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Dr Lars Larson
Let's turn in our Bibles to 1 Thessalonians, please. And as you do so, I'm going to make a rather unusual announcement. Lloyd has two cats he's just desperate to get rid of. I know it's unseemly, but he asked me.
I'm not going to turn him down. A household cat and an outside cat. They're a little older, but they're good cats. They need a home.
I did it, Lloyd.
And not only that through sermon audio, this is going out to all the world this afternoon. Let's begin with reading the first full chapter of 1 Thessalonians. And not long, there are ten verses. Sylvanus and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians, in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace.
We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers. Remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
For we know, brothers, loved by God, that he has chosen you. Because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. And you know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake.
And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.
For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere so that we need not say anything. For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.
Today we'll begin the study of this New Testament book of the Bible. A book I've never taught through verse by verse, although I preach many times from different places in this book, I've never worked through the entire book that I can recall.
I don't know how long our study will be. There are five chapters. But there is some important matters that the apostle covers here, and so that may prolong our study. Only the Lord knows at this point how long we'll be here.
Today we want to say some words about introduction to the book, to this epistle, and then, Lord willing, we'll address the contents of verse 1, the greeting that Paul gives to this letter. We're going to see some familiar language here, customary greeting, things we've talked about before, but they are important.
And so let's first give attention to the introduction to this epistle. And you notice I put that word introduction in quotation marks, and there's a reason for that. Let me say a word about this first.
In the arena of formal biblical studies, and that's where my specialty is in my degree, the word introduction has a technical meaning. We should not view an introduction as a few brief chosen words to set the stage of our study, but rather an introduction has to do with specific information about a book of the Bible.
And so normally an introduction addresses matters, say, of authorship, the date in which the book was written, the place where the book was written, the identification of the original readers, including the place or destination to which the book was sent, the canonicity of the book, in other words, how did the letter come to be regarded and when did it come to be regarded as scripture.
I don't think when the church received this letter initially, everyone immediately said, hey, we've got some holy scripture here. But Paul's writings early on came to be recognized as holy scripture. The occasion or reason for the writing of the book, and usually the major themes of the book are identified.
All of these issues are under the category of introduction. And so if you were to obtain a book entitled An Introduction to the New Testament, and there are a number of those, there are a few good ones.
There's a few that are not so good. But if you bought a book called Introduction to the New Testament, you would have before you important and foundational information about every book, say, within the New Testament.
And there's also an introduction to the Old Testament that you can buy. It does the same thing with Old Testament books. And so this information is important to understand for it will affect how we read and interpret the book before us.
And so these are important matters. So let's consider a few of these questions. First, regarding authorship. Obviously, the Apostle Paul is attributed to be the author of this epistle. But if you look at verse 1 closely, you'll also see that this book is not only, this letter is not only from Paul, but also from Silvanus and Timothy.
See that in verse 1? Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians, and God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we should understand the Apostle to be the chief or the principal writer of this epistle, although he may have dictated this letter to a scribe.
That was a common practice. And that person may have been Silvanus. By the way, Silvanus is a Latin name. His Greek name is Silas. And probably those of you who are familiar with Scripture, you'll immediately recognize the name Silas.
Well, Silas and Silvanus are probably the same man. And so he would have been the same Silas who had traveled with Paul on his second missionary journey. Silas would have been with Paul when he initially came to Thessalonica and began to preach the gospel there and found the church in that region of Macedonia.
The destination, Thessalonica, was the capital city of the province of Macedonia. Rome, the Roman Empire, allowed Macedonia to have an independent government, to govern itself, even though it was a province of Rome.
It's north of the Balkan peninsula of Greece, north of Achaia, and so Macedonia. And I gave a little map there. I don't know if it came through on your printing or not. It did? Good. And you'll see Thessalonica up there at the top of the Aegean Sea, over on the western side of the Aegean Sea, right on the coast there.
It's a thriving city today. I'd like to go there someday. This city was located on an important Roman route, a trade route. In fact, it's still there today. You can go on the internet and see pictures of the Roman stones on this roadway.
It was a major trade route from east to west. It was known as the Via Ignatia. They had their own system of government. Their leaders were called polytarchs. And again, you have a map of that region before you.
