Suffering for the Gospel - Bible Survey Part 13

First and second Thessalonians, there's a huge historical backdrop to these letters, and I want us to see that together. In Acts chapter 16, the Apostle Paul is on his second missionary journey, and he's at Troas, ancient Troy, in Asia Minor, the northwest corner of modern-day Turkey, when he has a vision to come over to Macedonia, to come over to Greece, to cross the Aegean Sea into Europe, and he does this. He and his team, which is Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Dr. Luke, and they go to Philippi in northeastern Greece, which is where they first start preaching the gospel in Europe, and lots of people come to Christ, and there's a church that begins there, but eventually the Apostle Paul is arrested, beaten with rods, thrown into jail, and then when they discover that he's a Roman citizen, and they could have gotten in a lot of trouble for doing this, they just quickly kind of usher him out of town, and he moves on to the town of Thessalonica, and that's where we pick up in Acts chapter 17 verse 1.

Let's see what happened in Thessalonica. Now they, Paul, Silas, Timothy, where's Luke? Well Luke got left behind in Philippi when they got ran out of town in order to work with the young church there. So Luke's in Philippi, the other three of them, came to Thessalonica where there was a Jewish synagogue. You might be interested to know that there has always been a sizable Jewish community in Thessalonica up until 1941. In 1941 the Nazis conquered Greece.

They deported 60,000 Jewish people to concentration camps from Thessalonica and killed them all. Today the Jewish population of Thessalonica is less than a thousand people, but at the time of the Apostle Paul it was sizable. Verse 2, and according to Paul's custom, he went to the Jewish people first, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Messiah had to suffer and rise again from the dead.

That's all in the Old Testament, and saying this Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is that Messiah. And some of the Jewish people were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas along with a large number of God-fearing Gentiles and a number of the city's leading women. Then the unbelieving Jewish people became jealous.

They didn't want the Gentiles in on this. And taking along some wicked men from the marketplace, they formed a mob and went to Jason's house where Paul was staying, looking for Paul and Silas. And when they didn't find them, they dragged Jason and some other believers before the city authorities.

Now I want to stop for a minute and just talk to you for a moment about this word, the city authorities, the city officials. These are called polytarks, a single word in the Greek, and up until 150 years ago there had never been found anywhere this word outside of the Bible. And so critics of the Bible use this as great fodder to claim that the Bible was unreliable, unhistorical, and inaccurate. However, over the last 150 years, archaeologists have discovered on inscriptions that they've dug out of the ground 64 references or occurrences of this word polytark. And I'll show you, let me show you an example of one. Here's a stone and we put in a red square the word polytarks.

And what this shows us is that at the time of the Apostle Paul, the city of Thessalonica was ruled by five local officials who had the unique title of polytarks. And what that means is that for all these centuries the Bible's been right and all of these scholars have been wrong. You know what we love to say here.

Say it with me. The more they dig out of the ground, the more the Bible proves to be right. Amen? All right, good.

Now let's move on. Verse 6. And they dragged Jason and some of the other believers before the polytarks, shouting, these men, Paul, Silas, Timothy, who have turned the world upside down, have now come here too. And Jason has welcomed them into his home. And they are acting contrary, the mob says, to the laws of Caesar, saying that there is another king named Jesus. Well hey, at least they got the point, right?

That's exactly what we're saying. And good for them, they got the point. And they stirred up the crowd and the polytarks. And after Jason gave them a pledge, they released him. Then the brethren immediately sent Paul for his own safety away and Silas by night to Berea. Now Paul's total time in Thessalonica was one month, but it doesn't end there. The verse, Acts 17 goes on.

Verse 10. When Paul and Silas arrived in Berea, they went to the Jewish synagogue. And as a matter of fact, archaeologists have unearthed the very steps, marble steps, that the Apostle Paul stood on when he preached there in Berea. They're right there in the city. And whenever we go on the footsteps of Paul tour to Berea, which we do, I have the incredible privilege, and I mean it is, it'll bring tears to your eyes, to stand on those same steps where the Apostle Paul himself stood and teach the Word of God.

There everybody else gets to get up there and stand on the steps and you know too. Amazing. Verse 11. Now these Jewish people, the one in Zimbarea, were more noble minded than the Jews in Thessalonica. And they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul was saying was true.

