Last week we began a series on 1 Thessalonians. We reviewed the wealth of sources we have for this book and how that help us have confidence in its veracity as scripture. We noted that the letter was from Paul, Silas who had been sent to travel with him at the Council of Jerusalem, and Timothy who came to join them in their missionary work. We heard from chapter one the ways in which these men gave thanks to Almighty God for the work he had wrought in the hearts of the Thessalonians. They gave thanks for their trust in the gospel. They gave thanks to God that during persecution the Thessalonians had grown in their love for each other, grown in their faith, grown in their hope that Jesus would come again and deliver them from wrath. Mostly they gave thanks that this suffering united these Christians with the suffering of the Church in Jerusalem and the suffering of Christ on the cross. This week we will move on to Chapter 2.

Paul and Silas begin this chapter by recounting their time in Thessalonika as missionaries. You may remember they came first to the synagogue until the conversion of God-fearing gentiles got them kicked out and they reconvened in Jason’s house. Paul and Silas remember this time as not a fruitless time, but a time of great harvest. They remind the Thessalonian Christians that they arrived in Thessalonika tired and weary. They had suffered in Philippi. In Philippi Paul and Silas got scourged, whipped and beaten and arrested for casting a demon out of a fortune teller and you may recall there was an earthquake and the jailer who was prepared to commit suicide instead converts together with his whole family and they are baptized. After this the Roman officials escorted Paul and Silas out of the city. Weak and tired and separated from other believers they arrived in Thessalonika. After arriving they again shared the gospel, as weak and tired men.

Paul says something here that my heart needs to hear. Often Christian ministry can look like trying to be nice to people and hoping that they will grow to like you and then hear the message that is your hope. Paul here says that that is not a good strategy. It is not a good strategy because your heart in a place where you are trying to please people. Why would you try and please people? Their hearts are carnal! Their hearts are wicked! They are in rebellion against a Holy God that’s why he sent you into their lives with the gospel. Paul makes a big deal about how Paul and Silas were trying, frail as they were, not to please people but to please God. We need to remember this, that is what ought to be orienting our lives, to seek in how we live the joy and pleasure of God. Why would someone else and turn their lives to God if you are putting them in God’s place? My friend Matthew from seminary used to quote to me this line from Gregory of Nicaea “My first point is this, Dear Basil, we should not worry so much about offending men, if by pleasing them we should offend God.” Paul and Silas remind the Thessalonians, we wanted to please God and so we shared the gospel with you. We did not put on a mask. We did not flatter you. We weren’t motivated by greed trying to make a living off your backs. We did not assert our authority over you to please our vanity. We sought to please God and share with you the hope he had given us. 

Paul also reminds the Thessalonians that while they were with them they were given grace to show them what a holy life looked like. They were able to be righteous and blameless before God in their sight. It is not the friendliness or the harmlessness or the coolness or the brilliance of a Christian that God used in Paul and Silas in Thessalonika, it was their holiness. They sought to please God with their lives. They sought carefully, earnestly, patiently, encouragingly by example and instruction to help the Christians in Thessalonika learn how to live a life that is pleasing to God. JI Packer once said “The holiness of a Christian is an awesome weapon in the hands of our mighty God”. Do you want the people in your life to turn to Christ and share your hope? Do you want your neighbour to be saved from the bondage of sin and death and hell? Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. May we seek first to live a life under the reign of King Jesus. May we seek first to let him be the Lord of our lives. And by grace and the power of the Holy Spirit may we be transformed into men and women who by word and example become signposts pointing to the Way of heaven. In that way, Paul is showing us, the kingdom of God has broken forth in days before ours.

For God worked an amazing thing in the hearts of some in Thessalonika out of Paul and Silas seeking to serve them by pleasing God and not pleasing them. When they did hear the Word of God they received it as the Word of God and not as the testimony of these two strange men. They became not followers of Paul and Silas but hearers of the Word of God. And God worked faith in their hearts and gave them faith to believe in Jesus for their salvation. And Paul and Silas and Timothy know this because they have endured suffering together for Jesus’s sake.

Do you know that if you want to be a Christian you should expect to suffer for the sake of Jesus? That this is the norm through history. The peace Jesus brings comes after his sword which cleaves the faithful from those that before he shared a language and traditions and livelihoods with. There is a unity and peace which is the very unity of hell, unified in rebellion against Jesus. In coming to follow him we are at odds with the world. We should not expect to be accepted. We should not expect to be celebrated. We should not expect comfort and affirmation. We should expect the rage of this passing world, this frail flesh, and the defeated devil.

Matthew 5:10-12: Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you
These missionaries note that they followed the example of the church in Judea in that they suffered like the church in Judea. Paul was there the day a stone was first lifted against a Christian, against Stephen, he was holding the men’s coats. His heart raged zealously against them. Until this God of ours gave him a new heart. Thereafter he suffered with them. Paul knows both sides, he knows the hate so does not vainly describe it to them. They displease God and live for hostility. They killed Jesus and the Prophets before your brothers and sisters. Heathens are going to rage, against the Lord and against his anointed.

In the face of that rage we ought to yearn like the Thessalonians to be united together in our hope in Jesus’s return to gather us in. Paul commends this to them, calls this a crown given to them. And Paul longs to be with them, though he has been so far prevented. More on that next week.