There were a number of Jewish people living in Thessalonica in the first century. They had their own synagogue. That wasn't true of all. I believe it was Philippi that didn't have their own synagogue.
They met down by the riverside. And so normally a synagogue, I think you had to have at least seven Jewish men. And at Philippi they didn't have that. But they did at Thessalonica. There was a rather large company of Jewish people.
They had a synagogue there. Paul evangelized this city on his second missionary journey. He would have had both Silas and Timothy with him. And here is an account of that visit that we take from Acts 17, 1 -9.
If you have your Bibles, you might turn there. Acts 17, 1 -9. Now, when they had passed through Amphipolis in Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica where there was a synagogue of the Jews. Then Paul, as his custom was, went into them and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, This Jesus, whom I preach to you, is the Christ.
And some of them were persuaded, and a great multitude of devout Greeks, interesting, and not a few of the leading women, joined Paul and Silas. But the Jews, who were not persuaded, becoming envious, took some of the evil men from the marketplace, I think this is where the King James, I love King James language, I think King James called them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathering a mob, set all the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.
And when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out, These who have turned the world upside down have come here too. And Jason has harbored them.
And these are all acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying, There is another king, Jesus. You see, their gospel was the gospel of the kingdom, wasn't it? Got another king, Jesus. And they troubled the crowd and the rulers of the city when they heard these things.
So when they had taken security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. So there you have the sounding of the church. We read that the ones who received Paul's gospel were some of the Jews and a great multitude of devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women.
These Greeks had probably been God-fearers, kind of like Cornelius. Gentiles who had turned away from the pagan morality of the Roman Empire, as well as the immorality of the pagan ethics. The Roman world was an immoral world.
Because they were responsive and open to the ethics promoted by the Jews. And so they would attend the Jewish synagogue, even though they weren't Jews. Here is an assessment of many of these Greek converts to this church.
No doubt the stable core of the young church were the God-fearers, who were particularly open to the reception of the gospel. They had a real dissatisfaction with pagan morality, and had turned their attentions to the purer ethical teaching of the Jews.
They had moreover been attracted to the lofty conception of Jewish monotheism as contrasted with the pure purity, in other words the childishness, the foolishness of idol worship. And yet they found themselves dissatisfied with the narrow nationalism and ritual requirements of Judaism.
And the advent of Christianity supplied their demand for an adequate and even greater conception of God than that which Judaism provided, a nobler ethic centered in the remarkable personal example of Jesus, and a universal outlook which came as a breath of liberation after the tightness of Jewish exclusivism.
It is not surprising, therefore, at Thessalonica, so great a company of these serious-minded proselytes embraced the message. They would have been Gentiles. And so the result of many of these Jews and Greeks coming to Christ through the gospel was that they left the synagogue and joined themselves with Paul and Silas.
They formed a church. The Jews who had remained in the synagogue, who had not embraced the gospel, became envious and angry. You can imagine if all of a sudden a huge number left the synagogue and started meeting with Paul and Silas as a church.
And so these envious Jews stirred up a mob to attack and persecute Paul and his ministry and companions. And they brought some who had been converted before the Roman authorities. By the way, Rome was not the great oppressor of Christianity during the ministry of Paul and Peter.
It was really the Jewish unbelievers who sought to use Roman authority to persecute the Christians. But more often than not, whenever Christianity was brought before the Roman authorities, the Roman authorities decided in favor of the Christians and against the Jewish persecutors.
And during Paul and Peter's ministry, Rome was really the preserver and protector.
Of the early church.
It was the Jewish unbelievers that were the persecutors. Well, again, this resulted in the crowd and leaders of the city being troubled. And so we read that it was then that the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, not too far away.
But in just a matter of three weeks, or maybe just a couple months, a vibrant church was begun. It could only have been perhaps a few weeks, or at the most a few months, before Paul and his companions were forced to leave the area.
And so think about it. This was a young church. It was very uninformed. Yes, they were steeped in understanding of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. But you can imagine that Paul and Silas and Timothy would not have been that confident about the stability of this church after just beginning it and then having to leave so abruptly.
And so later Paul sent Timothy back to Thessalonica to encourage the brethren and also to assess the spiritual condition of this church and to report back to him. He wanted to know how they were doing.
