Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians

 is most likely the earliest letter that we have from Paul.

 The backstory for it is found in the book of Acts.
o It is where Paul and his coworker Silas went to the ancient Greek city of Thessalonica
o After just one month of telling people the good news about Jesus, a large number of Jewish and Greek people gave their
allegiance to Jesus.  They form the first church community there.  But trouble was brewing.

Paul's announcement of the risen Jesus as the true Lord of the world led to suspicion.
 Christians in Thessalonica were eventually accused of defying Caesar, the Roman Emperor, when they said that there is another King:
Jesus.
 This led to a persecution that got so intense Paul and Silas actually had to flee from the city.
o This was painful for them because they love the people there so much.
 This letter is Paul's attempt to reconnect with the Christians in Thessalonica after he got a report from Timothy
o that they were doing more than okay; they were flourishing despite this intense persecution.
o He designed the letter to have two main movements.
a. First is a celebration of their faithfulness to Jesus
b. Then he challenges them to keep growing as followers of Jesus.

these two movements are surrounded by three prayers.

1. The letter opens with a thanksgiving prayer.
2. The two movements are linked together by a transitional prayer.
3. Then the whole thing is concluded with a final prayer.

It is a beautiful design.
 Paul opens by giving thanks and celebrating the Thessalonians' faith, their love for others and their hope in Jesus, despite persecution
 He goes on to retell the story of their conversion, how they used to be idolatrous polytheists.
o They were living in a culture where all of life was permeated by institutions and practices that honored the Greek and Roman
gods.
 Paul talks about how they turned away from those idols to serve the living and true God and that they are now waiting for the coming of
God's Son from heaven.

In a city like Thessalonica, transferring your allegiance to the Creator God of Israel and to King Jesus came at a cost:
(a) isolation from your neighbors,
(b) hostility from your family...

But for the Thessalonians, the overwhelming love of Jesus who died for them, and the hope of his return it made it all worth it.
 Paul then retells the story of his mission in Thessalonica and of the dear friendships he formed with the people.
 He uses really intimate metaphors here.
o They treated him like their child and he became like their mother and like their father.
o He says, we were happy to share with you not only the good news from God, but our very selves, because we came to dearly love
you.

Paul reminds us here that the essence of Christian leadership is not about power and having influence.
 It is about healthy relationships and humble, loving service.
 He reminds them that he never asked for money.
 He simply came to love and serve them in the name of Jesus.

Paul moves on to reflect on their common persecution.

 Just like Jesus was rejected and killed by his own people,  so now Paul is persecuted by his fellow Jews + and the Thessalonians are
facing hostility from their Greek neighbors.
 Paul draws a strange comfort from knowing that, together,
o their sufferings are a way of participating in the story of Jesus' own life and death.
o Paul then shares about the anguish he experienced when he heard of the hardships the Thessalonians had after he and Silas fled.
 So he sent Timothy to support them and see how they were doing.
 To his joy, Timothy discovered that they were going strong.  They were faithful to Jesus. + They were full of love
for God and their neighbors. + And they longed to see Paul as much as he longed to see them.

Paul concludes with a prayer for endurance.

 he introduces here the topics he is going to address in the letter's second half.
1. He prays that God will grow their capacity to love,
2. that he will strengthen their commitment to holiness as they fix their hope on the return of King Jesus

He opens the letter's second movement by challenging them to a life that is consistent with the teachings of Jesus.
 This means, first of all, a serious commitment to holiness and sexual purity. ==== In contrast to the promiscuous, sexually destructive
culture around them,
 they are to follow Jesus' teaching about experiencing the beauty and the power of sex within the haven of a committed marriage
covenant relationship
God takes sexual misbehavior seriously, Paul says.
 It dishonours and destroys people, their dignity.

Following Jesus also means a commitment to loving and serving others.

 Paul instructs them that Christians should be known in the city as reliable people who work really hard not just to make money:
o so that they can have resources to provide for themselves
o and to generously share with people who are in need.

