This blog serves as an outreach for Pastor Randy Powell of the First Baptist Church of Franklin, PA. Feel free to ask questions or send me an e-mail at pastorpowell@hotmail.com
Having learned from Timothy that his worst fears (see previous sermon in this series) had not come about because the church at Thessalonica was actually doing well in his absence, the Apostle Paul shifts to thanksgiving and prayer.
When a church is already standing firm, what prayer need does it have?
Paul offers three possible needs: (1) outside support and encouragement, (2) overflowing love, and (3) blameless devotion to God.
In sharing his own anxiety over their well-being with them, the Apostle Paul opens up to the church at Thessalonica by telling them that his prolonged (unwanted) absence from them has caused him turmoil. His reasons? (1) The relationship that they have will be celebrated when Christ returns. (2) They needed his assistance, which meant sending them Timothy in Paul's stead. (3) Paul knew that they would be facing persecution. (4) He feared that temptation might have caused them to be unfruitful.
Paul's openness demonstrates the importance to us of our relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ, the need that every local church has for its own version of Timothy to support and encourage it, and our collective reliance upon faith to overcome temptation.
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.
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.
Pastor Matt and I have had an email conversation going for some time, I was glad to have the opportunity today to learn more about his faith journey, call to ministry, and efforts to plant a congregation that is both welcoming to Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus Christ, and at the same time intentional about its mission to evangelize within the Jewish community.
Pastor Matt offered numerous insights into issues related to being Jewish, Judaism, Messianic Judaism, and the Hebrew Roots Movement.