And when Timothy returned to Paul, Paul was at Corinth, which is down south in Greece. It's on the map there too, I think. No, it isn't on the map. However, it's down south in the Peloponnesian Peninsula.
It looks almost like an island there. Corinth is just over the waterway there. That's where Paul was, and that's where Timothy returned to him. And Timothy reported to Paul the condition of the church.
And it was a favorable report. And it was after Timothy returned with a report about this church that Paul sat down and wrote 1 Thessalonians. So it was a letter written by Paul not long after the church had begun.
And he instructed the church in this epistle, corrected the church regarding a few matters. But it was really one of Paul's first epistles that he wrote. Now what about the date of the writing? Well, we read in the Book of Acts of several recounted details that can be precisely dated.
In fact, throughout the Book of Acts, there are actually four of them. Four events that can be identified precisely as to date because they are found in Roman records, secular records. And one of these is found in Acts 18 .11 and following, where we read, and Paul continued there a year and six months.
This is Corinth teaching the word of God among them when Galileo was proconsul of Achaia. Now, Achaia would have been the southern portion of Greece there. The Jews, with one accord, rose up against Paul and brought him to the judgment seat.
Well, we happen to know that Achaia was led by the proconsulship of Galileo appointed by Caesar. And we know from secular records exactly when that was. And that was in A .D. 50 or 51. And that's recorded for us.
And so it is assumed that Paul wrote this epistle at this time, or a little before perhaps, in the years A .D. 50 or 51. And 2 Thessalonians was written not long after 1 Thessalonians. And so among Paul's letters, therefore, 1 and 2 Thessalonians are maybe the earliest letters that Paul wrote.
The only possible exception would be the Book of Galatians. There are some scholars that argue Galatians was written before 1 and 2 Thessalonians. There are some who argue Galatians was written after.
And really the debate there is a debate over where Galatia is located. If Galatia was a region located northward in the northern part of what is modern-day Turkey, they say it was written later, in 52 A .D. or thereabouts.
But if Galatia was in the lower region along where Paul passed through there on his missionary journey, then the Galatians might have been the first epistle written by Paul in A .D. 49. I tend toward that second view, that Galatia was the southern, more southern region.
But 1 and 2 Thessalonians were early letters of the Apostle. Now, the occasion of the epistle. Paul's epistles are sometimes referred to as occasional epistles. And the reason they are called this is because Paul wrote due to some occasion or situation in the churches.
Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians in response to the report he received from Timothy and Silas respecting the church in Thessalonica after having received it. And in fact, in 1 Thessalonians 3, 1 and following, we read this is exactly the case.
There we read Paul writing to the church. Therefore, when we could no longer endure it, we thought it good to be left in Athens alone, and sent Timothy, our brother and minister of God, our fellow laborer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you and encourage you concerning your faith, that no one should be shaken by these afflictions.
For you yourselves know that we are appointed to this. For in fact, we told you before when we were with you that we would suffer tribulation, just as it happened. And you know for this reason, when I could no longer endure it, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter had tempted you, and our labor might be in vain.
In other words, they only believed shortly and then quit, and the devil tempted them to abandon the gospel. There is no promise of salvation for temporary believers, and Paul was concerned about this.
But now that Timothy has come to us from you, and brought us good news of your faith and love, and that you always have good remembrance of us, greatly desire to see us, as we also to see you. Therefore, brethren, in all our affliction and distress, we were comforted concerning you by your faith.
And so this is what motivated Paul to write them. And we read again of their return to Paul in Corinth in Acts 18 .5. It must have been shortly after he wrote this epistle, maybe from Athens, maybe, no, no, from Corinth it was.
But perhaps he sent them when he was in Athens. He sent them northward. What were the issues that concerned Paul, that Paul felt he needed to address? Well, these must be gleaned from the contents of the epistle, and there have been as many as seven major issues suggested.
What motivated Paul to write? They might have included the following. First, Paul desired to express his joy and satisfaction that they were stable in progressing in the faith, because he does so in his letter.
Second, Paul answered charges that had been leveled against him, that he had been self-seeking and cowardly in his ministry among them. Hey, when the going got tough, he fled, and he was defending himself.