After this, Paul addresses a number of questions the Thessalonians had raised about the future hope of Jesus' return.
 Some Christians in the church had recently died, most likely killed as martyrs.  Their friends and family are wondering about their fate
when Jesus returns.
 So Paul makes it clear that, despite their grief and loss, not even death can separate Christians from the love of Jesus.
 When he returns as king, he will call both the living and the dead to himself.
Paul uses a really cool image here.
- He uses language that would normally describe how a city, subject to the Roman Caesar, would send out a delegation to welcome or meet
his arrival.
Paul then applies this imagery to the arrival of King Jesus.
- He, too, will be greeted by a delegation of his people who will go to meet the Lord in the air
- as they welcome and escort him back to this world where he will establish his kingdom of justice and peace.

Paul then wants the Thessalonians to see how this hope should motivate faithfulness to Jesus.
How:
(1) he pokes fun at the famous Roman propaganda that it is Caesar who brings peace and security.
o Of course, Rome's peace came through violence, through enslaving their enemies and military occupation.
o Paul warns that Jesus will return as King one day and confront this kind of injustice.
o Followers of King Jesus should live in the present as if that future day is already here.
o Despite the night time of human evil around them, they should stay sober and awake as the light of God's kingdom.

Dawn is here on earth as it is in heaven.

 Paul closes all of these exhortations like he began, with a hopeful prayer that:
o God would permeate their lives with his holiness that he would set them apart to be completely devoted and blameless until the
return of King Jesus.

SUMMARY:
1Thessalonians reminds us that:
(1) following Jesus as king has produced a truly countercultural or holy way of life.  This will sometimes generate suspicion and conflict
among our neighbors.
(2) The response of Jesus' followers to such hostility should always be love, meeting opposition with grace and generosity.  This way of life
is motivated by hope in the coming kingdom of Jesus that has already begun in his resurrection from the dead.

Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians.

 So not long after Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians,
 he got a report about the Christians in Thessalonica,  the problems he had addressed in that letter not only had continued, but had gotten
worse.
o The persecutions had intensified
o The Thessalonian Christians had become confused and scared about the return of Jesus.

So Paul sent off this short letter which is designed to have three sections that address the three problems in this church.
 1. Paul first offers hope in the midst of their continued persecution
2. then he offers clarity about the coming day of the Lord
3. then finally he brings a really specific challenge to the idle, people who were refusing to work normal jobs.

 the end of each of these sections is clearly marked by a short closing prayer.

Paul opens with a thanksgiving prayer for the Thessalonians' continued faithfulness and love, and specifically for their endurance.
 He's learned that their Greek and Roman, and perhaps even Jewish neighbors have
o intensified their persecution of these Christians.
o There are religious minorities facing violent oppression
 Paul's worried that they might give up on Jesus if it gets worse.

So Paul reminds them like he did in the first letter that they're suffering because of being associated with Jesus,
 it's a way of participating in God's kingdom.
o Jesus was inaugurated as king by His suffering on the cross  and so his followers will show their victory over the world by
imitating Jesus' non-violence and patient endurance.

Paul also reminds them that this won't last forever.

 When Jesus returns, He will bring His justice to bear on those that have oppressed them and shed the blood of the innocent.
 Specifically, he says that their punishment is to be banished away from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His power.
o Paul does not speculate here on the fate of those who reject Jesus, except to say that, throughout their lives, they wanted nothing
to do with Jesus  and in the end, they get what they want:  Relational distance from their creator and their King,

FOR Paul, this is the ultimate tragedy.

 To choose separation from Jesus who is the source of all life and love is to embrace one's own undoing.
 He closes this thought by praying that God would use their suffering to bring about deep character change inside of them so that their lives
would bring honor to the name of Jesus.

