Walk Through The Bible: I Thessalonians
Text for Sermon: 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 3:5-7; 4:1-4; 5:1-2; 5:8; 5:15-18
Introduction.
I have mentioned before that the letters of Paul are arranged in the NT by length, from Romans down to II Thessalonians, and then the three short personal or pastoral epistles at the end. That is why we have I Timothy after II Thessalonians, even though I Timothy is longer than II Thessalonians.
One thing that gets obscured by arranging the letters in this way is a sense of the flow of Paul’s missionary journeys, of what comes first and then second.
Something we have not spotlighted as we talk about Paul’s letters and the other books of the NT is how historical they are. They can all be located in time and space and history. The places are real places you can still visit. The names are real names of real people, some of whom are identified in secular histories.
The events of the Bible did not take place “once upon a time” or “long ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” They happened in this world, in recorded history. Christianity isn’t “true” in an abstract sense. King David was a real ancient warrior king. Jesus turned water into real wine, not just a spiritual metaphor. Lazarus was a real dead body that came back to real life. Christianity is a historical reality, with a beginning in Israel.
The core truth of Christianity is not built on abstract truisms or pieties, but history. It names a specific man—Pontius Pilate—who was a real Roman governor in Judea at a specific point in history. Every year, millions travel to Israel, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and Turkey to see where the events of the Bible took place.
Each year, more discoveries from the ancient world confirm the stories told in Holy Scripture. The science of archelogy which has been practiced extensively all over the Middle East, Turkey and Greece has never once contradicted anything said in the Bible. This is real and true.
We know from the historical record of Luke recorded in Acts 17 that during Paul’s second missionary journey he got to western Asia minor, or western Turkey when he received a vision of a man from Macedonia urging Paul to cross over from Asia to Europe, which he did. After a brief time in Philippi he was chased out by the Jews, so he went southwest to Thessalonica.
Paul was the first known Christian missionary in Europe. This was the beginning of when Europe would become Christian.
Thessalonica is in northern Greece, in a region called Macedonia. Thessalonica was then as it is today the second largest city in Greece with a population of over 200,000. It was an important city in the Roman empire, the capital of Macedonia. It was the home of Alexander the Great and was named after his the half-sister.
Paul’s ministry in Thessalonica was one of his success stories. He preached for three weeks in the Jewish synagogue there before getting the left foot of fellowship. From there he turned to the Gentiles where there was great fruit from his labor.