These charges apparently originated with the unconverted Jewish opponents to his gospel. Third, he encouraged the Christians to persevere in their own hardship and opposition they were encountering. Hang in there.
Don't be discouraged. Fourth, he speaks of the superiority of Christian ethics over that promoted by the pagans. Fifth, Paul corrected their errant belief concerning the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
And that's probably what's going to take most of our time and effort, because we've got things to be corrected today, too, regarding belief in the Second Coming of Christ. And Paul addresses that, both in this epistle and the Second Thessalonians, which we'll probably do after we get done with First Thessalonians.
Sixth, perhaps due to his encouraging the brethren to respect their leaders, there may have been resistance or failure to do so in the church. And then seventh, he may also have been cautioning them about a right regard for ecstatic manifestations.
Despise not prophesies, he was saying. And so there were some problems, perhaps, in that church regarding that. We'll find that the contents of this epistle is quite practical in nature, contains counsel and direction for young Christians in a rather recently established church.
These people had their problems. They were messed up in their understanding of the Second Coming. We've said it before, you hear a lot of people today, evangelicals, saying, you know, if we could just get back and be like the churches of the first century.
No, thank you.
They didn't have the New Testament.
We do.
We are greatly advantaged over them. And they had some problems that we could not envision a church having a problem with today. Well, let's now begin to work through it. And again, we're only going to be able to consider the greeting.
Paul's greeting, First Thessalonians 1, verse 1. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians, and the Lord Jesus Christ raise to you in peace. This was a typical, formal greeting, common to Paul's letters, common to all letters really written in the first century.
It's not like today where you have to look at the end of the letter to see who signed it, to see who sent it to you. They would identify at the opening of the letter who was the author. Makes sense. Notice Paul did not his name with his office, that he was an apostle.
He just simply said, Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians. This is not what he did say in Galatians or other places, but to the Galatians we read Paul, an apostle, and then a parenthetic explanation, not from men, nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.
Galatians 1 .1. He didn't use that kind of identification of himself in First Thessalonians 1. And it's probably because he knew this church already had a high regard for him. He didn't have to defend his apostleship.
He did have to to the Galatians. He made clear, I'm called of God to be an apostle, not by man, but through God himself. And so Paul simply referred to himself by his first name to this church. He knew the church had high regard for him, and would value highly his letter without him having to cite his apostolic office.
He didn't have to give weight to his letter to convince them. As one wrote, in fact this was Calvin, the brevity of the inscription clearly shows that Paul's doctrine had been received with reverence among the Thessalonians, and that without controversy they all rendered to him the honor that he deserved.
For when in other epistles he designates himself an apostle, he does so with the purpose of claiming for himself authority. Hence the circumstance that he simply makes use of his own name without any title of honor is an evidence that those to whom he writes voluntarily acknowledge him to be such as he was.
And that certainly is true. He didn't have to call himself an apostle. But apart from Paul identifying himself first, he mentions both Silvanus and Timothy. Silvanus was a man well attested in the early churches.
In fact I went online this morning and I see that in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, Silvanus or Silas is regarded as a saint, and they even have a festival and a feast day I think in January commemorating him, which we would reject of course.
Again the other name for which he is known is Silas. Silas was his Greek name, Silvanus was his Latin name, his Roman name. He was Paul's companion and assistant beginning with Paul's second missionary journey.
The occasion for Silas joining Paul was the sharp disagreement that Paul had with Barnabas, you might recall that event, which resulted in the separation of Paul from Barnabas. We actually read of the emergence of Silas as an important person in the communication of the recommendation of the Church of Jerusalem to the Church of Antioch.
The Church of Antioch was primarily a Gentile church early on, and the people really didn't know what to impose upon the Gentile Christians, how they should live, because some said they needed to become Jews and be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses as a covenant.
There was a great deal of disagreement about this, and so the Church of Antioch sent some to Jerusalem to get the Church of Jerusalem to give their opinion on the matter. The Church of Jerusalem made a decision and sent back their recommendation, and the Church of Antioch embraced it.
We see in this interchange, in this involvement between these two churches, Silas being mentioned. Here's the first mention of Silas, and I'm going to read now from Acts 15, beginning in verse 22. Then it pleased the apostles and elders with the whole church, that would have been the church of Antioch, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, namely Judas, who was also named Barabbas, and Silas, there he is, first mentioned, leading men among the brethren.
