First Thessalonians 1:8- 10 The Word of the Lord Sounded Forth
1 Thessalonians 1:8-10 · Andrew Molloy · Feb 14, 2021
Thessalonians, No. 04
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261921486409

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

There's my buddy Rick there in the Garfield Cadets. That's cool, man. From way back when. Yeah. And I thought that I found that picture on the internet. And I just thought that that kind of fits with the theme, sounding forth the word of God. That's been happening. it's me. Andrew, are you muted? Oh, I'm muted. Okay, now I'm not muted. I was just saying that this is Rick here playing the bugle in the 1987 Garfield Gadets, and I was just thinking that it fit today's theme of sounding forth the word of God here in our two passages.

And here's our verses, 1 Thessalonians 1 8-10, and I'll read the three verses that we have for today. For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. verse nine for the themselves report about us what kind of reception we had with you and how you turn from god to the from idols to serve a living and true god and to wait for a son from heaven whom he raised from the dead that is jesus who rescues us from the wrath to come uh... the main purpose that The main purpose for Paul's writing to Thessalonians in this first epistle, and some say that is his very first letter to a church besides the book of Galatians, is that he has to clear something up. And that thing is, we talked about their work of faith in the earlier verses, their labor of love.

They were fine in those areas. Their work of faith was excellent. Their labor of love was excellent. Paul had no criticism, no qualms. But they needed some shoring up on their steadfastness and their patience and hope. As you recall in, What verse is that? Work of faith, labor of love, steadfastness, and hope. Verse three. Verse three, yeah. Yeah, verse three. So they needed a little clarification in the aspect of hope.

And the issue was that the Thessalonians knew from Paul's teaching, because he had taught them this, that the Lord was going to return. His appearing, his parousia, was imminent. However, During the year and a half that he had left, they had some relatives or friends, you know, Aunt Jane, Uncle Marvin, or John Q. Public, or whomever who had died after Paul left. And their question was, will they miss the rapture? What is their eternal fate? What becomes of them? We know that we're gonna be raptured here with living, but what happens to them?

So that Paul addresses in chapter four here that we'll get to, but that's the main kind of thrust of it. So he needed to clear up their thoughts on the lesson of hope. The tenor of this epistle, very quickly, is it's very warm, personable. It's not so apostolic. Paul opens his heart to Thessalonian believers overflowingly, and William Kelly says in kindred tones, He is happy, very happy and refreshed at Timothy because he sent Timothy back up to Thessalonica. He was down in Corinth.

He wanted a report on how they were doing and when he found out that they're doing better than fine, his joy bursts forth in remembrance of them in this first chapter. He's in constant thanksgiving for them, for their growth and stability. And he finds that, alas, his labors were not in vain.

Even though, point C here, the length of his ministry was, three weeks, maybe up to four, some say six, but I would say, yes, six or less. He could have taught in the Jewish synagogue for three Sabbath days, three Saturdays, and then maybe they ran him out, and then maybe he continued in someone's home like they did in the first century for another couple weeks. And then they came for him. So then he needed to jet out of there. But we'll talk about that more next week, the historical aspect of it.

Notice that Paul doesn't use his apostolic title in verse one. Paul and Silas and Timothy to the church of Thessalonica, he doesn't say Paul, an apostle, because they knew exactly who he was, and he was confident that he knew that they knew that he was directly from God to tell them about the gospel. Wolvard says here, even though that the ministry was very, very short, and again, he's writing this one and a half years after he'd been there, he covered election with them.

In verse four of chapter one, he covered the Holy Spirit. They knew who he was. Our verse today in verse nine, he covers conversion. He covers the assurance of salvation that Roy covered last week in verse 5 of chapter 1. He covered sanctification. They knew what that was in those two verses, 4.3 and 5.23.

And then he gives them general Christian life teachings, but they were set doctrinally. They had a lot of doctrine. Whatever there was, Paul covered it, but there might've been great gaps in their knowledge of things. And that's our topic for today, this gap in their knowledge of.

What happens to the dead in Christ? Will they be raptured? And some clarifications on the rapture. I think that the Thessalonians really took to the rapture doctrine very strongly, because he addresses that in this book and the next book. So they had a keen interest in it.

