12 episodes
Thessalonians: Hope for a Hopeless World Ray C. Stedman
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- Religion & Spirituality
The first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians is also the first letter the apostle wrote. It was written to a struggling, yet vigorous church that was only a few months old, made up of Christians who had just come to Christ under Paul's ministry. This is a delightfully revealing letter, showing the heart of the apostle toward these new Christians, and also showing the struggles that were present in the early church.
We sometimes get very distorted conceptions of these early Christians; there's a tendency to regard them as always triumphant, always waging the battle with vigor, and always winning great victories in Christ's name. But they also had very severe problems, some of which are reflected in this letter. It was written about 50 A.D., and may well be the first part of our New Testament to be written. Most scholars feel that the gospels were written about this same time or shortly afterward, though some hold that the gospel of Matthew, and perhaps of Mark, appeared about 43 or 45 A.D. At any rate, this letter is at least one of the earliest Christian writings.
The account of Paul's founding of this church is recorded in the seventeenth chapter of Acts. After he and Silas were thrown into prison in Philippi because of their preaching of the Gospel, an earthquake shook down the prison doors and freed the prisoners. Paul was then freed by the Roman magistrates, and he left Philippi and went to Thessalonica. Many of the places where Paul preached have crumbled into ruin, but Thessalonica is still a thriving, bustling metropolis. It was then the capital of Macedonia, but it is now in Greece proper, and is called Salonika.
From the account in Acts, we learn that Paul had only been there about three weeks when persecution began and he had to leave the city for his own safety. He went down to Athens and from there he sent Timothy back to Thessalonica to see how these Christians were doing. He was very disturbed about them; he felt that perhaps the persecution they were undergoing would drive them from their faith.
He went on to Corinth where he founded a church after several months of difficult labor. After some time, Timothy returned to him at Corinth, bringing word of how the Thessalonians were doing, and of some of the problems they were facing. As we read this little letter through, we can recognize them as the kind of problems that we also face.
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A Father's Joy (1 Thess 2:17 - 3:13)
Real father love is in short supply in our world today. What we see is a frightening increase of child abuse, of fathers actually attacking their own children. A simple little song, "Dear Mister Jesus," the tale of a child who remembers the abuse she suffered at her father's hand, is being played on radio stations all over the country. Some time ago I read the sad story of a four-year-old boy who was beaten to death by his stepfather because he boy had wet his pants. When his body was dug up, a tiny cross was found clutched in his hand. It tears one's heart to think of fathers treating their children in that way, but it points up the need we have today for father and mother love.
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Changed Lives (1 Thess 1:1-10)
The Thessalonian letters of the Apostle Paul were written to a young church that was situated in an extremely dangerous world. Within twenty years of their writing, the whole of the ancient East was convulsed in warfare and rebellion. In 70 A. D., the armies of Titus surrounded the city of Jerusalem. Following a bloody siege, the city was overrun, the temple destroyed, and the Jews taken captive. The movements that culminated in these events had already begun when this first letter was written. Thus it is clear that the Thessalonian Christians were facing extremely perilous times.
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Comfort at the Grave (1 Thess 4:9-18)
No one knows what circumstances he is going to face tomorrow. That is characteristic of the future. But there is something that comes before tomorrow. It is called today, and that is where we must live. We cannot live in tomorrow, but we can live today. This issue was troubling the Thessalonian Christians. They were looking toward tomorrow, but wondering what to do today. The Apostle Paul's advice to them in his first Thessalonian letter is, as usual, very practical. We have it in Chapter 4, beginning with Verse 9:
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Handling your Sex Drive (1 Thess 4:1-8)
I must say that 1987 was one of the most depressing years that I have lived through. Looking back, it seems the headlines continually spoke of disasters, murders and scandals. As I reflected upon the year, I wondered if there was not some way to eliminate, or at least cut back, all this evil. I thought of one thing which would certainly reduce crime, bring an end to the divorce scandal, eliminate teenage pregnancies, reduce the prison population, stop the sale of pornography, and decrease poverty. If we could come up with a drug that would remove pleasure from the act of sex, because that is why everybody indulges in sexual misbehavior, we could change the whole moral climate of our country. But I realized we also would lose much color from life. We would forfeit the companionship and fellowship which the sexes have in one another. Life would become very drab and dreary indeed. Since we obviously cannot make that drastic change, the only thing left to us is to learn how to handle our sexuality properly.
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Is Work a Curse? (2 Thess 3:6-18)
Our final study in Paul's letters to the Thessalonians deals with the value of work. It is a rather strange subject for Sunday worship, but one that we should find profitable.
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Living Christianly (1 Thess 5:12-28)
I heard a man say, "The most important thing in learning to relate to others is personal honesty. Once you learn to fake that," he added, "everything else is easy!" Many people, unfortunately, seem to follow that philosophy. Perhaps one of the most discouraging aspects of modern-day living is not so much the moral collapse of leaders, such as we have seen many examples of recently, but the low level of ethical behavior on the part of many Christians.