So Silas was a respected Christian in the church of Antioch. They wrote this letter by them, the apostles, the elders, the brethren, to the brethren who are, or this is the letter coming back from Jerusalem to Antioch, the apostles, elders, and brethren to the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia.
Greetings, since we have heard that some who went out from us have troubled you with words unsettling your souls, saying you must be circumcised and keep the law, to whom we gave no such commandment, it seemed good to us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, there he is, who also report the same things by word of mouth, for it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no other greater burden than these necessary things, that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, from sexual immorality.
If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well, fare well. So when they were sent off, that is from Jerusalem, they came to Antioch, when they had gathered the multitude together they delivered the letter, when they read it they rejoiced over its encouragement, and now Judas, and there you have another reference, Silas, themselves being prophets, Silas was a prophet, he received direct revelations from God on occasion, a message from God to the people.
Now Judas and Silas, themselves being prophets also, exhorted and strengthened the brethren with many words, and after they had stayed there a time, they were sent back with greetings from the brethren to the apostles.
So they were sent back to Jerusalem. However, it seemed good to Silas to remain there, so he remained in the church at Antioch. Paul and Barnabas also remained in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord with many others also.
And then after some days, Paul said to Barnabas, let us now go back and visit our brethren in every city where we preach the word of the Lord, see how they are doing. This is the onset of the second missionary journey.
They started a number of churches, Paul and Barnabas, let's go check them out. Now Barnabas was determined to take with him John called Mark, the same one who wrote our gospel. He was a young man at the time, and he went with them on their first missionary journey, but he backed off probably out of fear and left Paul and Barnabas.
And so Paul didn't want to take him with him. But Paul insisted that they should not take with them the one who had departed from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. Then the contention became so sharp that they departed from one another.
And so Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas. There he is, and departed being commended by the brethren to the grace of God. And he went through Syria, Cilicia, strengthening the new churches.
And so Silas was an important man, highly regarded in the church at Jerusalem and also the church at Antioch. And he accompanied Paul in the second missionary journey. And so Silas was with Paul when they went to Thessalonica and they started that church.
And in fact, we'll read that Silas also did some of the preaching there. And it was on their second missionary journey that they found Timothy, and Timothy came along with them. So it was really those three, Paul, Silas, and Timothy, that worked together as an evangelistic team proclaiming the gospel.
And so Silas served alongside Paul. In 1 Corinthians 1 .19, Paul wrote of the faithful preaching of Silas and Timothy. He had preached also at Thessalonica. And so when the church received this letter, Paul wrote, you know, this is Paul and Silas, Silvanus, and Timothy.
They must have welcomed the epistle all that much more. They knew this man who had been a faithful servant of the Lord. Silas may be the same man whom Peter later named as his amuensis. In other words, a secretary or scribe who'd written Peter's words.
He penned 1 Peter. Peter dictated to him, 1 Peter. In fact, we read in 1 Peter 5 .12 a reference to him by Silvanus, Our faithful brother as I consider him, I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God in which you stand.
So Silvanus was probably the one who actually put the words on the scroll when Peter wrote 1 Peter. Well, there was Paul, there was Silas, and then thirdly, there was Timothy in his greeting. Paul, Silvanus, Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians.
Timothy was a young man at this stage of his ministry, possibly still a teenager. He joined Paul during the second missionary journey. And so he had not been traveling long with Paul when this epistle had been written, perhaps just a number of months.
Timothy was the son of a Greek father and a Jewish mother. Timothy, although the son of a Jewish mother, had not been circumcised as a child, but Paul later had him circumcised so that he would be accepted by the Jewish brethren.
But his mother and grandmother had trained him well in the scriptures, even from youth. His faith was both sound and strong. He seemed to be a rather timid young man, perhaps due to his youth and lack of experience.
But in time, Paul entrusted Timothy with great responsibility. We've talked about it in the past. Paul made him pastor of the church at Ephesus. First Timothy, Second Timothy. And I've given you a couple of references where Paul entrusted Timothy with great responsibility.
Now, although Paul included Silas and Timothy in his greeting, does not necessarily mean that they contributed significantly to the epistle. It wasn't the three of them that sat down and wrote a letter.