Okay, verse eight. Here we are in verse eight. For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia, but in Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. The word of the Lord sounded forth from you is, Ezekeio, there it is.

And if you take away that hyphen, that's the Greek word, E-X-E-C-H-E-O. And it's the X-E-X part of that is out from, and the C-H-E-O part of that is sound. So out from sound. Constable has this definition, an echo that rings forth out, rings out indefinitely. an Exiceo, an unmistakable proclamation. And you can see my map here. You can see I tried to put that in a picture, the echoing forth or the sounding out. And that's why I had my buddy Rick up in that title page, loudly playing the bugle.

That's the sort of thing that we want to think about the Thessalonians, the word of their faith, the word of their faith and their change of life. went from Macedonia, which Thessalonica is in Macedonia. And I have that highlighted there. It's the northern region of Greece. Thessalonica is the principal city.

And then the word of their conversion also rang down into Achaia, the region south. That includes Corinth, where Paul is currently. And Corinth is the principal city of Achaia. Kenneth, I think his name is Kenneth Hampton Keithley, wrote, he wonders if that, you know the name Priscilla and Achelas, Achelas, you spell A-Q-U-I-L-A. I always said Achela, but I guess it's Achelas.

They were companions of Paul. They came from Rome and they met him in Corinth. And he theorizes that maybe they heard of this Thessalonians all the way in Rome, all the way to the West. And that's how they were sympathetic to the gospel or believers when they came and met Paul a year and a half later. So that's an interesting theory, could be true.

The news of the Thessalonican change, change in manner of life was reverberating throughout these two regions of Macedonia and Achaia. And there's another word for that, exacheo, that reverberation. That's another word for it. William Kelly says that people were talking everywhere along the Ignatian way. and down south to Achaia, that a body of people who were former idol worshipers, that a former people would abandon their false gods and be filled with the knowledge of the one true God in a joy which no sufferings could chill. And as you know, from up in the previous verses, they were, They, in verse six, they were experiencing tribulation and they were suffering. And I think we'll look at that more next week too, more of the historical side of it. But they had joy, which in the gospel, which no sufferings could chill.

I like that phrase. From this active center of commerce, of Macedonia, and in the Ignatian way, the report peeled out everywhere. And the word peeled is another kind of a synonym for the Exicale. You see I have highlighted, it's in red, I put a map up of the Ignatian Way that went all the way from modern day Turkey, all the way along the coast into Greece, and then it hit the west coast of Greece, and then you hop a ship, That's the blue dashed line, hop a ship to Italy. So that Ignatian Way. That's the Ignatian Way. Ignatian Way, which is a major trade route.

The news of the Thessalonians rang out from that road that these former idol worshipers renounced Zeus, Herod, Artemis, Apollo, and all the rest without adopting the cold hard legalism and circumcision of the Jews. And that's a That's a thing of the Holy Spirit in itself, because these Thessalonian believers had come to the synagogue, even if they're Gentiles, they attached themselves to the God of the Jews, and then they accepted Paul's gospel. Now they could have taken on the legalism of the Jews, the law, but they didn't adopt that. They adopted grace, didn't they? So that is a work of God in itself. And that's, the Jews, of course, didn't like that, and more persecution will follow for the Thessalonians.

Maybe we should skip on to Philippians. So I can say the Thesses. Yeah. Yeah. So in verse nine, we, we read that for they themselves. report about what kind of a reception we had with you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God. Well, that word receiving is Æsodos in the Greek. And I took this from Kali, and it's just interesting point of fact that it's the exact opposite of the word Exodus. So it's the way in versus the way out. Or Paul's entrance into Thessalonica.

I think I've inherited my dad's lack of being able to pronounce words. I know that he would stumble on words, too. And I just must have inherited his lethargic tongue. Is there a gene for that? I think there is. But we'll look into that more, that isodos, that receiving, next week, because in chapters 2, 1 through 4, because it fits in better there. kind of along the historical lines that we'll look at next week.

I'm trying to get to verse 10 here and all that, all that's in verse 10, which is big, big, big, big. So point number two, they turn from God, from idols. The turning is epistrophal and that's to convert or conversion to turn to or return to is what it means or to turn around completely turn around and as you know that's a salvation to turn conversion or convert. Epistrepho.