Paul then moves on to address a specific issue related to the return of Jesus and the day of the Lord.
- So somebody in the Thessalonian church community had been spreading wrong information in Paul's name
o sayS that God's final act of justice on human evil, the day of the Lord  it was upon them, it has come and these people had
likely been predicting dates about the end of all things and they were frightening other Christians
 Due to the intense persecution,
 they were vulnerable to somebody claiming that Jesus had already returned like a thief in the night, they've
been left behind! ======== It's misrepresenting his teaching.
o The return of Jesus should never inspire fear but rather hope and confidence.

Paul reminds them of everything he taught them about Jesus' return back when he was in town. and he gives a short summary here, it's actually too
short.
- he cites the well known theme from the prophets Isaiah and Daniel that the kingdoms of this world will continue to produce rulers who
rebel against God like Nebuchadnezzar or the King of the North did in the past.
o These leaders had exulted themselves to divine authority and for Paul, these ancient kings and prophecies ; they give us images ,
they set out a pattern that he saw fulfilled in his own day in the Roman emperors, Caligula and Nero,  and he expected that it
would be repeated again,
HOW:
❊ history would culminate with such a rebellious rule, empowered by evil itself
o someone who will wreak havoc and violence in God's world, but not forever.
o When Jesus returns, He will confront the rebel and all who perpetrate evil, and He will deliver His people.

So Paul's point here is not to give later readers fuel for apocalyptic speculation.
 Rather, he's comforting the Thessalonians. He's recalling the teaching of Jesus from Mark 13
o who said that the events leading up to His return would be very public and obvious, and so they don't need to be scared or
worried that they've been left behind,  rather they need to stay faithful until Jesus returns to deliver them.

And so in his closing prayer,

 he asks Jesus and the Father to comfort and strengthen the Thessalonians to stay faithful to the way of Jesus,  which brings Paul to the
final topic.
o It's a challenge for those who were idle, which doesn't just mean lazy,
Ð this refers to people who were irresponsible and who refused to work and provide for themselves resulting in chaotic personal lives.

So Paul had actually addressed this problem in his first letter, and it seems like it's gotten worse.
Now we don't know for certain why some people in this church were refusing to work,
it's possible that this problem's connected to the previous one.
 Maybe some people thought Jesus would return very soon and so they quit their jobs and dropped out of normal life.
 it's more likely that Paul's addressing a problem related to a practice in Roman culture called 'patronage'
  So you'd have poor people living in cities and they would become clients, kind of like personal assistants to wealthy people, and they
would live off of their occasional generosity  lots of strings attached  sometimes involved the clients and their patrons' morally
corrupt way of life, not to mention it was unpredictable income.

So this is what Paul seems to refer to when he says these people lead a disordered life.
¶ They're not working, and they're meddling in the business of others.
¶ So Paul reminds them of the example he gave when he was with them; he didn't ask for their money,
o he worked a manual labor job so he could provide for himself and so he could serve the Thessalonians free of charge.
 He says this is the ideal: a follower of Jesus should imitate Jesus's self-giving love by working hard so they can provide
for themselves and so their lives can be a benefit to other people.

He concludes this with a final prayer, that in the midst of all their confusion and suffering
 that God would grant them peace through the Lord Jesus the Messiah.

This short letter to the Thessalonians , it helps us see that the early Christian belief in Jesus' return and the hope of final judgement.
❊ These ideas were not meant for generating speculations about apocalytpic timelines.
❊ these beliefs brought hope; they inspired faithfulness and devotion to Jesus, especially for persecuted Christians facing violent opposition.

And so for later generations of Christians, whether they undergo persecution or not, this letter reminds us that what you hope for shapes what you
live for,

How does the Bible record the death of the Apostles?