Watch. Therefore, many of them believed. Folks, the Bible is telling us something very important right here. It's telling us that any person who will examine the Scriptures with an open mind, that person will end up believing that Jesus is the Messiah. There's no other place to go.

There's no other conclusion to draw. And these Jews in Berea, who were not predisposed to disbelieve, but were willing to simply consider the evidence on faith value, therefore many of them believed. But when the unbelieving Jewish people in Thessalonica found out that the Word of God was being preached nearby in Berea, they came there and began agitating and stirring up the crowds in Berea. You get the picture, right? These enemies of Paul in Thessalonica hated him so much that it wasn't good enough just to run him out of Thessalonica.

No. They wanted to run him out of everywhere. So they followed him to Berea, and they ran him out of town there as well.

Look. Then immediately, again for his safety, the brethren in Berea sent Paul to Athens by way of the sea, while Silas and Timothy remained in Berea there to work with the young church. Paul's total time in Berea was actually less than one month.

Okay. So there's the historical background. Now let's turn and talk about the actual letters that Paul wrote the Thessalonian Church. Friends, after Paul arrived in Athens by himself, remember he'd left Luke in Philippi.

Come on, class. And after he left Silas and Timothy in Berea and Thessalonica together, right, he was alone. So he arrived in Athens, stayed there several weeks, got laughed out of town and ridiculed out of town by the philosophers on Mars Hill, and went on to Corinth, which is nearby. Paul arrived in Corinth in the year 51 AD. We know that for certain because Gallio was the proconsul in Corinth when Paul arrived, and we know from Roman records that he was the proconsul there 51 and 52 AD.

So we're sure of that date. Soon afterwards, Acts 18 5, Silas and Timothy joined Paul in Corinth, and Timothy told Paul that the believers back in Thessalonica were going through horrible suffering for their faith. Who was causing this suffering? Well, those same Jewish people who had run Paul out of town, who had chased him to Berea, now they're back home in Thessalonica persecuting the church that's still there. So Paul sent Timothy back to Thessalonica to make sure that the faith of these young believers wasn't faltering in the face of such heavy persecution, and here he refers to that in 1 Thessalonians.

Here we go. Chapter 3, verse 2. Paul says, So I sent Timothy back to you in Thessalonica to strengthen and encourage you as to your faith, that none of you should be shaken by these sufferings. For indeed, when I was there with you, I told you in advance that we were going to suffer persecution just as has happened, as you well know. Thus Paul says, I sent to find out about your faith, for I was afraid that the tempter, Satan, may have tempted you to abandon the faith, and thus our labor among you might have been in vain. But now Timothy has returned to me in Corinth and brought us the good news about your faith, and so even in our suffering we were encouraged, for we really live if you stand firm in the Lord. Folks, this is why the Apostle Paul wrote both of the Thessalonian letters. He wrote them from Corinth in 52 AD, number one, to commend the believers in Thessalonica for their perseverance under suffering, and number two, to encourage them to keep standing firm for the Lord. And in 2 Thessalonians, they're still standing firm.

Look what Paul says. He says, we thank God, 2 Thessalonians 1-3, for you, and we boast among God's churches about your perseverance and faith in spite of the persecutions and trials you are enduring. Therefore, Paul says in 2 Thessalonians, stand firm and hold to the truths that you were taught by us, whether in person or by letter. What letter is he referring to in 2 Thessalonians? 1 Thessalonians. There you go. Good job.

Exactly. Verse 3 of chapter 3, for the Lord is faithful and he will strengthen and protect you. So let's summarize. The purpose of the two letters to the Thessalonians, to encourage them to stand strong for the Lord, even under intense suffering. The date? 52 AD. And where was Paul when he wrote them?

He was in Corinth. Everybody got it? Okay. Now it's time for us to stop going through all of that and ask our most important questions. So are you ready? All you guys at Loudoun and Bethesda and Prince William and Edge, everybody ready? Okay, come on now. This is our first So What After Easter, so it's got to be good.

I know, I'm shameless, but I'll do anything to get a good one. All right, here we go. Come on.

One, two, three. Oh, that's beautiful. You say, Lon, I mean all this is really interesting, I appreciate this, but I mean what difference does any of this make to my life, you know, today? Oh, a lot. A lot.