Here I have Acts 3, a verse from Acts 3. Paul says to a crowd after he just healed a lame beggar, he says, therefore repent and return so that your sins may be wiped away in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. And there we have, interesting, I just bring this up to contrast these two words. We have return and then we have repent in that same verse.

Epistrephos, the word for turning around or to convert. Whereas repenting is mentinaeo. And I have it there in point B. And mentinaeo is just a change of mind. So what he's saying there in Acts 3 is, therefore turn around and well actually he's saying therefore change your mind and then turn around or turn so that your sins may be wiped away. So there's the two words in that one verse. And I just want to bring those out because one time I got in an argument with a Sunday school class I was teaching here in Telluride years and years ago, evening class.

I don't think it came to fisticuffs, but I was trying to convince them that repenting wasn't changing your mind. Well, repenting is changing. So you see, now I'm confused. But they had it that repenting was turning. And of course, repenting is a change of mind and that's not turning. So we were going back and forth on that. I think friendly. I don't think it was an argument, but there you go. I just wanted to point that out. More of turning to God from idols.

Some of the idols at the time here in Thessalonica, I can't even say that this morning, were Artemis, Apollo, Nike, Heike, Aphrodite, Demeter, Cori, Hercules, Poseidon, Zeus, the Sun, which is Helios, Asclepius, Pan, Dionysus, Hara, Hades, and Hermes, just to name a few.

So they had a whole smorgasbord of God's worship in Thessalonica. And I'm sure they worship many of them. The church at Thessalonica was comprised of a lot of women, a lot of prominent women, because in Macedonia, women had a prominent place in business, in commerce, or they were married to a lot of the men who were political leaders, economic leaders, and things like that. And they were considered prominent in this region. Think of Lydia up there in Philippi. The church there, the Thessalonian church was also comprised of Gentiles, and some of those Gentiles were God-fears, meaning that they would go to the synagogue to hear because they were interested in the one God of the Jews. the singular god of the Jews.

So they would go to hear about him. And then there was Gentiles who were idol worshipers. So you had those two types of Gentiles. And then you had many of those Gentiles were slaves or had who were indentured servants. So that kind of formed the basis of this Thessalonican church, slaves and women.

And so that's an interesting point about this church. Now we go to the last part of verse nine, and that's turning to God from idols and to serve a living and true God. Well, there's only one God, and we know that. He's Yahweh, Jehovah, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and he's a living God. as opposed to these gods above in point 3a there, who were made-up gods.

In Acts 14-15, Paul had healed, I think, the same lame man, and the crowd were trying to grab him, and I think it was Barnabas. They thought that Paul was Hermes, and they thought that Barnabas was Zeus. So they thought that the three of them were gods, so they were gonna worship them. And Paul said, men, why are you doing these things?

We are also men of the same nature as you and preach the gospel to you that you should turn, there's our word for repenting, from these, and these are Zeus and Hermes, from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.

So we have a living God contrasted to idols. Idols are things. They're created works of man's hands, and they come from his imagination, his mind. They're made of gold, silver, stone, and wood. And scripture always mentions this, it's too many times to mention, but I have some verses in Psalm down there, and Isaiah, and that idols are just created things, and they're mute, and they just, why serve those when there's a living, I'll say breathing, but I don't think God breathes, living, breathing God, to to ascribe the origin of the earth and the origin of life to and salvation. Okay, verse 10.

And to wait for his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come. There are two infinitives, one is in verse nine, to serve, and let's see if we can go back there, that you turn to God from idols to serve a living and true God.

So that's the first infinitive. The second infinitive is to wait. So these believers, and I won't say their name, because I can't pronounce it this morning, turned, in verse nine, they turned Godward, And they had the purpose and the result of, one, serving, serving the Lord. And that's evident through the fact that they were witnesses to him throughout Macedonia and Achaia. And two, they were instructed by Paul to wait, wait for, and you have that in verse 10 right there, wait for Jesus, who's in heaven, who God raised from the dead. who will rescue them from the wrath to come, who is coming again in immanently. Two present active infinitives is what those are. So our application for today is we too are to serve.

