, The practice is inconsistent with a new believers way of life.
It’s why I think verse four is better read as “That each of you should learn to live with your own wife or acquire a wife” and not be in passionate lust like the pagans...”
The thought is more consistent with Paul’s early writing and better reflects the situation. Now, let’s not get down on the new believers. They probably heard Paul's rhetoric, his teaching on God’s grace and his statement about freedom in Christ. Maybe they were confused or misunderstood or didn’t want to give up the practice. After all, it was common.
In the same way today, in our consumeristic, materialistic, individualistic and self-centered society people think nothing of wasting God’s resources for their own pleasure.
Water is the easiest to make a point. I will never forget bucket showers in Tanzania or Haiti. Or the feeling of walking by hundreds waiting in line at a well to pay to get a few pots of water filled. Or distributing bags of purified water after the earthquake. After seeing and experiencing this first hand, you don't take for granted the miracle of a hot shower, a tap in the home, or the luxury of water in a pool so you can swim in it versus a creek. You also wonder about the logic of watering the grass.
Let’s continue…
9 Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, 11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
Paul wants to be clear. It’s better to focus on the Lord, demonstrate His presence in your life than judge the world around us. We leave judgment to God. He is the only one qualified to judge. And we know he has promised to judge in the final days.
However, when we see a believer doing or saying something out of character for a Christ follower, we are to help them. Love them enough to be gentle and understanding in our correction when they aren’t the best witnesses for our faith. Matthew 18 gives us a good process for this. Go direct first. Go with two others and confront them privately. If nothing changes, go before other and expose the error publicly.
Paul is firm in His belief, our faith in Jesus, the afterlife and His coming judgment should be evident in how we represent Jesus daily. Does your life reflect this hope?
Paul continues…
13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. 14 For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15 According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Paul describes end times. The end of the world fascinates people. How, When, and Why make for some of the most popular sermon series. People want to know the future.
Orthodox Christian teaching has always asserted that Jesus will one day visibly return as Judge and King of creation. The ecumenical creeds of the early church all affirm that Jesus will “come again to judge the living and the dead,” and the Reformed confessions that have followed them also endorse this understanding.
Though there has been unity among believers that Jesus will personally and physically return, there has been some debate about the precise timing of this event.
1 Thessalonians 4:17 is one plenty of professional and unprofessional scholars are enamored with. Because it has been used to teach a curious doctrine called “the Rapture,” which is less than 200 years old.
The Rapture doctrine says that Christ will “rapture” or take His saints from the earth before the outbreak of this seven-year tribulation, or at least before the last three-and-a-half years of it. The 3 ½ year version claims there will be a “secret rapture” of Christ a few years before His visible return and the final rapture. While even those who confess a secret rapture disagree about its timing, the idea basically says that at some point, the church (the people of God) will be removed from the world by Jesus in order that it might escape an ensuing tribulation. Tribulation is a time of horrendous events.
The problem with this popular opinion is not only that 1 Thessalonians 4 says nothing about such a tribulation as the context for the ascension of the saints, but also the fact that many Christians have suffered horribly in the past without being “raptured.”
The Bible is quite clear that there is but one return of Jesus and that all will see it.
As a leader and a reader of scripture, I am reminded often of Jesus’ words.
“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. 37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. … 42 Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
“No one knows the time or day” of judgment and it's better to be found working for Him. Those who continue to be curious need to remember our witnessing to the hope we have within because of our belief in Christ everyday through our words and actions will be enough to ensure our forever future.
So let’s get to work…
Baptism
Communion
