How Did Paul Change a Pagan City in Only 4 Weeks?

Okay, good to have everybody back in and we're once again going to take off on 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, verse 1, and we are in the 3rd program of the afternoon. For those of you joining us on television, again we always have to remind new listeners that all the past programs are available on videotape, audio tape, and they've been transcribed by Jerry down here, and they're available in print, little spiral notebook, and if you're interested in any of those you just give us a call. What we like to do is send you out our catalogue or our list of the subject matter so that you can see where we've come from, and then if you're ready to order something you just call us and we'll get it right out to you. For all of you here in the studio you should be in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, and we're going to start at verse 1 in a moment, but again I like to give a little brief historical background of this letter, and I've got a caricature of a map, now you know what that means. It looks sort of like it, but it really isn't, it's just a makeshift, but anyhow we have our Mediterranean Sea, and this of course is Asia Minor in Scripture, or it's Turkey in our geography today, and of course the Dardanelles and so forth. And so Ephesus was one of the earlier churches from Paul's journeys from Antioch and over up in here to Asia Minor, and then he came back. Then I think on about his third missionary journey he went up through Central Asia Minor, and you remember when he got here on the sea coast he was intending to come on back to the east to Asia, but instead the Spirit appeared to him in a vision, come over to Macedonia and help us. So Paul didn't argue with the vision, and so he took shipping and he went across to Philippi, and of course Philippi is clear up here in northern Greece, and this is the main nation of Greece, and of course over here is Italy. But as he started his ministry in Philippi, where you remember he was beaten, he and Barnabas back there in Acts, in fact it would probably do good to go back to the book of Acts and look at it. But I didn't intend to do this, but maybe we should. Come back with me to Acts chapter 13, where Paul and Barnabas now leave the church of Antioch, and then in chapter 14 they move on into Central Asia Minor, and they go into the work at Iconium, and Derbe, and Lystra, and then all the way up to chapter 16 is the account of what happened in Philippi. Now of course if you know your history, all of this was part and parcel of the Roman Empire. So Philippi was a Roman colony. Now you have to know a little bit of your history to know the difference. That Philippi, a Roman colony, meant that there was a Roman garrison stationed there at the city, or like today we call them occupation troops, whereas Thessalonica, which is just the next city down towards Athens from Philippi, Thessalonica was a free city. They didn't have Roman troops roaming up and down the street, they just had complete freedom. Probably because they helped out a couple of the Roman generals in a battle sometime earlier. So anyway, you have these different Roman rules, but in Philippi where Paul began his ministry in Europe, you know the account of how they were beaten, and flogged, and thrown into the dungeon. You all know that one. And out of the jail experience, the earthquake set them free, and we had the salvation then of the Philippian jailer, who if I'd have had more time in the last half hour, I would have used as the counter example of Acts 2.38. When Acts 2 .38 says, What must we do to be saved? The Philippian jailer, who is now a Gentile, says, What must I do to be saved? And Paul does not tell him to repent and be baptized, he tells him to simply believe. Well anyway, after having been beaten in Philippi, he makes his way on down to Thessalonica, and now we pick that up in Acts chapter 17, and you can start at verse 1. Acts 17, verse 1. Now when they, that is Paul and Barnabas and whoever was with him, and so when they had passed through Amphipolis in Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. Now there wasn't in Philippi, if you remember. And Paul as his manner was, went in unto them, that is to these Jews meeting in the synagogue, went in unto them, and three sabbaths, so the very most you can get out of three sabbaths would be how long? Four weeks, assuming that he didn't stay for the next sabbath. So the length of time that he ministered in this city of Thessalonica was at the max, four weeks. Some Bible students will say three weeks, because of the three sabbaths. But you see there could be another six days extended, and still be just three sabbaths. But whatever. It was no more evidently than four weeks in this pagan, pagan Greek city. Verse 3. Opening and alleging that Christ must deeds have suffered, risen from the dead, and that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ, or Messiah. Now verse 4. This was the reaction as it was almost everywhere. Some of them believed, and consorted, or took up with Paul and Silas, and of the devout Greeks, I said Barnabas, it should