Only recorded death:
 James – put to death by sword
 Matthew – killed by sword
 John faced martyrdom when he was boiled in a huge basin of boiling oil during a wave of persecution
in Rome   however he was miraculously delivered from death
o John was then sentenced to the mines on the prison island of Patmos he wrote his prophetic
book of Revelation on Patmos
o the Apostle John was later freed and returned to what is now modern-day Turkey he died as an
old man
o the only apostle to die peacefully
 James the brother of Jesus not officially an apostle
o was the leader of the church in Jerusalem he was thrown from the southeast pinnacle of the
temple over a hundred feet down when he refused to deny his faith in Christ  when they
discovered that he survived the fall his enemies beat James to death with a club === this is
thought to be the same pinnacle where Satan had taken Jesus during the temptation
Bartholomew also known as Nathanael was a missionary to Asia
 he witnessed in present-day Turkey and was martyred for his preaching and Armenia
being flayed to death by a whip Andrew was crucified on an x-shaped cross in Greece
after seven soldiers whipped Andrew severely they tied his body to the cross with cords
to prolong his agony
 his followers reported that when he was led toward the cross Andrew saluted it
in these words “I have long desired and expected this happy hour - the Cross has
been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it.”
o he continued to preach to his tormentors for two days until he died
 Apostle Thomas was stabbed with a spear in India during one of his missionary trips to establish the
church there
 Matthias - Apostle chosen to replace the traitor Judas Iscariot = stoned and then beheaded
 Apostle Paul was tortured and then beheaded by the evil emperor Nero in Rome ad 67

not so important how the Apostles died

 ❊ important is the fact that they were all willing to die for their faith in Jesus
❊ willing to die horrible deaths refusing to renounce their faith in Christ
o this tremendous evidence that they had truly witnessed the resurrection of Jesus Christ

the first letter to the Thessalonians makes clear that every Christian should expect to grow in holiness over the
course of his or her life.

Paul’s teachings in this epistle are primarily focused on the Second Coming of Jesus
Christ, including
1. the hardships that followers of Jesus Christ will face before His return
(see 1 Thessalonians 3:3),
2. the Resurrection of Christians at the Second Coming (see 1 Thessalonians 4:13–14),
and
3. the timing of Christ’s Second Coming (see 1 Thessalonians 5:1–2).

EPISTLES
 aka letters
 composed of: 21 of the 27 books in the NT
o divided into two sections:
(1) Paul’s Epistles = 13 letters – written by apostle Paul (Romans thru Philemon)
(2) General Epistles = 8 letters – written by other apostles or early church leaders (Hebrew to
Jude)
 explains the effects of Jesus’ ministry, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the spread of gospel

\KNOW THE DIVISIONS OF THE NT BOOKS – SLIDE# 6 – GCLASSROOM

1 THESSALONIANS
 Title: A letter about Hope in the Face of Persecution
 Author: Apostle Paul
 Date: AD 50-52
 Target readers: Christians in Thessalonica
 Purpose: express Paul’s care for the believer and encourage them
 Key verse: 1 Thessalonians 4:16: For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven – with the trumpet
call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
o Meaning: God will come again and those who died in Christ will have salvation. Those who
died in Christ are those people who accepted JC in their lives and with that, their old sinful ways
died with Christ on the cross.
 Summary: Paul and Silas – face violent persecution in Thessalonica  force to flee the city
o Reason why Paul discusses the first 3 chapters of this letter discussing his action and absence
o Paul encourages believers to live holy lives, despite persecution, because Christ will come again
DOES THE BIBLE RECORD THE DEATH OF THE APOSTLES?
 Only recorded death: Apostle James – death by sword
 Other apostles: due to church traditions
o Apostle peter – upside down crucifixion
o Matthew – in Ethopia – sword
o John – boiling oil – delivered from death – sent to PATMOS – grew old – only apostle to die
peacefully
 Willing to die for their faith – people will not die for something they know to be a lie
o All apostles – willing for horrible deaths – refused to renounced thei faith in JC – Evidence that
they had truly witnessed JC’s resurrection