Our citizenship is in heaven, quoting from Philippians 3.20, from which we also eagerly wait for a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we are eagerly waiting, I am eagerly waiting. You know I'm eagerly waiting. Yeah.

I mean, we had a discussion in this class with It involved Roy and Bob, I think, of time. Is there gonna be time in eternity future? Is time gonna be counted? So we're talking about time and someone said, you know, that God's timing is always perfect, right? And in my mind, I was thinking, well, I don't know. I think that rapture should have happened three and a half weeks ago, you know? So yeah, we are eagerly waiting for this rapture to come.

So we serve and we are continuing on serving in the future, point C, and we are waiting and we are continue to wait into the future is the thrust of the infinitive, the Greek grammar, and serve and to wait. So do it now and then on into the future, keep doing. point D in second Thessalonians in his epistle, in the second Thessalonian epistle, so the one that we'll study next, Paul is gonna have to address something else that comes up, and that was they were taking this waiting command a little bit too far in that they were quitting their jobs and just really sitting around and not being productive. And he says they're busybodies, so they had to get back to work. And so he has to address that in the next book that we'll look at.

But we now, hear us today in this Zoom class and whoever's listening into the future, we are to wait and we are looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ from Titus 2.13.

And that appearing is epiphania. Epiphania. I'm gonna cover that word as well as the other Greek words for the coming of Christ, the coming of Jesus and the rapture. Next. Let me move this, okay. So verse 10, is in a way, it's maybe not the whole crux of the letter, but it's a very important, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is called the parousia in the Greek. And here's why.

In every chapter of 1 Thessalonians, there's a mention of the future coming of Jesus Christ. It is described first as in our verse, in verse 10, we wait for his son from heaven. That's the first mention of the rapture. Number two, at the coming of the Lord, Paul says, the Thessalonians will be the joy and the crown of Paul's gospel ministry. That's in chapter two. And in chapter three, this church's ultimate sanctification is promised when Christ comes, chapter three, verse 13. So in every chapter, the coming of Jesus Christ is mentioned. So it's a major theme of the book.

The word parousia, I always used to pronounce- Parousia. Parousia. I used to pronounce it Perugia, but then I learned that that's not the correct pronunciation, but it means to be near or alongside, or the presence of a person physically as a result of them coming, coming through the door or coming to your house, the parousia. And compare parousia to other words used to describe Christ's coming for his saints, and with his saints, by the way, at the second coming.

The other word is apokalupsis, and that means revelation, revealing, uncovering. and then veiling. So you could rename the book that Revelation, you could rename it The Apocalypses if you want to, because that's the Greek word for it. The second word is Epiphaneia or Epiphania. is and that word for his his coming or his revealing is to bring forth the light to shine or to show forth and the English word epiphany or the Latin word I guess comes from that and epiphany is usually um used by religious people to say that they had an epiphany, they saw Christ in his glory and things like that, when something appears and brings forth life. So those are three words, parousia, apocalypses, and epiphania.

These are the three words. And let me just get to this slide, okay. Some examples of Christ's coming, or His appearance, or His revelation, are in 1 Peter 4, verse 13. We covered that in our last study of 1 Peter. But to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, Keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation, and there's a Greek word, apocalypses, at the revelation of his glory, you may rejoice with exultation.

And the second verse is from what we'll cover in second Thessalonians 2.8. And then shall the wicked, the lawless one, uh... be revealed and that uh... report is apocalyptic uh... from the of whom the lord shall consume with the spirit and the breath of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness uh... the appearance of his coming uh... and it's interesting that verse in second Thessalonians has all three of those words you can see in there uh... highlighted all three of the words to describe the rapture and the second coming of Christ.

Okay, so what are the characteristics of this rapture? Well, one, point number A, it's fast. Scripture says it's a twinkling of an eye in a moment. who is raptured it's the body of believers both living and sleeping uh... and the believers are the uh... those who have trusted christ for their death uh... those who have trusted christ's death burial and resurrection and trusted in christ's personal salvation in other words the church is going to be raptured The Greek word for rapture is harpatzion, catching up or catching away or plucking from the earth, snatching away. Where is the rapture going to take place?