have been Silas, and of the devout Greeks a great multitude. Now you see the Gentiles are more and more latching on to this Gospel of Grace, to the consternation of course of the Jew. Now verse 5. But the Jews who believed not, now there were some that did, but the majority did not. And so verse 5. The Jews who believed not, moved with envy. Now you don't always have to stop. What were the envious of? Hey they didn't want these pagan Gentiles coming in and having anything to do with their God. Because I told one of my classes during the week, this past week, you ought to take your concordance sometime, and just look up how many times up through the Scriptures you have the three names right in order, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Sometimes it's in a matter of three or four verses. And the God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Peter in Acts chapter 3 will repeat it. The God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And so you see, they felt that they were so inclusive of their God, that those Gentiles couldn't have anything to do with Him. And when they saw Gentiles responding to Paul and Silas preaching, they were furious with envy. Those Gentiles had no business worshipping and believing in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And so verse 5 again. They were moved with envy, and they took unto themselves lewd, in other words unscrupulous fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. When they found them not, in other words Paul and Silas had already left and escaped and were headed on down to Athens. So when these Thessalonians could not find them, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down. Isn't that amazing? That here into this pagan world comes one man with of course two or three of his friends. But by and large it was the work of the Apostle Paul that caused these pagans to think that they were literally turning their religious world upside down, or like most people say right side up. But oh what an impact this one man had on the pagan world. And so they cried, They have turned the world upside down, and now they've come hither also. Verse 7, Whom Jason hath received, and these all do contrary the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. In other words that tells us that Paul was already proclaiming the coming king and his kingdom. Verse 8, And they troubled the people and the rulers of the city when they heard these things, and when they had taken security of Jason and of the other, they let them go. And immediately they sent Paul and Silas away by night, and they went on to Berea, which of course is the next little city south of Thessalonica. And they spent some time at Berea, and then Paul comes down to Athens alone, and then the others, Silas and Timothy and so forth, catch up with him. And then they go on down to Corinth. Now by the time Paul gets to Corinth, realizing that this little group of believers up here in Thessalonica had only heard him teach for 4 weeks, can't you imagine how his heart must have burned, how are they faring? Four weeks isn't very long. My I've had to teach people 3 years before they see it. But 4 weeks, and he had a sizable group of these pagans who had become believers of his gospel. Almost unbelievable, isn't it? Now that's the backdrop then for these two little letters to the Thessalonians. The first that Paul writes, even though they're at the end of his letters for the most part, yet as far as everything can tell, they were the earliest of his writings. And they were written within a matter of weeks after having escaped Thessalonica, spent some time in Berea, spent a few days in Athens, and evidently wrote these letters from the city of Corinth, and then took it back to the Thessalonian Church for their admonition and for their spiritual food. Now let's take it verse by verse for a little bit. Thessalonians 1, verse 1. Paul and Silvanus and Timothy unto the church or the assembly of the Thessalonians, which is in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ. See that's the same positioning that Paul teaches us in Colossians chapter 3 as we saw a week or two ago. Where are we as a believer? We're hid in Christ in God. That's our position. Alright, these Thessalonians were the same way. Verse 2. We give thanks to God always for you, making mention of you in our prayers, and remembering without ceasing your work of faith, your labor of love, and your patience of hope. Now, whenever the Scripture repeats something in a rather short period of time, what's my word? Emphasis. Alright, come right on down to verse 9, and what a tremendous verse. And he writes to these ex-pagans, who he had only spent four weeks among. And he says, for they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you. In other words, your testimony shows how God blessed our ministry among you. And what an entering in we had unto you, and how you turned to God from idols. Now think about that a minute. What one word describes those people turning from their pagan idolatry to the truth of God? What one word? Faith. See? Faith. It was their faith. They believed what God said through the