Paul probably did. But Paul tended to write in the first person plural, we and us, rather than I and me. In fact, I read something the other day, and I couldn't find it when I was thinking about this.
Most of the time, he refers to himself, first person plural, we and us. I think it was just a manifestation of his humility. And that's probably the case here, too. I don't doubt that Silas, Silvanus, and Timothy maybe had some input.
Obviously, they did.
Hey, this was a problem here that we needed to address, and Paul sat down and wrote about it. But we shouldn't think that although Paul identifies these three fellows, himself and these two others, that all three of them had an equal part in writing the epistle.
I don't think that that's necessarily so. Notice Paul addressed this epistle to the Church of the Thessalonians, in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. To the Church. The letter was to the local church.
It wasn't written only to the church's pastor or its elders, but to the church as a single entity. The New Testament holds forth the local church very highly. More highly than a lot of Christians do today, it would seem, in the evangelical world.
It was written to a church. Collective. And the high view of the local church that Paul held is clear when he identified the church at Thessalonica as being in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Think about that. The church is in God. In the Lord Jesus. The apostles viewed this church within the same sphere as God the Father and the Son. Paul declared that the church was in union with God Himself and His Son.
In God the Father. In Jesus Christ. This conveys the affection that God has for His people. It conveys the concern and protection that God affords His people. It conveys that God is in covenant relationship with His people.
His church. As one wrote, Christians are not simply people who have heard about God and trust Him. They live in Him day by day. All their deeds are done in Him. It is Paul's usual habit to speak of being in Christ.
Though when God occurs elsewhere, as in Colossians 3 .3. And so the church is in God the Father. In Jesus Christ. To cite Calvin again, he noted the apostle, what he was saying, that there is truly among the Thessalonians a church of God.
It's in God the Father and in Jesus Christ. This mark, therefore, is, as it were, an approval of a true and lawful church. We may, however, at the same time infer from it that a church is to be sought for only where God presides and where Christ reigns.
And that, in short, there is no church but what is founded upon God, is gathered under the auspices of Christ, and is united in His name. Amen to that. The church was in God the Father and in Jesus Christ.
Take note also in this expression the very high view of Jesus Christ that Paul sets forth. He conjoins God the Father and Jesus Christ with the word and. The church is both in God the Father and in Jesus Christ.
Although he distinguishes the two persons of the Father and Son, he joins them together as equal in stature with the simple conjunction and. We had some Jehovah's Witnesses out here. They had a booth.
They had a Spanish Jehovah's Witness. They had an English one. Of course, they teach otherwise. That Jesus Christ is inferior to God.
God the Father.
Oh, yes, He's the Son of God, but He's not really God. This verse condemns that teaching. You have them conjoined together, the Father and the Son. As one wrote, this is Leon Morris. Through these two epistles, in other words, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Paul constantly associates the Father and the Son in the closest fashions.
No higher view could possibly be taken of the person of Christ.
How could it be?
You've got them equal with God the Father. The church is in God the Father and in Jesus Christ. To say it in another way, in these words, the apostle sets forth the divinity of Jesus and that the church is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Here you have the deity of Jesus Christ set forth. He is God. Or Paul would have never written it in this way. And then quickly, let's consider the title. The lofty title Paul ascribes to Jesus. He is the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Greek word for Lord is the Greek word kuros. This is the same Greek word that's used for Jehovah. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, that is, the Septuagint. The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew.
There are a few little parts in Aramaic, but written in Hebrew. And then in the 2nd century B .C., there were some Jewish men, probably now in Alexandria, Egypt, who translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek because most of the Jews read Greek at that time.
And when they came across the word for Jehovah or Yahweh in the Old Testament, they used the word kuros, Lord, to translate it. And so, basically, what that is saying is that every time you see the word Lord referred to Jesus in the New Testament, it's a claim of His deity.
He's the Jehovah of the Old Testament. Jehovah is not just God the Father. Jehovah is the Triune God. And Jesus Christ is as much Jehovah as God the Father is. And so we have the Triune God, and the deity of Jesus Christ, being expressed by this title, Lord.