Let me show you how. Friends, the theme of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, read through these two books and underline or highlight every time you find the word suffer, persecution, mistreatment, you will find that it's all over these books. These books are all about the suffering that we encounter when we decide we're going to stand up for Jesus and we're going to go public and we're not going to back down. And it wasn't just about the Thessalonians. There's a lot in these letters about the suffering that Paul himself endured.

Watch. But 1 Thessalonians 2, 2, after we, that is Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke, after we had already, what's the next word, suffered and been mistreated in Philippi, as you know, remember what we said, in Philippi they were arrested, they were beaten with rods, they were thrown in jail, and then they were run out of town. Paul says even after that, we were still bold to speak the Word of God to you in Thessalonica. Next three words, amid strong opposition. Where were they getting the opposition from? All those Jewish people who ran them out of town.

Yeah. Look, Paul says for your own countrymen, those Jewish people in Thessalonica drove us out of Thessalonica and tried to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved. For in fact, we saw this earlier, Paul says, when we were there with you in Thessalonica, we kept telling you that we would be what? Persecuted, just as it has happened to you, as you well know. This goes along with what Paul says in Philippians 1 verse 29, where he says, for it has been granted to us on Christ's behalf, not only to believe in him, but also to what? Suffer for his sake.

Now friends, you know what? The Lord Jesus said the same thing. And the neat thing is, the Lord Jesus told us why we're gonna suffer if we take a stand for him. Here's what Jesus said, John 15 20.

He said, remember what I said to you, that a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you. If you stand up for me, now watch, and these things they will do to you for my sake, because they do not know the one who sent me.

Hey, the point's clear. If we stand up for Christ anywhere, anytime, anyhow, we're gonna be persecuted. It might be verbal persecution, where people simply make fun of us, or they laugh at us, or they snicker at us, or they criticize us. It can be physical persecution, where people, you know, they don't want to hang around us.

They turn the other way when we walk by. And it can even be violent persecution, but we're gonna pay a price. But friends, listen, Jesus said we're not gonna pay a price because of who we are.

We're not the issue. We're gonna pay a price because of who Jesus is. And the reason people are persecuting us is because of Jesus, and the reason they're persecuting him is, what did he say? They do not know the one who sent me. They're blind. They're lost. They don't know Christ. They don't know God. And so, rather than know him, they try to persecute him.

And we need to know this is gonna happen, and we need to expect that nothing different is gonna happen. You know, I walk around my neighborhood. I walked around my neighborhood handing out, you know, the little door hangers for Easter. Did them all. Had to get a second supply because I ran out. I didn't know there was that many houses in my neighborhood.

But anyway, did it. And it was interesting, in my neighborhood, my neighborhood's about half Jewish, half my neighborhood says hello to me when I'm out walking Jill around the block, and half of them will literally turn. If I'm six feet from them, they're back to me and won't even look at me.

If I say hello, they won't even acknowledge you. You say, doesn't that hurt your feelings? No. Because, you say, because you don't care about people? No. Because, no. Because I understand what's going on.

I expect it. Because it's not me that they hate. Yeah, well, they might, but it, but, but they certainly hate me because of my stand for Jesus. And as Moishe Rosen, the head of Jews for Jesus, once told me, it's okay to be hated if you hate it for the right reason. And if somebody hates you because you stand for Christ, that is the right reason. And Jesus said, don't expect anything different. And before you clap, let me just say to you, if there's nobody in your life you can think of who's persecuting you, rejecting you, criticizing you, making fun of you in some way or another, ostracizing you because of your stand for Jesus, I'd like to suggest to you your stand for Jesus is just not public enough.

Pure and simple. So now you want to clap? Yeah, okay. And you know, this happened to Paul. Let's look back over Paul's life. On his first missionary journey, he was abused in Pisidian Antioch, his life was threatened in Iconium, and he was stoned and left for dead in Lystra.

On his second missionary journey, just as far as we've read, he was beaten and imprisoned in Philippi, he was run out of town in Thessalonica and Berea by a mob that wanted to kill him, and he was laughed and ridiculed out of town in Athens. But you know, it's going to get a lot worse for the Apostle Paul. Listen to what he says, 2 Corinthians 11. He says, I have been beaten times without number.