apostle, and when they believed it, what were they able to do? Turn their back on idolatry and accept the truth. Has anything changed? No. It still takes faith in God's Word. So the second one then is, after they had turned, that is, and exercised their faith to leave idolatry, and to cling to the God of truth, what was the next one? And to serve the Living God. Now put that over with the work in verse 3, and what was the labor in verse 3? Here's how you learn how to compare Scripture with Scripture. A labor of what? Love. So now what two words have you got? Faith, and love. Now come on down, verse 10, and to wait for His Son from heaven, come back and compare it with the third part of verse 3, and what's the word? Hope. See? Now, where do I go first? First Corinthians or Titus chapter 2? Let's go to First Corinthians. First Corinthians chapter 13, and you remember way back when I was teaching, and we came to the last verse. Some of you should know it from memory. What three things are going to abide? There you've got it, faith, hope and charity, or faith, hope and love. If you'll remember, many of you were sitting in this very same studio audience when I taught this chapter, and I said, Now if you will be aware throughout Paul's writings, these three words just keep popping up like cream on a bottle of unpasteurized milk. You know how that works don't you? Some of you older ones. You remember how the cream just came to the top? Well that's what happens to these three words, faith, hope and love. They just keep coming up and coming up. Now come back then to Thessalonians, and see if that isn't exactly what he's saying. Verse 3, Remembering without ceasing your work of faith. The other verse in verse 9 says, You turned to God from idols, but what caused them to turn? Their faith. Back to chapter 3, what was the next thing? Their labor of love. Chapter 9, to serve the Living God. Now all you have to do is just close your eyes and think. What is the predominant reason for serving God right now today in the year 2000? Your love. Your love first for Him, and for lost humanity, and now I'm going to start adding, untaught Christians. Oh, it's pitiful, and it's getting worse by the day. How ignorant. Now remember I always have to qualify. When I use the word ignorant, I'm not referring to a lack of brain cells. Ignorance is simply a lack of teaching. You can have somebody in church all their life, and they're as ignorant as ignorant can be. Why? Because they haven't taught them anything. You ought to read our mail. You ought to read our mail, and this is exactly what we hear. I don't care whether they're 90 years old or they're 50, it's almost always the same. I've been in church all my life, and I never learned any of this before. Well now, somebody is going to be held responsible. Somebody has not been fulfilling their obligations. But you see, Paul had so completely instructed these ex-pagans of Thessalonica that they did all three. They practiced their faith by turning from idols, they immediately went into a labor of love, and then verse 3 again, what were they doing? They were in the patience of hope. And then you come over to verse 9 for the comparison, or verse 10 rather, and to wait. Now you see they're practicing all three words, faith, love, and hope. Now let me show you where there's another example where Paul uses those same three. Come over to Titus chapter 2, and to me this is what makes studying this book so exciting. How it all fits, just like that jigsaw puzzle that I told you a while back. That when everything fits, you know you're on the right track. And to answer the question that comes in the mail over and over, how can I know who's right? I had a letter just yesterday, he said you've got the Baptists, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Pentecostals, the Catholics, the Mormons, and all this. He had a whole list of them. How am I to know who's right? And who's wrong? Well you know what I write back? Whoever is purely and completely going by Paul's epistles is the one you can trust. And the rest of them you better pitch it, because it's going to be a blended, turned up on high mixture, that's going to give you nothing but a spiritual indigestion. Now look what Titus writes. Verse 11, "...for the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men." What does Ephesians 2, 9, and 10 say? "...for by grace are ye saved through faith." So what can you label this verse? Faith. Alright, next verse, "...teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world." What is that? That's your labor of love. And then what's the next verse? Verse 13, "...looking for that blessed hope." So what have we got again? Faith, love, and hope. Isn't that amazing? I mean you just can't escape it. These are the three things of Paul's teaching that are appropriate even today. Much of what he wrote about in I Corinthians has fallen through the cracks scripturally, but not those three. It is still predominant in our understanding of the scriptures that we have to have faith, we have to have love, that's the reason we serve, that's the reason we're... I thought of this during the night. Iris woke up at 