Then we have, of course, His name, Jesus. Jesus is our Lord's proper name. Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name, Joshua. It means Jehovah is salvation. The angel told Joseph, who was betrothed to Mary, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.
She will bring forth a son, you shall call his name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. And so the name Jesus speaks of Jehovah saving His people. And then thirdly, Paul refers to the Lord as the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the Greek word for the Hebrew word Messiah.
Messiah and Christ are one and the same. Messiah Hebrew, Christ Greek. Messiah, of course, means anointed one. Jesus is the Christ, the one who is anointed. Anointed Messiah means He was called and equipped by God, His Father, to secure the redemption of His people.
He was sent into the world to accomplish this work. He is the Christ. More specifically, the term Christ speaks of our Lord anointed to His threefold office. We, of course, know that Christ is a prophet.
He was anointed as prophet. He is a priest. He was anointed as priest. Priests were anointed in the Old Testament. Prophets were. And He was king. And we are in need of a king, a prophet, priest, and king.
And our Lord was anointed by the Father to perform this threefold function on our behalf. And so in Him alone were all of these duties entrusted, and He alone was equipped to execute them on our behalf.
He is prophet, priest, and king. And so in the Old Testament there are examples of men endued with, say, two of these three offices. We read of kings who were prophets, like David. We read in the Old Testament of a king who was also a priest, Melchizedek.
There was also a priestly prophet, Samuel. Both prophet and priest. But only our Lord Jesus was anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows to possess His threefold office. And thus He is to us a priest, having sacrificed Himself on our behalf.
And He lives as a priest to apply the benefits of His sacrifice to us. He is a prophet who declares and reveals the will of God to us. He is our teacher, and He is our king who delivers us, leads us, and protects us, and provides for us.
And so Christ is all that we need. He is the Anointed One. We have cited often in the past the Little Children's Catechism, which instructs in the Christian faith, who says it so plainly and simply, Question, Why do you need Christ as a prophet?
Answer, Because I am ignorant. How plain is that? Why do you need Christ as a priest? Answer, Because I am guilty. Why do you need Christ as a king? Answer, Because I am weak and helpless. The Lord Jesus is the only Savior for fallen men.
And so when we speak of Jesus Christ, we are saying that Jesus was called and equipped by God to serve us in this threefold office in bringing us salvation. Lastly, and we want to conclude with this, after having identified Himself, Paul, and the church to which He was writing, He gave this Christian greeting, Grace to you and peace.
Again, a customary greeting. In the first century, we find Paul having used this similar greeting in other epistles as well. But again, we shouldn't dismiss it, because it's customary. In fact, to me, this accentuates the importance of it.
If it would be stated so frequently and often, it must be very important. Now, it's true that we received these things when we came to Christ. We were saved by grace. And certainly, when we came to Christ, we entered into a state of peace.
This is true of all true Christians. We should understand the term peace as the Hebrews understood the word, not necessarily as the Greeks. We tend to think of peace to describe a state in which there is no conflict.
But this does not reflect the biblical idea of shalom or peace. And here is a good statement or description. Peace among the Greeks meant much the same as it does with us, namely, the absence of war or strife.
There was a sign out here yesterday by one of the churches that they are all for peace. And what they mean by that is clear. They don't want any war in the world. But among the Hebrews, it was a positive concept.
When a Hebrew said, Peace be with you, he did not mean, I hope you won't get in a fight, but rather, I pray that you may prosper. And he's not talking about health and wealth gospel there. The Hebrew shalom meant prosperity in the widest sense.
The root is concerned with wholeness. The man who enjoys peace is thus the one whose life is well-rounded. Peace is regarded as a gift of God and is a very definite spiritual aspect to the completeness it denotes.
Paul's greeting then reminds his friends that all is owed to God. It is in the nature of prayer and His grace and peace with all the richness of the concept denoted by these terms may be granted to the Thessalonians.
We're going to pass by the description or delineation between objective peace and subjective peace. We've gone through that many times before. Objective peace is the same for every Christian. We are at peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ.
Subjective peace is the kind of peace you feel, however, that's probably different in every one of us. Some of you are at great peace. Some of you are greatly troubled. Objective peace never changes. It's the same because of Christ.