You say, well, that's probably a hyperbole, you know. Friends, he's writing the Bible. You don't lie when you're writing the Bible.

You understand? If he says he was beaten times without number, he was beaten times without number. Frequently in prison, often in danger of death. Five times from the Jews I received 39 lashes. You say, what's that all about? Did you all see the Passion movie and that lash that they used on the back of the Lord Jesus? Well, the Jewish people had a rule that you couldn't hit somebody with that thing 40 times because you'd kill them. The point is you should go light with it. That's the point.

But the Jewish people in their wonderful ability to be legalistic said, okay, if we can't hit you 40, we'll hit you 39. And that's exactly what Paul's talking about. Five times. Can you imagine when the Apostle Paul took his shirt off, what his back must have looked like? I can't even imagine. But it doesn't stop there.

Three times I was beaten with rods. We know about one of them. We just mentioned it. Where was it? In Philippi.

Right. Once I was stoned. We know where that was. Where? In Lystra. Three times I was shipwrecked. Well, we only know about one of those. Acts chapter 27 in the Bible.

A night and a day I've spent in the deep floating out there in the water. We don't know where that was, not mentioned in the Bible. The point I want you to see is we read through the book of Acts and we go, oh my gosh, that poor guy. That's only some of what happened to him.

There's a lot of things that happened to him that aren't even recorded there. And yet he kept going. Now the question is, why? I always want to know why people do what they do. Why did Paul keep going?

Well, the answer is simple, folks. It's because Paul believes something. Paul believed that a part from personal faith in Jesus Christ, no one will ever have eternal life.

No one will ever see the shores of heaven. That's what Paul believed. And you know, he had good basis for believing it because that's exactly what the Bible teaches. Look, John 3 36, whoever believes in the Son, Jesus, has eternal life but whoever rejects the Son will not see eternal life. Jesus said, John 14 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, gets eternal life, gets into heaven except through me. 1 John 5 11, and this is the record that God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has eternal life and he who does not have the Son of God will not see eternal life.

He doesn't have it. Finally, I don't know how you can say any simpler than that, but Acts chapter 4 verse 12, salvation is found in no one else for there is, say the next three words, no other name under heaven by which, except for Jesus's name, by which we can be saved. This is the why behind why Paul kept going because he realized every single person out there apart from Christ was gonna perish and that's what drove him to keep going. Pure and simple. And you know, it's my heart for us here at McLean Bible Church that we have this same soul-winning passion that the Apostle Paul had, but friends, as followers of Christ, we will never live like the Apostle Paul lived until we believe what the Apostle Paul believed. It's just that simple. You know, in over 40 years of serving the Lord, I've learned it takes three things to make a bold witnesser for Christ.

Three. Number one is exactly what we've been talking about here, the absolute belief that Jesus is not just a way to heaven, but that Jesus is the only way to heaven because otherwise we're not going to be willing to pay the price to share Christ with people. I mean, if you can get to heaven through Buddha, then why should I take the chance on offending a friend and losing a friend by sharing Christ with them, they can get there through Buddha. If my parents can get to Christ through Muhammad, then why in the world should I risk my inheritance by making them mad about Jesus?

I just let them find another way to get there. You understand what I'm saying? But if they can't get to heaven through Muhammad and they can't get to heaven through Buddha or anybody else, then if I love these people, I step out and I worry more about their soul than whether I lose my inheritance or lose a friend. And this is what we've got to believe, and this is why I teach it to you from the Bible month after month, year after year, because folks, the whole rest of the world is trying to convince you different. Movies, books, newspapers, educators, they're all trying to tell you that there's 50 ways to get to God and they'll all get you there, and I'm telling you that the Bible says that is not true.

And we need preachers who are willing to stand up and just simply say, call me anything you want, but this is not true. Jesus is the only way. But there's two other things that make great, that you got to have to be a bold soul winner.

It's a three-legged stool. The second thing we've got to have is that we've got to be more in love with Jesus than ourselves, pure and simple. We've got to love Jesus more than our popularity, more than our reputation, more than our prestige, more than our friends, more than our families, because sometimes that's the price it's going to cost for us to stand up for the Lord, and we've got to be willing to say, I love Jesus more. I love these other people and things, but I love Jesus more.