In the clouds, in the first heaven, the troposphere is technically, I think, the scientific word for it. It's the troposphere goes up 20 miles above the surface of the earth. So at one of those elevations, the Lord will catch believers up in there in the air to meet him. And I know this gentleman, One gentleman says, it's going to be fun. It's going to be a fun event. And it's going to be a wonderful event. When is it? It's at any moment. The rapture is imminent. It's overhanging like an icicle about to fall. I like that description of it.

It's like a thief in the night, according to 1 Thessalonians 5.2.

No one knows the day or the hour in Matthew 24, and it's gonna happen quickly in Revelation 22.20. There are no pre-signs or no pre-warnings of the rapture. Destination is heaven. The believers will always be with him physically from then on after the rapture.

The purpose, and I just tried to come up with every purpose I could think of, Maybe you can think of more purposes than I have here. It's to be with Him forever, to be given our rewards at the Bema Seat Judgment. It's the fulfillment of the blessed hope. It's the third and final piece of our salvation, the release from the sin nature, from our body of death to these new heavenly bodies that we'll receive at the rapture. It's salvation from the presence of sin. And the purpose, one other purpose from the verse above, verse 10, is that we are delivered. We are saved from the day of wrath, from the wrath to come. Yeah. We are not under the purview of wrath. And 1 Thessalonians 5, 9 says that we are not appointed to wrath.

So that's another purpose of the rapture. I just put this in as a supplement if you want to take a look at it on your own from Roger. my dad's study in this topic, the rapture versus the second coming and all the scripture references of the rapture versus the second coming.

And they're compared and contrasted here. You can go through those. I overlapped a lot of those in my previous slide, but some of these are new too. So I thought I'd just throw that in as a supplement. Okay, final with an ode, a hat to Roger. And we have a visitor here in our play.

So, is to look, wait and be ready and occupy till he comes. And I pulled this out from a book by Tim LaHaye, and I thought this little paragraph was very good. For these many years, believers have been looking and watching for their Lord from glory, for their Lord from glory. They have believed that while his coming might not be immediate, nor necessarily in their lifetime, his coming would be very soon. weary from the presence of sin or in pain from the presence of sickness, like many of us are, in the morning, we have said, perhaps today, and in the evening, we have whispered, perhaps tonight. They have loved his appearing, viewing it as imminent. and so have watched for the return of the Savior.

Yet with all of it, they have lived in accord with that other most practical exhortation, and that is to occupy till I come, from Luke 19.13. Blackstone says, true watching is an attitude of mind and heart. which would joyfully and quickly turn from any occupation to meet our beloved, rapturously exclaiming, this is the Lord.

We have waited for him. And I thought that was a good note to end on for the study. Wraps it up pretty nicely. How am I doing on time? Oh, perfect timing. Yeah. So there it is. We'll continue next week into chapter two and verses one through four, right, Roger? Yes. Okay. Just one thing. Yeah.

Wondering, we'll get there when we get to chapter five, but the day of the Lord, and it has, get a little echo there, I'm sorry. In verse 5, it says, 5-2, For the day of the world will come like a thief in the night. I'm wondering if distinguishing between the day of the Lord and the rapture, we need to sort that out.

Yeah, yeah, and we will, because I pulled that from, you know, that John Volver book. And he, he mentioned that too. And I was like, well, that's talking about that. And that's what you're saying, right? The day of the Lord or the, or what his second coming. And I thought, yeah. And I had an issue with that too. I left it in and I just thought we could sort it out later. So yeah, good point. So you caught that too.

I guess I should, but I didn't want to break up his quote, I guess is why I left that out. And sometimes, you know, with some of these passages, it's, is he talking about rapture or the second coming? And sometimes it, you know what I mean? Sometimes it's a little subtle in determining which is which.

OK. Andrew, don't forget to send us the slides. Oh, I will. Yeah. Right after this, I will send you the slides out to everybody. Roger, should I send it to you and you can distribute it or? Maybe not. Maybe I'll just use my list. Just use your list. OK. Great, great, great. OK.

Well, let's close in prayer then. Our Heavenly Father, we We look forward, especially in this day and time where things seem to be upside down and going sideways in the world, we look for your son from heaven to come and take us to be with you. And we patiently await that, and we thank you for that. And we thank you for this study and your word. In Jesus' name, amen.