VIDEO: HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION:

while most of us live a life relatively free from persecution because of our faith = there are many who do not for as long as Christianity has existed there have been those
persecuted because of it
- even today in order for us to know how persecution affects us today we must know how it has manifested itself across history beginning around a year after Jesus's
death and resurrection:
o apostle Stephen was stoned to death because of his faith in fact nearly all
o the Apostles paid the price of their life for their faith
 64 AD the Roman Empire led by Nero begin the first recorded systematic torturing and murder of Christians
 this was the first time a governing body enacted the persecution of Christians
 around a hundred years later Christians were killed in mass quantities for refusing to renounce their faith it was not uncommon at this time for
Christians to be robbed assaulted or even stoned for their faith
 250 AD all Christians were commanded to sacrifice to Roman gods or face immediate execution the persecution continued until Constantine
came to power in 300 AD and legalized Christianity
 717 AD the pact of whom are was enacted while giving Christians certain rights it brought a large list of restrictions in many countries this pact
forbade Christians from publicly displaying crosses and rebuilding churches after they were destroyed
 1318 - a ruler at the time over Persia and Central Asia conducted massacres of Christians on a wide scale in Mesopotamia Persia Asia Minor
and Syria
 1600 ad the Emperor of China banned Christianity for over a hundred years
 1850 ad in Madagascar the Queen prohibited the practicing of Christianity
 1915 AD Ottoman army troops enacted a large massacre on Christian populations in Anatolia Persia and northern Mesopotamia regions
 1917 AD after a political change in Russia tens of thousands of churches were destroyed or repurposed this resulted in the murder of over
500,000 Orthodox Christians
 in the 20th century
 1983 Christians in Sudan were under attack some estimates but the number of those martyred and over a million with many more
displaced present-day Christians are facing growing levels of persecution on the continents of Africa and Asia
 there are many countries where being a Christian is punishable by death several where it is punishable by significant time in prison
and even more we're attempting to convert someone to Christianity is a crime for as long as Christianity has existed there have been
those persecuted because of it what Christianity can often seem like a safe choice to us
 there are many who live we're identifying with Christ means putting your life in severe danger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpHT20xrxmI&t=1s
Early church suffered immense
persecution since her birth especially
in rome and alexandria
the persecution differed with different
emperors and rulers but there was almost
always persecution
if persecution was not imperial
throughout the empire
there was certainly local waves of
persecution
when an imperial persecution took place
it often came with the goal of
exterminating Christianity
the persecution and bloodshed compelled
an early christian thinker named
Tertilian to say
the more you mow us down the more we
grow the blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the church
examples of waves of persecution were
experienced under
Maximinous Thrax around 235 a.d
250 a.d
valyrian around 257 a.d and the great
persecution under diocletian around
302 a.d
cyprian of carthage and sixtus ii of
rome were among the bishops who fell
victims
of the persecution of valerian
diocletian's persecution was too vicious
that it marked the beginning of an
ecclesial calendar adopted in alexandria
known as the calendar of the martyrs
although such waves of persecution would
end with many devout christians who shed
their blood for christ as martyrs or
confessors
some felt weak under the yoke of
persecution and apostatized
this compelled the church to answer
questions such as
should one run toward martyrdom
should one avoid martyrdom
what do we do with apostates who desire
to return to the church
theologians such as origen of alexandria
encouraged pursuing martyrdom
as a teenager he himself tried to be
martyred but because his mother hid his
clothes
he was embarrassed to leave the house
however he died because of his wounds at
an old age
cyprian of carthage preferred that
people avoid persecution lest they fall
weak and apostatize
if one is caught and tortured cyprian
would say they should not deny christ
whether in reality or in appearance as
some would pretend to deny christ so
they could escape persecution while
still believing in their hearts
cyprian considered those who denied
christ whether in reality or in
appearance as apostates
when an apostate desire to return to the
church there was a controversy as to how
they ought to be received
some insisted that they would not be
accepted into the church after having
apostatized
cyprian had a more moderate position
which required them to live in
repentance and not approach the chalice
or partake of the holy communion until
they are on their deathbed
this controversy caused minor schisms
and carthage
and its surrounding regions in africa