Sermon Video: Receiving God's word in a hostile environment - 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16

 

We know the stories of the missionary martyrs, those who risked their lives and gave them to share the Gospel.  Less well known are the persecutions of those who chose to accept Jesus in those dangerous settings.  The persecution that Paul endured is familiar to us, but what about the ordinary men and women of Thessalonica, what was it like for them?

In our text today Paul doesn't detail the hostility they faced, rather he focuses on what they did in response: they accepted the Gospel as the very words of God.  This remarkable faith is encouraging to us, reminding us of the power of the Gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit.  Persecution didn't stop the redeeming power of God's grace in Paul's day, it won't in ours either.

Sermon Video: The spiritual parents of a new church - 1 Thessalonians 2:7-12

The Apostle Paul tells the young church at Thessalonica that he and his team  were related to this congregation as its spiritual mother and father.  Both the tenderness of a mother and the encouragement of a father were needed by the community of new Christians as they grew in maturity.

This same principle applies to individual new Christians within an established Christian congregation, a reminder to mature disciples of Jesus that we are called to serve as mentors of the discipleship of others.