How do you get there? Well friends, the Holy Spirit's got to do that. I can't make you love Jesus, but I'll tell you, I've got two practical suggestions that can help the Holy Spirit get you there. One is pray and ask the Holy Spirit to get you there where you love Christ more than yourself. And number two, hang around with people who love Christ like this. Find a mentor, find a discipler, find a friend you know who's on fire for the Lord and loves the Lord, and it's like sticking a poker in the fire.

You'll heat up just being around them. You say, well I don't have room for any more friends. Well if the friends you got don't love the Lord like this, then you need to get rid of some of the friends you got and get some new friends. Praise the Lord. Huh?

Yeah. And finally, number three, in order to be a bold witness for Christ, we need to be trained how to do this so that we can enter in with confidence to a conversation with somebody. Now listen to me carefully. Techniques do not lead people to Christ. The Holy Spirit leads people to Christ. But if you expect to be bold, you got to know and have the confidence that what you're talking about, that you can do this. I mean imagine putting me up in front of a conference full of accountants and having me give a speech.

I know nothing about accounting. How could I be bold in front of them if I don't even know what I'm talking about? And yet we ask people to go out and share their faith. And friends, if we're not trained to know how to walk people down the yellow line in the middle of the road, you know how to get into a conversation, the scripture verses to use, how to ask for a decision, how to lead them in a sinner's prayer, how to give them assurance of salvation when they're done, how to get them off of rabbit trails and bring them back to the yellow line in the middle of the road. If we don't know how to do that or we feel we don't, then it's going to hurt our boldness in being willing to step out and share. And you know I'm up here all the time just exhorting your brains out that we need to share our faith, share our faith, share our faith.

But you know what? I realized something not too long ago and that is that we have not done a great job here at McLean of providing you with the training that you need so that you know when you go out there that you know how to share your faith. And I want to apologize to you for that because that's unfair for me to exhort you to do something that we haven't provided the proper amount of training for you to do. Well I'm telling you by the grace of God we're gonna fix that.

I don't have time to tell you about it now but we're gonna fix that. And then I'm gonna try to press every one of us, myself included, through that training because we can all get better at sharing our faith. Now remember techniques don't lead people to Christ. The Spirit does.

But when I sit down, if I know my verses, I know where I'm going, I know how to lead in a sinner's prayer, I know how to handle the most common objections, then I have more confidence and willingness to share my faith. Does that make sense? Yeah. Well we're gonna give you that training.

I'll tell you more about it in the next few weeks but I want you to get as excited about it as I am. I feel like I've let you down by all these years not making sure we had that in an easily accessible way but by the grace of God I'm gonna fix that. So that's it. We're done.

I mean I don't I don't have any more to say. So let's pray. Heavenly Father thank you for the example of the Apostle Paul and and the Thessalonian believers who stood and faced the most unbelievable suffering in order to tell people about Jesus. Lord Jesus inspire us with their example and help us become bold witnesses for Christ because we believe what Paul believed, because we love you Lord more than we love ourselves, and because we've been trained and have the confidence that we know how to do this. And so I ask you to make us an army of discipling witnesses here in this city and help us achieve our mission Lord of blowing this city up with the gospel. And we pray these things in Jesus name. God's people said, all right now don't go anywhere I need 60 more seconds listen to me carefully. It'd be really easy to walk out of here and say you know what I haven't been trained yet so I don't really know how to share my faith so I'm not really gonna say anything. Don't you do that.

No. We're gonna go out and we're gonna keep sharing our faith to the best of our ability. I don't care how good you can get. You're good enough now that anything you say for the Lord God will use. Look the guy who led me to Christ, Bob Eckhart, you're told in training you know when a Jewish person, don't say Jesus say Yeshua, don't say convert, don't say become a Christian. He said everything wrong. This guy was as Gentile as a pork barbecue sandwich. Y'all understand what I'm saying?

He didn't know nothing about witnessing to Jewish people but look I still came to Christ. Huh? Amen. God will use anything as long as it's true that you put out there for the Lord Jesus. So we're all gonna try to get better but let's take what we got and use what we got and the Lord Jesus will still bless it.

Make sense? Amen? All right. God bless you. Have a good week. you