Grant Jr. 1-2 Thessalonians (Redesign)

The Hope of Salvation
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4335-5015-7
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

Reihe: Preaching the Word

The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica to encourage Christians to live in light of the gospel. In 1 and 2 Thessalonians, he addressed a number of topics, including the persecution they were enduring, the second coming of Christ, and how they were to live in difficult times. While the letters were written nearly two thousand years ago, pastor James H. Grant Jr. insists that Paul's audience includes us as well as the Thessalonians. Grant applies Paul's message to contemporary churches over the course of twenty-five chapters by leading readers systematically through the epistles-unpacking the gospel and its implications in light of Christ's second coming. Part of the Preaching the Word commentary series.

James H. Grant Jr.  (MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary) is an ordained minister in the PCA and has served in pastoral ministry for over 20 years. He is president of Historic Images in Memphis, Tennessee, and provides consulting for leaders in ministry, business, and education. He is married to Brandy, and they have four children.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Grant Jr., James H.

Leseproben

2

Christianity at Thessalonica

1 THESSALONIANS 1:1 AND ACTS 17:1–10

CHURCH PLANTING was a crucial aspect of Paul’s ministry, but in recent years, especially in Western culture, the emphasis on planting churches has diminished. Instead of reduplicating, Western churches developed the attitude that if we build it, people will come. Thankfully, it looks as if that tide is shifting, and church planting has received more attention. The movement toward church planting goes by several names, but it is usually described as being missional, a term that means we are to be moving outward toward those around us. It is a movement that seeks to make the faith public and to duplicate the faith among people who are our neighbors.

This missional, church-planting direction has gained popularity, and although we should be encouraged by this, we should not jump into a ministry without understanding some of the aspects of what we are doing. Church planting takes work. It is important to know something of the location regarding a church plant. Will the church be planted in a major city like New York or Chicago? Or will the church be planted in a rural area like the mountains of Colorado or the plains of Kansas? A church plant in New York City is not going to be the same as a church plant in Memphis, and both of those will be different from the church that is planted in the midst of farms in the heart of the United States.

Church planters must know something of the city in which they are going to plant a church, but this is not new. As Paul went into new cities, he understood the area and the issues surrounding those cities. Each one of his letters was slightly different, not just because of the issues the churches faced but also because of their locations. The Christians in Rome faced a different world than the Christians in Thessalonica. So we must pause and consider some of the features of the city of Thessalonica.1

Background

Paul was on his second missionary journey. He had received a vision from Jesus that a man of Macedonia was urging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16:9). So Paul took up the call of Jesus to push the gospel into areas we consider today as Europe. In order to preach the gospel to this area, Paul was traveling along the Via Egnatia, a Roman road that connected Greece to Byzantium (modern-day Istanbul), connecting what we know as Europe and Asia. Before this road was built, the journey would have taken three to four months by ship or five to six weeks by land. But once the Via Egnatia was finished, the journey took less than three weeks.2

As Paul traveled along this road, he came upon several key cities, and he brought the gospel to those areas. First he came to Philippi (Acts 16). While he was there, he faced a great deal of suffering and persecution, which resulted in Paul and Silas being thrown into prison. God miraculously got them out of prison through an earthquake, and in the process the Philippian jailer and his family became Christians. The church was established in Philippi, and Paul and Silas left to continue their work of the gospel.

Once Paul and Silas departed from Philippi, Luke picks up their journey in Acts 17 as they passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia. This journey would have been similar to traveling along the Gulf Coast from Pensacola, Florida, through Mobile, Alabama, on your way to New Orleans, Louisiana. Paul and Silas were traveling on this major road along the Aegean Sea, and they passed through these two cities before they came to the central city we know of as Thessalonica.