3 o'clock and I said, "...you know I haven't slept a wink yet." She said, "...what's the matter? Are you thinking about tomorrow?" I said, "...that's all I can think about, and I don't think I got an hour last night." Because all these things just keep coming up, coming up, coming up. And I think, "...how in the world can I put all that in just four 30 minute segments?" But here's what I had to realize. That if we are exercised by our faith, and we are doing the labor of love, and we are living in that expectancy and that hope that maybe today or tomorrow the Lord will come, do I have to go down to the bookstore, now I don't say this with any malice toward the authors of books or anything like that. You know, God knows I don't care if they make a million selling their books. But really, if you have all of this going for you between these two covers, do you have to read book, after book, after book? I don't think so. I don't need a book on how to treat my wife. Ask her. I don't need a book on how to treat my kids. Ask them. I'm not worried about what they'll tell anybody. And I've never had to read a book on how to do this and how to do that. If you're into this book, it's going to come naturally. And this is what is so hard for even Christians to understand, that you don't have to have a book that will tell you how to live victoriously. You've got it. You don't have to have a book to tell you how to pray. You've got it. You don't have to have a book to tell you how to study the Bible. You've got it. It explains itself. The Holy Spirit leads us into all truth, see? But oh, we're all shook up all the time by all these extraneous forces on the how-tos. Now like I say, I'm not condemning them, but all I'm saying is, it's really not necessary. If you can once get a handle on the Word of God. Alright, now let's move on. We're back in chapter 1, and I think we can come on down to verse 4 now, where He says, Now don't lose sight of the kind of people He's writing to. He's only had four weeks with them. They were steeped in pagan idolatry. And as I have taught from this point for years, when you had paganism, what was the moral climate? It was rotten. It was rotten. They had almost no, what we would call, biblical morality. And these were no different. And so He had brought them by simply proclaiming the Gospel, the Good News, out of that immoral pagan background. And now verse 4, He says, Knowing, see, He didn't have to wonder. He knew these Thessalonians were believers. Knowing, brethren, beloved, your election of God. Now don't let that word throw a curve at you. That just simply means that you're cemented in. You are in the body. You have been placed in that place of adoption that He taught back in Ephesians, which was reserved for every believer. Now verse 5, For our gospel, Paul says, Our gospel, the one that he and Silas and Barnabas had now been proclaiming to the Gentile world, Our gospel, Now I've got to also make another comment. You know a lot of times Paul uses the plural pronoun, we, us, and our. But do you know what he's really meaning? Himself. I just read that again the other night, that this was typical of the writers of this day and time. That in order to not become egotistical, they would use the plural pronoun, and not necessarily mean plural, but he's speaking of himself. So you could very safely say, for my gospel, because that's what he says over and over. My gospel. And so he says, My gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance. As you know what manner of men we were among you for your sake, and you became followers of Peter, James, and John, and then Paul says, Praise the Lord, come on, you should be up there on the ceiling. No that's not what he says, but you became followers of us. Now I've had my pet verses, I've used them before, and we'll use them again. Come all the way back to I Corinthians chapter 4, yeah, I Corinthians chapter 4, I've only got one minute. I've only got time to look at a couple of them, but they say it all. I Corinthians 4, verse 16. I Corinthians 4, verse 16. Yeah we've got to be sure and get this one on the screen. I Corinthians 4, verse 16. Wherefore Paul writes to the Corinthians, I beseech you, be ye followers of Peter, be ye followers of Jesus. No, that's not what he says. Be ye followers of who? Me! See? Paul says, be ye followers of me. Alright, come on over to chapter 11, verse 1. I Corinthians chapter 11, doesn't look right. Is it? Is it? I Corinthians 11? Oh yeah. Would to God you could bear with me a little in my folly, and indeed bear with me, and that I may present you, no I don't think that's the verse I want. Huh? Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick. Through the Bible is a partner supported ministry. If this program has been a help to your study of the scriptures, and you'd like to see others enjoy the teaching, your support would be greatly appreciated. Write to us at Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, Oklahoma, 74552. Or call 1-800-369-7856. Remember, all programs are available in printed form, audio cassette, and videotape. Be sure to tune in next time to Through the Bible with Les Feldick.