Subjective peace varies all the time, not necessarily because of circumstances because somebody can be in terrible circumstances and yet be in peace, and others can have little difficulty in life and yet be terribly troubled.
We won't go into the whys and wherefores for that, but God would have us to be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, we are to make our requests made known to God, and then this subjective peace, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
It passes all understanding. In other words, if you look at your life, you should be at anything other than being at peace. It doesn't make sense to be at peace when you've got all this stuff on you, but you are because it's imparted by God.
It will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. And grace speaks about God's favors shown toward His people, and that He enables them, equips them, and strengthens them to fulfill His will. Grace giving us the desire and the ability to do His will.
And the order is important here. Grace and peace to you. You can't reverse those because grace must come first, then peace follows. Grace doesn't follow upon peace, but rather peace follows upon grace.
When the Savior was born, the announcement was made to the shepherds, Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace.
Who? To whom?
Men, on whom His grace rests. First comes grace from God, afterward, peace follows. And again, although we've experienced grace and peace, you need grace and peace today, don't you? This church at Thessalonica needed God's grace and peace.
You and I need God's grace and peace. We need grace because our life is filled with difficulty. And we need peace because life is filled with disappointments. And so grace and peace are gifts from God that we need continuously.
The King James, by the way, or the New King James, includes the words, after grace and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The same phrase that you had earlier. Paul did not write that here.
However, he did write it elsewhere, namely in Philippians. And so it is a truism that this grace and peace comes from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. And we should experience it too. If we're weak, we need God's grace.
If we're troubled, we need God's peace. And it's available to us from God the Father and from His Son. May He grant it to us. Let me conclude with this remark, and we'll pray. Let me close by making a general statement about the work of God in our world.
We spoke earlier about the God-fearing Greeks or Gentiles, many of which embraced the gospel when Paul came among them proclaiming the gospel. They were ones who had not fully embraced Judaism, but they'd already turned from the immoral paganism of the Roman world.
They were receptive and responsive to the claims of the gospel when Paul proclaimed it to them. Similarly, I would argue, the Lord is preparing people today to hear readily and respond heartily to the claims of the gospel.
The Lord is the one who creates the hearing ear and the seeing eye. And although many in the fallen world will react to us and reject us as we make and proclaim our biblical standards of morality, there are people out there that are not Christian who will find our standards attractive to them.
They have consciences that are not yet seared. We stand forth boldly and proclaim, for example, the need for sexual purity and that all sexual relationships outside of marriage is sin. Adulterers and fornicators God will judge.
We believe homosexual activity behavior is sinful and will fall under the condemnation of God. We believe homosexual marriage is contrary to God's ways and we proclaim that. And we understand perfectly well the hostility of the world that's coming down on us and will continue to do so and even be worse.
But there are non-Christians out there who still have the law of God impressed in a measure on their conscience and they know that this is right and this is true. And when they hear us stand boldly for these values, we're going to have a hearing with them.
Just as these God-fearing Gentiles were ready to listen to Paul and they heard the gospel and they embraced it. And so woe be to us if we're cowardly, you know, and we're ashamed to make known what righteousness is in this fallen world.
God has his people out there and there are people that are fed up with the churches out here because they're not hearing anything of truth and value. They're fed up with the world and all of its immorality, but they haven't heard of Christ.
But when we come among them and we preach the gospel, it's going to be reinforced with standards of righteousness that they will affirm and they will hear us. The Lord will see to it. May the Lord give us courage and boldness in these days.
Let's pray. Thank you, our Father, for your kindness and mercy that you've shown to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father, for placing us in this church for which you have such high regard.
We are in you, our Father, and in your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray, our God, that you would help us to be faithful proclaimers of the gospel in our world today. And we pray, our God, that you would cause many to hear us and that they would hear the message that we have that Jesus Christ is their only hope as their prophet, king, and priest, to whom alone may they come into a relationship with you, our Father, receiving the free and full forgiveness of sins when they put their faith in him.
Help us as a church, Lord, to lovingly desire and seek the salvation of so many around us who are lost in their sin. And we pray that you would cause many ears to hear and eyes to see the truth that is in Christ, whom we proclaim, for we pray in his name.
Amen.
Let's stand and we'll sing our closing hymn. What is it? 169? Do we know this one? We do. All right. Hymn 169.