The Importance of Thessalonica

Thessalonica was important for several reasons, and its importance played a role in Paul’s decision to stop in this city. We do not know if he stopped in Amphipolis and Apollonia to establish churches, but it is doubtful. Luke tells us no more than that he passed through those cities, but Paul did stop in Thessalonica, one of the largest cities in the Roman world with over one hundred thousand people. As a large city, it had a synagogue. Luke mentions this immediately in Acts 17. We know that on his missionary journeys Paul would make the synagogue his starting point for the gospel as he preached the good news “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). But we also see something of the providence of God in this event because synagogues had been established in large cities after the Jewish dispersion. By placing Jewish synagogues throughout the Roman Empire, God was providing a means for the gospel to advance throughout the Greco-Roman world.

Thessalonica was also at a strategic location. It was on that important road, the Via Egnatia. In terms we can understand, perhaps we could compare it to New York City, which has a central harbor, several important airports, central train locations, and the connection of several central interstates. Thessalonica was centrally located just like that. It was a key city of the region because it had fertile farmland, a good mining operation, and a great fishing industry from both the rivers and the sea. So important was the city that one of the writers of that time, Meletius, once said, “So long as nature does not change, Thessalonica will remain wealthy and fortunate.”3

Thessalonica was a free city in the Roman world. Other cities did not have this privilege. In other locations the Roman Empire had military occupation forces and set up its own government, but not in Thessalonica. The Thessalonians controlled their own affairs and political situations, making them almost democratic, unlike any other city in that region. They had freedom from military occupation, and they could mint their own coins. That makes their political structure very important. In fact, this plays a role in our story. If we don’t understand the political structure of the city, some of Acts 17 and 1 Thessalonians will not make much sense.

The political structure of Thessalonica had several different levels. The lowest level was the citizen assembly. This was a type of local government consisting of individual citizens meeting to make decisions. This is indicated in Acts 17:5 when Luke says that the mob tried to bring the Christians “out to the crowd.” The word for “crowd” indicates the people assembled in a public place or, as some believe, the citizen assembly. When trouble came up, the mob wanted to bring Paul and Silas before this citizen assembly. Luke then says in verse 6 that the mob could not find them, so Jason and other Christians were brought before the city authorities. The word for “city authorities” here is a specific word referring to government leaders called politarchs.4

The politarchs were the upper level of government in Thessalonica. They had a very important role in that city, which is why Jason and some of the brethren were brought to them. These leaders, these politarchs, were responsible for the governing of the city, and if they could not keep everything going smoothly, they would be accountable to the Roman Empire. So they did everything possible to please the Roman Empire and its citizens. They were politically perceptive leaders, and for good reason: they didn’t want to get into trouble and lose all the privileges of the city. Thessalonica had wonderful privileges because it was a free city, and these governors or politarchs were put in place to make sure the city didn’t lose its privileges. If Thessalonica lost its status as a free city, there would be terrible consequences. Their income would go down as they would have to pay more taxes, as well as paying and housing Roman military officers. The economy would take a significant hit, and the freedom of the city would be at stake. If there were problems, the Roman Empire would come in and take all privileges away.

Not only did these politarchs govern the city as political authorities, they also had another very important role to play in Thessalonica: they led the people in certain aspects of religious worship.5 This is far removed from our concept of church and state and the separation of the two. At that time you could not separate the political leaders from the worship of the city. The ruler or king was often worshipped alongside other gods. In the Egyptian world, the Pharaoh was considered a god with all the other gods. The same thing is true of the Roman Empire. Caesar was worshipped, and this worship bound the Roman Empire together and created solidarity, and the politarchs played an important role regarding this religious unity.

Because of Thessalonica’s key location, it had a significant religious atmosphere. There were many temples and shrines within the city. In fact, the city was only fifty miles from Mt. Olympus, the home of the Greek gods such as Zeus. In order to travel to Mt. Olympus, worshippers would come by ship to the Thessalonica harbor or take the central Roman road, the Via Egnatia. Since Thessalonica was on a major road, and since it had a major harbor, these religious opportunities brought a lot of money. So Thessalonica catered to every kind of god in that world—Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and numerous others. But the most important religious ceremony of the city concerned the worship of the Roman emperor. This was called the Roman imperial cult.6 This movement placed the Caesars and some members of his family within the realm of deity, and the Roman citizens were called upon to worship Caesar. This was an important element of freedom in cities like Thessalonica. As long as they paid homage to Caesar, as long as they...